Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex

by William Isaac Thomas

There is here a rapid shifting of attention between organic impulse to pair and organic dread of pairing, until an equilibrium is reached, which is not essentially different from the case, in human society, of that woman who, "whispering, 'I will ne'er consent,' consented." In either case, the minimum that it is necessary to assume is an organic hesitancy, though in the case of woman social hesitancy may play even the greater rôle. Pairing is in its nature a seizure, and the coquetry of the female goes back, perhaps, to an instinctive aversion to being seized.

Our understanding of the nature of modesty is here further assisted by the consideration that the same stimulus does not produce the same reaction under all circumstances, but, on the contrary, may result in totally contrary effects. A show of fight may produce either anger or fear; social attention may gratify us from one person and irritate us from another; or the attentions of the same person may annoy us today and please us tomorrow. Mere movement is, to take another instance, one of the most powerful stimuli in animal life; and, if we examine its meaning among animals, we find that the same movement may have different meanings in terms of sex. If the female runs, the movement attracts the notice of the male, and the movement is a sexual stimulus. Or the movement may be a movement of avoidance—a running-away; and in this way the female may secure contrary desires by the same general type of activity. Or, on the other hand, not-running is a condition of pairing, and is also a means of avoiding the attention of the male. Similarly modesty has a twofold meaning in sexual life. In appearance it is an avoidance of sexual attention, and at many moments it is an avoidance in fact. But we have seen in the case of the birds that the avoidance is, at the pairing season, only a part of the process of working up the organism to the nervous pitch necessary for pairing.

But without going farther into the question of the psychology of wooing, it is evident that very delicate attention to behavior is necessary to be always attractive and never disgusting to the opposite sex, and even the most serious attention to this problem is not always successful.[²⁴⁷] Sexual association is a treacherous ground, because our likes and dislikes turn upon temperamental traits rather than on the judgment, or, at any rate, upon modes of judgment not clearly analyzable in consciousness. An openness of manner in the relations of the sexes is very charming, but a little more, and it is boldness, or, if it relates to bodily habits, indecency. A modest behavior is charming, but too much modesty is prudery. Under these circumstances, when the suggestive effect of bodily habits is realized, but the effect of a given bit of behavior cannot be clearly reckoned, and when, at the same time, the effect produced by the action is felt to be very important to happiness, it is to be expected that there should often be a conflict between the tendency to follow a stimulus and the tendency to inhibit it, a hovering between advance and retreat, assent and negation—a disturbed state of attention, and an organic hesitancy, resulting in the emotional overflow of blushing when the act is realized or thought as improper.

But, however thin and movable the partitions between attraction and disgust, every person is aware of certain standards of behavior, derived either from the strain of personal relationship or by imitation of current modes of behavior. The girl of the unclothed races who takes in sitting a modest attitude is acting on the result of experience. She may have been often annoyed by the attentions of men at periods when their attention was not welcome, and in this case the action is one of shrinking and avoidance. She doubtless has in mind also that all females are not at all times attractive to all males, that female boldness sometimes excites disgust, and that the concealment of the person may be more attractive than its exposure.

This more or less instinctive recognition of the suggestive power of her person and her corresponding attitude of modesty have been assisted also by her observation of the experiences of other women, and by the talk of the older women. I may add the following instances to make it plain that the sexual relation is the object of much attention from both sexes in primitive society, and furnishes occasion for the interruption of the smooth flow of the attention and the bodily activities. Describing the use of magic by the male Australians in obtaining wives, Spencer and Gillen add:

In the case of charming, however, the initiative may be taken by the woman, who can, of course, imagine that she has been charmed, and then find a willing aider and abettor in the man, whose vanity is flattered by the response to the magic power which he can soon persuade himself that he did really exercise.[²⁴⁸]

If this attempt at suggestion failed, we should have a case of lively embarrassment in the woman, and her discomfiture would be heightened if the other women and men of the community were aware of her attempt. Similarly on Jervis Island in Torres Straits, if an unmarried woman was interested in a man, she accosted him, but the man did not address the woman "for, if she refused him, he would feel ashamed, and maybe he would brain her with a stone club, and so 'he would kill her for nothing.'"[²⁴⁹]

A wholesale unsettling of habit is seen when a lower culture is impinged upon by a higher. The consciousness of other standards of behavior causes new forms of modesty in the lower race. Haddon reports of the natives of Torres Straits:

The men were formerly nude, and the women wore only a leaf petticoat, but I gather that they were a decent people; now both sexes are prudish. A man would never go nude before me—only once or twice has it happened to me, and then only when they were diving.... Amongst themselves they are, of course, much less particular, but I believe they are becoming more so.... I have not noticed any reticence in their speaking about sexual matters before the young, but missionary influence has modified this a great deal; formerly, I imagine, there was no restraint in speech, now there is a great deal of prudery;... and I had the greatest possible difficulty in getting the little information I did about the former relationships between the sexes. All this, I suspect, is not really due to a sense of decency per se, but rather to a desire on their part not to appear barbaric to strangers; in other words, the hesitancy is between them and the white man, not as between themselves.[²⁵⁰]