Masculine 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Others, under a like mistake, resort occasionally, (as in the foregoing instance,) to an androgynal, and also to a doubtful gender: both of which are more objectionable than the common gender of the old grammarians; though this common "distinction with regard to sex," is, in our language, confessedly, no distinction at all. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let us review the threefold distinction on which this whole study rests, between masculine, feminine and human. Grant that woman, being feminine, cannot emulate man in being masculine—and does not want to. ”

“ In the first stage the man apes a woman only in the manner of braiding and arranging the hair of his head. In the second he dons female attire; in the third stage he adopts as far as possible the life and characteristics of the female sex. A young man who is undergoing this final transformation abandons all masculine occupations and manners. ”

“ Her share of the processes which sex distinction serves is by far the greater. To be feminine—if one were nothing else, is a far more extensive and dignified office than to be masculine—and nothing else.
But as a matter of humanity the male of our species is at present far ahead of the female. By this superior humanness, his knowledge, his skill, his experience, his organization and specialization, he makes and manages the world. All this is human, not male. All this is as open to the woman as the man by nature, but has been denied her during our androcentric culture. ”

“ Let us pass now to a much more serious instance of those artificial divisions between masculine and feminine habits of thought and action which have in the past seemed so absolute, and are, in fact, so impossible to maintain. ”

“ Masculine in intellect, masculine in will, masculine in bodily endurance, masculine in the roughness of her sensibilities, she showed her sex mainly in her dislike of women. She knew herself to be a man, and resented bitterly the freak of nature which had clothed her with a woman’s form. ”

“ We may now generalize and clearly state: That is masculine which belongs to the male—to any or all males, irrespective of species. That is feminine which belongs to the female, to any or all females, irrespective of species. ”

“ From the time our children are born, we use every means known to accentuate sex-distinction in both boy and girl; and the reason that the boy is not so hopelessly marked by it as the girl is that he has the whole field of human expression open to him besides. In our steady insistence on proclaiming sex-distinction we have grown to consider most human attributes as masculine attributes, for the simple reason that they were allowed to men and forbidden to women. ”

“ This may be true, and it may be a wily statement to again throw men off the track; at any rate it contains the old assumption of a mystery, practically insoluble, about the gentler sex. Women generally encourage this notion, and men by their gingerly treatment of it seemed to accept it. But is it well-founded, is there any more mystery about women—than about men? Is the feminine nature any more difficult to understand than the masculine nature? ”

“ Making Women Masculine.—Nothing proves so irrefutably the hopelessness of the task undertaken by a few “strong-minded” women—namely, to equalise the sexes by making women more masculine—than the fact thus revealed by anthropology and history: that the tendency of civilisation has been to make men and women more and more unlike, physically and emotionally. ”

“ The processes of Sexual Selection, which, so long as the female was the controlling agency in courtship, worked on the male, have in these later ages been reversed.82 For the reason that the female of the human species has so long been under subjection to the male, the styles of female dress and adornment which have been adopted, and which are still in vogue, are largely the result of masculine taste. Woman’s business in life has been to marry, or, at least, it has been necessary for her, in order to gain her support, to win the favour of the opposite sex. ”

“ There are other virtues, such as warlike courage, love of justice, or a passion for truth, which, though happily not the monopoly of either sex, are, whether rightly or not, deemed to be specially masculine. ”

“ Not necessarily do these women possess the male intellect; they simply approach the male type in this single aspect of their characters, other and equally feminine attributes of mind existing in full force. But, as demonstrating a sexual origin for this traditional and actual gentleness of the female mind, the fact that certain departures from the typical feminine form are associated with equally positive analogies to the typical masculine mind, seems to me to be conclusive. ”

“ But it is no more the order of nature that it should be incarnated pure in any form, than that the masculine energy should exist unmingled with it in any form.
Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. ”

“ We have to-day reached a degree of human development where both men and women are capable of seeing over and across the distinctions of sex, and mutually working for the advancement of the world. Our progress is, however, seriously impeded by what we may call the masculine tradition, the unconscious dominance of a race habit based on this long androcentric period ”

“ We have had concerning sex not knowledge, but a series of attitudes, the attitude of virtue, the attitude of pruriency, the attitude of good taste, the attitude of the theoretic libertine, the attitude of the satyr's vulgarity. All these poses, of course, have supplied not an iota to an understanding of the foundations of the problems of sex, biologically considered. Thus, a masculine master has coined that immortal phrase, the Eternal Feminine. And in a matriarchate we should undoubtedly hear of the Eternal Masculine. Each leaves one as unenlightened as the other. ”

“ Observing all these disorders and shortcomings in the masculine administration of affairs, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that there is a missing element somewhere; and as there is no element in humanity beside the two, that it must be the feminine element. ”

“ But even in the highest form of life, there are the vestigal organs and characters of the opposite sex, so that while the normal human being has a definite sexual category, it is just as truly apparent that no individual is wholly of one sexual character. The most masculine man is not one hundred per cent masculine, nor is the most feminine woman one hundred per cent feminine. ”

“ I have enjoyed the benefit of free intercourse with your masculine mind undiluted by your masculine prejudices and proclivities with regard to my sex. Had you known that I was a woman—even you—the pleasure of your companionship would have been spoilt for me, so unwholesomely is the imagination of a man affected by ideas of sex. The fault is in your training; you are all of you educated deliberately to think of women chiefly as the opposite sex. ”

“ And though women, after thousands of years of such discussion, have become a little restive under the constant use of the word female: men, as rational beings, should not object to an analogous study—at least not for some time—a few centuries or so.
How, then, do we find these masculine tendencies, desire, combat and self-expression, affect the home and family when given too much power?
First comes the effect in the preliminary work of selection. One of the most uplifting forces of nature is that of sex selection. ”

“ We are therefore prepared to find in it" [the feminine structure] "the embodiment of a larger number of powers and higher aims in its Use... a deeper feeling for the Ends of Use, a more abiding faith in and loyalty to Development, as the one aim that makes life worthy of acceptance and sweet in its passing taste, and on the other hand to see that its failure herein is more fatal and destructive than it is in the masculine life.... The feminine includes the masculine, transcending it in all directions." ”

“ Except in a few rare instances, where the men unite to the hardier qualities of the masculine intelligence the nicer, finer, most susceptible instincts of the other sex,—the organization that more than any other touches on excellence,—except, I say, in these cases, the women have the best of it. ”

“ Curious enough, in this assemblage, numbering over 2,000 people, hardly 400 men are found. As a fact, this disproportion between the masculine and feminine element is more or less noticeable in all warm countries, where the births average five females to two males. ”

“ What kind of man, then, is likely to be the best mate of the woman with pronounced masculine elements in her constitution?
The problem is to make her masculine elements recessive in favour of her female elements. It amounts to this, then—in what circumstances is a woman likely to abandon her masculine elements as a weapon in the struggle of life? ”

“ Further, in the external decoration of our bodies, what is the influence here of masculine dominance.
We have before spoken of the peculiar position of our race in that the woman is the only female creature who carries the burden of sex ornament. This amazing reversal of the order of nature results at its mildest in a perversion of the natural feminine instincts of love and service, and an appearance of the masculine instincts of self-expression and display. Alone among all female things do women decorate and preen themselves and exhibit their borrowed plumage (literally!) ”

“ From available facts relative to the development of early mankind, it is certain that it must have required centuries upon centuries of time to subjugate women and bring them into harmonious relations with men while occupying a position of sexual slavery; first, physical force, second, dependence, and third the substitution of masculine opinions for the instincts and ideas which are peculiar to the female constitution. ”

“ The same conclusion might be arrived at theoretically on the grounds of the recent biological evidence of intersexuality discussed in Part I, which implies that there are no absolute degrees of maleness and femaleness. If there are no 100% males and females, it is obvious that no men and women will entirely conform to ideals of masculine and feminine perfection. ”

“ Now the grounds that begat, or much promoted the opinion of a double sex in Hares, might be some little bags or tumours, at first glance representing stones or Testicles, to be found in both sexes about the parts of generation; which men observing in either sex, were induced to believe a masculine sex in both. ”

“ I am very sceptical when it comes to drawing a clear line of cleavage between what is typically masculine and what is typically feminine in behavior, and I believe that many of the so-called fundamental differences between the sexes are artificial and temporary ones due to the economic and social pressure which woman has to bear. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Contrasted with the view which accounted for the predominance of male strength, and in some cases of masculine beauty, over the weaker 228sex by a long course of discerning feminine selection, it has an unconscious irony. Going quite outside the merits of the male sex per se, Mr. ”

“ The traditions and training to which she is subjected in this matter have a subtle and far-reaching significance, according as they are good or evil. If she is taught, implicitly or explicitly, contempt for the characteristics of her own sex, she naturally develops masculine ideals which may permanently discolor her vision of life and distort her practical activities; it has been found that as many as fifty per cent. of American school girls have masculine ideals, while fifteen per cent. ”

“ In the common conception, when among masculine comrades she should bear herself as a sexless sort of half-being, an hermaphroditic comrade, a weaker, unsexed creature, not markedly masculine, like her brother or the present golfing woman, and far from positively feminine. ”