Watson, J.B. Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviourist. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1919.
CHAPTER II
HOW OUR INSTITUTIONS FIT INDIVIDUAL SEX PSYCHOLOGY
Social institutions controlling sex activities based on the assumption that all women are adapted to as well as specialized for reproduction; Neurotic tendencies which unfit women for marriage—the desire for domination; Sexual anæsthesia another neurotic trait which interferes with marital harmony; The conditioning of the sexual impulse to the parent ideal and the erotic fetish as factors which determine mating; Homosexual tendencies and their part in the sex problem; The conflict between the desire for marriage and egoistic ambitions; The social regulations from the viewpoint of individual psychology.
The institutionalized forms of social control into which the old sex taboos have developed impose upon all members of the group a uniform type of sexual relationship. These socially enforced standards which govern the sex life are based upon the assumption that men and women conform closely to the masculine and feminine ideals of tradition. The emphasis is much more strongly placed on feminine conformity, however; a great many sexual activities are tolerated in the male that would be unsparingly condemned in the female. Thus the sex problem becomes in large measure a woman's problem, not only because of her peculiar biological specialization for reproduction, which involves an enormous responsibility but also because her life has for so many generations been hedged in by rigid institutionalized taboos and prohibitions.
The traditional conception of marriage and the family relation implies that all women are adapted to as well as specialized for motherhood. In reality, if the biological evidence of intersexuality be as conclusive as now appears, there are many women who by their very nature are much better adapted to the activities customarily considered as pre-eminently masculine, although they are still specialized for childbearing. There is no statistical evidence of any high correlation between the sexual and maternal impulses. Indeed, a great many traits of human behaviour seem to justify the inference that these two tendencies may often be entirely dissociated in the individual life. Dr Blair Bell (as noted in Part I, Chapter III) believes that it is possible to differentiate women possessing a maternal impulse from those lacking such tendencies by the very anatomical structure. It is obvious that a woman endowed with a strong erotic nature requires a kind of sexual relationship different from one whose interests are predominantly in her children. And both the sexual and maternal types require different situations than the woman who combines the two instincts in her own personality for a normal expression of their emotional life.