Sex, menstruation, pregnancy, and other related matters were explained to her calmly and clearly and at just the right times to satisfy her normal curiosity.
She had no shocking experience, nobody seduced her; nothing whatsoever that was visibly untoward had happened to her.
Many girls can be turned against sexuality by experiences that are directly traumatic. Such experiences, however, are not an absolute prerequisite for later difficulties. If you will recall our earlier discussion, you will remember that to embrace the feminine role a woman must be willing in the deepest biological and psychological sense to suspend the natural law of self-preservation. She must be willing to sacrifice her time, her being, her other goals—her very life—to give birth to her children and to see them safely to maturity.
If in her formative years the young girl is not properly prepared for this role, if womanhood is not treated as desirable, honorable, and lovable, she will automatically turn against it. The game, to the young mind, will seem far too risky for the candle. As the years pass, nothing disproves this contention and the original childlike fears, unmodified by reality, remain intact or even increase.
In other words, to the improperly prepared child, facing the reality of being a woman is in itself traumatic. Such was the case with Toni. She was convinced that real love, full of giving and willing sacrifice, represented death. It is no wonder then that two years before she saw me, when she had come to the verge of experiencing something like true sexual pleasure with her husband, she turned against it in a panic, barred it from her consciousness, attempted to render unlovable the man who had dared to rouse such dangerous feelings in her.
In telling of Toni's story I have selected a rather pure type of clitoridal woman, but I should like to make clear that
