In comparison together with her the male appears infinitely favoured: his sexual life shouldn’t be in opposition to his existence as a person, and biologically it runs a good course, with out crises and usually without mishap. It is during her periods that she feels her physique most painfully as an obscure, alien factor; it’s, certainly, the prey of a stubborn and international life that each month constructs after which tears down a cradle within it; every month all things are made prepared for a baby and then aborted within the crimson move. Blood strain rises before the beginning of the circulation and falls afterwards; the pulse charge and infrequently the temperature are increased, so that fever is frequent; pains in the abdomen are felt; typically a tendency to constipation followed by diarrhoea is noticed; often there are also swelling of the liver, retention of urea, and albuminuria; many topics have sore throat and difficulties with listening to and sight; perspiration is elevated and accompanied originally of the menses by an odour sui generis, which could also be very strong and may persist all through the period. The rate of basal metabolism is raised. Instability is strikingly characteristic of womans organisation typically; among other things, man exhibits larger stability within the metabolism of calcium, woman fixing a lot less of this material and dropping a great deal during menstruation and pregnancy.
It would seem that in regard to calcium the ovaries exert a catabolic motion, with ensuing instability that brings on difficulties within the ovaries and in the thyroid, which is more developed in woman than in man. This glandular instability brings on a pronounced nervous instability. Nevertheless it must be noted that the primary of those problems is quite different within the case of girl, as compared with other females; for animal species are fastened and it is feasible to outline them in static phrases by merely gathering observations it may be decided whether or not the mare is as fast because the stallion, or whether male chimpanzees excel their mates in intelligence tests whereas the human species is for ever in a state of change, for ever becoming. Certain materialist savants have approached the issue in a purely static vogue; influenced by the theory of psychophysiological parallelism, they sought to work out mathematical comparisons between the male and female organism and they imagined that these measurements registered instantly the purposeful capacities of the two sexes.
It is usually associated in the first months with loss of appetite and vomiting, which are not noticed in any female domesticated animal and which signalise the revolt of the organism against the invading species. It’s obvious once more that many of these traits originate in womans subordination to the species, and here we discover the most putting conclusion of this survey: namely, that girl is of all mammalian females at once the one who is most profoundly alienated (her individuality the prey of outdoors forces), and the one who most violently resists this alienation; in no other is enslavement of the organism to reproduction more imperious or more unwillingly accepted. It would seem that her lot is heavier than that of other females in just about the same degree that she goes past different females in the assertion of her individuality. It is generally said that girls of a sure age constitute a third sex; and, in reality, while they don’t seem to be males, they’re not females. Crises of puberty and the menopause, month-to-month curse, lengthy and infrequently troublesome pregnancy, painful and generally harmful childbirth, illnesses, unexpected symptoms and complications these are characteristic of the human feminine.
The battle between species and particular person, which typically assumes dramatic power at childbirth, endows the feminine body with a disturbing frailty. Which performs the more necessary position in the species? They are insufficient for organising a hierarchy of the sexes; they fail to elucidate why lady is the other; they don’t condemn her to remain on this subordinate role for ever. On the common she is shorter than the male and lighter, her skeleton is extra delicate, and the pelvis is bigger in adaptation to the features of pregnancy and childbirth; her connective tissues accumulate fat and her contours are thus extra rounded than those of the male. The lady is more emotional, more nervous, extra irritable than typical, and may manifest serious psychic disturbance. On this disaster it’s most clearly evident that the physique doesn’t at all times work to the advantage of both species and particular person directly; the infant could die, and, once more, in being born it may kill its mother or depart her with a chronic ailment. A quantity of things especially the hormone prolactin carry about the secretion of milk in the mammary glands; some soreness and infrequently fever could accompany the process and in any case the nursing mom feeds the newborn from the resources of her personal vitality.