It expresses a consciousness that
the nude can only be alluring, obscene, "indecent," and should therefore
be feared and avoided. It is the defensive weapon of sexually excited,
for the most part, slightly hysterical women, against the purely sexual,
whose sphere they often extend amazingly. Prudery conceives sexuality as
a distinct, restricted complex in consciousness. Such division is alien
to woman and, where it exists, a hysterical condition, a condition of
inner discord, is clearly indicated. We may take it that the obscene
which affects normal men, affects only hysterical, inwardly discordant
women who try to take shelter behind prudery. To the normal woman the
obscene does not exist as a spiritual principle; she turns with a
feeling of displeasure from all the lower sexual manifestations, and
even finds them absurd. The elimination of personality of eroticism, the
charm of which is felt by even the most highly differentiated man, has
always been foreign to woman--she lacks the duality of erotic emotion
which man is slowly and laboriously striving to overcome--a still
further proof of the unbroken, synthetic emotion of woman.
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