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XIV Woman and Humanity Now at last, cleansed and armed, we can once more confront the question of the emancipation of women. Cleansed, because our eye is no longer clouded by the ambiguities swarming around the subject like a thousand midges; armed, because we are in possession of ¤rm theoretical concepts and assured ethical views. A long way from the playground of ordinary controversies and far beyond the problem of differences in endowment, my investigation reached some points that foreshadowed the role of Woman in the universe and the meaning of her mission for humanity. Therefore, I will once more refrain from discussing any overly speci¤c questions, particularly as I am not optimistic enough to expect that my results will have any in®uence on the conduct of political affairs. Rather than elaborating any suggestions concerning social hygiene, I will deal with the problem in terms of the idea of humanity which dominates the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. That idea is under considerable threat from femininity. Women are equipped to a high degree with the art of creating the illusion that they are really asexual and that their sexuality is only a concession to Man. For if this illusion were to cease, what would become of the competition of several, or indeed many, men for one woman? However, with the support of men who have believed them, women today have almost succeeded in persuading the opposite sex that the most important, most characteristic, need of Man is sexuality, that he can expect the ful¤llment of his truest and deepest desires only from Woman, and that chastity, for him, is something unnatural and impossible. How often are young men who ¤nd satisfaction in serious work told by women, to whom they do not seem too ugly and too unpromising as lovers or sons-in-law, not to study too hard, but to “enjoy life.” These friendly admonitions reveal Woman’s, naturally unconscious, sense of failing in her mission—which is directed solely at copulation —and of becoming nothing and losing all her signi¤cance together with her entire sex, as soon as a man begins to take an interest in anything other than sexual matters. That women will ever change in this respect is doubtful. Nor should it be believed that they were ever any different. Today the sensual element may be more prominent than it used to be, because such an in¤nitely large part of the “women’s movement” is only a desire to exchange motherhood for prostitution: the movement as a whole is an emancipation of prostitutes rather than an emancipation of women, and its main result is certainly the bolder emergence of the cocotte element in Woman. But what seems new is the behavior of men. Under the in®uence of Judaism, among other things, men today are close to complying with, and indeed appropriating, women’s evaluation of themselves. Male chastity is laughed at and no longer understood, Woman is no longer perceived by Man as his sin and his destiny, and Man is no longer ashamed of his own desire. It is now clear where the demand for the lack of restraint, the coffee-house concept of the Dionysian, the cult of Goethe insofar as Goethe is Ovid, the whole modern copulation culture, comes from. We have reached a point where hardly anybody has the courage to confess his belief in chastity, and almost everybody prefers to behave as if he were a debauchee. Sexual excesses are the most popular topic to brag about, and sexuality is so highly rated that the braggart has a hard time trying to make people believe him. Chastity, on the other hand, commands so little respect that the truly chaste man often hides behind the appearance of the roué. It is certainly the case that the modest are even ashamed of their modesty : however, today’s modesty is not the modesty of eroticism, but the shame of a woman who has not yet found a man and has not yet received her value from the opposite sex. That is why everybody is eager to show everybody else how faithfully and with what dutiful pleasure he exercises his sexual functions. Thus the decision as to what is masculine is today made by Woman, who by her nature is able to appreciate only the sexual side of Man, and men receive the measure of their masculinity from her hand. And thus the number of copulations and the “sweetheart” or...

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