How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.

partner, do not experience the normal enjoyment of the companionship of love because their belligerent and aggressive drive for personal prestige distorts, disfigures, or paralyses their relations to the opposite sex. Fear and ignorance not only spoil the art of living, they also preclude adequate relations between the sexes. It is impossible for a woman who has been trained to believe that men are just out for what they can get to surrender herself to her husband without believing that she has also surrendered the best of her personality, and has become a slave. It is impossible for a man who has been trained from early childhood to believe that all women are false and untrustworthy to be unprejudiced in his relations with his wife, no matter how sincerely he protests he is in love with her. One of the most common manifestations of the competitive spirit in love is that phenomenon called “ sex appeal ” or “ It ”. In animal communities every normal male has an appeal for every normal female, and vice versa. But in our civilization of sexual competition, it is apparent that any man or woman who can heighten his sexual attractiveness by an intuitive exaggeration of all sex-stimulating behaviour, is better armed for the sexual fray, and enjoys a certain prestige because members of the opposite sex “ fall ” for these charms. The very words we employ to describe sexual relations clearly indicate the power motive behind much of our sexual behaviour. Men “ fall ” (that is, they tumble from the heights of their masculine prestige) for a woman’s charms. Women “ succumb ” to a man’s “ line ” (that is, their natural cunning is overcome). Children go to the picture houses to learn the wiles of the vampire, and go home with the steadfast resolve that no woman shall “ get ” them 1 Women boast of their ability to arouse a man’s sexual passion without gratifying it. The woman with the most provocative “ it ” is usually envied by her sisters. This belligerent “ it ” is no more than an attempt to batter the male out of the stronghold of his domination by the use of sex as a weapon of offence and defence.