Femaleness in the male, on the other hand, tends to manifest itself particularly in cases where the male reproductive instinct has been stifled, or unhinged, or when his spirit has been ruthlessly broken.
Now it may be as well for the reader to know that the attitude of the modern world is to fall down in a state of acquiescence before this important fact of sex, without attempting to inquire whether the importance with which it looms on the horizon of our lives is not precisely due to the attitude of prostrate acceptance with which it is met.
Particularly in England is the phenomenon of mixed elements noticeable—so much so that foreigners call attention to it as something exceptional.[60] But it is only noticeable in this marked degree in England because, like all other manifestations of sex in this country, it is ill-adapted. A well-adapted sexual proclivity does not cry aloud and call attention to itself in this way.
Humbly as they may acquiesce in it, however, it is customary for people in this country to speak disparagingly of the “male woman,” of her who flaunts manly attire, affects a walking-stick, hunts like a man, and is always the last to be drawn away from a drain or other refuge in which some unfortunate fox or other hunted animal has run for safety. I know of a case where such a woman constantly waits until long after dark in order to catch or kill the fox that has thus hoped to save its life. (Unconscious Sadism.)
Now it is all very well to inveigh against the existence of such viragos, and to describe as morbid their manifestation of male sexual characteristics, but, as a matter of fact, there is as a rule nothing really morbid in their constitutions. And in any case, an attitude of humble acquiescence before them, as if they were an imposition from Providence, which must be suffered willy-nilly, is hardly the best way of modifying either the disagreeable character of their proclivities or tastes, or the evil to which these proclivities and tastes undoubtedly lead.
I realize that in making this statement I am at variance with practically every authority on the subject; but it is because in no authority on the subject have I found a suggestion of what I am about to say, that I venture to trust my own judgment, and provisionally to adhere to it until such time as the authority who opposes it makes allowances for all I am going to advance in defence of these so-called “male” women.
In the first place, then, it may be pointed out that it would be absurd to complain that a race is breeding women with manly traits in their character, if the desideratum of that race is avowedly to breed people of highly virile propensities. The mating of highly virile males with women devoid of all trace of virility would surely only lead to a depreciation of the stock. For the males, by having their seed diluted by elements utterly unlike them, could not hope to be the fathers of boys in any way worthy of them.
The rearing of women with strong male characteristics is, in fact, always an advantage to a race that wishes to produce a fine virile manhood;[61] for the dangerous diluent “effeminine”—to coin a new word for a new notion—is thus reduced to a minimum.
Among the ancients Celts, Teutons and Slavs, than which few races have been more virile, women, when necessary, used to fight side by side with their men. It is said of the virile Similkameen Indians, that “the women were nearly as good hunters as the men.”[62] The whole race survived only by means of hunting. It was therefore an advantage for the females to approximate to the men in their skill. By this means a double strain of hunting virtues descended to the offspring, thus leading to ever greater and greater refinement and specialization of instinct and judgment.
From the reading of the biographies of great men also we are in a position to determine to what extent the quality which to-day is opprobriously referred to as female “masculinity” was present in their mothers. Think of Schopenhauer, Byron, and, above all, of King Alfred the Great, to whose mother history declares the monarch owed everything! She could hardly have reared so manly a king, had she not herself possessed some innate knowledge of manliness and masculine virtue.