THE ANTI-MAN CRUSADE
We have already pointed out that Modern Feminism has two sides or
aspects. The first formulates definite political, juridical and
economic demands on the grounds of justice, equity, equality and so
forth, as general principles; the second does not formulate in so many
words definite demands as general principles, but seems to exploit
the traditional notions of chivalry based on male sex sentiment, in
favour of according women special privileges on the ground of their
sex, in the law, and still more in the administration of the law.
For the sake of brevity we call the first _Political Feminism_, for,
although its demands are not confined to the political sphere, it is
first and foremost a political movement, and its typical claim at
the present time, the Franchise, is a purely political one; and the
second _Sentimental Feminism_, inasmuch as it commonly does not profess
to be based on any general principle whatever, whether of equity or
otherwise, but relies exclusively on the traditional and conventional
sex sentiment of Man towards Woman. It may be here premised that most
Political Feminists, however much they may refuse to admit it, are at
heart also Sentimental Feminists. Sentimental Feminists, on the other
hand, are not invariably Political Feminists, although the majority of
them undoubtedly are so to a greater or lesser extent. Logically, as we
shall have occasion to insist upon later on, the principles professedly
at the root of Political Feminism are in flagrant contradiction with
any that can justify Sentimental Feminism.
Now both the orders of Feminism referred to have been active for more
than a generation past in fomenting a crusade against the male sex—an
Anti-Man Crusade. Their efforts have been largely successful owing
to a fact to which attention has, perhaps, not enough been called.
In the case of other classes, or bodies of persons, having community
of interests this common interest invariably interprets itself in a
sense of class, caste, or race solidarity. The class or caste has a
certain _esprit de corps_ in its own interest. The whole of history
largely turns on the conflict of economic classes based on a common
feeling obtaining between members of the respective classes; on a
small scale, we see the same thing in the solidarity of a particular
trade or profession. But it is unnecessary to do more than call
attention here to this fundamental sociological law upon which alike
the class struggles of history, and of modern times, the patriotism
of states from the city-state of the ancient world to the national
state of the modern world, is based. Now note the peculiar manner in
which this law manifests itself in the sex question of the present
day. While Modern Feminism has succeeded in establishing a powerful
sex-solidarity amongst a large section of women as against men, there
is not only no sex-solidarity of men as against women, but, on the
contrary, the prevalence of an altogether opposed sentiment. Men hate
their brother-men in their capacity of male persons. In any conflict
of interests between a man and a woman, male public opinion, often
in defiance of the most obvious considerations of equity, sides with
the woman, and glories in doing so. Here we seem to have a very
flagrant contradiction with, as has already been said, one of the
most fundamental sociological laws. The explanations of the phenomena
in question are, of course, ready to hand:—Tradition of chivalry,
feelings, perhaps inherited, dating possibly back to the prehuman stage
of man’s evolution, derived from the competition of the male with his
fellow-male for the possession of the coveted female, etc.
These explanations may have a measure of validity, but I must confess
they are to me scarcely adequate to account for the intense hatred
which the large section of men seem to entertain towards their
fellow-males in the world of to-day, and their eagerness to champion
the female in the sex war which the Woman’s “sex union,” as it has been
termed, has declared of recent years. Whatever may be the explanation,
and I confess I cannot find one completely satisfactory, the fact
remains. A Woman’s Movement unassisted by man, still more if opposed
energetically by the public opinion of a solid phalanx of the manhood
of any country, could not possibly make any headway. As it is, we
see the legislature, judges, juries, parsons, specially those of the
nonconformist persuasion, all vie with one another in denouncing the
villainy and baseness of the male person, and ever devising ways and
means to make his life hard for him. To these are joined a host of
literary men and journalists of varying degrees of reputation who
contribute their quota to the stream of anti-manism in the shape of
novels, storiettes, essays, and articles, the design of which is to
paint man as a base, contemptible creature, as at once a knave and an
imbecile, a bird of prey and a sheep in wolf’s clothing, and all as
a foil to the glorious majesty of Womanhood. There are not wanting
artists who are pressed into this service. The picture of the Thames
Embankment at night, of the drowned unfortunate with the angel’s
face, the lady and gentleman in evening dress who have just got out
of their cab—the lady with uplifted hands bending over the dripping
form, and the callous and brutal gentleman turning aside to light a
cigarette—this is a typical specimen of Feminist didactic art. By
these means, which have been carried on with increasing ardour for a
couple of generations past, what we may term the anti-man cultus has
been made to flourish and to bear fruit till we find nowadays all
recent legislation affecting the relations between the sexes carrying
its impress, and the whole of the judiciary and magistracy acting as
its priests and ministrants.
On the subject of Anti-man legislation, I have already written at
length elsewhere,[55:1] but for the sake of completeness I state the
case briefly here. (1) The marriage laws of England to-day are a
monument of Feminist sex partiality. If I may be excused the paradox,
the partiality of the marriage laws begins with the law relating to
breach of promise, which, as is well known, enables a woman to punish
a man vindictively for refusing to marry her after having once engaged
himself to her. I ought to add, and this, oftentimes, however good
his grounds may be for doing so. Should the woman commit perjury, in
these cases, she is never prosecuted for the offence. Although the
law of breach of promise exists also for the man, it is well known to
be totally ineffective and practically a dead letter. It should be
remarked that, however gross the misrepresentations or undue influences
on the part of the woman may have been to induce the man to marry
her, they do not cause her to lose her right to compensation. As, for
instance, where an experienced woman of the world of thirty or forty
entraps a boy scarcely out of his teens. (2) Again, according to the
law of England, the right to maintenance accrues solely to the woman.
Formerly this privilege was made dependent on her cohabitation with the
man and generally decent behaviour to him. Now even these limitations
cease to be operative, while the man is liable to imprisonment and
confiscation of any property he may have. A wife is now at full liberty
to leave her husband, while she retains her right to get her husband
sent to gaol if he refuses to maintain her—to put the matter shortly,
the law imposes upon the wife no legally enforceable duties whatever
_towards_ her husband. The one thing which it will enforce with iron
vigour is the wife’s right of maintenance _against_ her husband. In
the case of a man of the well-to-do classes, the man’s property is
confiscated by the law in favour of his wife. In the case of a working
man the law compels her husband to do _corvée_ for her, as the feudal
serf had to do for his lord. The wife, on the other hand, however
wealthy, is not compelled to give a farthing towards the support of her
husband, even though disabled by sickness or by accident; the single
exception in the latter case being should he become chargeable to
the parish, in which case the wife would have to pay the authorities
a pauper’s rate for his maintenance. In a word, a wife has complete
possession and control over any property she may possess, as well
as over her earnings; the husband, on the other hand, is liable to
confiscation of capitalised property or earnings at the behest of the
law courts in favour of his wife. A wife may even make her husband
bankrupt on the ground of money she alleges that she lent him; a
husband, on the other hand, has no claim against his wife for any money
advanced, since a husband is supposed to _give_, and not to _lend_, his
wife money, or other valuables. (3) The law affords the wife a right
to commit torts against third parties—_e.g._ libels and slanders—the
husband alone being responsible, and this rule applies even although
the wife is living apart from her husband, who is wholly without
knowledge of her misdeeds. With the exception of murder, a wife is held
by the law to be guiltless of practically any crime committed in the
presence of her husband. (4) No man can obtain a legal separation or
divorce from his wife (save under the Licensing Act of 1902, a Police
Court separation for habitual drunkenness alone) without a costly
process in the High Court. Every wife can obtain, if not a divorce, at
least a legal separation, by going whining to the nearest police court,
for a few shillings, which her husband, of course, has to pay. The
latter, it is needless to say, is mulcted in alimony at the “discretion
of the Court.” This “discretion” is very often of a queer character for
the luckless husband. Thus, a working man earning only twenty shillings
a week may easily find himself in the position of having to pay from
seven to ten shillings a week to a shrew out of his wages.
[55:1] Cf. _Fortnightly Review_, November 1911, “A Creature of
Privilege,” also a pamphlet (collaboration) entitled “The Legal
Subjection of Men.” Twentieth Century Press, reprinted by New
Age Press, 1908.
In cases where a wife proceeds to file a petition for divorce, the way
is once more smoothed for her by the law, at the husband’s expense. He
has to advance her money to enable her to fight him. Should the case
come on for hearing the husband finds the scale still more weighted
against him; every slander of his wife is assumed to be true until he
has proved its falsity, the slightest act or a word during a moment of
irritation, even a long time back, being twisted into what is termed
“legal cruelty,” even though such has been provoked by a long course of
ill treatment and neglect on the part of the wife. The husband and his
witnesses can be indicted for perjury for the slightest exaggeration
or inaccuracy in their statements, while the most calculated falsity
in the evidence of the wife and her witnesses is passed over. Not
the grossest allegation on the part of the wife against the husband,
even though proved in court to be false, is sufficient ground for the
husband to refuse to take her back again, or from preventing the court
from confiscating his property if he resists doing so. Knowledge of
the unfairness of the court to the husband, as all lawyers are aware,
prevents a large number of men from defending divorce actions brought
by their wives. A point should here be mentioned as regards the action
of a husband for damages against the seducer of his wife. Such damages
obviously belong to the husband as compensation for his destroyed
home life. Now these damages our modern judges in their feminist zeal
have converted into a fund for endowing the adulteress, depriving the
husband of any compensation whatever for the wrong done him. He may not
touch the income derived from the money awarded him by the jury, which
is handed over by the court to his divorced wife. It would take us too
long to go through all the privileges, direct and indirect, conferred
by statute or created by the rulings of judges and the practice of
the courts, in favour of the wife against the husband. It is the more
unnecessary to go into them here as they may be found in detail with
illustrative cases in the aforesaid pamphlet in which I collaborated,
entitled “The Legal Subjection of Men” (mentioned in the footnote to p.
55).
At this point it may be well to say a word on the one rule of the
divorce law which Feminists are perennially trotting out as a proof of
the shocking injustice of the marriage law to women: that to obtain her
divorce the woman has to prove cruelty in addition to adultery against
her husband, while in the case of the husband it is sufficient to prove
adultery alone. Now to make of this rule a grievance for the woman is,
I submit, evidence of the destitution of the Feminist case. In default
of any real injustice pressing on the woman the Feminist is constrained
to make as much capital as possible out of the merest semblance of a
grievance he can lay his hand on. The reasons for this distinction
which the law draws between the husband and the wife, it is obvious
enough, are perfectly well grounded. It is based mainly on the simple
fact that while a woman by her adultery may foist upon her husband a
bastard which he will be compelled by law to support as his own child,
in the husband’s case of having an illegitimate child the wife and her
property are not affected. Now in a society such as ours is, based upon
private property-holding, it is only natural, I submit, that the law
should take account of this fact. But not only is this rule of law
almost certainly doomed to repeal in the near future, but in even the
present day, while it still nominally exists, it is practically a dead
letter in the divorce court, since any trivial act of which the wife
chooses to complain is strained by the court into evidence of cruelty
in the legal and technical sense. As the matter stands, the practical
effect of the rule is a much greater injustice to the husband than to
the wife, since the former often finds himself convicted of “cruelty”
which is virtually nothing at all, in order that the wife’s petition
may be granted, and which is often made the excuse by Feminist judges
for depriving the husband of the custody of his children. Misconduct
on the wife’s part, or neglect of husband and children, does not
weigh with the court which will not on that ground grant relief to
the husband from his obligation for maintenance, etc. On the other
hand, neglect of the wife by the husband is made a ground for judicial
separation with the usual consequences—alimony, etc. “Thus,” as it
has been put, “between the upper and the nether millstone, cruelty on
the one hand, neglect on the other, the unhappy husband can be legally
ground to pieces, whether he does anything or whether he does nothing.”
Personal violence on the part of the husband is severely punished;
on the part of a wife she will be let off with impunity. Even if she
should in an extreme case be imprisoned, the husband, if a poor man,
on her release will be compelled to take her back to live with him.
The case came under the notice of the writer a few years ago in which
a humane magistrate was constrained to let off a woman who had nearly
murdered a husband on the condition of her graciously consenting to a
separation, but she had presumably still to be supported by her victim.
The decision in the notorious Jackson case precluded the husband from
compelling his wife to obey an order of the court for the restitution
of conjugal rights. The persistent Feminist tendency of all case-law is
illustrated by a decision of the House of Lords in 1894 in reference
to the law of Scotland constituting desertion for four years a ground
_ipso facto_ for a divorce with the right of remarriage. Here divorce
was refused to a man whose wife had left him for four years and taken
her child with her. The Law Lords justified their own interpretation
of the law on the ground that the man did not really want her to come
back. But inasmuch as this plea can be started in every case where
it cannot be proved that the husband had absolutely grovelled before
his wife, imploring her to return, and possibly even then—since the
sincerity even of this grovelling might conceivably be called in
question—it is clear that the decision practically rendered this old
Scottish law inoperative for the husband.
As regards the offence of bigamy, for which a man commonly receives
a heavy sentence of penal servitude, I think I may venture to state,
without risking contradiction, that no woman during recent years has
been imprisoned for this offence. The statute law, while conferring
distinct privileges upon married women as to the control of their
property, and for trading separately and apart from their husbands,
renders them exempt from the ordinary liabilities incurred by a male
trader as regards proceedings under the Debtors Acts and the Bankruptcy
Law. See Acts of 1822 (45 & 46 Vict. c. 75); 1893 (56 & 57 Vict. c.
63), and cases Scott _v._ Morley, 57 L.J.R.Q.B. 43. L.R. 20 Q.B.D. In
_re_ Hannah Lines _exparte_ Lester C.A. (1893), 2. 2. B. 113.
In the case of Lady Bateman _v._ Faber and others reported in
Chancery Appeal Cases (1898 Law Reports) the Master of the Rolls
(Sir N. Lindley) is reported to have said: “The authorities showed
that a married woman could not by hook or by crook—even by her own
fraud—deprive herself of restraint upon anticipation. He would say
nothing as to the policy of the law, but it had been affirmed by the
Married Woman’s Property Act” (the Act of 1882 above referred to) “and
the result was that a married woman could play fast and loose to an
extent to which no other person could.” (_N.B._—Presumably a male
person.)
It has indeed been held, to such a length does the law extend its
protection and privileges to the female, that even the concealment
by a wife from the husband at the time of marriage that she was then
pregnant by another man was no ground for declaring the marriage null
and void.
The above may be taken as a fair all-round, although by no means an
exhaustive, statement of the present one-sided condition of the civil
law as regards the relation of husband and wife. We will now pass on to
the consideration of the relative incidence of the criminal law on the
two sexes. We will begin with the crime of murder. The law of murder is
still ostensibly the same for both sexes, but in effect the application
of its provisions in the two cases is markedly different. As, however,
these differences lie, as just stated, not in the law itself but rather
in its administration, we can only give in this place, where we are
dealing with the principles of law rather than with their application,
a general formula of the mode in which the administration of the
law of murder proceeds, which, briefly stated, is as follows: The
evidence even to secure conviction in the case of a woman must be many
times stronger than that which would suffice to hang a man. Should a
conviction be obtained, the death penalty, though pronounced, is not
given effect to, the female prisoner being almost invariably reprieved.
In most cases where there is conviction at all, it is for manslaughter
and not for murder, when a light or almost nominal sentence is passed.
Cases confirming what is here said will be given later on. There is one
point, however, to be observed here, and that is the crushing incidence
of the law of libel. This means that no case of any woman, however
notoriously guilty on the evidence, can be quoted, after she has been
acquitted by a Feminist jury, as the law holds such to be innocent and
provides them with “a remedy” in a libel action. Now, seeing that most
women accused of murder are acquitted irrespective of the evidence, it
is clear that the writer is fatally handicapped so far as confirmation
of his thesis by cases is concerned.
Women are to all intents and purposes allowed to harass men, when they
conceive they have a grievance, at their own sweet will, the magistrate
usually telling their victim that he cannot interfere. In the opposite
case, that of a man harassing a woman, the latter has invariably to
find sureties for his future good behaviour, or else go to gaol.
One of the most infamous enactments indicative of Feminist sex bias
is the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1886. The Act itself was led
up to with the usual effect by an unscrupulous newspaper agitation
in the Feminist and Puritan interest, designed to create a panic in
the public mind, under the influence of which legislation of this
description can generally be rushed through Parliament. The reckless
disregard of the commonest principles of justice and common-sense of
this abominable statute may be seen in the shameless sex privilege it
accords the female in the matter of seduction. Under its provisions a
boy of fourteen years can be prosecuted and sent to gaol for an offence
to which he has been instigated by a girl just under sixteen years,
whom the law, of course, on the basis of the aforesaid sex privilege,
holds guiltless. The outrageous infamy of this provision is especially
apparent when we consider the greater precocity of the average girl as
compared with the average boy of this age.
We come now to the latest piece of Anti-man legislation, the so-called
_White Slave Trade Act of 1912_ (Criminal Law Amendment Act 1912, 2
& 3 Geo. V. c. 20). This statute was, as usual, rushed through the
legislature on the wave of factitious public excitement organised
for the purpose, and backed up by the usual faked statements and
exaggerated allegations, the whole matter being three parts bogus
and deliberate lying. The alleged dangers of the unprotected female
were, for the object of the agitation, purposely exaggerated in
the proverbial proportion of the mountain to the molehill. But as
regards many of those most eager in promoting this piece of Anti-man
legislation, there were probably special psychological reasons to
account for their attitude. The special features of the Bill, the Act
in question, are (1) increased powers given to the police in the matter
of arrest on suspicion, and (2) the flogging clauses.
Up till now the flogging of garrotters was justified against opponents,
by its upholders, on the ground of the peculiarly brutal nature of
the offence of highway robbery with violence. It should be noted that
in the Act in question no such excuse can apply, for it is appointed
to be inflicted for offences which, whatever else they may be, do not
in their nature involve violence, and hence which cannot be described
as brutal in the ordinary sense of the term. The Anti-man nature of
the whole measure, as of the agitation itself which preceded it, is
conclusively evidenced by the fact that while it is well known that the
number of women gaining a living by “procuration” is much greater than
the number of men engaged therein, comparatively little vituperation
was heard against the female delinquents in the matter, and certainly
none of the vitriolic ferocity that was poured out upon the men
alleged to participate in the traffic. A corresponding distinction was
represented in the measure itself by the allocation of the torture of
the lash to men alone. It is clear, therefore, that the zeal for the
suppression of the traffic in question was not the sole motive in the
ardour of the flogging fraternity. Even the Anti-manism at the back of
the whole of this class of legislation seems insufficient to account
for the outbreak of bestial blood-lust, for the tigerish ferocity,
of which the flogging clauses in the Act are the outcome. There is,
I take it, no doubt that psychical sexual aberration plays a not
inconsiderable part in many of those persons—in a word, that they are
labouring under some degree of homo-sexual Sadism. The lustful glee
on the part of the aforesaid persons which greets the notion of the
partial flaying alive, for that is what the “cat” means, of some poor
wretch who has succumbed to the temptation of getting his livelihood by
an improper method, is hardly to be explained on any other hypothesis.
Experts allege that traces of psycho-sexual aberration are latent
in many persons where it would be least expected, and it is, _prima
facie_, likely enough that these latent tendencies in both men and
women should become active under the cover of an agitation in favour
of purity and anti-sexuality, to the point of gratifying itself with
the thought of torture inflicted upon men. A psycho-sexual element
of another kind doubtless also plays a not unimportant rôle in the
agitation of “ladies” in favour of that abomination, “social purity,”
which, being interpreted, generally means lubricity turned upside
down. The fiery zeal manifested by many of those ladies for the
suppression of the male sex is assuredly not without its pathological
significance.
The monstrosity of the recent _White Slave Traffic_ enactment and
its savage anti-male vindictiveness is shown not merely, as already
observed, in the agitation which preceded it, with its exaggerated
vilification of the male offenders in the matter of procuration and its
passing over with comparative slight censure the more numerous female
offenders, or in the general spirit animating the Act itself, but it
is noticeable in the very preposterous exaggeration of its provisions.
For example, in the section dealing with the _souteneur_, the framers
of this Act, and the previous Criminal Law Amendment Acts to which this
latest one is merely supplementary, are not satisfied with penalising
the man who has no other means of subsistence beyond what he derives
from the wages of some female friend’s prostitution, but they strike
with impartial rigour the man who knowingly lives _wholly or in part_
from such a source. If, therefore, the clause were taken in its strict
sense, any poor out-at-elbow man who accepted the hospitality of a
woman of doubtful virtue in the matter of a drink, or a dinner, would
put himself within the pale of this clause in the Act, and might
be duly flayed by the “cat” in consequence. The most flagrant case
occurred in a London police court in March 1913, in which a youth of
eighteen years, against whose general character nothing was alleged
and who was known to be in employment as a carman, was sentenced to a
month’s hard labour under the following circumstances:—It was reported
that he had been living with a woman apparently considerably older than
himself, whom admittedly he had supported by his own exertions and,
when this was insufficient, even by the pawning of his clothes, and
whom as soon as he discovered she was earning money by prostitution he
had left. Would it be believed that a prosecution was instituted by the
police against this young man under the iniquitous White Slave Traffic
Act? But what seems still more incredible is that the magistrate,
presumably a sane gentleman, after admitting that the poor fellow was
“more sinned against than sinning,” did not hesitate to pass on him a
sentence of one month’s hard labour!!! Of course the woman, who was
the head and front of the offending, if offending there was, remained
untouched. The above is a mild specimen of “justice” as meted out in
our police courts, “for men only”! Quite recently there was a case in
the north of England of a carter, who admittedly worked at his calling
but who, it was alleged, was assisted by women with whom he had lived.
Now this unfortunate man was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment
plus flogging. For the judges, of course, any extension of their power
over the prisoner in the dock is a godsend. It is quite evident that
they are revelling in their new privilege to inflict torture. One of
them had the shamelessness recently to boast of the satisfaction it
gave him and to sneer at those of his colleagues who did not make full
use of their judicial powers in this direction.
The bogus nature of the reasons urged in favour of the most atrocious
clauses of this abominable Act came out clearly enough in the speeches
of the official spokesmen of the Government in its favour. For example,
Lord Haldane in the House of Lords besought the assembled peers to
bethink themselves of the unhappy victim of the _souteneur_. He drew
a picture of how a heartless bully might beat, starve and otherwise
ill treat his victim, besides taking away her earnings. He omitted to
explain how the heartless bully in a free country could coerce his
“victim” to remain with him against her will. He ignored the existence
of the police, or of a whole army of social purity busybodies, and
vigilance societies for whom her case would be a tasty morsel only
too eagerly snapped at. If the “victim” does not avail herself of any
of those means of escape, so ready to her hand, the presumption is
that she prefers the company of her alleged brutal tyrant to that of
the chaste Puritan ladies of the vigilance societies. To those who
follow the present state of artificially fomented public opinion in
the matter, Lord Haldane’s suggestion that there was any danger of the
precious “victim” not being sufficiently slobbered over, will seem to
be not without a touch of humour. Furthermore, as illustrating the
utter illogicality of the line taken by the promoters of the Act, for
whom Lord Haldane acted as the mouthpiece, we have only to note the
fact that the measure does not limit the penalties awarded to cases
accompanied by circumstances of aggravation such as Lord Haldane
pictures, which it might easily have done, but extends it impartially
to all cases whether accompanied by cruelty or not. We can hardly
imagine that a man of Lord Haldane’s intellectual power and general
humanity should not have been aware of the hollowness of the case
he had to put as an official advocate, and of the rottenness of the
conventional arguments he had to state in its support. When confronted
with the unquestionably true contention that corporal punishments,
especially such as are of a savage and vindictive kind, are degrading
alike to the inflicters of them and to those who are their victims,
he replied that criminals in the cases in question were already so
degraded that they could not be degraded further. One would imagine
he could hardly have failed to know that he was talking pernicious
twaddle. It is obvious that this argument, in addition to its being
untrue, in fact opens the floodgates to brutal penal legislation all
round, so far at least as the more serious offences are concerned.
One could equally well assert of murder, burglary, even _abus de
confidence_ in some cases, and other offences, that the perpetrators
of them must be so degraded that no amount of brutal punishment could
degrade them further. Everybody can regard the crime to which he has
a pet aversion more than other crimes as indicating the perpetrator
thereof to be outside the pale of humanity.
But as regards the particular case in point, let us for a moment clear
our minds of cant upon the subject. Procuration and also living on
the proceeds of prostitution may be morally abominable methods of
securing a livelihood, though even here, as in most other offences,
there may be circumstances of palliation in individual cases. But after
all is said and done, it is doubtful whether, apart from any fraud
or misrepresentation, which, of course, places it altogether in a
different category, these ought to be regarded as _criminal_ offences.
To offer facilities or to act as an agent for women who are anxious to
lead a “gay life,” or even to suggest such a course to women, _so long
as prostitution itself is not recognised by the law as crime_, however
reprehensible morally, would scarcely seem to transcend the limits of
legitimate individual liberty. In any case, the constituting of such
an action a crime must surely open out an altogether new principle in
jurisprudence, and one of far-reaching consequences. The same remarks
apply even more forcibly to the question of sharing the earnings of a
prostitute. Prostitution _per se_ is not in the eyes of the law a crime
or even a misdemeanour. The woman who makes her living as a prostitute
is under the protection of the law, and the money she receives from
her customer is recognised as her property. If she, however, in the
exercise of her right of free disposition of that property, gives
some of it to a male friend, that friend, by the mere acceptance of
a free gift, becomes a criminal in the eyes of the law. Anything
more preposterous, judging by all hitherto recognised principles of
jurisprudence, can scarcely be imagined. Even from the moral point of
view of the class of cases coming under the purview of the Act, of men
who in part share in the proceeds of their female friends’ traffic,
must involve many instances in which no sane person—_i.e._ one who is
not bitten by the rabid man-hatred of the Feminist and social purity
monger—must regard the moral obliquity involved as not very serious.
Take, for instance, the case of a man who is out of work, who is
perhaps starving, and receives temporary assistance of this kind. Would
any reasonable person allege that such a man was in the lowest depths
of moral degradation, still less that he merited for this breach, at
most, of fine delicacy of feeling, the flaying alive prescribed by
the Act under consideration. Besides all this, it is well known that
some women, shop assistants and others, gain part of their living by
their reputable avocation and part in another way. Now presumably the
handing over of a portion of her regular salary to her lover would not
constitute the latter a flayable criminal, but the endowment of him
with a portion of any of the “presents” obtained by her pursuit of her
other calling would do so. The process of earmarking the permissible
and the impermissible gift strikes one as very difficult even if
possible.
The point last referred to leads us on to another reflection. If the
man who “in whole or in part” lives on the proceeds of a woman’s
prostitution is of necessity a degraded wretch outside the pale of all
humanity, as he is represented to be by the flogging fraternity, how
about the employer or employeress of female labour who bases his or
her scale of wages on the assumption that the girls and women he or
she employs, supplement these wages by presents received after working
hours, for their sexual favours—in other words, by prostitution?
Many of these employers of labour are doubtless to be found among the
noble band of advocates of White Slave Traffic Bills, flogging and
social purity. The above persons, of course, are respectable members of
society, while a _souteneur_ is an outcast.
In addition to the motives before alluded to as actuating the promoters
of the factitious and bogus so-called “White Slave” agitation, there
is one very powerful political and economic motive which must not be
left out of sight. In view of the existing “labour unrest,” it is
highly desirable from the point of view of our possessing and governing
classes that popular attention should be drawn off labour wrongs and
labour grievances on to something less harassing to the capitalist and
official mind. Now the Anti-man agitation forms a capital red herring
for drawing the popular scent off class opposition by substituting sex
antagonism in its place.
If you can set public opinion off on the question of wicked Man and
down-trodden Woman, you have done a good deal to help capitalistic
enterprise to tide over the present crisis. The insistence of public
opinion on better conditions for the labourer will thus be weakened by
being diverted into urging forward vindictive laws against men, and for
placing as far as may be the whole power of the State at the disposal
of the virago, the shrew and the female sharper, in their designs upon
their male victim. For, be it remembered, it is always the worst type
of woman to whom the advantage of laws passed as the result of the
Anti-man campaign accrues. The real nature of the campaign is crucially
exhibited in some of the concrete demands put forward by its advocates.
One of the measures proposed in the so-called “Woman’s Charter” drawn
up with the approval of all prominent Feminists by Lady M‘Laren (now
Lady Aberconway) some four or five years back, and which had been
previously advocated by other Feminist writers, was to the effect
that a husband, in addition to his other liabilities, should be
legally compelled to pay a certain sum to his wife, ostensibly as
wages for her housekeeping services, no matter whether she performs
the services well, or ill, or not at all. Whatever the woman is, or
does, the husband has to pay all the same. Another of the clauses in
this precious document is to the effect that a wife is to be under no
obligation to follow her husband, compelled probably by the necessity
of earning a livelihood for himself and her, to any place of residence
outside the British Islands. That favourite crank of the Feminist, of
raising the age of consent with the result of increasing the number
of victims of the designing young female should speak for itself to
every unbiassed person. One of the proposals which finds most favour
with the Sentimental Feminist is the demand that in the case of the
murder by a woman of her illegitimate child, the putative father should
be placed in the dock as an accessory! In other words, a man should
be punished for a crime of which he is wholly innocent, because the
guilty person was forsooth a woman. That such a suggestion should be
so much as entertained by otherwise sane persons is indeed significant
of the degeneracy of mental and moral fibre induced by the Feminist
movement, for it may be taken as typical. It reminds me of a Feminist
friend of mine who, challenged by me, sought (for long in vain) to find
a case in the courts in which a man was unduly favoured at the expense
of a woman. At last he succeeded in lighting upon the following from
somewhere in Scotland: A man and woman who had been drinking went home
to bed, and the woman caused the death of her baby by “overlaying it.”
Both the man and the woman were brought before the court on the charge
of manslaughter, for causing the death, by culpable negligence, of the
infant. In accordance with the evidence, the woman who had overlaid
the baby was convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, and
naturally the man, who had not done so, was released. Now, in the
judgment of my Feminist friend, in other matters sane enough, the fact
that the man who had not committed any offence was let off, while
his female companion, who had, was punished, showed the bias of the
court in favour of the man!! Surely this is a noteworthy illustration,
glaring as it is, of how all judgment is completely overbalanced
and destroyed in otherwise judicial minds—of how such minds are
completely hypnotised by the adoption of the Feminist dogma. As a
matter of fact, of course, the task my friend set himself to do was
hopeless. As against the cases, which daily occur all over the country,
of flagrant injustice to men and partiality to women on the part of
the courts, there is, I venture to assert, not to be found a single
case within the limits of the four seas of a judicial decision in the
contrary sense—_i.e._ of one favouring the man at the expense of the
woman.
This sex hatred, so often vindictive in its character, of men for men,
which has for its results that “man-made” laws invariably favour the
opposite sex, and that “man-administered justice” follows the same
course, is a psychological problem which is well worth the earnest
attention of students of sociology and thinkers generally.