The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    65/546 page 35
    THE FEMALE SEXUAL IMPULSE and more capable, from the standpoint of consciousness, of temporising. 1 Thus, in the male, sexual experience prior to choice is a sine qua non of sobriety and wisdom in selection. In the female sexual experience only tends to increase attachment—hence the some times staggering contentment of superior women with inferior males. 2 This is not to say that women are less sensual or less able to enjoy sexual intercourse than men, although these conclusions have been quite unjustifiably drawn by many from the circumstance that the unspoilt virgin does not consciously pursue the male for sexual relief. 3 Woman is normally just as sexual as man— often, in my opinion, more so. She is just as able to enjoy her sex experience and no less seriously injured than he is by a long wait after puberty before normal functioning begins. That great authority, Dr. E. H. Kisch, sums the matter up very well by saying : “ According to the general opinion, the sexual impulse is not so strongly developed in women as it is in men. ... I do not believe this view of the slight intensity of the sexual impulse in women in general is well grounded, and can admit only this much, that in adolescent girls who are inexperienced in sexual matters, the sexual impulse is less perfect than in youths of the same age who have undergone sexual enlightenment. From the moment when the woman also has been fully enlightened as to sexual affairs, and has actually experienced sexual excitement, her impulse towards intimate physical contact and towards copulation is just as powerful as that of man.” 4 While unspoilt, therefore, the virgin is more easily educated in choice than the sex-starved male. The chief factor that blinds Ludwig Klages (Die Grundlage der Charakterkunde, Leipzig, 1928, p. 89) says : “ Contrary to a very widespread prejudice, woman, at least in her judgment of persons, is usually more objective than man.” 1 S.P.W., p. 106 : “ In the young girl the cerebral sex-centre is more or less dormant unless it has been unnaturally stimulated.” 2 Hence the view of some thinkers that women are indifferent to male beauty. See L.M., IX, 14 : “ Women do not care for beauty ... it is enough that he is a man, they give themselves to the handsome and the ugly.” See also C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero (La Femme Criminelle et la Prostituée, Paris, 1896, p. 121) : “ En général la beauté et V intelligence la laissent indifférente .” See pp. 170-171, infra. 3 P.F.M., p. 82. Hegar, Litzmann and P. Müller make the same mistake. See also Dr. Harry Campbell (Differences in the Nervous Organisation of Man and Woman. London, 1891, pp. 209-210) : “ The sexual instinct is very much less intense in woman than in man.” See Part II, Chap. Ill infra. 4 S.L.W., p. 168.
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