ABSTRACT
Love must be differentiated from “sex”. “Sex”, according to the dictionary, means “the physical difference between male and female; the character of being male or female”. Accepting this meaning for the word “sex”, “sex emotion” must mean that emotion which one has by virtue of being either male or female. The contention has never seriously been advanced that love is an emotion experienced by one sex only. Undoubtedly, both men and women love, and women, at least, love one another in exactly the same way as they love males. Therefore, love emotion cannot be regarded as a “physical difference between male and female”, nor can it be supposed to depend for its existence upon the existence of sex differences. The identification of love emotion with sex is responsible, in a large degree, for the social taboos which occidental civilizations place on love. To regard love as an emotion the expression of which is facilitated by sex differences of body structure is wholesome. But to identify love emotion with sex characteristics in general, especially those of the male, leads to a most unfortunate lack of understanding of love, since the male sex is characterized chiefly by a preponderance of appetite. It also leads to a confusion of sex differences in love, with sex differences in appetite. Each sex possesses certain secondary appetitive characteristics, just as each sex possesses secondary love characteristics. The sex differences in bodily love structures are localized on the outside of the body; while the sex differences in appetitive bodily structures are less obvious, manifesting their presence by different glandular balance, differences in hunger mechanism, and differences in bodily shape and musculature. There is no more reason for identifying love with sex under the name “sex emotion” than there is for identifying appetite with sex under a similar title.
