Sex & Character / Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition

by Otto Weininger

It seems to me that if we look the facts of the case in the face there are only two possible courses open for women: either to pretend to accept man’s ideas, and to think that they believe what is really opposed to their whole, unchanged nature, to assume a horror of immorality (as if they were moral themselves), of sexuality (as if they desired platonic love); or to openly admit that they are wrapped up in husband and children, without being conscious of all that such an admission implies, of the shamelessness and self-immolation of it.

Unconscious hypocrisy, or cynical identification with their natural instincts; nothing else seems possible for woman.

But it is neither agreement nor disagreement with, but rather the denial and overcoming of her womanishness that a woman should aim at. If a woman really were to wish, for instance, for man’s chastity, it would mean that she had conquered the woman in her, it would mean that pairing was no longer of supreme importance to her and that her aim was no longer to further it. But here is the trouble: such pretensions must not be accepted as genuine, even although here and there they are actually put forward. For a woman who longed for man’s purity is, apart from her hysteria, so stupid and so incapable of truthfulness that she is unable to perceive that she is in this way negating herself, making herself absolutely worthless, without existence!

It is difficult to decide which is preferable: the unlimited hypocrisy which can appropriate the thing that is most foreign to it, i.e., the ascetic ideal, or the ingenuous admiration for the reformed rake, the complacent devotion to him. The principal problem of the woman question lies in the fact that in each case woman’s one desire is to put all responsibility on man, and in this it is identical with the problem of mankind.

Friedrich Nietzsche says in one of his books: “To underestimate the real difficulties of the man and woman problem, to fail to admit the abysmal antagonism and the inevitable nature of the constant strain between the two, to dream of equal rights, education, responsibilities and duties, is the mark of the superficial observer, and any thinker who has been found shallow in these difficult places—shallow by nature—should be looked upon as untrustworthy, as a useless and treacherous guide; he will, no doubt, be one of those who ‘briefly deal with’ all the real problems of life, death and eternity—who never gets to the bottom of things. But the man who is not superficial, who has depth of thought as well as of purpose, the depth which not only makes him desire right but endows him with determination and strength to do right, must always look on woman from the oriental standpoint:—as a possession, as private property, as something born to serve and be dependent on him—he must see the marvellous reasonableness of the Asiatic instinct of superiority over women, as the Greeks of old saw it, those worthy successors and disciples of the Eastern school. It was an attitude towards woman which, as is well known, from Homer’s time till that of Pericles, grew with the growth of culture, and increased in strength step by step, and gradually became quite oriental. What a necessary, logical, desirable growth for mankind! if we could only attain to it ourselves!”

The great individualist is here thinking in the terms of social ethics, and the autonomy of his moral doctrine is overshadowed by the ideas of caste, groups, and divisions. And so, for the benefit of society, to preserve the place of men, he would place woman in subjection, so that the voice of the wish for emancipation could no longer be heard, and so that we might be freed from the false and foolish cry of the existing advocates of women’s rights, advocates who have no suspicion of the real source of woman bondage. But I quoted Nietzsche, not to convict him of want of logic, but to lead to the point that the solution of the problem of humanity is bound up with the solution of the woman problem. If any one should think it a high-flown idea that man should respect woman as an entity, a real existence, and not use her merely as a means to an end, that he should recognise in her the same rights and the same duties (those of building up one’s own moral personality) as his own, then he must reflect that man cannot solve the ethical problem in his own case, if he continues to lower the idea of humanity in the women by using her simply for his own purposes.

Coitus is the price man has to pay to women, under the Asiatic system, for their oppression. And although it is true that women may be more than content with such recompence for the worst form of slavery, man has no right to take part in such conduct, simply because he also is morally damaged by it.

Even technically the problem of humanity is not soluble for man alone; he has to consider woman even if he only wishes to redeem himself; he must endeavour to get her to abandon her immoral designs on him. Women must really and truly and spontaneously relinquish coitus. That undoubtedly means that woman, as woman, must disappear, and until that has come to pass there is no possibility of establishing the kingdom of God on earth. Pythagoras, Plato, Christianity (as opposed to Judaism), Tertullian, Swift, Wagner, Ibsen, all these have urged the freedom of woman, not the emancipation of woman from man, but rather the emancipation of woman from herself.

It is easy to bear Nietzsche’s anathema in such company! But it is very hard for woman to reach such a goal by her own strength. The spark in her is so flickering that it always needs the fire of man to relight it; she must have an example to go by. Christ is an example; He freed the fallen Magdalen, He swept away her past and expiated it for her. Wagner, the greatest man since Christ’s time, understood to the full the real significance of that act: until woman ceases to exist as woman for man she cannot cease being woman. Kundry could only be released from Klingsor’s curse by the help of a sinless, immaculate man—Parsifal. This shows the complete harmony between the psychological and philosophical deduction which is dealt with in Wagner’s “Parsifal,” the greatest work in the world’s literature. It is man’s sexuality which first gives woman existence as woman. Woman will exist as long as man’s guilt is inexpiated, until he has really vanquished his own sexuality.

It is only in this way that the eternal opposition to all anti-feministic tendencies can be avoided; the view that says, since woman is there, being what she is, and not to be altered, man must endeavour to make terms with her; it is useless to fight, because there is nothing which can be exterminated. But it has been shown that woman is negative and ceases to exist the moment man determines to be nothing but true existence.