Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex

by William Isaac Thomas

But perhaps the most interesting modification or reversal of plan to be noted in mankind is connected with the relation of the two sexes. As will presently be indicated, life itself was in the beginning female, so far as sex could be postulated of it at all, and the life-process was primarily a female process, assisted by the male. In humankind as well, nature obviously started out on the plan of having woman the dominant force, with man as an aid; but after a certain time there was a reversal of plan, and man became dominant, and woman dropped back into a somewhat unstable and adventitious relation to the social process. Up to a certain point, in fact, in his physical and social evolution man shows an interesting structural and mental adaptation to woman, or to the reproductive process which she represents; while the later stages of history show, on the other hand, that the mental attitude of woman, and consequently her forms of behavior, have been profoundly modified, and even her physical life deeply affected, by her effort to adjust to man.

The only attitude which nature can be said to show toward life is the design that the individual shall sustain its own life, and at death leave others of its kind—that it shall get food, avoid destruction, and reproduce. In pursuance of this policy it naturally turns out that those types showing greater morphological and functional complexity, along with freer movement and more mental ingenuity, come into the more perfect control and use of their environment, and consequently have greater likelihood of survival. Failing of this greater complexity, their chance of life lies in occupying so obscure a position, so to speak, that they do not come into collision with more dominant forms, or in reproducing at such a rate as to survive in spite of this. The number of devices in the way of modification of form and habit to secure advantage is practically infinite, but all progressive species have utilized the principle of sex as an accessory of success. By this principle greater variability is secured, and among the larger number of variations there is always a chance of the appearance of one of superior fitness. The male in many of the lower forms is very insignificant in size, economically useless (as among the bees), often a parasite on the female, and, as many biologists hold, merely a secondary device or afterthought of nature, designed to secure greater variation than can be had by the asexual mode of reproduction. In other words, he is of use to the species by assisting the female to reproduce progressively fitter forms.

When, in the course of time, sexual reproduction eventuated in a mammalian type, with greater intimacy between mother and offspring and a longer period of dependence of offspring on the mother, the function of the male in assisting the female became social as well as biological; and this was pre-eminently so in the case of man, because of the pre-eminent helplessness of the human child.[²⁵⁶] The characteristic helplessness of the child, which at first thought appears to be a disadvantage, is in fact the source of human superiority, since the design of nature in providing this condition of helplessness is to afford a lapse of time sufficient for the growth of the very complex mechanism, the human brain, which, along with free hands, is the medium through which man begins that reaction on his environment—inventing, exterminating, cultivating, domesticating, organizing—which ends in his supremacy.

It is plain, therefore, that species in which growth is slow are at an advantage, if to the care and nourishment of the female are added the providence and protection of the male; and this is especially true in mankind, where growth is not completed for a long period of years. In this connection we have an explanation of the alleged greater variability of the male. Instead of an insignificant addendum to the reproductive process, he becomes larger than the female, masterful, jealous, a fighting specialization—still an attaché of the female, but now a defender and provider. This is the general condition among mammals; and among mankind the longer dependence of children results in a correspondingly lengthened and intimate association of the parents, which we denominate marriage. For Westermarck is quite right in his view that children are not the result of marriage, but marriage is the result of children. From this point of view marriage is a union favored by the scheme of nature because it is favorable to the rearing and training of children, and the groups practicing marriage, or its animal analogue, have the best chance of survival.

But the evolution of a courageous and offensive disposition naturally did not result in an eminently domestic disposition. Man did the hunting and fighting. He was attached to the woman, but he was not steady. He did not stay at home. The woman and the child were the core of society, the fixed point, the point to which man came back. There consequently grew up a sort of dual society and dual activity. Man represented the more violent and spasmodic activities, involving motion and skillful co-ordinations, as well as organization for hunting and fighting; while woman carried on the steady, settled life. She was not able to wander readily from a fixed point, on account of her children; and, indeed, her physical organization fitted her for endurance rather than movement. Consequently her attention was turned to industries, since these were compatible with settled and stationary habits. Agriculture, pottery, weaving, tanning, and all the industrial processes involved in working up the by-products of the chase, were developed by her. She domesticated man and assisted him in domesticating the animals. She built her house, and it was hers. She did not go to her husband's group after marriage. The child was hers, and remained a member of her group. The germ of social organization was, indeed, the woman and her children and her children's children. The old women were the heads of civil society, though the men had developed a fighting organization and technique which eventually swallowed them up.

From the standpoint of physical force, man was the master, and was often brutal enough. But woman led an independent life, to some extent. She was, if not economically independent, at least economically creative, and she enjoyed the great advantage of being less definitely interested in man than he was in her. For while woman is more deeply involved physiologically in the reproductive life than man, she is apparently less involved from the standpoint of immediate stimulus, or her interest is less acute in consciousness. The excess activity which characterizes man in his relation to the general environment holds also for his attitude toward woman. Not only is the male the wooer among the higher orders of animals and among men, but he has developed all the accessories for attracting attention—in the animals, plumage, color, voice, and graceful and surprising forms of motion; and in man, ornament and courageous action. For primitive man, like the male animal, was distinguished by ornament.

Up to this time the relation of man to woman was the natural development of a relation calculated to secure the best results for the species. His predacious disposition had been, in part at least, developed in the service of woman and her child, and he was emotionally dependent on her to such a degree that he used all the arts of attraction at his command to secure a relation with her. In the course of time, however, an important change took place in environmental conditions. While woman had been doing the general work and had developed the beginnings of many industries, man had become a specialist along another line. His occupation had been almost exclusively the pursuit of animals or conflict with his neighbors; and in this connection he had become the inventor of weapons and traps, and in addition had learned the value of acting in concert with his companions. But a hunting life cannot last forever; and when large game began to be exhausted, man found himself forced to abandon his destructive and predacious activities, and adopt the settled occupations of woman. To these he brought all the inventive technique and capacity for organized action which he had developed in his hunting and fighting life, with the result that he became the master of woman in a new sense. Not suddenly, but in the course of time, he usurped her primacy in the industrial pursuits, and through his organization of industry and the application of invention to the industrial processes became a creator of wealth on a scale before unknown. Gradually also he began to rely not altogether on ornament, exploits, and trophies to get the attention and favor of woman. When she was reduced to a condition of dependence on his activity, wooing became a less formidable matter; he purchased her from her male kindred, and took her to his own group, where she was easier to control.

In unadvanced stages of society, where machinery and the division of labor and a high degree of organization in industry have not been introduced, and among even our own lower classes, woman still retains a relation to industrial activities and has a relatively independent status. Among the Indians of this country it was recognized that a man could not become wealthy except through the possession of a sufficient number of wives to work up for trade the products of the chase; and today the West African youth does not seek a young woman in marriage but an old one, preferably a widow, who knows all about the arts of preparing and adulterating rubber. Among peasants, also, and plain people the proverb recognizes that the "gray mare is the better horse." The heavy, strong, enduring, patient, often dominant type, frequently seen among the lower classes, where alone woman is still economically functional, is probably a good representative of what the women of our race were before they were reduced by man to a condition of parasitism which, in our middle and so-called higher classes, has profoundly affected their physical, mental, and moral life.

On the moral side, particularly, man's disposition to bend the situation to his pleasure placed woman in a hard position and resulted in the distortion of her nature, or rather in bringing to the front elemental traits which under our moral code are not reckoned the best. In the animal world the female is noted for her indirection. On account of the necessity of protecting her young, she is cautious and cunning, and, in contrast with the open and pugnacious methods of the more untrammeled male, she relies on sober colors, concealment, evasion, and deception of the senses. This quality of cunning is, of course, not immoral in its origin, being merely a protective instinct developed along with maternal feeling. In woman, also, this tendency to prevail by passive means rather than by assault is natural; and especially under a system of male control, where self-realization is secured either through the manipulation of man or not at all, a resort to trickery, indirection, and hypocrisy is not to be wondered at. Man has, however, always insisted that woman shall be better than he is, and her immoralities are usually not such as he greatly disapproves. There has, in fact, been developed a peculiar code of morals to cover the peculiar case of woman. This may be called a morality of the person and of the bodily habits, as contrasted with the commercial and public morality of man. Purity, constancy, reserve, and devotion are the qualities In woman which please and flatter the jealous male; and woman has responded to these demands both really and seemingly. Without any consciousness of what she was doing (for all moral traditions fall in the general psychological region of habit), she acts in the manner which makes her most pleasing to men. And—always with the rather definite realization before her of what a dreadful thing it is to be an old maid—she has naïvely insisted that her sisters shall play well within the game, and has become herself the most strict censor of that morality which has become traditionally associated with woman. Fearing the obloquy which the world attaches to a bad woman, she throws the first stone at any woman who bids for the favor of men by overstepping the modesty of nature. Morality, in the most general sense, represents the code under which activities are best carried on, and is worked out in the school of experience. It is pre-eminently an adult and a male system, and men are intelligent enough to recognize that neither women nor children have passed through this school. It is on this account that, while man is merciless to woman from the standpoint of personal behavior, he exempts her from anything in the way of contractual morality, or views her defections in this regard with allowance and even with amusement.

In the absence of any participation in commercial activity and with no capital but her personal charms and her wits, and with the possibility of realizing on these only through a successful appeal to man, woman naturally puts her best foot first. It was, of course, always one of the functions of the female to charm the male; but so long as woman maintained her position of economic usefulness and her quasi-independence she had no great problem, for there was never a chance in primitive society, any more than in animal society, that a woman would go unmated. But when through man's economic and social organization, and the male initiative, she became dependent, and when in consequence he began to pick and choose with a degree of fastidiousness, and when the less charming women were not married—especially when "invidious distinctions" arose between the wed and unwed, and the desirably wed and the undesirably wed-woman had to charm for her life; and she not only employed the passive arts innate with her sex, but flashed forth in all the glitter which had been one of man's accessories in courtship, but which he had dispensed with when the superiority acquired through occupational pursuits enabled him to do so. Under a new stimulation to be attractive, and with the addition of ornament to the repertory of her charms, woman has assumed an almost aggressive attitude toward courtship. The means of attraction she employs are so highly elaborated, and her technique is so finished, that she is really more active in courtship than man. We speak of man as the wooer, but falling in love is really mediated by the woman. By dress, behavior, coquetry, modesty, reserve, and occasional boldness she gains the attention of man and infatuates him. He does the courting, but she controls the process. "Er glaubt zu schieben, und er wird geschoben."