Sex and Society by William I. Thomas

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Woman's activities, on the other hand, were largely limited to plant
life, to her children, and to manufacture, and the stimulation to
mental life and invention in connection with these was not so powerful
as in the case of man. Her inventions were largely processes of
manufacture connected with her handling of the by-products of the
chase. So simple a matter, therefore, as relatively unrestricted
motion on the part of man and relatively restricted motion on the part
of woman determined the occupations of each, and these occupations
in turn created the characteristic mental life of each. In man this
was constructive, answering to his varied experience and the need of
controlling a moving environment; and in woman it was conservative,
answering to her more stationary and monotonous condition.

In early times man's superior physical force, the wider range of his
experience, his mechanical inventions in connection with hunting and
fighting, and his combination under leadership with his comrades to
carry out their common enterprises, resulted in a contempt for the
weakness of women and an almost complete separation in interest
between himself and the women of the group. The men frequently formed
clubs, and lived apart from the women; and even where this did not
happen, the men and women had no mental life in common. To this
contempt for women also was added a superstitious fear of them,
growing out of the primitive belief that weakness or any other bad
quality is infectious, and may be transferred by physical contact or
association.[270]

From Mr. Crawley's excellent paper on "Sexual Taboo" I transcribe the
following illustrations of this attitude:

In New Caledonia you rarely see men and women talking or
sitting together. The women seem perfectly content with the
company of their own sex. The men who loiter about with spears
in most lazy fashion are seldom seen in the society of the
opposite sex.... The Ojebwey, Peter Jones, thus writes of his
own people: "I have scarcely ever seen anything like social
intercourse between husband and wife, and it is remarkable
that the women say little in the presence of the men." The
Zulus regard their women with a haughty contempt. If a man
were going to the bush to cut firewood with his wives, he and
they would take different paths, and neither go nor return in
company. If he were going to visit a neighbor and wished his
wife to go also, she would follow at a distance. In Senegambia
the women live by themselves, rarely with their husbands,
and their sex is virtually a clique. In Egypt a man never
converses with his wife, and in the tomb they are separated by
a wall, though males and females are not usually buried in the
same vault.[271]

Amongst the Dacotas custom and superstition ordain that the
wife must carefully keep away from all that belongs to her
husband's sphere of action. The Bechuanas never allow their
women to touch their cattle; accordingly the men have to plow
themselves.... In Guiana no woman may go near the hut where
_ourali_ is made. In the Marquesas Islands the use of canoes
is prohibited to the female sex by _tabu_: the breaking of
the rule is punished with death. Conversely, amongst the same
people _tapa_-making belongs exclusively to the women: when
they are making it for their own headdresses it is _tabu_ for
the men to touch it. In Nicaragua all the marketing was done
by the women. A man might not enter the market nor even see
the proceedings at the risk of a beating.... In Samoa where
the manufacture of cloth is allotted solely to the women,
it is a degradation for a man to engage in any detail of the
process.... An Eskimo thinks it an indignity to row in an
_umiak_, the large boat used by women. The different offices
of husband and wife are also clearly distinguished; for
example, when he has brought his booty to land it would be a
stigma on his character if he so much as drew a seal ashore,
and generally it is regarded as scandalous for a man to
interfere with what is the work of women. In British Guiana
cooking is the province of the women, as elsewhere; on one
occasion when the men were compelled perforce to bake some
bread they were only persuaded to do so with the utmost
difficulty, and were ever after pointed at as old women.[272]

Amongst the Barea, man and wife seldom share the same bed; the
reason they give is that the breath of the wife weakens the
husband.... The Khyoungthas have a legend of a man who reduced
a king and his men to a condition of feebleness by persuading
them to dress up as women and perform female duties. When
they had thus been rendered effeminate they were attacked and
defeated without a blow.... Contempt for female timidity has
caused a curious custom amongst the Gallas: they amputate the
mammae of the boys soon after birth, believing that no warrior
can possibly be brave who possesses them, and that they should
belong to women only.... Amongst the Lhoosais when a man is
unable to do his work, whether through laziness, cowardice or
bodily incapacity, he is dressed in women's clothes and has to
associate and work with the women. Amongst the Pomo Indians of
California, when a man becomes too infirm for a warrior he is
made a menial and assists the squaws.... When the Delawares
were denationized by the Iroquois and prohibited from going
to war they were according to the Indian notion "made women,"
and were henceforth to confine themselves to the pursuits
appropriate to women.[273]

Women were still further degraded by the development of property and
its control by man, together with the habit of treating her as a piece
of property, whose value was enhanced if its purity was assured and
demonstrable. As a result of this situation, man's chief concern in
women became an interest in securing the finest specimens for his own
use, in guarding them with jealous care from contact with other men,
and in making them, together with the ornaments they wore, signs of
his wealth and social standing. The instances below are extreme ones,
taken from lower social stages than our own, but they differ only in
degree from the chaperonage of modern Europe:

I heard from a teacher about some strange custom connected
with some of the young girls here [New Ireland], so I asked
the chief to take me to the house where they were. The house
was about twenty-five feet in length and stood in a reed and
bamboo enclosure, across the entrance of which a bundle of
dried grass was suspended to show that it was strictly _tabu_.
Inside the house there were three conical structures about
seven or eight feet in height, and about ten or twelve feet in
circumference at the bottom, and for about four feet from the
ground, at which point they tapered off to a point at the
top. These cages were made of the broad leaves of the pandanus
tree, sewn quite close together so that no light, and little
or no air could enter. On one side of each is an opening
which is closed by a double door of plaited cocoanut tree and
pandanus tree leaves. About three feet from the ground there
is a stage of bamboos which forms the floor. In each of these
cages, we were told there was a young woman confined, each
of whom had to remain for at least four or five years without
ever being allowed to go outside the house. I could scarcely
credit the story when I heard it; the whole thing seemed too
horrible to be true. I spoke to the chief and told him that
I wished to see the inside of the cages, and also to see the
girls that I might make them a present of a few beads.... [A
girl having been allowed to come out] I then went to inspect
the inside of the cage out of which she had come, but could
scarcely put my head inside of it, the atmosphere was so hot
and stifling. It was clean and contained nothing but a few
short lengths of bamboo for holding water. There was only room
for the girl to sit or lie down in a crouched position on the
bamboo platform, and when the doors are shut it must be nearly
or quite dark inside. They are never allowed to come out
except once a day to bathe in a dish or wooden bowl placed
close to the cage. They say that they perspire profusely. They
are placed in these stifling cages when quite young, and must
remain there until they are young women, when they are taken
out and have each a great marriage feast prepared for them.
One of them was about fourteen or fifteen years old, and the
chief told me that she had been there for five years, but
would soon be taken out now. The other two were about eight
and ten years old, and they have to stay there for several
years longer. I asked if they never died, but they said
"No."[274]

They [the Azande] are extremely jealous of their womenfolk,
whom they do not permit to live in the same village with
themselves. The women's village is generally in the bush,
about 200 yards or so distant from that of the chief. Women
are never seen in an Azande village, the pathway to their own
being kept secret from all outsiders. This system while being
something like that observed by the Arabs, has the important
distinction that the women are not shut up. They are free
to come and go and do what they like, except visit the men's
village. In common with the entire native population of
Central Africa, the custom among the Zande is that the men
do no work that is not connected with the chase or the
manufacture of implements. All agriculture is carried on by
the women.[275]

From the time of engagement until marriage a young lady is
required to maintain the strictest seclusion. Whenever friends
call upon her parents she is expected to retire to the inner
apartments, and in all her actions and words guard her conduct
with careful solicitude. She must use a close sedan whenever
she visits her relations, and in her intercourse with her
brothers and the domestics in the household maintain great
reserve. Instead of having any opportunity to form those
friendships and acquaintances with her own sex which among
ourselves become a source of much pleasure at the time and
advantage in after life, the Chinese maiden is confined to the
circle of her relations and her immediate neighbors. She has
few of the pleasing remembrances and associations that are
usually connected with school-day life, nor has she often the
ability or opportunity to correspond by letter with girls of
her own age. Seclusion at this time of life, and the custom
of crippling the feet, combine to confine women in the house
almost as much as the strictest laws against their appearing
abroad; for in girlhood, as they know only a few persons
except relatives, and can make very few acquaintances after
marriage their circle of friends contracts rather than
enlarges as life goes on. This privacy impels girls to learn
as much of the world as they can, and among the rich their
curiosity is gratified through maid-servants, match-makers,
peddlers, visitors, and others.[276]

The world of white civilization is intellectually rich because it has
amassed a rich fund of general ideas, and has organized these into
specialized bodies of knowledge, and has also developed a special
technique for the presentation of this knowledge and standpoint to
the young members of society, and for localizing their attention in
special fields of interest. When for any reason a class of society is
excluded from this process, as women have been historically, it must
necessarily remain ignorant. But, while no one would make any question
that women confined as these in New Ireland and China, as shown above,
must have an intelligence as restricted as their mode of life, we are
apt to lose sight altogether of the fact that chivalry and chaperonage
and modern convention are the persistence of the old race habit of
contempt for women, and of their intellectual sequestration. Men
and women still form two distinct classes and are not in free
communication with each other. Not only are women unable and unwilling
to be communicated with directly, unconventionally, and truly on many
subjects, but men are unwilling to talk to them. I do not have in mind
situations involving questions of propriety or delicacy alone, but a
certain habit of restraint, originating doubtless in matters relating
to sex, extends to all intercourse with women, with the result that
they are not really admitted to the intellectual world of men; and
there is not only a reluctance on the part of men to admit them, but
a reluctance--or, rather, a real inability--on their part to enter.
Modesty with reference to personal habits has become so ingrained and
habitual, and to do anything freely is so foreign to woman, that even
free thought is almost of the nature of an immodesty in her.

In connection also with the adventitious position of woman referred
to in another paper,[277] the feminine interests and habits are set so
strongly toward dress and personal display that they are not readily
diverted. Women may and do protest against the triviality of their
lives, but emotional interests are more immediate than intellectual
ones, and human nature does not drift into intellectual pursuit
voluntarily, but is forced into it in connection with the urgency of
practical activities. The women who are obliged to work are of the
poorer classes, and have not that leisure and opportunity preliminary
to any specialized acquirement; while those who have leisure are
supported in that position both by money and by precedent and habit,
and have no immediate stimulation to lift them out of it. They
sometimes entertain ideas of freedom and plan occupational interests,
but they have usually become thoroughly habituated to their unfreedom,
and continue to feed from the hand.

Custom lies upon them with a weight
Heavy as frost and deep almost as life.

The usual reasoning as to the ability of women also overlooks the fact
that many women are larger and stronger than many men, and some
of them possessed of tremendous energy, will, wit, endurance, and
sagacity. This type appears in all classes of society, but more
frequently in the lower classes and among peasants, both because the
natural qualities are less glozed over there by aristocratic custom,
and because these classes are bred truer to nature. Unfortunately, the
attention of the women of these classes is limited to very immediate
concerns; but, on the other hand, they present the true qualities of
the female type, and few, I believe, will deny that the peasant woman
described below would shine in intellectual walks if fate had called
her there:

Mother was a large, stout, full-blooded woman of great
strength. She could not read or write, and yet she was well
thought of. There are all sorts of educations, and though
reading and writing are very well in their way, they would not
have done mother any good. She had the sort of education
that was needed in her work. Nobody knew more about raising
vegetables, ducks, chickens and pigeons than she did. There
were some among the neighbors who could read and write and so
thought themselves above mother, but when they went to market
they found their mistake. Her peas, beans, cauliflower,
cabbages, pumpkins, melons, potatoes, beets, and onions sold
for the highest price of any, and that ought to show whose
education was the best, because it is the highest education
that produces the finest work.

Mother used to take me frequently to the market.... The market
women were a big, rough, fat, jolly set, who did not know
what sickness was, and it might have been well for me if I had
stayed among them and grown up like mother. One time in the
market-place I saw a totally different set of women. It was
about 8 o'clock in the morning, when some people began
to shout: "Here come the rich Americans! Now we will sell
things!" We saw a large party of travelers coming through the
crowd. They looked very queer. Their clothes seemed queer,
as they were so different from ours. They wore leather boots
instead of wooden shoes, and they all looked weak and pale.
The women were tall and thin, like beanpoles, and their
shoulders were stooped and narrow; most of them wore glasses
or spectacles, showing that their eyes were weak. The corners
of their mouths were all pulled down, and their faces were
crossed and crisscrossed with lines and wrinkles, as though
they were carrying all the care of the world. Our women all
began to laugh and dance and shout at the strangers.... The
sight of these people gave me my first idea of America. I
heard that the women there never worked, laced themselves too
tightly, and were always ill.[278]

The French dressmaker who wrote this passage has the true idea of
education and of mind. The mind is an organ for controlling the
environment, and it is a safe general principle that the mind which
shows high power in the manipulation of a simple situation will show
the same quality of efficiency in a more complex one.

The savage, the peasant, the poor man, and woman are not what we call
intellectual, because they are not taught to know and manipulate
the materials of knowledge. The savage is outside the process from
geographical reasons; the peasant is not in the center of interest;
the poor man's needs are pressing, and do not permit of interests of
a mediate character; and woman does not participate because it is
neither necessary nor womanly.

Even the most serious women of the present day stand, in any work
they undertake, in precisely the same relation to men that the
amateur stands to the professional in games. They may be desperately
interested and may work to the limit of endurance at times; but, like
the amateur, they got into the game late, and have not had a life-time
of practice, or they do not have the advantage of that pace gained
only by competing incessantly with players of the very first rank.
No one will contend that the amateur in billiards has a nervous
organization less fitted to the game than the professional; it
is admitted that the difference lies in the constant practice of
the professional, the more exacting standards prevailing in the
professional ranks, and constant play in "fast company." A group
of women would make a sorry spectacle in competition with a set of
men who made billiards their life-work. But how sad a spectacle the
eminent philosophers of the world would make in the same competition!

Scientific pursuits and the allied intellectual occupations are a
game which women have entered late, and their lack of practice is
frequently mistaken for lack of natural ability. Writing some years
ago of the women in his classes at the University of Zuerich, Professor
Carl Vogt said:

At lectures the young women are models of attention and
application; perhaps they even make too great effort to carry
home in black and white what they have heard. They generally
sit in the front seats, because they register early, and,
moreover, because they come early, long before the lecture
begins. But it is noticeable that they give only a superficial
glance at the preparations which the professor passes around.
Sometimes they pass them to their neighbor without even
looking at them; a longer examination would prevent their
taking notes.

On examination the conduct of the young women is the same as
during the lectures. They know better than the young men. To
employ a classroom expression, they are enormously crammed.
Their memory is good, so that they know perfectly how to give
the answer to the question which is put. But generally they
stop there. An indirect question makes them lose the thread.
As soon as the examiner appeals to individual reason, the
examination is over; they do not answer. The examiner seeks
to make the sense of the question clearer, and uses a word,
perhaps, which is in the manuscript of the student, when,
pop! the thing goes as if you had pressed the button of a
telephone. If the examination consisted solely in written or
oral replies to questions on subjects which have been treated
in the lectures or which could be read up on in the manuals,
the ladies would always secure brilliant results. But, alas!
there are other practical tests in which the candidate finds
herself face to face with reality, and that she cannot
meet successfully unless she has done practical work in the
laboratories, and it is there the shoe pinches.

The respect in which laboratory work is particularly difficult
to women--one would hardly believe it--is that they are often
very awkward and clumsy with their hands. The assistants in
the laboratories are unanimous in their complaint; they are
pursued with questions about the most trifling things, and one
woman gives them more trouble than three men. One would think
the delicate fingers of these young women adapted especially
to microscopic work, to the manipulation of small slides,
to cutting thin sections, to making the most delicate
preparations; the truth is quite the contrary. You can tell
the table of a woman at a glance: from the fragments of
glass, broken instruments, the broken scalpels, the spoiled
preparations. There are doubtless exceptions, but they are
exceptions.[279]

Zuerich was among the first of the European universities opening their
doors to women, and it is particularly interesting to see their
first efforts in connection with the higher learning. Without a wide
experience of life, and without practice in constructive thinking,
they naturally fell back on the memory to retain a hold on results in
a field with which they were not sufficiently trained to operate in it
independently. It is frequently alleged, and is implied in Professor
Vogt's report, that women are distinguished by good memories and
poor powers of generalization. But this is to mistake the facts. A
tenacious memory is characteristic of women and children, and of
all persons unskilled in the manipulation of varied experiences in
thought. But when the mind is able at any moment to construct a result
from the raw materials of experience, the memory loses something of
its tenacity and absoluteness. In this sense it may even be said that
a good memory for details is a sign of an untrained or imitative mind.
As the mind becomes more inventive, the memory is less concerned with
the details of knowledge and more with the knowledge of places to find
the details when they are needed in any special problem.

The awkwardness in manual manipulation shown by these girls was also
surely due to lack of practice. The fastest typewriter in the world
is today a woman; the record for roping steers (a feat depending on
manual dexterity rather than physical force) is held by a woman; and
anyone who will watch girls making change before the pneumatic tubes
in the great department stores about Christmas time will experience
the same wonder one feels on first seeing a professional gambler
shuffling cards.

In short, Professor Vogt's report on women students is just what was
to be expected in Germany forty years ago. The American woman, with
the enjoyment of greater liberty, has made an approach toward the
standards of professional scholarship, and some individuals stand at
the very top in their university studies and examinations. The trouble
with these cases is that they are either swept away and engulfed by
the modern system of marriage, or find themselves excluded in some
intangible way from association with men in the fullest sense, and no
career open to their talents.

The personal liberty of women is, comparatively speaking, so great in
America, suggestion and copies for imitation are spread broadcast
so copiously in the schools, newspapers, books, and lectures, and
occupations and interests are becoming so varied, that a number of
women of natural ability and character are realizing some definite aim
in a perfect way. But these are sporadic cases, representing usually
some definite interest rather than a full intellectual life, and
resembling also in their nature and rarity the elevation of a peasant
to a position of eminence in Europe. Nowhere in the world do women as
a class lead a perfectly free intellectual life in common with the men
of the group, unless it be in restricted and artificial groups like
the modern revolutionary party in Russia.

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