Although in the normal state woman is naturally full of delicacy and sentiments of modesty, nothing is easier than to make these disappear completely by training her systematically to sexual immodesty or to prostitution. Here we observe the effects of the routine and suggestible character of feminine psychology, of the tendency of woman to become the slave of habit and custom, as well as of her perseverance when her determined will pursues a definite end. Prostitution gives us sad proofs of this fact.
The psychology of prostitutes is very peculiar. Attempts to restore them to a moral life nearly always fail hopelessly; it is rare to see them permanently successful. Most of these women have a heredity of bad quality and are of weak character, idle and libidinous. They find it much easier to gain their living by prostitution, and forget their work, if they have ever learned any. The poverty, drunkenness and shame which follow seduction and illegitimate birth have no doubt driven more than one prostitute to her sad trade, but the naturally evil dispositions of these women constitute without any doubt the principal cause. Alcohol, venereal diseases and bad habits, combined with continually repeated sexual degradation, afterwards determine progressive decadence.
Some of these women, however, of better quality, only surrender themselves to prostitution by compulsion; they suffer from this existence and strive to escape from it. The grisettes and lorettes[2] form a group intermediate between prostitution and natural love; they are women who hire themselves for a time to one man in particular, and are maintained and paid by him in return for satisfying his sexual appetites. Here again, sexual desire only exceptionally plays the chief role. The conduct of these women results from their loose character and pecuniary interest.
If, therefore, we admit on the one hand that the sexual excesses of the female sex are especially grafted on hereditary disposition of character, or are primarily due to strong appetites, we are obliged on the other hand to recognize that the great role played by sexuality in the brain of woman renders it more difficult for her than for man to return to better ways when she has once prostituted herself, or when she has surrendered in any way to sexual licentiousness, even when her original quality was not bad.
In man the sexual appetite is much more easily separated than in woman from other instincts, sentiments and intellectual life in general, and possesses in him, however powerful it may be, a much more transient character, which prevents it dominating the whole mental life.
I have dwelt so much on this point because it is essential to know the differences which exist between man and woman in this respect, and to take them into account if we wish to give a just and healthy judgment on the sexual question from the social point of view. The more it is our duty to give the same rights to both sexes, the more absurd it is to disregard the profoundness of their differences and to imagine that these can ever be effaced.
Flirtation.—If we look in an English dictionary for the meaning of the word flirt, we find it equivalent to coquetry. But this English term has become fixed and modernized in another sense which has become international, to express the old idea of a series of well-known phenomena which must be clearly distinguished from coquetry.
Coquetry, an especially feminine attribute, is not in itself dependent on the sexual appetite; it is an indirect irradiation, purely psychical, and we shall speak of it later on. Flirtation, as we now understand the term, is directly connected with the sexual appetite, and constitutes its external impression in all the wealth of its forms, as much in man as in woman. In a word, flirtation is a polymorphous language which clearly expresses the sexual desires of an individual to the one who awakens these desires, actual coitus alone excepted.
Flirtation may be practiced in a more or less unconscious manner. It is by itself neither a psychic attribute nor sexual appetite, for a human being may so hide and overcome his appetites that no one remarks them; and on the contrary, he may simulate sexual appetite without feeling it, or at any rate behave in such a way as to excite it in his partner. Flirtation thus consists in an activity calculated to disclose the eroticism of the subject as well as to excite that of others. It is needless to say that the nature of coquetry disposes to flirtation.
Flirtation comprises all the sport of love, kisses, caresses and all kinds of sexual excitation even to orgasm, without reaching the consummation of coitus. All degrees may be noted; and, according to temperament, flirtation may be limited to slight excitation of the sexual appetite or may extend to violent and rapidly increasing emissions. The considerable individual differences which exist in sexual sensibility result in the same perception or the same act having little effect on one individual, while it excites another to a high degree. In the latter case, especially in man, flirtation may even lead to venereal orgasm without coitus, and even without any manipulations which resemble it. A woman of exuberant form, assuming sensual and voluptuous attitudes, may thus provoke an ejaculation by the slight and repeated friction of her dress against the penis of an excitable dancer.