Natural Freedom

This excerpt comes from Weininger's Sex and Character book. It's really deep. We should consider adding Sex and Character to the list of books for pimping. Although he is blatant homosexual, misogynist, and all around female disliker, his work has some worth because it is built from the foundations of human interaction.

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The Laws of Sexual Attraction

It has been recognised from time immemorial that, in all forms of sexually differentiated life, there exists an attraction between males and females, between the male and the female, the object of which is procreation. But as the male and the female are merely abstract conceptions which never appear in the real world, we cannot speak of sexual attraction as a simple attempt of the masculine and the feminine to come together. The theory which I am developing must take into account all the facts of sexual relations if it is to be complete; indeed, if it is to be accepted instead of the older views, it must give a better interpretation of all these sexual phenomena. My recognition of the fact that maleness and femaleness are distributed in the living world in every possible proportion has led me to the discovery of an unknown natural law, of a law not yet suspected by any philosopher, a law of sexual attraction. As observations on human beings first led me to my results, I shall begin with this side of the subject.

Every one possesses a definite, individual taste of his own with regard to the other sex. If we compare the portrait of the women which some famous man has been known to love, we shall nearly always find that they are all closely alike, the similarity being most obvious in the contour (more precisely in the "figure") or in the face, but on closer examination being found to extend to the minutest details, ad unguem, to the finger-tips. It is precisely the same with every one else. So, also, every girl who strongly attracts a man recalls to him the other girls he has loved before. We see another side of the same phenomenon when we recall how often we have said of some acquaintance or another, "I can't imagine how that type of woman pleases him." Darwin, in the "Descent of Man," collected many instances of the existence of this individuality of the sexual taste amongst animals, and I shall be able to show that there are analogous phenomena even amongst plants.

Sexual attraction is nearly always, as in the case of gravitation, reciprocal. Where there appear to be exceptions to this rule, there is nearly always evidence of the presence of special influences which have been capable of preventing the direct action of the special taste, which is almost always reciprocal, or which have left an unsatisfied craving, if the direct taste were not allowed its play.

The common saying, "Waiting for Mr. Right," or statements such that "So-and-so are quite unsuitable for one another," show the existence of an obscure presentiment of the fact that every man or woman possesses certain individual peculiarities which qualify or disqualify him or her for marriage with any particular member of the opposite sex; and that this man cannot be substituted for that, or this woman for the other without creating a disharmony.

It is a common personal experience that certain individuals of the opposite sex are distasteful to us, that others leave us cold; whilst others again may stimulate us until, at last, some one appears who seems so desirable that everything in the world is worthless and empty compared with union with such a one. What are the qualifications of that person? What are his or her peculiarities? If it really be the case - and I think it is - that every male type has its female counterpart with regard to sexual affinity, it looks as if there were some definite law. What is this law? How does it act? "Like poles repel, unlike attract," was what I was told when, already armed with my own answer, I resolutely importuned different kinds of men for a statement, and submitted instances to their power of generalisation. The formula, no doubt, is true in a limited sense and for a certain number of cases. But it is at once too general and too vague; it would be applied differently by different persons, and it is incapable of being stated in mathematical terms.

This book does not claim to state all the laws of sexual affinity, for there are many; nor does it pretend to be able to tell every one exactly which individual of the opposite sex will best suit his taste, for that would imply a complete knowledge of all the laws in question. In this chapter only one of these laws will be considered - the law which stands in organic relation to the rest of the book. I am working at a number of other laws, but the following is that to which I have given most investigation, and which is most elaborated. In criticising this work, allowance must be made for the incomplete nature of the material consequent on the novelty and difficulty of the subject.

. . . The law runs as follows: "For true sexual union it is necessary that there come together a complete male (M) and a complete female (F), even although in different cases the M and F are distributed between the two individuals in different proportions."

Were a man completely male, his requisite complement would be a complete female, and vice versa. If, however, he is composed of a definite inheritance of maleness, and also an inheritance of femaleness (which must not be neglected), then, to complete the individual, his maleness must be completed to make a unit; but so also must his femaleness be completed.

If, for instance an individual was three-quarters male and one quarter female, then the best sexual complement of that individual would be a person one quarter male and three-quarters female.

. . . In this matter we may neglect altogether the so-called aesthetic factor, the stimulus of beauty. For does it not frequently happen that one man is completely captivated by a particular woman and raves about her beauty, whilst another, who is not the sexual complement of the woman in question, cannot imagine what his friend sees in her to admire. Without discussing the laws of aesthetics or attempting to gather together examples of relative values, it may readily be admitted that a man may consider a woman beautiful who, from the aesthetic standpoint, is not merely indifferent but actually ugly, that in fact pure aesthetics deal not with absolute, but merely with conceptions of beauty from which the sexual factor has been eliminated.

I have myself worked out the law in, at the lowest, many hundred cases, and I have found that the exceptions were only apparent. Almost every couple one meets in the street furnishes a new proof. The exceptions were specially instructive, as they not only suggested but led to the investigation of other laws of sexuality. I myself made special investigations in the following way. I obtained a set of photographs of aesthetically beautiful women of blameless character, each of which was a good example of some definite proportion of femininity, and I asked a number of my friends to inspect these and select the most beautiful. The selection made was invariably that which I had predicted. With other male friends, who knew on what I was engaged, I set about in another fashion. They provided me with photographs from amongst which I was to choose the one I should expect them to think most beautiful. Here, too, I was uniformly successful. With others, I was able to describe most accurately their ideal of the opposite sex, independently of any suggestions unconsciously given by them, often in minuter detail than they had realised. Sometimes, too, I was able to point out to them, for the first time, the qualities that repelled them in individuals of the opposite sex, although for the most part men realise more readily the characters that repel them than the characters that attract them.

I believe that with a little practice any one could readily acquire and exercise this art on any circle of friends.

. . . I do not deny that my exposition of the law is somewhat dogmatical and lacks confirmation by exact detail. But I am not so anxious to claim finished results as to incite others to the study, the more so as the means for scientific investigations are lacking in my own case. But even if much remains theoretical, I hope that I shall have firmly riveted the chief beams in my edifice of theory by showing how it explains much that hitherto has found no explanation, and so shall have, in a fashion, proved it retrospectively by showing how much it would explain if it were true. . . .