Sex and Society by William I. Thomas
page 12 of 258 (04%)
page 12 of 258 (04%)
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metabolism. It is a general law in the courtship of the sexes that the
male seeks the female. The secondary sexual characters of the male are developed with puberty, and in some cases these sexual distinctions come and go with the breeding season. What we know as physiological energy is the result of the dissociation of atoms in the organism; expressions of energy are the accompaniment of the katabolic or breaking-up process, and the brighter color of the male, especially at the breeding season, results from the fact that the waste products of the katabolism are deposited as pigments. When we compare the sexes of mankind morphologically, we find a greater tendency to variation in man:[31] All the secondary sexual characters of man are highly variable, even within the limits of the same race; and they differ much in the several races.... Numerous measurements carefully made of the stature, the circumference of the neck and chest, the length of the backbone and of the arms, in various races ... nearly all show that the males differ much more from one another than do the females. This fact indicates that, as far as these characters are concerned, it is the male which has been chiefly modified, since the several races diverged from their common stock.[32] Morphologically the development of man is more accentuated than that of woman. Anthropologists, indeed, regard woman as intermediate in development between the child and the man. The outlines of the adult female cranium are intermediate between those of the child and the adult man; they are softer, more graceful and delicate, and the apophyses and ridges for |
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