Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXthe fundamental fact. Ultimately, throughout the zoologicalseries we belong to and most of the others, in sex themale is the more active, the female the more passive agent.Anatomically, if not physiologically,the male is the giver,the female the receiver. The psychological relationshipcannot fail to be essentially a reflection of this fact, eventhough, under varying circumstances, it may be departedfrom without disturbing the general norm of nature.In the second place, apart from the natural animal relationship,all our traditions in the recognizable historicpast are based on the dominance of the man in the establishmentof the sexual relationship, and the assumptionthat the chief if not the sole part pertainingthe sexual life isto woman inthat of the child-bearer, any erotic partexercised by her being a more or less illegitimate by-play.and been estab-Our social institutions have grown uplished on this male dominance and this commonly receivedassumption: marriage, the legal headship of thehusband with the legal irresponsibility of the wife, andoutside marriage the recognition of prostitution with asole view to the assumed needs of the man alone and notof the woman. We know that in all these matters bothsocial opinion and law are changing, but ancient institutions,and still more the feelings and opinions rooted inthem, can only change slowly, and even in a state of transitionwe are stillprofoundly influenced by the past.There is a further important consideration, proceedingfrom those that go before, though belonging more intimatelyto the feminine psychological sphere. Modestyboth what may be termed natural modesty, which is moreor less shared with the lower animals, and artificial modesty,which depends on social fashion and iseasily modifiableis more especially a feminine trait. Here is notthe place to show that this is so, or to deal with the[336]