SEX IN BODY AND MIND

As civilization progresses, the sexes become more and more differentiated, thus affording individual preference an infinitely greater scope.  The stamp of sex is no longer confined to the pelvis and the chest, but is impressed on every part of the body.  The women’s feet become smaller and more daintily shaped than the men’s, the limbs more rounded and tapering and less muscular, the waist narrower, the neck longer, the skin smoother, softer, and less hairy, the hands more comely, with more slender fingers, the skeleton more delicate, the stature lower, the steps shorter, the gait more graceful, the features more delicately cut, the eyes more beautiful, the hair more luxuriant and lustrous, the cheeks rounder and more susceptible to blushes, the lips more daintily curved, the smile sweeter.

But the mind has sex as well as the body.  It is still in process of evolution, and too many individuals still approximate the type of the virago or the effeminate man; but the time will come for all, as it has already come for many, when a masculine trait in a woman’s character will make as disagreeable an impression as a blacksmith’s sinewy arm on the body of a society belle would make in a ball-room.  To call a woman pretty and sweet is to compliment her; to call a man pretty and sweet would be to mock or insult him.  The ancient Greeks betrayed their barbarism in amorous matters in no way more conspicuously than by their fondness for coy, effeminate boys, and their admiration of masculine goddesses like Diana and Minerva.  Contrast this with the modern ideal of femininity, as summed up by Shakspere: 

     Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
     Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
     But that our soft conditions and our hearts
     Should well agree with our external parts?

TRUE FEMININITY AND ITS FEMALE ENEMIES

A woman’s voice differs from a man’s not only in pitch but in timbre; its quality suggests the sex.  There is great scope for variety, from the lowest contralto to the highest soprano, as there is in man’s from the lowest bass to the highest tenor; a variety so great that voices differ as much as faces and can be instantly recognized; but unless it has the proper sexual quality a voice affects us disagreeably.  A coarse, harsh voice has marred many a girl’s best marriage chances, while, on the other hand, it may happen that “the ear loveth before the eye.”  Now what is true of the male and female voice holds true of the male and female mind in all its diverse aspects.  We expect men to be not only bigger, stronger, taller, hardier, more robust, but more courageous and aggressive, more active, more creative, more sternly just, than women; while coarseness, cruelty, selfishness, and pugnacity, though not virtues in either sex, affect us much less repulsively in men than in women, for