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

THE ART OF LOVEalways been pronounced. Yet there is a large minorityof women, indifferent to the question of maternity, whocan form a relationship of sex as easily as the average man,while women generally are just as sensitive as men to theclaim of variety, and just as able if not better able tolove two persons at the same time. The custom of establishinghard and fast oppositions between "man" and"woman/* in this field as in others, will not bear seriousconsideration, though it is not yet extinct. Women, liketheir brothers, had fathers, and however numerous theminor distinctions between masculine nature and femininenature, they inherit the same fundamental humannature. It is, as we see, the existence of two different idealsbelonging to two different stages of culture which ismainly responsible for an artificial opposition. It is theclash between these ideals which we witness in our phaseof transition today.That is why we should attribute importance to all preciseand statistical studies, on a large scale, of the sexualsituation in women, whether normal women or women belongingto special groups, as compared with men. Merepicturesque general statement, the dogmatic generalizationsof psycho-analysts and others inevitably colored bythe prejudices and the necessarily limited experiences ofthe man or woman making them, are no longer of muchinterest, and, fortunately, are no longer required. Precisegroups of data are now being accumulated. It is indeedonly today that they have become available, and that wepossess valuable statistical investigations by competentlytrained hands, such as those by Katharine B. Davis, R. L.Dickinson, and G. V. Hamilton.Does the seeming greater passivityof women meanany fundamental psychic difference of feelings or physicaldifference of needs? A convenient measurement for[339]