The sexual crisis : a critique of our sex life / by Grete Meisel-Hess ; authorized translation by Eden and Cedar Paul.
- Grete Meisel-Hess
- Date:
- 1917
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The sexual crisis : a critique of our sex life / by Grete Meisel-Hess ; authorized translation by Eden and Cedar Paul. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![surmountable may well be advised to do their utmost to direct it into the channels of friendship, philanthropy, and even love of pets; for if there is no other way out it is better to bestow this kind of tenderness upon a favorite cat or a lap-dog than to bestow it without limit upon a man. In respect of letter-writing a similar recommendation may be made. If a woman has written a pas- sionate love-letter, and cannot bring herself to commit it to the flames, let her post it without delay to some woman friend upon whom it will work no harm. . A man who exploits and then basely deserts a woman of noble and self-sacrificing type will often be enslaved by a woman of a thoroughly meretricious character, for such a woman has more understanding of the peculiarities of the masculine temperament, and more inclination to turn them to account. In ‘‘Lebemanner”’ [‘‘Men About Town’’], Raoul Auernheimer depicts a number of intimacies with women of this type, all of which end in the victory of the women over the men of manifold sexual experiences. The man who wishes to break off the intimacy is met first with threats of suicide, and there follow scenes of increasing violence, ending in recourse to physical force. Holding a flask of vitriol in one hand, with the other the woman administers vigorous boxes on the ear, until she has safely steered her man into the haven of mar- riage. On the other hand, a woman is lost from the first instant in which she becomes the desirous one, the one who woos. Let him have gone to see her a hundred times of his own spontaneous wish, let it happen on the hundred and first occasion that he goes be- cause she wishes it, he will never forget his complacence, and will always consider the woman in his debt. Herein seems to be exer- cised over men a kind of metaphysical coercion. It is no radical infirmity or malignity of the will which makes a man’s ardency begin to cool directly the woman’s yearnings come to exceed his own in intensity; man seems to be subject, in this respect, to a force majeure stronger than his own will. It is only the strongest impulse of his own nature, the impulse to the discharge of sexual](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32802985_0296.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
