DOMINANT SEXES
DOMINANT SEXES
BY M. VAERTING
Certain peculiarities of physical form are to-day considered typical feminine sex characters. Thus roundness and fullness of figure are generally regarded as characteristic of women; larger size and strength among men are accepted as a sex difference, biologically determined.
But this theory, like the entire doctrine of secondary sex characters, stands upon a doubtful basis. It has grown up out of a comparison of men and women in very unequal situations. The bodies of men and women whose field of work and type of occupation differ widely have been compared. The man attends to the extra-domestic activities, while the woman is chiefly occupied at home. Bachofen writes: “If a man sits at a spinning-wheel a weakening of body and of soul will inevitably follow.” Charles de Coster in his “Wedding Journey” makes the significant remark: “Work in the fields had given Liskahips like a robust man’s.” Certain of the physical differences between men and women may therefore be sociologically determined rather than due to inborn differences.
One may object that the division of labor between the sexes, in which the woman takes the domestic and the man the extra-domestic sphere, is itself determined by inborn sex differences. Even in Socrates’s time it was believed that the nature of the sexes fixed their fields of activity. Man was unquestionably intended for matters which must be attended to outside the house, “while the weak and timid woman was by divine order assigned to the inner work of the home.” After thorough investigation it appears that this hoary theory, which still persists, is false. The division of labor between man and woman corresponds not to an innate difference but to their power-relation. If man dominates he says that woman’s place is the home, and that work outside the home is fit only for men. If woman is dominant then she has the opposite opinion, takes care of business outside the home, and leaves the man to take care of the family and the housekeeping. The ruling sex, whether male or female,always puts the domestic duties on the subordinate sex and takes to itself work outside the home. To-day man is dominant, but there have been many peoples among whom woman was dominant and the rôle of man and woman was the reverse of that common to-day. In ancient Egypt there was a period when women ruled. Herodotus reports that they unnaturally performed “masculine” activities, carried on commerce in the market-place, while the men stayed at home, sewed, and attended to domestic difficulties. To Herodotus, who came from a state where men were dominant, the work of the Egyptian women naturally seemed “male.” In the Talmud Herodotus’s report is confirmed. The children of Israel, it tells us, were disturbed because their men were forced to do women’s work and their women men’s work. In Sophocles’s “Œdipus Kolonos” Œdipus says to his two daughters: “Ha, how they imitate the Egyptians in the manner and meaning of life. There the men stay home and sit at the spinning-wheel, and the women go out to meet the needs of life.” Œdipus also mentions the fact reported also by Herodotus, that only the daughters, not the sons,were compelled in Egypt to support their parents. The sons could not fulfill that duty, Sophocles says, because, like the Greek girls, they stayed at home and had no income from their labor. Furthermore, they had only a limited right to own property.
One might cite many other peoples where the woman was dominant. Among the Kamchadales the men, in the days of female dominance, were such complete housewives that they cooked, sewed, washed, and were never allowed to stay away from home for more than a day. Similarly among the Lapps there was a period when the men did the housework while the women fished and sailed the sea. Under such circumstances the men also took care of the children. Strabo and Humboldt both report of the Vasko-Iberian races that the women worked in the fields; after child birth they turned the child over to the man and themselves resumed their work in the fields. A similar arrangement prevailed in the days when women ruled Lybia, which bordered upon Egypt.
When one sex is dominant there is always a division of labor.
This differentiation of occupation is one of the chief causes of certain differences in physical form between men and women. It changes the fundamental conditions of development—among others the course of the inner secretions. Where man rules he does the active outside work and is accordingly larger and stronger; where woman rules and does the same “man’s work” her body assumes what are to-day regarded as typically male proportions, whereas the man develops what we call feminine characteristics. We have a few definite proofs of this from states dominated by women.
When woman ruled among the Gauls, and worked outside the home, we are told by Strabo that the female was the larger and stronger sex.
Among the Adombies on the Congo women were in power and did all the hard work. According to Ellis they were stronger and better developed than the men. The same was true of the Wateita in East Africa. Fritsch and Hellwald report that the woman is larger than the man among the Bushmen. Female and male pelvises show no differences, but are alike “male” in our sense of the word.
The Spartan women in the days of their rule had a reputation for enormous strength. Aristophanes says that a Spartan woman could strangle an ox bare-handed. The Egyptian women at the height of their power were called by their neighbors the “lionesses of the Nile,” and they seemed to like the name. When Heracles visited the Lybians, whose state bordered on Egypt and of whose rule by women we have many witnesses, he had to work, like the other men of the country, with the distaff. His wife Omphale, however, wandered about clad in a lionskin and armed with a club, and won respect for her strength.
A very striking report comes from near New Guinea, where the woman was stronger than the man. There it was a common sight to see a woman spanking her husband with a paddle. Through the brute force of superior strength she oppressed the man just as men oppress women where the woman is weaker.
Thus through legend and the records of travelers we have clear testimony that man is not larger and stronger than woman because of innate differences, as is generally supposed, but thatphysical superiority is a characteristic of the dominant sex, regardless whether that be male or female.
Similarly those secondary physical characteristics which are to-day regarded as female are found among males when they occupy the subordinate position in which woman lives to-day. Woman is inclined to-day to full, rounded curves and even to stoutness. Among the Celts the woman dominated, and according to Strabo the men of that people were inclined to be fat and heavy-paunched. The same was true of the Kamchadales in the days of woman rule. The men were strikingly voluptuous and well rounded. The male Eskimos too were inclined to fatness in the days when they did the housekeeping. The more subordinate the fatter.
In this connection the Oriental women are typical; their exuberance of figure is as well known as their absolute subordination and their confinement to the home. They may be contrasted with the fat and subordinate male Kamchadales, whose wives were slim and firm breasted into old age.
Equal rights do away with this division oflabor. There are no longer male and female jobs; not sex but inclination and fitness now begin to determine the individual’s occupation. In late Egypt, when the domination of woman was merging into a period of equal rights, there are many indications that both sexes did the same work without any differentiation of occupation. In the marriage contract in the time of Darius, the woman—who then made the contract alone—says, “All, which you and I may together earn....” Victor Marx has studied the position of woman in Babylon in the period 604-485B.C., and finds a similar situation. In an inheritance case of that period a woman recites that “I and my husband carried on business with my dowry and together bought a piece of land.” Such common businesses by man and woman are frequently mentioned. Under such circumstances it was natural that neither man nor woman bound themselves at marriage to live in the same house, for both went to work outside the home.
To-day, when we are passing from male domination to equal rights it is natural that the woman should be seeking more and more to get out of the home. The greater her power the more sheseeks to level the lines between male and female work. This effort is strongest in the subordinate sex—in this case the feminine—because it seeks naturally to better its position. In this transition period, therefore, women are pressing into male pursuits much faster than men into domestic occupations. Yet even in Germany a beginning has been made. For women the male professions seem higher and better, because they have hitherto belonged to the dominant sex, while for the men feminine occupations seem to have about them something degrading; but the more women approach equality the less odium attaches to what has been their sphere, and the more men tend to enter it.
The same phenomenon may be observed in periods of transition from female to male domination. Among the Batta, for instance, both sexes worked in the fields, but the man alone cared for the children. This was obviously a step toward equal rights. The men already shared the extra-domestic occupations of the women, but the women still refused to share the work of the hitherto subordinate men.
When equal rights put an end to the differentiationof occupation the physical differences between men and women also disappear. We are to-day still far enough away from equality of the sexes, but there have been people where equal rights prevailed, and among such people the physical form of the two sexes was so like that they could hardly be distinguished. In Tacitus’s day, when equality was probably general among the Germans, men and women are reported to have had exactly the same weight and strength. Albert Friedenthal says of the Cingalese that a stranger could not distinguish the sexes. Men and women were so alike among the Botocudos that one had to count their tresses to tell them apart. Lallemant found among this people “a swarm of men-women and women-men, not a single man or a single woman in the whole tribe.” This good man came from a state where men dominated and did not suspect that when the power-relation of the sexes changed their physical appearance changed too. If a Botocudo had come to Europe in those days he would presumably have judged by his own standards and noted with equal horror the outer differences of European men and women.
Every age holds its own standards absolute. The domination of one sex depends upon the artificial development of as many and as striking bodily differences as possible, and therefore approves them and insists upon emphasizing them. Equal rights tend to develop the natural similarity of the sexes and considering that the norm, regards it as ideal.
There is ample opportunity to observe to-day that equality of the sexes coincides with a tendency slowly to do away with artificial physical differences. The disappearance of the so-called feminine figure was so striking in America, where the sexes are more nearly equal than in Europe, that Sargent and Alexander prophesied in 1910 that soon men and women could hardly be distinguished from one another. A comparison with pictures of thirty or forty years ago makes it plain that even in Europe male and female figures are coming closer to each other. The narrow waists and full bosoms of the women and the full beards of the men have disappeared. And, as a result of our investigation, we may prophesy that the coming equality will still more completely iron out those differences which hithertohave been regarded as genuine secondary sex characters.
Whenever one sex is dominant there is a tendency to differentiate male and female costume. The more completely one sex dominates the greater will be the differences in clothes, and as the sexes become equal the differences disappear. When the two sexes are really equal they will wear the same clothing.
The clothing of the dominant sex usually tends to be uniform and tasteless, that of the subordinate to be varied and richly ornamented. To-day man is still dominant, and his clothes are monotonous, dull, and less subject to shifts of fashion. Especially in formal dress he wears a sort of uniform. All men, of whatever age or position, wear dress clothes of the same cut and color. A grandfather wears a dinner coat exactly like that of his eighteen-year-old grandson. This seems natural, but the situation is reversed with the subordinate sex, most completely when the subordination is most complete. Only twenty or thirty years ago it was a crime in Germany for a mother to dress as “youthfully” as her unmarried daughter. A grandmother who daredto dress like her eighteen-year-old granddaughter would have been laughed to scorn. As woman’s power has grown, this has changed. Custom no longer requires a grandmother to emphasize her age by her clothes.
Where woman dominates she tends to wear darker and plainer clothing and the man dresses himself more richly and variously. Erman writes of the old Egyptians:
While according to our conceptions it befits the woman to love finery and ornament, the Egyptians of the old Empire seem to have had an opposite opinion. Beside the elaborate costumes of the men the women’s clothing seems very monotonous, for, from the fourth to the eighteenth dynasty, all, from the king’s daughter to the peasant woman, wore the same garb—a simple garment without folds.
While according to our conceptions it befits the woman to love finery and ornament, the Egyptians of the old Empire seem to have had an opposite opinion. Beside the elaborate costumes of the men the women’s clothing seems very monotonous, for, from the fourth to the eighteenth dynasty, all, from the king’s daughter to the peasant woman, wore the same garb—a simple garment without folds.
Herodotus, indeed, reported that Egyptian men had two suits, women only one. Erman naturally cannot explain the simplicity of the women’s clothes and the eagerness of the men for color and ornament, because it contradicted current theories of the character of the two sexes. To-day the view is current which Runge expressed when he said that “Women’s desire to please and love of ornament is dependent uponher sex life.” This view, though still common, is fundamentally false. The inclination to bright and ornamental clothing is dependent not upon sex but upon the power-relation of the sexes. The subordinate sex, whether male or female, seeks ornament. Strabo tells of the love of finery and cult of the body among Lybian men. They curled their hair, even their beards, wore gold ornaments, diligently brushed their teeth and polished their finger-nails. “They arrange their hair so tenderly,” he writes, “that when walking they never touch one another, in order not to disturb it.” It is usual in states where women are dominant for the men to wear long hair and pay particular attention to their barbering. The men of Tana, in the Hebrides, wore their hair 18 to 20 inches long, divided into six or seven hundred tiny locks, in the days when women ruled. Among the Latuka the men wore their hair so elaborately that it took ten years to arrange it. The Konds also wore very long hair, elaborately arranged.
The stronger tendency of the subordinate sex to ornamentation apparently is closely related to the division of labor. The subordinate sex,working at home, has more leisure and opportunity for ornament than the dominant. Furthermore, leisure stimulates the erotic feelings. Since the partner does not share the leisure the lonely erotic often seeks a way out in self-ornamentation. At the same time the ornament is intended for the partner, for the stimulated eroticism increases the desire to please the other sex.
When the sexes are equal the clothes of the two sexes tend to be alike. We have noted that the Cingalese were physically similar; their clothes were exactly the same. The only difference was that the men wore a mother-of-pearl comb in the hair, the women none. Among the Lepka the sexes can be distinguished only by the fact that the men wear their hair in two braids, the women in one. Tacitus reports that the old Germans wore the same clothes and wore their hair alike.
We can observe the tendency to similarity of costume in this transition period. Many such attempts fail the first time, but finally succeed. More than a decade ago Paris attempted to establish a fashion of knickerbockers and bobbedhair. The attempt failed, but to-day the bobbed head has invaded every civilized country, almost in direct proportion to the degree in which women have acquired equal rights. It is reported from England that English women can already go to their work in trousers, heavy shoes, and short hair without exciting attention. The reader may judge of the accuracy of these reports. In Germany the police forbid one sex to wear the clothes of the other, but during the war when German women had to enter male trades they usually wore men’s clothing.
Among men too the tendency to similarity is evident. Thirty years ago the beard was a generally accepted sign of manhood; it has fallen out of fashion. In the Youth Movement there is a tendency to leave the shirt open at the neck and to adopt a hair-cut like a bobbed girl’s. A note in Jean Paul’s “Levana,” which appeared in 1806, is interesting. He writes: “A few years ago it was fashionable in Russia for the men to fill out their clothing with high false bosoms.” That was in the days following the French Revolution, when a short wave of freedom, even for women, swept across the earth. It showed alsoin the women’s fashion which Jean Paul mentions:
A fortunate accident for daughters is the Grecian costume of the present Gymnosophists (naked female runners), which, it is true, injures the mothers but hardens the daughters; for as age and custom should avoid every fresh cold so youth exercises itself on it as on every hardship until it can bear greater.... So, likewise, the present naked manner of dressing is a cold bath into which the daughters are dipped, who are exhilarated by it.
A fortunate accident for daughters is the Grecian costume of the present Gymnosophists (naked female runners), which, it is true, injures the mothers but hardens the daughters; for as age and custom should avoid every fresh cold so youth exercises itself on it as on every hardship until it can bear greater.... So, likewise, the present naked manner of dressing is a cold bath into which the daughters are dipped, who are exhilarated by it.