THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MOVEMENT
We have already spoken of two strains in Modern Feminism which,
although commonly found together, are nevertheless intrinsically
distinguishable. The first I have termed Sentimental Feminism and the
second Political Feminism. Sentimental Feminism is in the main an
extension and emotional elaboration of the old notion of chivalry, a
notion which in the period when it was supposed to have been at its
zenith, certainly played a very much smaller part in human affairs
than it does in its extended and metamorphosed form in the present
day. We have already analysed in a former chapter the notion of
chivalry. Taken in its most general and barest form it represents
the consideration for weakness which is very apt to degenerate into
a worship of mere weakness. _La faiblesse prime le droit_ is not
necessarily nearer justice than _la force prime le droit_; although to
hear much of the talk in the present day one would imagine that the
inherent right of the weak to oppress the strong were a first principle
of eternal rectitude. But the theory of chivalry is scarcely invoked
in the present day save in the interests of one particular form of
weakness—viz. the woman as the muscularly weaker sex, and here it has
acquired an utterly different character.[141:1]
[141:1] As regards this point it should be remarked that
mediæval chivalry tolerated (as Wharton expressed it in his
“History of Poetry”) “the grossest indecencies and obscenities
between the sexes,” such things as modern puritanism would
stigmatise with such words as “unchivalrous,” “unmanly” and
the like. The resemblance between the modern worship of women
and the relations of the mediæval knight to the female sex is
very thin indeed. Modern claims to immunity for women from the
criminal law and mediæval chivalry are quite different things.
Chivalry, as understood by Modern Sentimental Feminism, means unlimited
licence for women in their relations with men, and unlimited coercion
for men in their relations with women. To men all duties and no rights,
to women all rights and no duties, is the basic principle underlying
Modern Feminism, Suffragism, and the bastard chivalry it is so fond of
invoking. The most insistent female shrieker for equality between the
sexes among Political Feminists, it is interesting to observe, will, in
most cases, on occasion be found an equally insistent advocate of the
claims of Sentimental Feminism, based on modern metamorphosed notions
of chivalry. It never seems to strike anyone that the muscular weakness
of woman has been forged by Modern Feminists into an abominable weapon
of tyranny. Under cover of the notion of chivalry, as understood by
Modern Feminism, Political and Sentimental Feminists alike would
deprive men of the most elementary rights of self-defence against women
and would exonerate the latter practically from all punishment for the
most dastardly crimes against men. They know they can rely upon the
support of the sentimental section of public opinion with some such
parrot cry of “What! Hit a woman!”
Why not, if she molests you?
“Treat a woman in this way!” “Shame!” responds automatically the crowd
of Sentimental Feminist idiots, oblivious of the fact that the real
shame lies in their endorsement of an iniquitous sex privilege. If the
same crowd were prepared to condemn any special form of punishment
or mode of treatment as inhumane for both sexes alike, there would,
of course, be nothing to be said. But it is not so. The most savage
cruelty and vindictive animosity towards men leaves them comparatively
cold, at most evoking a mild remonstrance as against the inflated
manifestation of sentimental horror and frothy indignation produced by
any slight hardship inflicted by way of punishment (let us say) on a
female offender.
The psychology of Sentimental Feminism generally is intimately bound up
with the curious phenomenon of the hatred of men by their own sex as
such. With women, in spite of what is sometimes alleged, one does not
find this phenomenon of anti-sex. On the contrary, nowadays we are in
presence of a powerful female sex-solidarity indicating the beginnings
of a strong sex-league of women against men. But with men, as already
said, in all cases of conflict between the sexes, we are met with a
callous indifference, alternating with positive hostility towards
their fellow-men, which seems at times to kill in them all sense of
justice. This is complemented on the other side by an imbecile softness
towards the female sex in general which reminds one of nothing so much
as of the maudlin _bonhomie_ of the amiable drunkard. This besotted
indulgence, as before noted, is proof even against the outraged sense
of injury to property.
As we all know, offences against property, as a rule, are those the
average bourgeois is least inclined to condone, yet we have recently
seen a campaign of deliberate wanton destruction by arson and other
means, directed expressly against private property, which nevertheless
the respectable propertied bourgeois, the man of law and order, has
taken pretty much “lying down.” Let us suppose another case. Let us
imagine an anarchist agitation, with a known centre and known leaders,
a centre from which daily outrages were deliberately planned by these
leaders and carried out by their emissaries, all, _bien entendu_, of
the male persuasion.
Now what attitude does the reader suppose “public opinion” of the
propertied classes would adopt towards the miscreants who were
responsible for these acts? Can he not picture to himself the furious
indignation, the rabid diatribes, the advocacy of hanging, flogging,
penal servitude for life, as the minimum punishment, followed by panic
legislation on these lines, which would ensue as a consequence. Yet
of such threatenings and slaughter, where suffragettes who imitate
the policy of the Terrorist Anarchist are concerned, we hear not a
sound. The respectable propertied bourgeois, the man of law and order,
will, it is true, probably condemn these outrages in an academic way,
but there is an undernote of hesitancy which damps down the fire of
his indignation. There is no vindictiveness, no note of atrocity in
his expostulations; nay, he is even prepared, on occasion, to argue
the question, while maintaining the impropriety, the foolishness,
the “unwomanliness” of setting fire to empty houses, cutting up golf
links, destroying correspondence, smashing windows and the like. But
of fiery indignation, of lurid advocacy of barbaric punishments, or of
ferocity in general, we have not a trace. On the contrary, a certain
willingness to admit and even to emphasise the disinterestedness of
these female criminals is observable. As regards this last point, we
must again insist on what was pointed out on a previous page, that
the disinterestedness and unselfishness of many a male bomb-throwing
anarchist who has come in for the righteous bourgeois’ sternest
indignation, are, at least, as unquestionable as those of the female
house-burners and window-smashers. Moreover the anarchist, however
wrong-headed he may have been in his action, as once before remarked,
it must not be forgotten, had at least for the goal of his endeavours,
not merely the acquirement of a vote, but the revolution which he
conceived would abolish human misery and raise humanity to a higher
level.
In this strange phenomenon, therefore, in which the indignation of
the bourgeois at the wanton and wilful violation of the sacredness of
his idol, is reduced to mild remonstrance and its punitive action to
a playful pretence, we have a crucial instance of the extraordinary
influence of Feminism over the modern mind. That the propertied classes
should take arson and wilful destruction of property in general,
with such comparative equanimity because the culprits are women,
acting in the assumed interest of a cause that aims at increasing the
influence of women in the State, is the most striking illustration we
can have of the power of Feminism. We have here a double phenomenon,
the unreasoning hatred of man as a sex, by men, and their equally
unreasoning indulgence towards the other sex. As we indicated above,
not only is the sense of _esprit de corps_ entirely absent among modern
men as regards their own sex, while strongly present in modern women,
but this negative characteristic has become positive on the other side.
Thus the modern sex problem presents us with a reversal of the ordinary
sociological law of the solidarity of those possessing common interests.
It remains to consider the psychological explanation of this fact.
Why should men so conspicuously prefer the interests of women before
those of their own sex? That this is the case with modern man the
history of the legislation of the last fifty years shows, and the
undoubted fact may be found further illustrated in the newspaper
reports of well-nigh every trial, whether at civil or criminal law,
quite apart from the ordinary “chivalric” acts of men in the detail of
social life. This question of sex, therefore, as before said, forms
the solitary exception to the general law of the _esprit de corps_ of
those possessing common characteristics and interests. It cannot be
adequately explained by a reference to the evolution of sex functions
and relations from primitive man onwards, since it is at least in
the extreme form we see it to-day, a comparatively recent social
phenomenon. The theory of the sacrosanctity of women by virtue of their
sex, quite apart from their character and conduct as individuals,
scarcely dates back farther than a century, even from its beginnings.
The earlier chivalry, where it obtained at all, applied only to the
woman who presented what were conceived of as the ideal moral feminine
characteristics in some appreciable degree. The mere physical fact of
sex was never for a moment regarded as of itself sufficient to entitle
the woman to any special homage, consideration, or immunity, over and
above the man. No one suggested that the female criminal was less
guilty or more excusable than the male criminal. No one believed that
a woman had a vested right to rob or swindle a man because she had had
sexual relations with him. This notion of the mere fact of sex—of
femality—as of itself constituting a title to special privileges
and immunities, apart from any other consideration, is a product of
very recent times. In treating this question, in so far as it bears
on the criminal law, it is important to distinguish carefully between
the softening of the whole system of punishment due to the general
development of humanitarian tendencies and the special discrimination
made in favour of the female sex. These two things are very often
inadequately distinguished from one another. Punishment may have become
more humane where men are concerned, it may have advanced up to a
certain point in this direction, but its character is not essentially
changed. As regards women, however, the whole conception of criminal
punishment and penal discipline has altered. Sex privilege has been now
definitely established as a principle.
Now a complete investigation of the psychology of this curious
phenomenon we have been considering—namely, the hatred so common with
men for their fellow-men as a sex—is a task which has never yet been
properly taken in hand. Its obverse side is to be seen on all hands in
the conferring and confirming of sex prerogative on women. Not very
long ago, as we have seen, one of its most striking manifestations
came strongly under public notice—namely, the “rule of the sea,” by
which women, by virtue of their sex, can claim to be saved from a
sinking ship before men. The fact that the laws and practices in which
this man-hatred and woman-preference find expression are contrary to
every elementary sense of justice, in many cases conflict with public
policy, and can obviously be seen to be purely arbitrary, matters not.
The majority of men feel no _sense_ of the injustice although they may
admit the fact of the injustice, when categorically questioned. They
are prepared when it comes to the point to let public policy go by
the board rather than entrench upon the sacred privilege and immunity
of the female; while as to the arbitrary and unreasoning nature of
the aforesaid laws and practices, not being troubled with a logical
conscience, this does not affect them. I must confess to being unequal
to the task of accurately fathoming the psychological condition of the
average man who hates man in general and loves woman in general to the
extent of going contrary to so many apparently basal tendencies of
human nature as we know it otherwise. The reply, of course, will be
an appeal to the power of the sexual instinct. But this, I must again
repeat, will not explain the rise, or, if not the rise, at least the
marked expansion of the sentiment in question during the last three
generations or thereabouts. Even apart from this, while I am well aware
of the power of sexual love to effect anything in the mind of man as
regards its individual object, I submit it is difficult to conceive how
it can influence so strongly men’s attitude towards women they have not
seen, or, even where they have seen them, when there is no question of
sexual attraction, or, again, as regards the collectivity of women—the
abstract category, Woman (in general).
We have already dealt with the Anti-man campaign in the Press,
especially in modern novels and plays. This, as we have remarked, often
takes the form of direct abuse of husbands and lovers and the attempt
to make them look ridiculous as a foil to the brilliant qualities of
wives and sweethearts. But we sometimes find the mere laudation of
woman herself, apart from any direct anti-manism, assume the character
of an intellectual emetic. A much-admired contemporary novelist,
depicting a wedding ceremony in fashionable society circles, describes
the feelings of his hero, a young man disgusted with the hollowness
and vanity of “Society” and all its ways, as follows:—“The bride was
opposite him now, and by an instinct of common chivalry he turned
away his eyes; it seemed to him a shame to look at that downcast head
above the silver mystery of her perfect raiment; the modest head full,
doubtless, of devotion and pure yearnings; the stately head where no
such thought as ‘How am I looking this day of all days, before all
London?’ had ever entered: the proud head, where no such fear as, ‘How
am I carrying it off?’ could surely be besmirching. . . . He saw below
the surface of this drama played before his eyes; and set his face, as
a man might who found himself assisting at a sacrifice.” Now, I ask,
can it be believed that the writer of the above flamboyant feminist
fustian is a novelist and playwright of established reputation who
undoubtedly has done good work. The obvious criticism must surely
strike every reader that it is somewhat strange that this divinely
innocent creature he glorifies should arise straight out of a _milieu_
which is shown up as the embodiment of hollowness and conventional
superficiality. If men can lay the butter on thick in their laudation
of womanhood, female idolaters of their own sex can fairly outbid
them. At the time of writing there has just come under my notice a
dithyramb in the journal, _The Clarion_, by Miss Winnifred Blatchford,
on the sacrosanct perfections of womanhood in general, especially
as exemplified in the suicidal exploits of the late lamented Emily
Wilding Davidson of Epsom fame, and a diatribe on the purity, beauty
and unapproachable glory of woman. According to this lady, the glory of
womanhood seems to extend to every part of the female organism, but, we
are told, is especially manifested in the hair (oozing into the roots
apparently). Evidently there is something especially sacred in woman’s
hair! This prose ode to Woman, as exemplified in Emily Davidson,
culminates in the invocation: “Will the day ever come when a woman’s
life will be rated higher . . . than that of a jockey?” Poor jockey!
We will trust not, though present appearances do indicate a strong
tendency to regard a woman as possessing the prerogatives of the sacred
cow of Indian or ancient Egyptian fame!
It is impossible to read or hear any discussion on, say, the marriage
laws, without it being apparent that the female side of the question is
the one element of the problem which is considered worthy of attention.
The undoubted iniquity of our existing marriage laws is always spoken
of as an injustice to the woman and the changes in the direction of
greater freedom which are advocated as a relief to the wife bound to
a bad or otherwise unendurable husband. That the converse case may
happen, that that reviled and despised thing, a husband, may also have
reason to desire relief from a wife whose angelic qualities and vast
superiority to his own vile male self he fails to appreciate, never
seems to enter into the calculation at all.
That no satisfactory formulation of the psychology of the movement of
Feminism has yet been offered is undoubtedly true. For the moment, I
take it, all we can do is co-ordinate the fact as a case of what we
may term social hypnotism, of those waves of feeling uninfluenced by
reason which are a phenomenon so common in history—witchcraft manias,
flagellant fanaticisms, religious “revivals,” and similar social
upheavals. The belief that woman is oppressed by man, and that the
need for remedying that oppression at all costs is urgent, partly, at
least, doubtless belongs to this order of phenomena. That this feeling
is widespread and held in various degrees of intensity by large numbers
of persons, men no less than women, is not to be denied. That it is of
the nature of a hypnotic wave of sentiment, uninfluenced by reason,
is shown by the fact that argument does not seem to touch it. You may
show conclusively that facts are opposed to the assumption; that, so
far from women being oppressed, the very contrary is the case; that
the existing law and its administration is in no essential respect
whatever unfavourable to women, but, on the contrary, is, as a whole,
grossly unfair to men—it is all to no purpose. Your remonstrances,
in the main, fall on deaf ears, or, shall we say, they fall off the
mind coated with Feminist sentiment as water falls from the proverbial
duck’s back. The facts are ignored and the sentiment prevails; the same
old catchwords, the same lies and threadbare fallacies are repeated.
The fact that they have been shown to be false counts for nothing.
The hypnotic wave of sentiment sweeps reason aside and compels men to
believe that woman is oppressed and man the oppressor, and believe
it they will. If facts are against the _idée fixe_ of the hypnotic
suggestion, so much the worse for the facts. Thus far the Feminist
dogma of the oppression of the female sex.
As regards the obverse side of this Sentimental Feminism which issues
in ferocious sex-laws directed against men for offences against
women—laws enacting barbarous tortures, such as the “cat,” and
which are ordered with gusto in all their severity in our criminal
courts—this probably is largely traceable to the influence of Sadic
lusts. An agitation such as that which led to the passing of the
White Slave Traffic Act, so-called, of 1912, is started, an agitation
engineered largely by the inverted libidinousness of social purity
mongers, and on the crest of this agitation the votaries of Sadic
cruelty have their innings. The foolish Sentimental Feminist at large,
whose indignation against wicked man is fanned to fury by bogus
tales and his judgment captured by representations of the severities
requisite to stamp out the evil he is assured is so widespread, lends
his fatuous support to the measures proposed. The judicial Bench
is, of course, delighted at the increase of power given it over the
prisoner in the dock, and should any of the _puisnes_ happen to have
Sadic proclivities they are as happy as horses in clover and the “cat”
flourishes like a green bay tree.
Let us now turn to the question of the psychology of Political
Feminism. Political Feminism, as regards its immediate demand of female
suffrage, is based directly on the modern conception of democracy.
This is its avowed basis. With modern notions of universal suffrage
it is declared that the exclusion of women from the franchise is
logically incompatible. If you include in the parliamentary voting
lists all sorts and conditions of men, it is said, it is plainly a
violation of the principle of democracy to exclude more than one half
of the adult population from the polls. As Mill used to say in his
advocacy of female suffrage, so long as the franchise was restricted
to a very small section of the population, there may have been nothing
noteworthy in the exclusion of women. But now that the mass of men
are entitled to the vote and the avowed aim of democracy is to extend
it to all men, the refusal to extend it still further to women is an
anomaly and a manifest inconsistency. But in this, Mill, and others
who have used his argument, omitted to consider one very vital point.
The extensions of the suffrage, such as have been demanded and in
part obtained by democracy up to the present agitation, have always
referred to the removal of class barriers, wealth barriers, race
barriers, etc.—in a word, social barriers—but never to the removal
of barriers based on deep-lying organic difference—_i.e._ barriers
determining not sociological but biological distinctions. The case of
sex is unique in this connection, and this fact vitiates any analogy
between the extension of suffrage to women and its extension to fresh
social strata such as democracy has hitherto had in view, terminating
in the manhood suffrage which is the ultimate goal of all political
democrats. Now sex constitutes an organic or biological difference,
just as a species constitutes another and (of course) a stronger
biological difference. Hence I contend the mere fact of this difference
rules out the bare appeal to the principle of democracy _per se_ as an
argument in favour of the extension of the suffrage to women. There is,
I submit, no parity between the principle and practice of democracy as
hitherto understood, and the new extension proposed to be given to
the franchise by the inclusion of women within its pale. And yet there
is no question but that the apparent but delusive demand of logical
consistency in this question, has influenced and still influences many
an honest democrat in his attitude in this matter.
But although the recognition of the difference of sex as being
an organic difference and therefore radically other than social
differences of caste, class, wealth, or even race, undoubtedly
invalidates the appeal to the democrat on the ground of consistency, to
accept the principle of female suffrage, yet it does not necessarily
dispose of the question. It merely leaves the ground free for the
problem as to whether the organic distinction implied in sex does or
does not involve corresponding intellectual and moral differences in
the female sex which it is proposed to enfranchise; and furthermore
whether such differences, if they exist, involve general inferiority,
or at least an unfitness _ad hoc_ for the exercise of political
functions. These questions we have, I think, sufficiently discussed
already in the present work. The fact of the existence of exceptionally
able women in various departments, does undoubtedly mislead many men
in their judgment as to the capacity of the average woman to “think
politically,” or otherwise to show herself the effective equal of the
average man, morally and intellectually. The reasons for answering
this question in the negative we have already briefly indicated in the
course of our investigations. This renders it unnecessary to discuss
the matter any further here.
In dealing with the psychological aspects of the Feminist Movement,
the intellectual conditions which paved the way for its acceptance,
it is worth while recalling two or three typical instances of the
class of “argument” to be heard on occasion from the female advocates
for the suffrage. Thus, when the census was taken in 1911 and the
Women’s Political and Social Union conceived, as they thought, the
brilliant idea of annoying the authorities and vitiating the results
of the census by refusing to allow themselves to be enrolled, one
of the leaders, when interviewed on the point, gave her reason for
her refusal to be included, in the following terms:—“I am not a
citizen” (meaning that she did not possess the franchise) “and I am
not going to pretend to be one.” The silliness of this observation
is, of course, obvious, seeing that the franchise or even citizenship
has nothing whatever to do with the census, which includes infants,
besides criminals, lunatics, imbeciles, etc. Again, in a manifesto of
the Women’s Political and Social Union defending window-smashing and
other “militant” outrages, it was pointed out that the coal strike
had caused more injury than the window-smashing and yet the strikers
were not prosecuted as the window-smashers were—in other words, the
exercise of the basal personal right of the free man to withhold his
labour save under the conditions agreed to by him, is paralleled with
criminal outrage against person and property! Again, some three or
four years ago, when the Women’s Suffrage Bill had passed the Commons,
on its being announced by the Government that for the remainder of
the Session no further facilities could be given for private members’
Bills, save for those of a non-contentious character, one of these
sapient females urged in the Press that, seeing that there were
persons to be found in both the orthodox political camps who were
in favour of female suffrage, therefore the Bill in question must
be regarded as of a non-contentious character! Once more, a lady,
writing a few months ago to one of the weekly journals, remarked that
though deliberate window-breaking, destruction of letters, and arson,
might be illegal acts, yet that the punishing of them by imprisonment
with hard labour, they being political offences, was also an illegal
act, with the conclusion that the “militants” and the authorities,
both alike having committed illegal acts, were “quits”! These choice
specimens of suffragettes’ logic are given as throwing a significant
light on the mental condition of women in the suffragette movement,
and indirectly on female psychology generally. One would presumably
suppose that the women who put them forward must have failed to see
the exhibition they were making of themselves. That any human being
out of an asylum, could have sunk to the depth of fatuous inconsequent
idiocy they indicate would seem scarcely credible. Is the order of
imbecility which the above and many similar utterances reflect,
confined to suffragette intelligence alone, or does it point to radical
inferiority of intellectual fibre, not in degree merely, but in kind,
in the mental constitution of the human female generally? Certainly it
is hard to think that any man, however low his intelligence, would be
capable of making a fool of himself precisely in the way these women
are continually doing in their attempts to defend their cause and their
tactics.
In the foregoing pages we have endeavoured to trace some of the leading
strands of thought going to make up the Modern Feminist Movement.
Sentimental Feminism clearly has its roots in sexual feeling, and
in the tradition of chivalry, albeit the notion of chivalry has
essentially changed in the course of its evolution. For the rest,
Sentimental Feminism, with its double character of man-antipathy and
woman-sympathy, as we see it to-day, has assumed the character of one
of those psychopathic social phenomena which have so often recurred in
history. It can only be explained, like the latter, as an hypnotic wave
passing over society.
As for Political Feminism, we have shown that this largely has its
root in a fallacious application of the notion of democracy, partaking
largely of the logical fallacy known technically as _a dicto secundum
quid ad dictum simpliciter_. This logical fallacy of Political Feminism
is, of course, reinforced and urged forward by Sentimental Feminism.
As coming under the head of the psychology of the movement, we have
also called attention to some curious phenomena of logical imbecility,
noticeable in the utterances of educated women in the suffragette
agitation.