an,
is not fundamental, that it is against Nature's purpose that it should
be so; rather it has arisen as a pretence of necessity, because it has
been expected of her, nourished in her, and imposed on her by the
unnatural prohibitions of religious and social conventions. The female
half of life has not been pre-ordained to suffer any more than the
male half: this belief has done more to destroy the conscience of
woman than any other single error. You have only to repeat any lie
long enough to convince even yourself of its truth. But assuredly free
woman will have to yield up her martyr's crown.

I grant willingly that men often talk brutally of sex, but I am
certain that few of them think brutally. We women are so easily
deceived by the outside appearance of things. The man who calls "a
spade a spade" is not really inferior to him who terms it "an
agricultural implement for the tilling of the soil." And women also
express their sensuality in orgies of emotion, in hypocrisies of
chastity, and in many other ways that are really nothing but a subtle
sensuality disguised.

I confess that I doubt very much the existence of any special soulful
character in woman's love. I wish that I didn't. But my experience
forces me to admit that this is but another of those delusions which
woman has wrapped around herself. Of course I may be wrong. I find
Professor Forel and other distinguished psychologists lending their
support to this idol of the woman's superior sexual virtue.
Krafft-Ebing goes much further, holding "that woman is naturally and
organically frigid." It may be then that some difference does exist in
the driving force of passion in men and women. I do not know the exact
character of men's love to compare it with my own, and I hesitate to
write with that assurance of the passions of the other sex with which
they have written of mine. Yet I believe that the male receiving life
from the female is not more mindful of the physical needs of love than
the woman, though possibly she has less understanding of its joys. For
the woman with a much more complex sexual nature is carried by passion
further than the male; the continuance of life rests with her. Under
this imperative compulsion woman, if needs be, will break every
commandment in the Decalogue and suffer no remorse for having done so.
I think this seeking to give life remains a necessary element in the
loves of all women. At its lowest it will stoop to any unscrupulousn