This manliness of women, therefore, far from being a disaster, is rather a desirable trait, if a particularly virile race of men is required. And since the existence of women with pronounced male characteristics cannot possibly be a novelty in this world, it is far more likely that the outcry against them, which is modern, is due to modern conditions, than that they are truly and intrinsically undesirable.
“But,” argue the man and woman of taste, “the masculine woman in our society is surely disagreeable!”
I agree. But while I shall now endeavour to explain why she is, or has become, disagreeable, I should like to repeat that she is by no means the only example of a disagreeable sex-phenomenon in our midst; that there are other phenomena just as obnoxious, and that all take their root not necessarily in abnormality of an incurable kind, but in the condition of ill-adaptation into which sex has fallen in this country—a condition that sex-psychologists do not sufficiently reckon with when they regard as pathological the unfortunate modern female who is either sadistic, hostile to man, unnatural in her love and pursuit of women, or blatantly and ostentatiously masculine in her tastes, her kit and her interests.
The maleness of women, considered from the standpoint of marriage—which is the only standpoint relevant to this chapter[63]—can be deprecated only when it renders impossible, or more than usually difficult, the cohesion of that valuable unit in society known as the family.
As this is not a work on the pathology of sex, I cannot deal with cases of genuine physical and mental aberration in which a woman is so intensely masculine that motherhood is quite out of the question. I can only deal with those cases where male elements are present in sufficient quantities in the female to avert serious dilution of virile qualities in a stock.
Now in such cases marriage is not only possible, but can be quite successful—or at least as successful as any marriage can be from the standpoint of the individual—provided that the female elements in the woman find complete and happy adaptation, and the male elements in her are prevented from guiding her conduct and her judgment at the cost of the female elements.
If the male elements in her are not prevented from guiding her conduct and her judgment, the evil result will be twofold: (1) she will develop her masculine proclivities at the cost of her female or maternal side; and (2) she will come into early and bitter conflict with her husband. Either one of these evil results is sufficient to upset the balance of the unit known as the family.
What kind of man, then, is likely to be the best mate of the woman with pronounced masculine elements in her constitution?
The problem is to make her masculine elements recessive in favour of her female elements. It amounts to this, then—in what circumstances is a woman likely to abandon her masculine elements as a weapon in the struggle of life? In what circumstances is she likely to realize their uselessness to her?
—Only, it may be said, when she has found them utterly useless; only when she has learned to despise them. But when does this occur?—It always occurs where the masculine elements belonging to the woman have in a sharp conflict, or by gradual experience covering innumerable small incidents, discovered superior, overwhelmingly superior, masculine elements in the mate. It may never come to a conflict. The superiority of the male elements in the husband may become impressed upon her by repeated lessons, by small daily occurrences, that teach her in spite of herself to trust his masculinity more than hers. When this point is achieved, her masculine elements rapidly become recessive, and thenceforward give no further trouble—nay, they may cease to manifest themselves altogether.