Page:The Power of Sexual Surrender.pdf/21

Rh after checking their facts). Fehling held that any appearance of sexual feeling in a young girl in love was "pathological." And Windschied stated that if a female showed any innate or spontaneous sexual attributes "there is abnormality."

These men were not crackpots. They were reputable and distinguished. This was the "scientific" view of the matter, and it was shared by most people, men and women alike. It throws into clear relief the potentialities of the present. Woman's new and revolutionary self-awareness, her knowledge gained in the past thirty-odd years that without guilt or inhibition she may function in an atmosphere of total equality with men and eager acceptance by them, makes the past seem like a nightmare. It is as though man and woman had emerged from a long, long journey through a dreary jungle full of fear and shame to the verge of a paradisal valley where they actually may live, as in the fairy tales, happily ever after.

But now we come to the tragic flaw in this picture. For, though the possibilities lie before them, millions of women find they must stay on the verge of, never enter, the paradisal valley. They find themselves, in an age where true womanhood is highly valued, sexually frigid.

What does sexual frigidity mean? I shall explain the matter in greater detail later, of course, but I can give a preliminary, working definition now. Sexual frigidity is the inability to enjoy physical love to the limits of its potentiality. The frigid woman is, to a greater or lesser degree, blocked in her sensual capacities. Generally she cannot experience orgasm. If she has one at all it is weak and unsatisfying. Many frigid women, however, not only do not have any orgasm but may also lack the capacity to feel even the beginnings of sexual excitement. To some the sexual act is painful.