Perhaps this is only to be expected, for the man or woman does not exist whose mind has not become so filled with accepted ideas of human beings and relationships before maturity, or even adolescence, that what is seen thereafter is chiefly a fog of creeds and patterns. If several hundred babies, children of good inherited backgrounds, could be brought up on an isolated island, without a taint of superimposed custom and never hearing generalizations about themselves—never having standardized characteristics laid heavily upon their shoulders, perhaps a different type of relationship founded upon actualities, would be evolved. Without a mythology of attributes, based chiefly upon biological functions, real human beings might discover each other and create new and honest ways of comradeship and association. As it is to-day, we do not know what the pristine reactions of individuals, free from the modifications of stereotype, would be like.
It was the development of means by which beliefs could be separated from actual facts which brought modern science into being and freed the world from the quaint superstitions of the ages. Not until the nature of substance could be proved and classified in contrast with the mass of ignorant notions which clogged ancient thought was the amazing mechanical, economic, and scientific advance of the last century possible. The world of antiquity had standardized life and tied thought down to speculative creeds. Empirical science discarded all supposition and centered itself upon building up another picture—life as an examination of its actual nature proved it to be.
In the creating of a new order which will bring with it a different type of social and personal contact, something similar must take place. For most of our ideas, even those classified as liberal and advanced, are built upon the reactions of an alleged, not an actual human being. Men have suffered from pattern-making, but never have they been burdened with the mass of generalizations that are heaped upon women from birth. Nobody knows what women are really like because our minds are so filled with the stereotype of Woman. And this picture, even in the interpretations of those who claim to understand the modern woman, is chiefly of function, not character. It is impossible to create a satisfying relationship between a red-blooded individual and a symbol. A changed morality cannot successfully emerge when half of those who participate are regarded not as people but functions. As long as women are pictured chiefly as wife, mother, courtesan—or what not—defining merely a relationship to men—nothing new or strange or interesting is likely to happen. The old order is safe.
Women and the New Morality
By Beatrice M. Hinkle
Beatrice M. Hinkle
is a physician and psycho-analyst who follows in general the beliefs of Jung. She is the author of “Recreating the Individual.”
WOMEN AND THE NEW MORALITY
BY BEATRICE M. HINKLE, M.D.
In the general discussions of morality which are the fashion just now, sex morality seems to occupy the chief place. Indeed, judging from the amount of talk on this subject one would be inclined to think it the outstanding problem of our time. Certainly the whole of humanity is concerned in and vitally affected by the sexual aspect of life. Sexuality in its capacity as an agent of transformation is the source of power underlying the creativeness of man. In its direct expression, including its influence upon human relationships in general, it is woman’s particular concern. The position of importance it is assuming seems, therefore, to be justified, regardless of the protests of the intellect and the wish of the ego to minimize its significance.