Bust go outside our own culture or back in history to see that conventional sex ideal types differ among diverse people, much as standards of beauty may vary also. At present the anthropological literature on the subject is meager, but highly suggests a need for now` concepts of "sex-typing". Dr. Mead's analysis of three cultures in New Guinea may not necessarily prove that there are no temperamental differences between man and women. But it does show the immense malleability of human nature and the vast superposition of culture over biology in the race of man.
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A study of sexual temperament among Americans ("Sex and Personality" Terman and Miles) in 1936 brought out a startling result that among women there was a direct correlation between education, intelligence, and masouline-interest quotients. This does not mean that masouline women are more intelligent or learned than their more feminine sisters, but it does imply that our traditional concepts of "feminine interests" (upon which the tests were based) are those involving a limitation, a narrowing of cultural contacts, and a basic deficiency in education.
We must not reject our femininity, rather, we should broaden our ideas of what this definition constitutes. Dr. Méad advocates "sex membership as a cross-constitutional classification...then the little girl who shows. a greater need to take things apart than most other girls need not be classified as a female of a certain kind. In such a world, no child would be forced to dony its sex membership for the special gifts that made it.
"But if each sex is to realize its sox-membership fully, oach boy and girl must also feel as a whole human being. We are human beings first."
So can wo accept our femininity? Of course we can if only we enlarge our view to include all women: tho gentle, the shy, the brave, the meek, the enterprising, the flamboyant and, perhaps, even you!
Botty Simm on s
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