The sexual life of woman in its physiological, pathological and hygienic aspectsKisch, E. Heinrich (Enoch Heinrich)
Science
The sexual life of woman in its physiological, pathological and hygienic aspects
Kisch, E. Heinrich (Enoch Heinrich)
Gynecology; Menstruation; Women -- Diseases
From these phenomena witnessed in the animal kingdom, many naturalists
have concluded that in females of the human species also, sexual
sensibility and the intensity of the sexual impulse are less than in the
males, and even that the sexual sense in general is but little developed
in the female sex, or sometimes entirely wanting. The complicated
apparatus which the primary and secondary sexual characters of the
female combine to make up, exists, according to this view, not for the
gratification of the sexual impulse, but for the fulfilment of the
function of motherhood. “Love in women,” says _Lombroso_, “is in its
fundamental nature no more than a secondary character of motherhood, and
all the feelings of affection that bind woman to man arise, not from
sexual impulses, but from the instincts, acquired by adaptation, of
subordination and self-surrender.”
_Mantegazza_ lays stress on the fact that in the female, sexual desire
is very rarely accompanied by pains analogous to those which occur in
man, in whom sexual excitement manifests itself in painful tension of
the testicle and the seminal vesicles, or in spasmodic, long-continued
priapism.
_Sergi_ writes to _Lombroso_: “The normal woman loves to be flattered
and wooed by man, but yields herself to his sexual desires only like an
animal at the sacrifice. It is well known how much pains must be taken,
how many caresses must be expended, before a woman will yield with
pleasure to a man’s desires, and will share his sexual passion. Without
the employment of these means, a woman remains cold and gives as little
satisfaction as she feels. There are girls who are quite obtuse to the
joys of love, and either resist energetically a man’s approaches, or
yield to him passively, without ardor and without enthusiasm. It is well
known, also, that among the lower races of mankind, means are employed
to stimulate the sexual sensibility in women, means that seem to us to
amount to torture; and that the male, with the same end in view,
undergoes the most painful operations, from which it is apparent that
the slight sexual sensibility of women in these lower grades of
civilization is fully recognized.” And again: “If a normal woman marries
for love, she hides that love deep in her heart, and even on the
wedding-day exhibits no great sexual excitement; she often complains
later that in her husband the love-fervor of the first days still
continues; the very moderate sexual needs of the wife form a natural and
most valuable check to the much more powerful passion of the male.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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