WHY WOMEN SCREAM.

Northern Advocate, 26 November 1910, Page 2

WHY WOMEN SCREAM.

Professor Osborn, of the Physiological School at the University, Melbourne, in the course of a speech recently, said the Australian League of Girls Aids did not want women who screamed, and who showed that they were not fit for the position they occupied. "I elon't think the modern woman is so much given to screaming as was, say, the early Victorian," said the Professor, "nor is the modern woman given to swooning. Scream ing may be said to be feminine and instinctive, having a two-fold significance, to disconcert the enemy and to summon help. Women scream when attacked, because they are not well equipped by Nature for the muscular response involved in fighting or running. To keep still and screech is the feminine way. Most women are better physically now than they were. More attention has been paid to their physical culture. They have come out into the world and they are stronger mentally. Women who are trained physically and mentally to look at life soberly and at danger with equanimity now and again betray their sex by vocalisation of a high pitch and intensity. At the water chutes, for instance, and on gravity railways they often scream from pleasureaMe excitement. Whether they would do it in the absence of the other sex is an interesting phychological question."