To suppose, by a false analogy with man, that sexual union alone, without its natural results, is going to satisfy Woman’s body, however much she herself may be deluded into believing it will, is nothing more nor less than to condone an act of pure cruelty, of savage violence, against a basic instinct and its elaborate generating mechanism.[34]
As a matter of fact, although Woman means everything to Man’s sexuality, and is the embodiment of all that his reproductive instinct can desire, even when it is at its keenest, Man means very little to Woman. He is, after all, no more than the sparking-plug that sets an elaborate process going, and the brief moment in which his share in her business is accomplished, and the incomplete pleasure it affords her, are ridiculously insignificant when compared with the importance he himself would fain attach to them. Woman’s supposed devotion to man, and even her love for him, is therefore much more of an illusion than Man’s love for Woman. Regarded dispassionately and coolly, Woman’s love for Man must be more or less of an exaggerated and romantic ideal. He is merely the first station on a long and delightful journey, in which the subsequent destination is the chief concern. Of course he may be desired again as the first station for a second, third, fourth or fifth journey; but it is always self-deception that induces any woman to regard a man as more than that, as more final, more satisfying than that; although utilitarian motives may induce her to exploit and use his social instinct to the utmost while she is serving nature’s and her own ends by having children by him.
The only kind of woman to whom Man is everything, is the prostitute, and I shall show in Chapter IX what a cruel misconception even her position is.
By the time that man has done his share in the sexual act, therefore, and that his social instinct alone has taken command of him, bidding him protect and support his mate, and face the responsibilities that are coming, the Woman may be said to have only just begun, only just started on the road. Silently, secretly, but with vigorous determination, the reproductive instinct still reigns supreme, and has an enormous amount to do—pleasures and pain to bring and to forget, power to confer and to withhold.
This is as important as it seems generally to be misunderstood; and yet its non-acceptance as a principle is the source of more than three-quarters of the crimes that are committed against and by women in the whole of the modern world.
Unfortunately, positive Woman herself does not come forward with any help here. Because positive Woman—sometimes even when she is married—is completely unconscious of what is necessary in order for her to have a complete and full sexual experience. All positive women are in the first place positive to men, and to men alone. This cannot be helped, as I shall explain later; it is one of the inevitable consequences of Woman’s universal unconsciousness. But how easy is the step from positiveness to men to exclusive positiveness to sexual union alone, only those women who have experienced it can tell! And this fatal step is taken by thousands of women annually—particularly in France, and it is a step taken by all prostitutes.
It is, of course, physical anguish for the woman. Her body suffers; because all the necessary subsequent stages of the sexual cycle are omitted: the period of gestation; parturition; suckling, when the mother’s power reaches its zenith, and when the soft helpless creature in her arms offers exquisite flattery to every fibre, both mental and physical, in her body. All this, until the actual day of weaning, comes strictly within the cycle of Woman’s complete sexual experience. To suppose that the mere act of sexual union, which is the first step in this cycle, is sufficient or adequate in the case of Woman, especially positive Woman, is to court disaster, it is to violate her deepest craving. She does not know this. How many millions of women have lived and died sufferers through not knowing this!
But those who profit from her unconsciousness in this matter, those who trade upon her apparent inability to understand her body’s demands in this matter, those, in short, who while debasing her from her exalted position of the mother of Life to a mere instrument of pleasure, also rob her of her full and complete sexual experience and its quota of pleasure, are in my opinion no better than barbarians, troglodytes, common whoreson knaves! Many thousands of them get punished quite soundly enough, as I shall show in Part II; but how many thousands get off scot free!
The Positive Woman, although she does not know it, must be and is positive to the whole cycle of female sexual experiences. Her body knows nothing else and craves for nothing else. It is true that her body bids her seek the male alone (consciously), but merely because if it were not for man’s diabolical skill and craft, this attitude would perforce lead to the natural and inevitable results. The body, however, knows nothing of the interception of the male fructifying element; when, therefore, it drives woman to be positive at first to man alone, it does the right thing; it does all it can be expected to do. It forces woman to the first step which, as far as it is aware, will lead to the inevitable cycle. Contraceptives obviously cannot come into its purview.
That is why positive woman is conscious only of desiring the male, while her body insists blindly on obtaining the whole cycle.