Feminine gender

“ The second element in the notion of gender, although I will not venture to call it an essential one, is the following:—In the words domina and dominus, mistress and master, there is a natural distinction of sex; the one being masculine, or male, the other feminine, or female. In the words sword and lance there is no natural distinction of sex. ”

“ The great Seventh Hermetic Principle—the Principle of Gender—embodies the truth that there is Gender manifested in everything—that the Masculine and Feminine principles are ever present and active in all phases of phenomena, on each and every plane of life. ”

“ She had, however, only so far succeeded as to acquire an abrupt and off-hand style of speaking, which was calculated to shut up old-fashioned people, who had been brought up under the impression that young ladies should belong to the feminine gender. ”

“ According to this, we must have five genders, exclusive of that which is called common; namely, the masculine, the feminine, the neuter, the androgynal, and the doubtful.
OBS. 4.—It is plain that many writers on grammar have had but a confused notion of what a gender really is. Some of them, confounding gender with sex, deny that there are more than two genders, because there are only two sexes. ”

“ I assume, that there are in English the three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, and no more; and that every noun and every pronoun must needs be of some gender; consequently, of some one of these three. A gender is, literally, a sort, a kind, a sex. But genders, in grammar, are attributes of words, rather than of persons, or animals, or things; whereas sexes are attributes, not of words, but of living creatures. ”

“ I refer to the renouncing of the distribution of its nouns into masculine, feminine, and neuter, as in German, or even into masculine and feminine, as in French; and with this, and as a necessary consequence of this, the dropping of any flexional modification in the adjectives connected with them. Natural sex of course remains, being inherent in all language; but grammatical gender, with the exception of ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘it’, and perhaps one or two other fragmentary instances, the language has altogether forgone. ”

“ If feminine independence can ever reach this limit, in accordance with the sum total of moral, intellectual, and even material progress, the social function of the affective sex will be found notably improved. ”

“ Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins—those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood and uncommunicative of tense. ”

“ But the Feminine principle is the one always doing the active creative work—and this is so on all planes. And yet, each principle is incapable of operative energy without the assistance of the other. In some of the forms of life, the two principles are combined in one organism. For that matter, everything in the organic world manifests both genders—there is always the Masculine present in the Feminine form, and the Feminine form. ”

“ Let us think of woman as she is typified and realized, either past or present, in commonplace life. We cannot fail to remark the same sort of divergence from what we call essential womanliness, in one respect or in another. Our study puts woman after woman more or less out of measure with the feminine symmetry we have a right to expect. Make the tests again, those of both physiology and psychology. ”

“ Every good quality, every virtue which we regard as distinctively feminine, will, under conditions of greater freedom, develop more freely, like plants brought out into the light from a cellar in which they languished, dwarfed and blanched, without sun or air. The woman is strong in almost every woman ”

“ And when in the progress of civilization the time had fully come for the recognition of the feminine element in humanity, women, in every civilized country unknown to each other, began simultaneously to demand a broader sphere of action. ”

“ Our dames were the physicians of their time and districts. An exaggerated sense of sex wastes accomplishments on the pursuit of mere feminine attractiveness, which might minister to and promote the highest interests of society. ”

“ A holy war of the sexes was proclaimed, and the sacred shibboleth of the New Thought, the New Ethics, and the New Love was soon in the mouth of every woman possessed of the true feminine esprit de corps. And with the praiseworthy object of adjusting the balance of nature, and of arriving so far as possible at the ideal harmony of an almost perfect equation, in some cases even the little boys would be brought up as girls, while, conversely, the little girls would be educated as boys. ”

“ In the education and elevation of woman we are yet to learn the true manhood and womanhood, the true masculine and feminine elements. Dio Lewis is rapidly changing our ideas of feminine beauty. In the large waists and strong arms of the girls under his training, some dilettante gentleman may mourn a loss of feminine delicacy. So in the wise, virtuous, self-supporting, common-sense women we propose as the mothers of the future republic, the reverend gentleman may see a lack of what he considers the feminine element. ”

“ No institution of note has yet ventured to admit females much further than into the mysteries of the rudiments." (Female delicacy, female industry, female mind, female college were terms hard worked in those days. A belief of sex in mind was universal.) ”

“ What is to become of our views of the feminine ideal, if we see even the model spectimens of the fair sex wander about the streets, the. delicate head adorned with a Babylonian tower, consisting of a collection of international hair and infusoria, and the curved model back ending in a mysterious elevation of drygoods and architectural designs, moving with strange contortions, and threatening changes of form, before which, if they really were a part of the person, the entire male sex would flee into the forest? At such a sight the question: "Must a woman have brains?" ”

“ Thus, it will be seen, both feminine and masculine articles must be used to designate the same object; and a person must be spoken of as feminine, although the person is a man; the reason being that personne, the word, is feminine.—Richard Grant White. ”

“ Given, therefore, the persistence of the body-despising values, and the conditions to which they give rise, we may expect to see the energetic minority of women, who now lead the Feminist movement, determine the future of their sex ”

“ These remarks have borne reference to the female sex principally, because they are the dependent, the acquiescent sex—from nature, and habit, and position, most exposed to be swayed by opinion—and yet, too, in a certain very wide department they are the lawgivers and custom-makers of society. ”

“ Our own country took some part, as will be readily remembered, in deposing the last of them from her throne.
Every student of what has come to be called "woman's sphere," especially among the uncultivated races, must be led to the conclusion that the condition of the female sex, the sphere of her activity and influence in any race, is one of the very best indexes of the civilization of that people. ”

“ There are many who consider that the excessive preoccupation of the present generation of women the political side of the question has tended to increase this confusion. It is still by no means satisfactorily demonstrated that women as a sex have interest apart from and antagonistic to those of men, or whether there are merely a number of feminine groups-interests arising from the peculiar conditions of women's work, Mrs. ”

“ She possessed all that soft delicacy of appearance that reminds the sterner sex how frail and dependent is woman, while she bore in her face that sweet and winning expression of intellect, that, in other climes more favored by civilization, and where cultivation adds so much to the charms of her sex, would alone have marked her as beautiful. ”

“ It is not for nothing that in common parlance woman is spoken of as ‘the sex.’ In this sexual differentiation of the whole life-nature of woman from man, deducible as it is from physiological and anatomical distinctions, lies the ground of those differentiations of function which culminate in the fact that while mankind in its intellectual moral and technical development is represented in the main by Man, Woman has continued to find her chief function in the direct procreation of the race. ”

“ In the old age, before sex was, we were mixed, each one a mixture. The process of singling into individuality resulted into the great polarisation of sex. The womanly drew to one side, the manly to the other. ”

“ The justification for the whole movement of Modern Feminism in one of its main practical aspects—namely, the placing of the female sex in the position of privilege, advantage and immunity—is concentrated in the current conception of “chivalry.” ”

“ For such women it was indeed a blessed day when the word that was to deliver them from bondage and to open to them paths of public usefulness was first spoken by the pioneers of feminism, throwing open to the female sex the many professions for which they are as fit, or even fitter—in spite of the equality theory—than men! ”

“ It lies with the woman of to-day to make that faith so strong as to move mountains. I think she will succeed, for I doubt whether any mental power is inherent in sex. There are differences of degree, differences of quality; but I suspect that they are mainly due to sexual heredity, to environment, to suggestion, and that indeed, if I may trench upon biology, human creatures are never entirely male or entirely female; there are no men, there are no women, but only sexual majorities. ”

“ After having appeared to the founders of the language, a distinction not necessary to be engrafted in the syntax, there are yet a limited number of words, to which the idea of sex, so strongly attaches, that it would be deemed the height of impropriety in a female to use the masculine, and in male to use the feminine expressions. ”

“ Of course, I do not deny for one moment—who could?—that there are women, and many women in this country, including some of the most gifted, most accomplished, most high-minded of their sex, who do feel in that way. ”

“ Thus freed from employments unsuited to her delicate constitution, the sex has also escaped that hideous ugliness and repulsive coarseness of complexion which toil and privation every where else bring upon them. Every woman here has the features as well as the dress of a lady; every woman here is called a lady, and strives to appear so. ”

“ I cannot better conclude than with the hope that these examples of what may be done may excite a noble emulation in their own sex, and in ours such a conviction of the value of the female mind, as shall overcome our long-cherished prejudices, and induce us to give our earnest endeavors to the promotion of women's best interests. ”

“ All efforts made to understand the sex problem, which is the woman question, must be based on the full knowledge of the physical capacity of woman and the effect that her emancipation will have on her function of race production. ”

“ Sex is merely a manifestation of Gender on a certain plane of the Great Physical Plane—the plane of organic life. We wish to impress this distinction upon your minds, for the reason that certain writers, who have acquired a smattering of the Hermetic Philosophy, have sought to identify this Seventh Hermetic Principle with wild and fanciful, and often reprehensible, theories and teachings regarding Sex.
The office of Gender is solely that of creating, producing, generating, etc., and its manifestations are visible on every plane of phenomena. ”

“ Yet those who maintain that distinction of intelligence, etc., between the sexes are traceable to external conditions affecting one sex only and inherited through that sex alone, cannot evade the above assumption. ”

“ Then, the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. ”

“ What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race, religion, or in the case of a conquered country, nationality, are to some men, sex is to all women; a peremptory exclusion from almost all honourable occupations, but either such as cannot be fulfilled by others, or such as those others do not think worthy of their acceptance. ”

“ Now I believe it will be impossible for woman to fill the station assigned her by God, until her brethren mingle with her as an equal, as a moral being; and lose, in the dignity of her immortal nature, and in the fact of her bearing like himself the image and superscription of her God, the idea of her being a female. ”

“ Those who regard women from the all-human standpoint, holding the functions of sex to be only a passing incident in the great scheme of life, will be inclined to take the former view; those, on the other hand, who believe that a woman's life derives its colour from considerations of sex which refuse to be ignored, may well wonder where a rigorous application of perfect equality will land us in the end. ”

“ This is absolutely the case even in those countries where civilization and refinement have elevated the sex to a higher grade in society than they ever before reached. Women are courted, flattered, caressed, extolled ”

“ But it may, perhaps, be worth while to say once more, what has so often been said already, that those who ask for a fuller and freer life for women have no desire to interfere with distinctions of sex. The question under debate is not whether, as a matter of fact, there is such a thing as distinctive manhood and womanhood ”

“ The changes that are made in the opinions of our sex as to female beauty, according to the different situations in which women are placed, and the different qualities on which we fix the idea of their excellence, are curious and striking. ”

“ Still it is a sad fact that inherited maladies or constitutional defects do fall to the lot of very many of the female sex. The common phrase, which has passed into a motto—"The suffering sex"—may have been, and I think was, intended to apply to the sympathetic mind of woman quite as much as to the body ”