Gender

“ The Principle of Gender works ever in the direction of generation, regeneration, and creation. Everything, and every person, contains the two Elements or Principles, or this great Principle, within it, him or her. Every Male thing has the Female Element also; every Female contains also the Male Principle. ”

“ The idea of gender was first suggested by the difference between man and woman, male and female, and, as in so many languages at the present day, was represented not by any outward sign but by the meaning of the words themselves. ”

“ In ancient languages every such word as day, night, earth, sun, spring, dawn, had an ending expressive of gender, which naturally produced the corresponding idea of sex. These objects accordingly became in the process of generations not only persons, but male and female. ”

“ The practice of giving the feminine gender to all ideal excellences personified is a mark of refinement observable in the mythologies of even the most barbarous nations. Glory and victory even are of the feminine gender, but it takes manly qualities to gain them. ”

“ To all these existences, whether animate or inanimate, they attach the idea of sex; thus every thing superior presiding, luminous, hard, and unyielding, is of the masculine, while every thing of an opposite quality is ascribed to the feminine gender. ”

“ But characteristically and predominatingly, Sex is predicated of Humanity, where it is developed in its highest perfection; and in the same degree Gender in Grammar is, in predominance, confined to the Proper Nouns Substantive. ”

“ And each year will bring other facts to corroborate the correctness of the Hermetic Principle of Gender. It will be found that Gender is in constant operation and manifestation in the field of inorganic matter, and in the field of Energy or Force. ”

“ All this has been swept clean away in English, in which language there is no distinction of gender but only that of sex: male creatures, or those so personified, are masculine, female, feminine; those which have no sex are neuter; and there an end. English is eminently a language of common sense ”

“ Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print—I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:
“Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
“Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.
“Gretchen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the task I have put before myself in this book is to give our girls and women sane, square and honest information about their sex organs and sex nature, information absolutely free from luridness, on the one hand, and maudlin sentimentality, on the other. The female sex is in need of such information, much more so than is the male sex. Yes, if boys, as is now universally agreed, are in need of sex instruction, then girls are much more in need of it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Christian lands, and beneath our own observation, we can see that it is so. Mark the nation, the city, the village, where order, purity and the social virtues in general, prevail. What is there the female character? We hazard nothing in the reply, that it is elevated, accomplished, and pure. The coarse jest, the impure expression, the subtle inuendo,—poisoning the more surely and deeply, by its very obscureness,—where are these tolerated? Where woman maintains the high rank of her 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. ”

“ The woman with the infant at the breast is in no condition to plow on the farm, labor hard in the workshop, discharge the duties of a juryman, conduct causes as an advocate in court, preside in important cases as a judge, command armies as a general, or bear arms as a private. These duties, and others of like character, belong to the male sex; while the more important duties of home, to which I have already referred, devolve upon the female sex. ”

“ Then let us have our daughters educated as women, and not as men. Let us have them trained for the duties of the household and the nursery, and the sweet enchantments of the domestic hearth. "Be that you are—that is, a woman; if you be more, you're none." ”

“ This Accomplishment is best, if not only to be acquir’d by conversing with us; for besides the natural Deference, which the Males of every observable Species of the creation pay to their Females, and the Reasons before given for Complacence, which all hold good here, there is a tender Softness in the Frame of our Minds, as well as in the Constitution of our Bodies, which inspire Men, a Sex more rugged, with the like Sentiments, and Affections, and infuses gently and insensibly a Care to oblige, and a Concern not to offend us. Invention, improv’d by our Society. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here, the female principle exists, and as you predicted, most of the women are therefore entirely different from ours. The term used in this language is "femininity." It is a devastatingly attractive thing—but almost impossible to explain. I will make an attempt.
Senseless, reasonless, even foolish motions of the body and the hands, the expressions of the eyes and the mouth, the way the head is moved and tilted are a part of it. So are unusual tones of the voice and special ways in which things are said. ”

“ 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.) ”

“ All the facts which have been observed relative to the acquirement of the social instincts and the moral sense prove them to have originated in the female constitution, and as progress is not possible without these characters, it is not difficult to determine within which of the sexes the progressive principle first arose. Even courage, perseverance, and energy, characters which are denominated as thoroughly masculine, since they are the result of Sexual Selection, have been and still are largely dependent on the will or choice of the female. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If there is, as I shall try to show, a fundamental and constantly increasing difference between the sexes; if their needs are different, and if their parts in the intellectual, moral, and social evolution of the race, are, like their parts in the reproductive process, complemental, the clear recognition of this difference must form both the foundation and superstructure of all plans for the improvement of women. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perhaps that is so; but people putting in practice commonly this sense of interest in the ordinary occupations of life rather startles me. I will ask you a question or two presently about that. But I want to return to the position of women amongst you. You have studied the 'emancipation of women' business of the nineteenth century: don't you remember that some of the 'superior' women wanted to emancipate the more intelligent part of their sex from the bearing of children? ”

“ Here then lies the main Defect, that we are taught only our Mother Tongue, or perhaps French, which is now very fashionable, and almost as Familiar amongst Women of Quality as Men; whereas the other Sex by means of a more extensive Education to the knowledge of the Roman and Greek Languages, have a vaster Feild for their Imaginations to rove in, and their Capacities thereby enlarg’d. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But perhaps the most interesting modification or reversal of plan to be noted in mankind is connected with the relation of the two sexes. As will presently be indicated, life itself was in the beginning female, so far as sex could be postulated of it at all, and the life-process was primarily a female process, assisted by the male. In humankind as well, nature obviously started out on the plan of having woman the dominant force, with man as an aid ”

“ We admit the principle that the sexes form series in physical, moral, intellectual, consequently functional respects.
We believe that they should become subordinate to each other in proportion to their relative excellence; and we take the destiny of the species as the touchstone of their respective value. ”

“ I again repeat that Nature has constituted the female differently from the male, and for a different purpose. The strength of the female constitution is designed to flow in a stream of life, to nourish and sustain the embryo, to bring it forth, and to nurse it on her bosom. ”

“ The first great bar to the mental development of woman was the assumed superiority of the male sex, the opinion, so generally accepted, that, in the scheme of creation, woman was but "an accident, an imperfection, an error of nature" ”

“ If the foregoing reflections be well grounded, it is plain we ought to recognize sex in education, and to provide that the method and aim of mental culture should have regard to the specialties of woman's physical and mental nature. Each sex must develop after its kind ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are here brought face to face with the old question that has confronted all investigators of sex-differences. It is evident, however, that the question of the social environment is, in this instance, a controlling one not merely in the discussion of the revelation of sex in handwriting, but also in that of the revelation of intelligence; for there exists a peculiar environment for talent as well as for sex. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You will easily conceive, my dear brother, that if the masculine and the feminine sex hold the same rank in the Divine Trinity, they will be also found in the same rank in humanity. The part which the divine woman plays in Heaven, the human woman will play on Earth.... ”

“ NAUTICAL AND MATHEMATICAL ACADEMY. In comparing the achievements of the sexes, we must not forget that the mind which has most dazzled or benefited the nations has received its first instructions from a mother’s, and probably its last from a wife’s lips. “Though the sinewy sex achieves enterprises on public theatres, it is the nerve and sensibility of the other that arm the mind and inflame the soul in secret. ”