In a sense, this problem will tend to solve itself.
With the substitution of the more rationalized standards
of self-interest and group loyalty for the irrational
taboo control of reproductive activities, there will
be as much freedom for women to choose whether they
will accept maternity as there is now, in the period
of transition from the old standards to the new.
The chief difference will be that many of the artificial
forces which are acting as barriers to motherhood
at the present time—as for example the economic
handicap involved—will be removed, and
woman’s choice will therefore be more entirely
in harmony with her native instinctive tendencies.
Thus those women endowed with the most impelling desire
for children will, as a rule, have the largest number.
In all probability their offspring will inherit the
same strong parental instinct. The stocks more
poorly endowed with this impulse will tend to die
out by the very lack of any tendency to self-perpetuation.
It is only logical to conclude, therefore, that as
we set up the new forces of social control outlined
in this chapter, we are at the same time providing
more scope for natural selection, and that the problem
of aberrant types consequently becomes only a transitory
one.
PART II
THE INSTITUTIONALIZED SEX TABOO
BY
IVA LOWTHER PETERS, PH.D.
CHAPTER I
THE PRIMITIVE ATTITUDE TOWARD SEX AND WOMANHOOD
Primitive social control; Its rigidity; Its necessity;
Universality of this control in the form of taboos;
Connection between the universal attitude of primitive
peoples towards woman as shown in the Institutionalized
Sex Taboo and the magic-religious belief in Mana;
Relation of Mana to Taboo; Discussion of Sympathetic
Magic and the associated idea of danger from contact;
Difficulties in the way of an inclusive definition
of Taboo; Its dual nature; Comparison of concepts
of Crawley, Frazer, Marett and others; Conclusion that
Taboo is Negative Mana; Contribution of modern psychology
to the study of Taboo; Freud’s analogy between
the dualistic attitude toward the tabooed object and
the ambivalence of the emotions; The understanding
of this dualism together with the primitive belief
in Mana and Sympathetic Magic explains much in the
attitude of man toward woman; The vast amount of evidence
in the taboos of many peoples of dualism in the attitude
toward woman. Possible physiological explanation
of this dualistic attitude of man toward woman found
in a period before self-control had in some measure
replaced social control, in the reaction of weakness
and disgust following sex festivals.
