It occurs chiefly
in women; it attains its chief intensity at puberty and during
adolescence; its most common occasion is some more or less sexual
suggestion; among one hundred and sixty-two occasions of blushing
enumerated by Partridge, by far the most frequent cause was teasing,
usually about the other sex. "An erection," it has been said, "is a
blushing of the penis." Stanley Hall seems to suggest that the sexual
blush is a vicarious genital flushing of blood, diverted from the genital
sphere by an inhibition of fear, just as, in girls, giggling is also very
frequently a vicarious outlet of shame; the sexual blush would thus be the
outcome of an ancestral sex-fear; it is as an irradiation of sexual
erethism that the blush may contain an element of pleasure.[65]
Bloch remarks that the blush is sexual, because reddening of the
face, as well as of the genitals, is an accompaniment of sexual
emotion (_Beitraege zur AEtiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil
II, p. 39). "Do you not think," a correspondent writes, "that
the sexual blush, at least, really represents a vaso-relaxor
effect quite the same as erection? The embarrassment which arises
is due to a perception of this fact under circumstances which are
felt to be unsuited for such a condition. There may arise the
fear of awakening disgust by the exhibition of a state which is
out of place.
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