The sexual question

by Auguste Forel

But all the sufferings of pregnancy and childbirth are compensated for by the ardent desire of the normal woman to have a child, and by the happiness of hearing its first cry. Proud and happy to give life to a new human being, which she hopes soon to suckle and carry in her arms, she cheerfully bears all the inconveniences and pains of pregnancy and childbirth. The latter is actually painful, for in spite of all that nature does to relax the pelvis and render it elastic, to dilate the neck of the womb, the vagina and the vulva, the passage of the enormous head of a human infant through all these relatively narrow apertures is extremely difficult (Figs. 22 and 23). The passage is forced by the powerful contractions of the muscles of the womb. However, they do not always succeed by themselves, and in this case the accoucheur is obliged to apply the forceps to extract the head of the child. Very often the neck of the womb, the vagina or the perineum (the part situated between the anus and the vulva) become torn during labor, and this may lead later on to disorders such as prolapse of the womb, etc.; disorders which may last through life.

When the child is born, the umbilical cord (that is the transformed allantois, Fig. 23) cut, and the placenta extracted, the connecting nutrition and respiration between the child and its mother are suddenly interrupted. Nourished hitherto by its mother's blood through the placenta and the vessels of the umbilical cord which supplied the necessary oxygen, the infant is suddenly obliged to breathe and feed for itself. Its lungs, hitherto inactive, expand instantaneously under the nervous influence produced by the blood saturated with carbonic acid, and the first cry is produced. Thus commences individual respiration. Several hours later the cessation of maternal nutrition causes hunger, and this the reflex movements of suction, and the child takes the breast. During this time the empty womb contracts strongly and retracts enormously in a few days. The increase of blood produced by the maternal organism, by its adaptation to the nutrition of the embryo, is then employed in the production of milk in the breasts or lactiferous glands, which were already well developed during pregnancy.

Suckling. Maternity.—The mother is instinctively disposed to suckle her child as the infant is to suck. At the end of four to six weeks, the womb has almost completely regained its former size.

In savage races suckling at the breast lasts for two years or more. It is useless to mention here to what point the capacity for suckling and the production of milk have diminished among the modern women of civilized countries. This sad sign of degeneration is due to a large extent, as Bunge has shown by careful statistics, to the habit of taking alcoholic drinks, and is combined with other blastophthoric degenerations due to hereditary alcoholism. The future will show whether the artificial feeding of infants with cows' milk will benefit humanity. In any case it allows infants to survive who would die without it. On the other hand the development of a degeneration can hardly be an advantage for the species and we should hope for a return to the natural rule by abstinence from all alcoholic drinks.

The false modesty of women concerning their pregnancy and everything that concerns childbirth, the pleasantries often made with regard to pregnant women are a sad sign of the degeneration and even corruption of our refined civilization. Pregnant women ought not to hide themselves, or to be ashamed to carry a child in their womb; on the contrary they should be proud. Such pride would certainly be much more justified than that of the fine officers parading in their uniforms. The external signs of the formation of humanity are more honorable to their bearers than the symbols of destruction, and woman should become imbued more and more with this truth! They will then cease to hide their pregnancy and to be ashamed of it. Conscious of the grandeur of their sexual and social duty they will raise aloft the standard of our descent, which is that of the true future life of man, at the same time striving for the emancipation of their sex. Viewed in this way, the sexual role of woman becomes elevated and solemn. Man should less and less maintain his indifference towards the social miseries to which the slavery of woman has led, which has lasted thousands of years and which has dishonored the highest functions of her sex, by abuses without number.

The hygiene of pregnancy, labor and its sequels, is of the highest importance. It certainly should not consist in exaggerated care and precaution, for in spoiling and softening women by inaction more harm than good is done. On the other hand, the social cruelty which neglects poor women of the people in confinement, often even without giving them sufficient nourishment, is revolting, and it is here especially that the reform of social hygiene becomes an elementary necessity for humanity.

All that we have just spoken of binds the woman for months or years to each of her children, and we can understand that her whole soul is adapted in consequence to maternity. Even when birth has detached the child from the maternal body, it remains attached to its mother by a hundred bonds, not only during the period of suckling, but long afterward when the conventions do not violate natural laws. Little children are deeply attached to their mother, and while the father is impatient with their cries and the embarrassment which they cause, the mother takes a natural delight in them. When pregnancies succeed each other at reasonable intervals of one or two years, the normal woman lives with her children for many years in intimacy which never entirely ceases in a family animated by human and social sentiments.

In normal circumstances the special bonds which unite the mother to her children last for life, while the father, if all goes well, becomes simply the best friend of his growing children. It is time that fathers began to recognize these natural laws, instead of clinging so tenaciously to the historic and artificial prestige of a worm-eaten and unnatural patriarchal authority. No doubt there are many pathological and degenerate mothers, but such an anomaly only proves the rule that we have just laid down.

Correlative Sexual Characters.—The correlative sexual characters, which we have previously spoken of in animals, are well known in man. Man is in the average larger, broader in the shoulders and more robust; his skeleton is more solid but his pelvis narrower. At the age of puberty, from 16 to 20 years, the beard grows on the face, while in the pubic region hair develops in both sexes. At the same time the testicles and external genital organs enlarge. The sexual glands as well as the external genital organs have remained so far in an embryonic state although the mechanism of erection is already established in young boys. But this mechanism, in the normal boy, is not associated with any voluptuous sensation or any glandular secretion.

Man possesses the rudiments of the correlative sexual characters of woman, such as nipples without lactiferous glands, etc. In a general way each part of the external genital organs of one sex has its corresponding embryonic homologue in the other, which is explained by the different transformations which were originally the same in the embryo. The clitoris of woman corresponds to the penis of man, the labia majora to the scrotum, etc. In certain individuals these rudiments are more strongly developed, and may by exaggeration and transition lead to pathological hermaphrodism (Chapter I); such are bearded women, and those possessing a large clitoris, or beardless men with effeminate bodies and small sexual organs. Such cases are not examples of hermaphrodism, but of incomplete embryological differentiation. They consist in certain correlative sexual characters which show a tendency toward the other sex, a tendency which we find, from the mental point of view, in homosexuals.