omething of the
characteristics to which the isolation was due, even outside those special
periods. And, in fact, in these communities, the separation of the sexes
is not merely intermittent; it has become chronic. The two elements of the
population live separately." Durkheim proceeds to argue that the origin of
the occult powers attributed to the feminine organism is to be found in
primitive ideas concerning blood. Not only menstrual blood but any kind of
blood is the object of such feelings among savage and barbarous peoples.
All sorts of precautions must be observed with regard to blood; in it
resides a divine principle, or as Romans, Jews, and Arabs believed, life
itself. The prohibition to drink wine, the blood of the grape, found among
some peoples, is traced to its resemblance to blood, and to its
sacrificial employment (as among the ancient Arabians and still in the
Christian sacrament) as a substitute for drinking blood. Throughout, blood
is generally taboo, and it taboos everything that comes in contact with
it. Now woman is chronically "the theatre of bloody manifestations," and
therefore she tends to become chronically taboo for the other members of
the community. "A more or less conscious anxiety, a certain religious
fear, cannot fail to enter into all the relations of her companions with
her, and that is why all such relations are reduced to a minimum.
Relations of a sexual character are specially excluded. In the first
place, such relations are so intimate that they are incompatible with the
sort of repulsion which the sexes must experience for each other; the
barrier between them does not permit of such a close union. In the second
place, the organs of the body here specially concerned are precisely the
source of the dreaded manifestations. Thus it is natural that the feelings
of aversion inspired by women attain their greatest intensity at this
point. Thus it is, also, that of all parts of the feminine organization it
is this region which is most severely shut out from commerce." So that,
while the primitive emotion is mainly one of veneration, and is allied to
that experienced for kings and priests, there is an element of fear in
such veneration, and what men fear is to some extent odious to them.[364]

These conceptions necessarily mingled at a very early period with men's
ideas of sexual intercourse with women and especially with menstruating
women. Contact with women, as Crawley shows by abundant illu