How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
334/400
315 (canvas 335)
The image contains the following text:
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.