Anthropological and Historical Notes on the Female Sexual Role

MARY JANE SHERFEY has suggested (20):

• 1that precivilized woman enjoyed full sexual freedom and was often totally incapable of controlling her sexual drive;

• 2that the transition from nomadic to urban cultures was very gradual because it took 5,000 years for the coercive suppression of woman's inordinate sexuality to take place;

• 3that such suppression was a prerequisite to the dawn of every modern civilization;

• 4that the subjugation of female sexuality carries with it the subjugation of woman's entire emotional and intellectual life; and

• 5that modern writers mistakenly ignore the work of Bachofen (1) and others concerning the importance of matriarchal societies and the inordinate erotism of women.

What follows will not deny the subjugation of women. It will, however, cite anthropological, historical, and psychoanalytic data to indicate that these problems are not as simple as Sherfey suggests. If my statements are as sweeping as hers, they will at least provide alternatives.

The term "precivilized" needs careful definition. Margaret Mead, discussing Freud's concept of the primal horde, states that it may