THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN WOMEN

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 by Havelock Ellis is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN WOMEN

THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN WOMEN.

A special and detailed study of the normal characters of the sexual impulse in men seems unnecessary. I have elsewhere discussed various aspects of the male sexual impulse, and others remain for later discussion. But to deal with it broadly as a whole seems unnecessary, if only because it is predominantly open and aggressive. Moreover, since the constitution of society has largely been in the hands of men, the nature of the sexual impulse in men has largely been expressed in the written and unwritten codes of social law. The sexual instinct in women is much more elusive. This, indeed, is involved at the outset in the organic psychological play of male and female, manifesting itself in the phenomena of modesty and courting. The same elusiveness, the same mocking mystery, meet us throughout when we seek to investigate the manifestations of the sexual impulse in women. Nor is it easy to find any full and authentic record of a social state clearly founded in sexual matters on the demands of woman's nature.

An illustration of our ignorance and bias in these matters is furnished by the relationship of marriage, celibacy, and divorce to suicide in the two sexes. There can be no doubt that the sexual emotions of women have a profound influence in determining suicide. This is indicated, among other facts, by a comparison of the suicide-rate in the sexes according to age; while in men the frequency of suicide increases progressively throughout life, in women there is an arrest after the age of 30; that is to say, when the period of most intense sexual emotion has been passed. This phenomenon is witnessed among peoples so unlike as the French, the Prussians, and the Italians. Now, how do marriage and divorce affect the sexual liability to suicide? We are always accustomed to say that marriage protects women, and it is even asserted that men have self-sacrificingly maintained the institution of marriage mainly for the benefit of women. Professor Durkheim, however, who has studied suicide elaborately from the sociological standpoint, so far as possible eliminating fallacies, has in recent years thrown considerable doubt on the current assumption. He shows that if we take the tendency to suicide as a test, and eliminate the influence of children, who are an undoubted protection to women, it is not women, but men, who are protected by marriage, and that the protection of women from suicide increases regularly as divorces increase. After discussing these points exhaustively, "we reach a conclusion," he states, "considerably removed from the current view of marriage and the part it plays. It is regarded as having been instituted for the sake of the wife and to protect her weakness against masculine caprices. Monogamy, especially, is very often presented as a sacrifice of man's polygamous instincts, made in order to ameliorate the condition of woman in marriage. In reality, whatever may have been the historical causes which determined this restriction, it is man who has profited most. The liberty which he has thus renounced could only have been a source of torment to him. Woman had not the same reasons for abandoning freedom, and from this point of view we may say that in submitting to the same rule it is she who has made the sacrifice." (E. Durkheim, Le Suicide, 1897, pp. 186-214, 289-311.)

There is possibly some significance in the varying incidence of insanity in unmarried men and unmarried women as compared with the married. At Erlangen, for example, Hagen found that among insane women the preponderance of the single over the married is not nearly so great as among insane men, marriage appearing to exert a much more marked prophylactic influence in the case of men than of women. (F. W. Hagen, Statistische Untersuchungen über Geisteskrankheiten, 1876, p. 153.) The phenomena are here, however, highly complex, and, as Hagen himself points out, the prophylactic influence of marriage, while very probable, is not the only or even the chief factor at work.

It is worth noting that exactly the same sexual difference may be traced in England. It appears that, in ratio to similar groups in the general population (taking the years 1876-1900, inclusive), the number of admissions to asylums is the same for both sexes among married people (i.e., 8.5), but for the single it is larger among the men (4.8 to 4.5), as also it is among the widowed (17.9 to 13.9) (Fifty-sixth Annual Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, England and Wales, 1902, p. 141). This would seem to indicate that when living apart from men the tendency to insanity is less in women, but is raised to the male level when the sexes live together in marriage.

Much the same seems to hold true of criminality. It was long since noted by Horsley that in England marriage decidedly increases the tendency to crime in women, though it decidedly decreases it in men. Prinzing has shown (Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft, Bd. ii, 1899) that this is also the case in Germany.

Similarly marriage decreases the tendency of men to become habitual drunkards and increases that of women. Notwithstanding the fact that the average age of the men is greater than that of the women, the majority of the men admitted to the inebriate reformatories under the English Inebriates Acts are single; the majority of the women are married; of 865 women so admitted 32 per cent, were single, 50 per cent, married, and 18 per cent, widows. (British Medical Journal, Sept. 2, 1911, p. 518.)

It thus happens that even the elementary characters of the sexual impulse in women still arouse, even among the most competent physiological and medical authorities,—not least so when they are themselves women,—the most divergent opinions. Its very existence even may be said to be questioned. It would generally be agreed that among men the strength of the sexual impulse varies within a considerable range, but that it is very rarely altogether absent, such total absence being abnormal and probably more or less pathological. But if applied to women, this statement is by no means always accepted. By many, sexual anesthesia is considered natural in women, some even declaring that any other opinion would be degrading to women; even by those who do not hold this opinion it is believed that there is an unnatural prevalence of sexual frigidity among civilized women. On these grounds it is desirable to deal generally with this and other elementary questions of allied character.

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