HISC 27 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Nocturnal Emission, Mortal Sin, Fetus
Document Summary
Humours wherein men were relatively hotter and drier, women cooler and wetter. Aristotle denied that women produced seed, emphasized the differences between the sexes, and pronounced women to be imperfect and passive versions of men. Many medieval commentators accepted the notion that pleasure, including simultaneous orgasm, was a necessary ingredient of reproductive success for both sexes. Without denying that women experienced pleasure in coitus, authors who relied on the. Aristotelian tradition tended to dissociate women"s pleasure from the emission of seed, ensuring that this conceptual point-of-view would persist in catholic dogma. This distinction left women"s sexual desire unmoored from the godly purpose for which it was intended, and it allowed medieval preachers to dwell on the dangers of female lust, particularly that of the common woman or prostitute. Albertus magnus makes the strongest case for the aristotelian position that women do not produce sperm properly speaking: he argues that sperm is to a man as menstruum is to a woman.
