Men, Women, and God / A Discussion of Sex Questions from the Christian Point of View

by A. Herbert Gray

For girls the process is often specially difficult. The task that confronts a girl at this stage is the task of accepting herself "as a woman." I know it is not an easy task or so many girls would not be heard saying that they would rather have been boys. No doubt one reason why girls feel this is that often their parents, and especially their mothers, have shown a preference for the boys in the family and have accorded to them a favored position. The psychologists report that an "inferiority complex" has thus been formed in many a girl's mind. And thus a very real wrong is done to them.

And yet this is not the whole explanation of the matter. In many girls there is a rebellion against their sex. Many hate the physical signs of their developing natures. It seems to them they are being called to a part in life which they have no wish to play. And if particular emotional stresses accompany that development, that may seem to them only one further reason for being annoyed at the nature of things.

I am sure too that the conventional notions of what a woman should be must often prove very annoying, if not enraging. Many men still cherish the idea of woman as a sort of household ornament—gentle and "sweet". Many have not accommodated themselves to the notion that a woman should know the blunt facts about this hard life and this disordered world. Society often seems to expect of a woman that she should be submissive, patient, and merely gentle. And of course nature has ordained that many women should be strong, stimulating, and militant in spirit. Of a really great woman it was said to me the other day that she is really more like a flame than a "cow". But the "cow" idea holds the field in many places. Well! happy those who have a sense of humor and can laugh when society is very foolish.

I dare not enter farther on a discussion of what it means for a girl to accept herself "as a woman". In that matter men seem always to flounder into folly. Even women are not yet agreed about it. Perhaps it is one of the things that is only gradually being discovered at this particular stage of human experience. I am indeed sure that we do not yet know all that women are meant to be and are capable of doing for the world. And that being so I can see that the difficulties which lie about the path of life for women to-day are peculiarly trying. It may be a real privilege to be a woman during this particular period of discovery and experiment. But it cannot but be also rather a strain. The one thing that I can with certainty say is that a woman is called to be like Christ—like Him in His meekness which was the outcome of perfect selflessness and self-mastery—in His gentleness which was the product of sensitive love—but like Him also in His strength, His boldness, His resolute refusal to bend before evil, His positive activities in the name of love.

One particular feature in a woman's impulse towards independence I cannot pass by without a special word. The very suggestion annoys some women that they are not complete in themselves without any relation to the other sex. Being without any conscious desire for the companionship of man, and without any definite sex consciousness, they resent the idea that woman is not complete in herself. To those who insist that the sexes vitally need each other such women would reply that they are altogether exaggerating and over-emphasizing the sex element in life.

Well, about the fact that man is not complete without woman I have no doubt whatever. And I have no reluctance whatever about admitting it. Perhaps that fact gives me no right to dogmatize about the other sex, but a considerable experience has left me in no doubt about the matter. I do not mean for a moment that a great and useful career is not possible to women quite apart from marriage. I do not forget that many women have great powers of intellect in the exercise of which they are living in a world apart from sex difference. But I believe it to be a serious mistake for either man or woman to imagine that they have no clamant sex instinct hidden within the depths of their personalities. And if the instinct is there it can only be folly to try to obscure the fact. It has to be reckoned with if life is to succeed. In many women it only awakens after early youth is past. The exceptions in whom it never awakens must be very few indeed. If the attempt has been made to ignore it the subsequent troubles are apt to be only the more intense. In this matter we are confronted with an unalterable decree of nature. To rebel against it is only to be broken in the long run. In various and great ways the instinct may be turned to splendid uses other than the usual ones of marriage and motherhood. But the instinct is there, and if wisdom means understanding ourselves and handling ourselves bravely, then it must be reckoned with. To quarrel with the nature of things is mere folly.

Another special feature of the period in a girl's life I am thinking of is a tendency to intense and passionate affections for other women—a tendency to idealize some other woman till she seems the center of life and adorable beyond words. A very real danger lurks here, and yet I would like to speak with great care about the matter, because a true friendship is always one of the finest and most enriching things in life, while a grande passion for another member of one's own sex is a different thing with an undesirable element in it.

In girls about thirteen or thereabouts grandes passions for other girls or for school-mistresses are very common, and so far from being harmful they may serve a very useful purpose. They generally pass away pretty quickly, and unless the older woman has been unwise they leave no bad effects behind them.

But among older girls they are a very different thing and often lead to serious trouble and unhappiness. What has happened in such cases is that an instinct which is designed to produce love for one of the opposite sex has been perverted to add an element of passion to what should have been merely a healthy friendship for another woman. And the result is an unhealthy type of relationship. It is unhealthy because, to begin with, in this way girls let themselves go and allow their emotions to run away with them; and that just at a time when it is most important that they should have themselves in firm control. And further, when members of the same sex employ lovers' language, and indulge in the imitation of lovers' endearments, there is something sickly about the whole business which healthy instinct condemns. I do not mean, of course, that when girls link arms or even embrace each other in moments of excitement there is anything mistaken. To some people such expressions of emotion are as natural as breathing. But grandes passions lead to much more than that sort of thing, and so become a serious evil.

It is in connection with this problem that psychologists have brought into use the rather ugly word "homosexuality", though it means nothing more dreadful than this tendency to put a member of one's own sex into the place that should be occupied by a member of the other sex. But I find a certain amount of talk going on which assumes that some people are of the homosexual type, and that it is natural and right for them to express themselves in this way. As a matter of fact homosexuality is always a sexual perversion and is fraught with great danger of nervous disorder. Dr. Crichton Miller says in The New Psychology and the Teacher: "From the point of view of psychological development homosexuality in the adult is a regression…. Clinical experience confirms the view that in the long run the man or the woman of the intermediate type is bound to pay the price of regression in one way or another" (p. 120).