Opposite sex

“ 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. ”

“ Occasionally, dissatisfied members of one sex will establish an innovation, or a revolutionary commotion, demanding rights which they claim have been usurped from them, and sometimes thirsting for prerogatives belonging to the opposite sex. ”

“ The sexual tragedy of modern life lies, not in the fact that woman as such is tending to differ fundamentally from man as such; but that, in the unassorted confusion of our modern life, it is continually the modified type of man or woman who is thrown into the closest personal relations with the antiquated type of the opposite sex; that between father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, husband and wife, may sometimes be found to intervene not merely years, but even centuries of social evolution. ”

“ It is odd enough to see how the entrance of a person of the opposite sex into an assemblage of either men or women calms down the little discordances and the disturbance of mood. ”

“ It may be said that a certain strain in the relations between the opposite sexes which has come about owing to a growing consciousness among women that they have been oppressed and unfairly treated by men, and a growing unwillingness to ally themselves unequally in marriage—that this strain has caused the womenkind to draw more closely together and to cement alliances of their own. ”

“ Shall women try to change this standard, and, if so, in which direction—up or down?
Is it desirable that the weaker sex be given more liberty in emotional matters, or that the stronger sex be given less liberty? ”

“ Was it just this simple deferential consciousness of sex between them, so much more natural than the comradeship which was the good form of her class? Sex-consciousness was after all more natural than sex-unconsciousness, the bridling of the flirt more natural than the indifference of the “woman who has no nonsense about her.” ”

“ In order to guard our young friends against the false reasonings, and equally false conclusions, of these advocates of the equality of the sexes, we will, in as plain and comprehensive a way as possible, set forth what is the true relation of one sex to the other; and in doing this we must explain the radical difference. As to equality in itself, this, no doubt, exists ”

“ In this so-called "duel of sex," while woman's moral equality has not been recognised, women have employed their sex-differences as the most effective weapon for compassing their own ends, and men in the mass—unmindful of the truth that love is an understanding of the contrasted natures, a solution of the riddle—have wished to have it so. What significance arises out of this in the so-much-lauded cry, "Woman's influence!" "By thy submission rule," really means in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, "Rule by sex-seduction and flattery." ”

“ The Force of Reason’s less, than that of Sense.
Your Sex you with such Charming Grace defend,
While that you vindicate, you Ours amend:
We in your Glass may see each foul defect,
And may not only see, but may correct.
In vain old Greece her Sages would compare,
They taught what Men shou‘d be, you what they are.
With doubtfull Notions they Mankind perplext,
And with unpracticable Precept vext. ”

“ Now, up to a certain point sex differences lead to sex-attraction, but whenever such variability—whether initiated by some natural process or by some intentional guidance of the pressure of civilisation—is unduly exaggerated, the way is opened up for sex-antagonism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To narrow the proposition to a particular case, they take one woman, not after long and patient deliberation,—that is the supreme pity of it,—but haphazard, on the impulse of a great emotion, and glorify her as the queen of all women. She becomes inevitably the test of a sex. The poor human touchstone fails, and a whole sex is condemned. ”

“ Now, although most men are in a certain sense "not worthy to unloose the latchet of the shoes" of the commonest woman, much less to "unfasten her girdle," yet they make the most extravagant demands on the feminine sex. ”

“ Women's instinctive attitude had a unique chance of displaying itself, and one wondered at the combined prudery and sentiment with which the subject was approached, while the most offensive part of their conventionalism was the sex-obsession, which was clotted, like cream turned sour, on all their judgments. ”

“ But by far the largest class of callers and correspondents must be reckoned that vast mass of people whose entire gender-nature had been broken up, or down, and demoralized until they had become mere phantom men and women, incapable of realizing the sublime meaning of the words Sex and Marriage ”

“ 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. ”

“ There must be many attributes and characteristics of the general run of women which are not really the attributes and characteristics of their sex, but of their class—a class persistently set apart for the duties of sexual attraction, house-ordering and the bearing of children. And the particular qualities that, in the eyes of man, fitted them for the fulfilment of these particular duties, generation after generation of women, whatever their natural temperament and inclination, have sought to acquire—or if not the actual qualities themselves, at least an outward semblance of them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If they strike at some of our bosom sins, our deep-rooted prejudices, our long cherished opinions, let us not condemn them on that account, but investigate them fearlessly and prayerfully, and not shrink from the examination; because, if they are true, they place heavy responsibilities upon women. In throwing them before the public, I have been actuated solely by the belief, that if they are acted upon, they will exalt the character and enlarge the usefulness of my own sex, and contribute greatly to the happiness and virtue of the other. ”

“ And this divergence of experiences in human relations must react on their attitude towards that particular body of human concerns which directly is connected with the sexual reproduction of the race; and, it is exactly in these fields of human activity, where sex as sex is concerned, that woman as woman has a part to play which she cannot resign into the hands of others. ”

“ Oh, the disgust that I feel when I hear matters pertaining to sex made light of. These relations to my mind are something sacred and pure. But the sensual man who believes that woman was made for his use only—the man who commits continual outrages upon the woman who is legally bound to him, upon her who bears the name of wife—such men defile the air with their very breath. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It sounds mere idiotcy, the thing is so obvious, when one reduces it to words, but yet neither men nor women themselves—for the most part—seem to recognize the fact that womanliness is a matter of sex, not of circumstances, occupation, or clothing; and each sex has instincts and proclivities which are peculiar to it, and do not differ to any remarkable extent even in the most diverse characters ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rather, by a swing of the pendulum we are back in an inverse form of the old initial error, the over-emphasis of sex. Woman, not man, now insists over-loudly on her own womanhood, and in this hubbub of man and woman the still small voice of humanity is apt to be unheard. ”

“ I have presupposed, as it will be seen, that a woman will write only for her sex, and only for the purpose of being useful and to alleviate a discovered need of her sex; but on no account for our sex, or from motives of vanity or ambition. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ I regard sex as the central problem of life. And now that the problem of religion has practically been settled, and that the problem of labor has at least been placed on a practical foundation, the question of sex—with the racial questions that rest on it—stands before the coming generations as the chief problem for solution. Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex.—So, at least, it seems to me. ”

“ We may perhaps all see in her want of self-control a grievous moral delinquency, but in her fortnightly periods of desire she fits perfectly into the law which, it appears to me, governs the normal sex-tides of the female of our species. ”

“ Let us therefore place woman first, and let us prepare ourselves by a reflection upon womanhood for an adequate examination of manhood. But the object of this reflection cannot be to merely emphasize the difference between the two sexes; the object is rather to find the characteristic traits through which each sex presents itself in its ideal character, its greatest perfection; in other words, to learn to know the ideal woman as well as the ideal man. ”

“ Are the men really like the women? Such a conception opens up considerations of very great significance. So far as I understand the matter, it appears that, as well as the deep inherent differences between the two sexes, there are other differences due to divergence in function. It seems probable that changes in environment or in function (as when one sex, for some reason or other, performs the duties usually undertaken by the other sex) , may alter or modify the differences which tend to thrust the sexes apart. ”

“ And then—well considering in what light most men, in their hearts, regarded women—if one might judge from their laws and their conduct and their literature, and the society that they had organized—admiration from this sex was a thing scarcely to be endured. ”

“ It is feared that a sudden rush of science to the female brain would produce asphyxia in the female heart. It is feared that the study of philosophy, the higher mathematics, and the ancient languages would unsex women,—would destroy the gentleness, the tenderness, the softness, the yieldingness, the sweet and endearing qualities which traditionally belong to them. They would lose all the graces of their sex, and become, say men, as one of us. ”

“ It must be confessed that the testimony of anthropologists on the difference in variability of men and women is to be accepted with great caution. As a class they have gone on the assumption that woman is an inferior creation, and have almost totally neglected to distinguish between the congenital characters of woman and those acquired as the result of a totally different relation to society on the part of women and men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus I have endeavour’d to vindicate our Sex, from the unjust Imputations with which some unreasonable, malicious Men wou’d load us: For I am willing to think the greater, or at least the better Part of their Sex, more generous than to encourage their Scandal. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”