The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE INVENTION OF THE FRIGID WOMAN
Wilhelm Stekel contributed an article entitled ‘Frigidity in
Mothers’ to a 1930 collection called The New Generation which
contained articles from many well known names in the sex
reforming camp and was introduced by Bertrand Russell. Stekel’s
article detailed the dire effects of frigidity in mothers upon their
children. According to Stekel frigidity meant ‘repressed
sexuality’. He states categorically that ‘frigid women are not
fit to be mothers. They should first get rid of their frigidity.’ 42
Van de Velde, in volume 2 of his trilogy on the relations
between the sexes, Sex Hostility in Marriage (1931), explained
precisely how the frigid woman became a manhater. He
attributed the contempt for men displayed by ‘unsatisfied
women’ to the reversal of feelings of attraction. Sexual
antagonism, he explained, was ‘nothing less than a fear of
attraction’ which developed from a knowledge of the power
that ‘sexual impulse’ would have over them. Some women
developed contempt for their husbands and men in general
because they knew that sexual satisfaction was denied them
through their husbands’ selfishness or ignorance. The process
of reversal is described thus:
The mental processes referred to, sublimation, reversal and
repression, often appear simultaneously, resulting in the
familiar type of ‘man-hater’, which needs no further
description. The contempt with which such women regard
men is reversal of the respect they would have been ready to
have paid him; and also of the desire to be subjected, which
is frequently encountered, and is a characteristic quality of
the feminine mind. 43
Another reason for lamenting women’s frigidity was that it
inhibited the husband’s pleasure and could make him feel
uncomfortable when he was using her body in sexual intercourse.
Weith Knudsen provides us with a graphic description of the
tragic consequences for a man of having a frigid white woman
for a wife instead of the Eastern woman whom he considered to
be far more responsive:
he who knows how terrible and degrading it can be,
especially to a nobler masculine nature, to be reduced to
mating with one of the numerous sexually anaesthetic white
women, will understand the European returned from the
tropics, who replies to the expert’s enquiries that he prefers
the Malayan, Polynesian or Japanese mistress, who screamed
178