Untruthfulness, organic untruthfulness, characterises both types, and accordingly all women. It is quite wrong to say that women lie. That would imply that they sometimes speak the truth. Sincerity, _pro foro interno et externo_, is the virtue of all others of which women are absolutely incapable, which is impossible for them!
The point I am urging is that woman is never genuine at any period of her life, not even when she, in hysteria, slavishly accepts the aspect of truth laid on her by another, and apparently speaks in accordance with those demands.
A woman can laugh, cry, blush, or even look wicked at will: the shrew, when she has some object in view; the “maid,” when she has to make a decision for herself. Men have not the organic and physiological qualifications for such dissimulation.
If we are able to show that the supposed love of truth in these types of woman is no more than their natural hypocrisy in a mask, it is only to be expected that all the other qualities for which woman has been praised will suffer under analysis. Her modesty, her self-respect, and her religious fervour are loudly acclaimed. Womanly modesty, none the less, is nothing but prudery, _i.e._, an extravagant denial and rejection of her natural immodesty. Whenever a woman evinces any trace of what could really be called modesty, hysteria is certainly answerable for it. The woman who is absolutely unhysterical and not to be influenced, _i.e._, the absolute shrew, will not be ashamed of any reproaches her husband may shower on her, however just; incipient hysteria is present when a woman blushes under her husband’s direct censure; but hysteria in its most marked form is present when a woman blushes when she is quite alone: it is only then that she may be said to be fully impregnated with the masculine standard of values.
The women who most nearly approximate to what has been called sexual anæsthesia or frigidity are always hysterical, as Paul Solliers, with whom I entirely agree, discovered. Sexual anæsthesia is merely one of the many hysterical, that is to say, unreal, simulated forms of anæsthesia. Oskar Vogt, in particular (and general observation has confirmed him), proved that such anæsthesia does not involve a real lack of sensation, but is simply due to an inhibition which keeps certain sensations in check, and excludes them from the consciousness.