Women -- Economic conditions; Women -- Employment; Women -- Social and moral questions
parasite female class in our own societies today to pass away, French
fashions with their easeless and grotesque variations (shaped not for
use or beauty, but the attracting of attention) would die out. And the
extent to which any woman today, not herself belonging to the parasite
class and still labouring, attempts to follow afar off the fashions of
the parasite, may be taken generally as an almost certain indication
of the ease with which she would accept parasitism were its conditions
offered her. The tendency of the cultured and intellectually labouring
woman of today to adopt a more rational type of attire, less shaped to
attract attention to the individual than to confer comfort and abstain
from impeding activity, is often spoken of as an attempt on the part
of woman slavishly to imitate man. What is really taking place is, that
like causes are producing like effects on human creatures with common
characteristics.)
But there remain certain psychic differences in attitude, on the part of
male and female as such, which are inherent and not artificial: and,
in the psychic human world, it is exactly as we approach the sphere
of sexual and reproductive activity, with those emotions and instincts
connected directly with sex and the reproduction of the race, that a
difference does appear.
In the animal world all forms of psychic variations are found allying
themselves now with the male sex form, and then with the female. In the
insect and fish worlds, where the female forms are generally larger
and stronger than the male, the female is generally more pugnacious and
predatory than the male. Among birds-of-prey, where also the female form
is larger and stronger than the male, the psychic differences seem
very small. Among eagles and other allied forms, which are strictly
monogamous, the affection of the female for the male is so great that
she is said never to mate again if the male dies, and both watch over
and care for the young with extreme solicitude. The ostrich male form,
though perhaps larger than the female, shares with her the labour of
hatching the eggs, relieving the hen of her duty at a fixed hour daily:
and his care for the young when hatched is as tender as hers. Among
song-birds, in which the male and female forms are so alike as sometimes
to be indistinguishable, and which are also monogamous, the male and
female forms not only exhibit the same passionate affection for each
other (in the case of the South African cock-o-veet, they have one
answering love-song between them; the male sounding two or three notes
and the female completing it with two or three more), but they build the
nest together and rear the young with an equal devotion. In the case of
the little kapok bird of the Cape, a beautiful, white, fluffy round
nest is made by both out of the white down of a certain plant, and
immediately below the entrance to the cavity in which the little female
sits on the eggs is a small shelf or basket, in which the tiny male sits
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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