Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/29

 Make the tests again, those of both physiology and psychology. Opposed, for instance, to the accepted idea that the great majority of women are "dependent" in their attitude toward social existence, we find that every walk of life offers types that dominate social life, as a matter of course; flouting many canons of intellectual, moral, and even physical relations to it; able to hold their own without struggle. Suppose we endow the "average woman" with theoretic characteristics marking her out. We expect her to be ordinarily not capable of dealing closely with the abstract; to act largely on impulse: to possess nervous energy rather than staying-power; to be uncombative; to have ideals as to moral attitudes rather than observances of them by herself; to shun responsibilities of severe sort; and (once more important) we endow her with the sexual impulse of seeking her unity with a man and her surrender to him. In place of this type, we constantly encounter a feminine creature of predisposition for what is abstract; governed in personal relations to life by calm reflection; full of physical and mental endurance; aggressive and with even a pleasure in stressful activity. We find women deeply ethical and philosophic. We meet many who are indifferent to much that is a traditional part of the feminine world, such as their personal beauty, its adornment, and their influence as to sex over men: including the more or less marked dissent from surrender to man, either physically or intellectually. We have analyses and intellectual independence in a corset; the battle of life ardently carried on in a petticoat! Especially, is to be noted the instinctive absence of sexual interest that such a woman shows toward a man. The outward physique of such women often does not conform to a correct and ideal female anatomy. The example can incline toward masculinity, as to build, height, features, mannerisms, now as to another; occasionally going so far as to be hermaphroditic.