Masochists, male or female, are often very anxious to perform menial or disgusting tasks for the person they love, thus placing themselves in a subordinate, protected, position and at the same time, claiming a great deal of credit for their devotion.
=Masochistic Fancies.= The male masochist, eager to place himself in the position of safety toward his mate, not infrequently imagines himself to be an animal and asks to be treated as such. Greek antiquity has bequeathed to us the story of Aristotle the philosopher, allowing a prostitute to ride on his back, whipping him like a horse, while he would crawl about on all fours.
Medical literature contains many descriptions of establishments where male masochists are submitted to voluntary torture thru various appliances.
The ascetics who in the Middle Ages whipped themselves, wore hair cloth studded with sharp nails, etc., to manifest their love to God or the Virgin, the Russian Skooptsy who mutilate themselves to please God, are religious examplaries of masochistic love.
The Christian ideal of suffering and renunciation as a means of conquering everlasting happiness is also purely masochistic.
Suffering, be it physical or mental (remorse), assures to them in the end, well-being (glandular well-being) and enables them to reach Heaven (will-to-be-above).
=Are Women Masochistic?= I denied in the preceding chapter the frequently heard assertion that sadism in a typically masculine trait. I would deny quite as emphatically that masochism is peculiarly feminine, a view held by many sadists, as an attempted justification of their cruel perversion.
Oscar Wilde, a bisexual, stated once that of all the masculine traits it was cruelty which women appreciated most. To his morbid mind cruelty meant power. It is power of course which woman, disabled several times in her life by pregnancy and lactation, seeks in the man with whom she mates. He must be a good fighter and a good hunter, not, however, merely to capture her and brutalise her, but on the contrary, to protect her and feed her.
The sadist Kurnberger in his novel, "The Castle of Horrors" also bids us believe that man's greatest victory, appreciated as such by woman, consists in making a woman suffer, in bringing tears to her eyes, in outtalking and outwitting her, "a victory compared to which," he says, "Marengo and Austerlitz look like thirty cents."