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

THE ART OF LOVEnumerous qualifications that must be made to the statement.In the main it is not doubtful, and it is closely connectedwith the more passive part in sex activity playedgenerally by the female in nature, and fortified by oursocial traditions. (But how modifiable ismodesty mayclearly be seen by the increasing number of societies establishedfor die practice of what is termed "Nudism"whereby men and women in a completely unclothed stateare enabled to meet socially without any embarrassment.)The modifications taking place in our traditions have nothere yet produced any pronouncedeffects. They have indeedtended to produce in women a disharmony betweenthe manifest and latent elements of consciousness. Thewoman is free to know what she latently feels and desires,but she is not yet usually free to manifest these feelingsand desires. The result is that we have today a far largerbody of women who definitely know what they want, butdefinitely know also that to make that clear would causemisunderstanding, if not repulsion, in the very men whoare in need of that knowledge. So we are always broughtback to men.-Even these considerations may suffice to suggest that weare in the presence of two different and sometimes conflictingideals of the sexual sphere of women. There is one,very ancient in our civilization, according to which maternityis the central fact in the sexual life of women,a fact we cannot dispute, while outside that fact, thesexual sphereismainly regarded as man's concern; womanhaving no sexual impulses (if any at all)which do nottend to motherhood, is thus by nature monogamous, whileman, not being anchored to home and child, but with awider scope of psychic variation, isby nature polygamous;so that, while the sexual problem for women is simple andobvious, for men it is more complex. That, one may al-[337]