The Natural Superiority of Women (20 page)

are seldom simple, and of all the impure and unsimple things in this world which befog and bedevil the minds of men, their ideas about women take first place. When toward the end of the fifteenth century the Pontiff-appointed inquisitors drew up their infamous handbook of instructions for dealing with witches, the
Malleus Maleficarum
(1487), or
Hammer of Witches,
in answer to the question, Why were a greater number of witches found in "the fragile feminine sex" than among men? the answer was as simple as it was succinct. Said the authorities, "It is indeed a fact that it were idle to contradict, since it is accredited by actual experience, apart from the verbal testimony of credible witnesses" (Question 6, Part I). And that was all the evidence required. And that, alas, is the kind of evidence on which men have usually based their prejudgments of women. The myth of feminine evil has been illuminatingly examined by H. R. Hays in his book,
The Dangerous Sex .

Men, in the cultures of the Western world, not only appear to be, but in fact are, in a chronic state of sex irritation, "erotosaurs," ready to indulge in intercourse with any presentable female at almost any available moment. This is not the case with the female, who has to be psychologically adequately prepared before she is willing to accept the advances of the male. It is a tragic but significant commentary upon our culture that there are vast numbers of men who are unaware of this simple fact. This is understandable because women seem to be so much more preoccupied with sex than are men. The cosmetics, the beauty treatments, the hairstyling, the concern with emphasizing the sexually attractive parts of the body by sexually stimulating kinds and arrangements of apparel, the décolletages, the miniskirts, the cleavages, and the thousand and one other devices calculated to produce similarly stimulating effects prove to the male the greater sexuality of the female. This is, of course, another significant misinterpretation of the facts, again calculated to establish the inferiority of the female, for what the male fails to realize is that the female's very real preoccupation with rendering herself sexually attractive, so that she looks like a movie star, represents nothing more nor less than an expression of the male's power in compelling her to conform to his reactionary requirements.

In a large proportion of societies adultery was and is punished by death or payment of a heavy penalty, that is, when the adultery is committed by the female. Adultery committed by the male has almost invariably gone unpunished. In some societies even more horrendous punishments than death were threatened or visited upon the adulterous female, death in such cases being but the final release. The stoning to death of women taken in adultery is but one of the more gentle methods with which such women were rewarded. We need not go any further into the inventory of horrors that have been visited upon women for this "crime"; it is sufficient to say that the penalties have been out of all proportion to its heinousness. In the civilized world of today we do somewhat better than our ancestors, though the emotional response of men to the unfaithfulness of their wives tends to be so excessive that one cannot help suspecting that the same ancient motives, at least in part, play a significant role in shaping their reactions. The emphatic paramountcy placed on premarital chastity largely has its origins in male insecurities rather than in concern for the welfare of the female.