Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/49

 We can indeed separate men, roughly-classed, into three distinct groups as to their social attitudes toward woman. They are either woman-haters, or woman-tolerators, or woman worshippers. These three divisions take in pretty completely male humanity, past and present. The woman-worshipper, or gynolator, is the most frequently met, provided we can rely on the sincerity of his outward demeanor. But often he is more politic than sincere; appreciating the need socially of playing his deferential rôle to the full. For, just this type, the woman-worshipper, frequently is disclosed to us in history, biography and daily social life as in his most intimate relationship, only if united by friendship of passionate sort with some man-friend.

The same statement is more clearly true of the second-named class, the woman-tolerators. Their attitude—civil, graceful, reticent, dispassionate toward women-acquaintances protects them from critical rebuke from women about them: but includes no real homage to woman as an indispensable factor in the mental or physical well-being of such males. This attitude is not of the sort to bring reproach on such men as generally selfish or aesthetically unimpressionable. Often they are nothing of the sort.

The declared, or undeclared woman-hater, in all sorts of protean forms, Irequently exaggerates his pose and enmity. Sometimes, too, it is a jest with him. But the instances are countless when such aversion is neither his joke nor that of acquaintances. His gradations vary from downright boorish enmity to courteous scorn: and of course they may be the result of some painful experience: not enmity that springs out of an inborn repugnance or indifference. Succeding pages of this study can painfully illustrate this fact. But