The ascetics who in the Middle Ages whipped themselves, wore hair cloth studded with sharp nails, etc., to manifest their love to God or the Virgin, the Russian Skooptsy who mutilate themselves to please God, are religious examplaries of masochistic love.
The Christian ideal of suffering and renunciation as a means of conquering everlasting happiness is also purely masochistic.
Suffering, be it physical or mental (remorse), assures to them in the end, well-being (glandular well-being) and enables them to reach Heaven (will-to-be-above).
Are Women Masochistic? I denied in the preceding chapter the frequently heard assertion that sadism in a typically masculine trait. I would deny quite as emphatically that masochism is peculiarly feminine, a view held by many sadists, as an attempted justification of their cruel perversion.
Oscar Wilde, a bisexual, stated once that of all the masculine traits it was cruelty which women appreciated most. To his morbid mind cruelty meant power. It is power of course which woman, disabled several times in her life by pregnancy and lactation, seeks in the man with whom she mates. He must be a good fighter and a good hunter, not, however, merely to capture her and brutalise her, but on the contrary, to protect her and feed her.
The sadist Kurnberger in his novel, "The Castle of Horrors" also bids us believe that man's greatest victory, appreciated as such by woman, consists in making a woman suffer, in bringing tears to her eyes, in outtalking and outwitting her, "a victory compared to which," he says, "Marengo and Austerlitz look like thirty cents."
And the sadistic Nietzsche puts in the mouth of an old woman in his "Zarathustra" the following statement: "when you go to women, don't forget to take your whip."
Other sadists remind us of the Russian woman's wail that her husband's love must be cooling off, because he hasn't beaten her in an age. Barring a number of exceptions, the fact remains that masochism in women is as abnormal as masochism in men, or sadism in men or women.
Women Who Enjoy a Beating. There are women who enjoy unconsciously being beaten by their husbands, much as they may resent the outrage consciously.
They are in every case hypothyroid and hypoadrenal types in whom the distribution of energy and the emergency production of energy are very subnormal. Nothing but a violent stimulus, physical or mental, whipping or insult, can make them feel strong and active.