WOMAN’S FUTURE
PEOPLE ultimately _become_ the image of _their_ values. Discover their
ruling values, and their future is foretold.
Now, if we are right in inferring from the many signs and portents to
which attention has been called, that our values are largely
body-despising values, and that modern conditions already reveal these
values well on their way to a complete triumph; if we are right,
moreover, in recognizing in modern degeneration, science, Feminism,
Puritanism, and the increasing cleavage between the sexes the logical
outcome of these values, then there can be but two possible alternatives
for the future: either the complete realization of the desiderata
implicit in these body-despising values, or else a revolt against them,
the strength for which will be drawn from the æsthetic, older, and more
healthy side of our nature. As both of these alternatives are possible,
and, moreover, each will mean a different future for women, it will be
necessary to examine them separately.
Dealing first with the future which will result from the complete
realization of the desiderata implicit in our body-despising values, we
must now recall the main tendencies of the present day, so that we may
discover whither they must necessarily lead.
We have seen that in our present world we have:
(=a=) A population the bulk of which are physiologically sub-human, and
frivolously oblivious of this fact. It is a population, therefore, to
which the value of Life and Love is beginning to be a matter of doubt,
and among which Puritanical prejudices are likely to become a
spontaneous growth where they are not already present. Puritanism,
however, must also bring about this indirect and unexpected result:
that, where it prevails, man is likely to become an object of general
disapproval; because, since the desires of the body are regarded as
sinful, man as the initiator, instigator, and active agent in the sexual
encounter, will gradually appear as the traditional villain of creation,
the natural butt of all gratuitous moral indignation.
(=b=) A body of sciences and commercial enterprises which, guided by
body-despising values, tends rather to provide us with an
extra-corporeal equipment for our declining bodies than to aim at
restoring to us our pristine functions and original corporeal equipment.
This enhances our doubt concerning the value of Love and Life, though it
helps us to “carry on.”
(=c=) A marked decline in the ability, versatility, and masculinity of
men, which is the outcome partly of physical and partly of intellectual
inferiority, brought about on the one hand by besotting and cramping
labour for generations, and, on the other, by the deliberate attempt,
throughout Anglo-Saxon civilization and its imitations, to limit the
notion of manliness to martial bravery and proficiency at sports. This
has led to a loss of mastery over all things which is far from edifying,
and has enabled women during the last century and recently to draw
unduly favourable comparisons between themselves and men—which, while
comprehensible in the circumstances, give quite a distorted view of the
situation. It is the case of two climbers, M. and W. who, while
ascending a hill, find that, through the sudden weakness of M., W.’s
pace appears to be wonderfully enhanced. W., however, interprets M.’s
retrograde movement not as abnormal weakness but as accelerated speed on
her part, and therefore feels contempt for M. as M., not merely as
enfeebled M.
(=d=) A large body of disgruntled women, mostly unmarried, who, having
turned away from Life and Love either through lack of mates or the
nausea acquired in modern matrimony, are prepared to slander not only
Life, but also motherhood, domesticity, and Man, and who, in their
conscious or unconscious jealousy of younger women and girls, try to
convince the latter that life can be lived happily without bodily
adaptation.
(=e=) Social circumstances which force millions of women into open
competition with men, and therefore increase the initial hostility
fostered by (=a=), (=c=), and (=d=).
(=f=) A state of abnormality so acute in some of the chief functions
connected with the sexual life that more and more cogent arguments are
found ready to hand for those who, through Puritanism, jealousy of the
rising generation, or hostility to the male, wish to slander life and
emancipate themselves _and others_ from “_that_ side of it.”
(=g=) A movement known as Feminism, generated chiefly by (=a=), (=c=),
and (=d=), and greatly reinforced by (=e=) and (=f=), but having also a
strong trace of (=b=) in its attitude, which claims that it can recruit
among its own supporters the mastery, ability, and strength to put the
world right, and which proposes to do so by superseding man everywhere,
if possible, even in his reproductive rôle.
This is the picture at a glance. To what can it lead?
The history of all reforms and radical innovations in this world has
shown that far-reaching changes are always the work of a leading,
active, gifted, and small minority, striving with zeal and determination
to realize an ideal. This ideal may be based on misconception or on
error; but that does not matter. In the end, the wilful minority
establishes the environment, or mould, and the inert, ductile masses
pour into it and receive their shape.
Now there is not a particle of doubt in anybody’s mind that the leading,
active, and gifted minority now constituting the van of the Women’s
Movement, are by far the most vital and energetic body of women in the
civilized world, admirable in their zeal, and noble in their readiness
to shoulder the responsibility of setting things right. This does not
prevent us, however, from believing them mistaken in their reading of
the situation, and pathetic in their illusions about their own and their
sex’s capacities. So indefatigable are they, indeed, that large numbers
of apparently monorchid and shallow-minded men have already gone over to
their side; while the conversion of girls and young women to a sexless
life is one of the least obvious but most pernicious results of their
activities. And, since there appears to be no general recognition that
our present state of muddle and lack of mastery over all things is the
outcome of masculine degeneracy; since, moreover, there seems to be no
attempt made to discover how man himself can recover his quota of manly
qualities, it is not only possible, but highly probable, that the mass
of mankind, through not having its attention called to the only remedy,
which is the regeneration of man, will, out of sheer lack of principles
and policies, see in the quack-cure of Feminism their only hope.
Given, therefore, the persistence of the body-despising values, and the
conditions to which they give rise, we may expect to see the energetic
minority of women, who now lead the Feminist movement, determine the
future of their sex; and, if we watch them and try to understand them,
we shall be in a position to describe the world they will call into
existence.
We have seen that Feminism is not only the outcome of the modern world’s
main characteristics, but also that it embodies these characteristics as
elements in its general attitude. Truth to tell, if we take our values
as given, together with all the results they were sure to bring about,
then Feminism was a foregone conclusion from the start.
Neglect and degeneration of the body were bound to lead to a loathing of
the body and the wish to be emancipated from its thraldom. This,
however, necessarily destroyed one of the chief bonds between man and
woman, and left the natural and radical hostility of the sexes naked and
unconstrained. This is one side of Feminism.
Next we have the fact that physical neglect and degeneration were also
bound to lead to the decline of man as the male, both in the material
and in the spiritual senses. This, in its turn, led on the one hand to
our lack of mastery in everything, which caused women to wonder whether
they could not help to clear up the muddle; and, on the other, to a
growing contempt of man’s powers, and, as we have seen, to an
exaggerated notion of woman’s. This is the other side of Feminism.
To complete the movement, all that we required was, (=a=) a large body
of disgruntled females, either spinsters or wives, all ready to slander
life and man; and (=b=) economic pressure driving women into open
competition with men in all paid employment. Both these conditions
having been fulfilled, the rest naturally followed.
The first indication we had that Feminism consisted of these elements
was the fact that the old passionate calls to which women once responded
gradually began to yield before calls of mere vanity and to the desire
for notoriety. Numbers of women no longer showed the old eagerness to
express physical passion, or the old sad resignation when it was
rebuffed: they were content with gratifying their vanity in every kind
of sterile pursuit that gave them the appearance of being important.
Without any promise whatsoever of doing better than degenerate men, and
certainly without any past record of achievement that would justify us
in expecting wonders from them—for in those departments of life over
which they have held supreme sway for thousands of years the most
deplorable muddle and ignorance prevail[10]—they claimed municipal and
even parliamentary power, they sought prominence even in empty
privileges, such as the right of sitting among the Peers; and were
triumphant when, at last, they figured in a position which has naturally
excited the abhorrence of all decent men for centuries—the jury box.
Footnote 10:
_Vide_ Chapter X of _Woman: A Vindication_.
The whole change revealed in the leaders of the movement and numbers of
their followers a transmutation of the once powerful bodily passion into
something more feeble, more volatile, and more exclusively dependent on
vanity; while accompanying it throughout were the two elements growing
daily more acute—the longing to be rid of the thraldom of sex, and
hostility to man, which these women like to see more general.
Nothing startling has come of women’s political power, and we can
prophesy with perfect confidence that nothing ever will; even when, as
may quite possibly happen, Parliament consists only of females. So far,
the measures they have introduced or clamoured for have indicated merely
a continuation and intensification of the Puritanical tradition, but not
a sign of anything hopeful or new, in the sense that it was beyond
degenerate men.
But the very demand for the vote was, in itself, merely a confirmation
of the view, held by ourselves and a few others, that no possible good
could come from Feminism, that it offered no hope of a better world, and
that it was a quack remedy for our sickness. For, if there had been any
intrinsic quality in it, any political or other genius peculiarly
feminine and foreign in kind and degree to anything found in man, how
can we explain that one of its first claims was to obtain a political
privilege, the futility and undesirability of which had been
demonstrated _ad nauseam_ long before this century dawned? Modern
democracy with its political machinery is so thoroughly discredited, and
is moreover such a menace to our national greatness, that, if there had
been any social acumen or shrewdness in woman, she would have proved it
by utterly scouting this political _faux pas_ of degenerate manhood. A
creative woman’s movement, if such an idea can possibly be conceived,
would have introduced something new and hopeful into our political life.
It might, at least, have tried to resuscitate the best in our
pre-democratic past; and, even if it did not show this amount of flair,
it might, when it got the vote, straight-way have shown its power by
initiating reforms that are peculiarly within woman’s province. It might
have demanded a reform of our food-conditions, and of the
proprietary-food, patent-medicine and culinary-aid industries, which are
in a scandalous state; or a reform of the conditions under which
midwifery is practised in this country. But it neither attempted, nor
showed any inclination to attempt, any one of these feats. It demanded
the preposterous vote; and, having got it, proceeded, both in Parliament
and out, to try to effect only Puritanical reforms, some of which were
frankly hostile to men.
We are likely to suffer a rude awakening, therefore, if we look to
Feminism for any marked improvement in our affairs. Nobody with any
profound understanding of woman’s nature, and of her past achievements,
can possibly expect it. What we can expect, however, when once the
forces of Feminism are completely organized, is a systematic
intensification of all the tendencies that have culminated in the modern
Women’s Movement.
The hostility to man and the jealousy of happy and passionate youth,
felt by all disaffected women, whether spinsters or wives, is sure to
lead to every effort being made to lure girls more and more from bodily
happiness. We can, therefore, expect an increasing emancipation of girls
and women from domestic arts and duties, together with an aggravation of
our present vices regarding foods. This will be accompanied by the
intensive manufacture of every kind of condensed, preserved, compressed,
and synthetic food, with a corresponding multiplication of aids to
minimize trouble in food-preparation. The ideal will be a standardized
and complete food, containing its own correctives for failing digestion,
to be obtained probably in tabloid form, and requiring no further
preparation whatsoever. Ultimately, there can be little doubt that this
form of food will be discovered, and may possibly become the product of
a special Government Department. Meanwhile, the human system will have
undergone years of painful attempted adaptation to increasingly bad
food-conditions, and acute indigestion, with repeated intestinal
operations, will probably have become as common as dental caries and
tooth-extraction are to-day.
The tendency as regards men will be to rear ever larger numbers of them
along the lines already indicated by modern taste—that is to say, their
manliness will be limited more and more to military courage and
proficiency at games. Thus, while they will prove increasingly harmless
and amenable to female rule—as Aristotle said such men always would—they
will be even more besotted, more lacking in mastery, will-power and
understanding, more feeble as lovers, and more contemptible than the men
of to-day.
We can expect an increasing assertion of the rights of females in every
branch of industry, commerce, and the professions, accompanied by such a
multiplication of ready workers that competition between the sexes will
become acute. The first moment of violent strain will occur when women
employers and women labour-leaders, both working under Feminist
guidance, appropriate certain industries wholly to female labour. This
will be accompanied by a vast extension of an idea already
materialized—the female bank, that is to say, financial houses and
interests devoted entirely to the women’s cause. Epicene organizations
and staffs will then tend to disappear, and soon the national industry
will be divided into two sections, each of which will be conducted by
and for one sex only, and in which the most poorly paid workers will
belong to the other sex. These two sections will confront each other
jealously like two competing nations, and, while each will try to
encroach on the domain and wealth of the other, it will also try to
compass the other’s failure.
Occasionally this bitter rivalry will lead to riots and savage
street-fighting, in which, owing to the fact that moral indignation will
always be on the side of the women, the men are certain to be routed,
and to lose credit, prestige, and lives. In any case, owing to the
continued besotment of men, the female domain will steadily corrode and
eat into the male, and soon men will cease to be employers altogether,
and become the poorest-paid workers in an industry run entirely by
women.
Abetting and assisting this movement, we shall see engineering and
machinery so much perfected that skill in operative work will entirely
vanish. A team of intelligent monkeys will then be adequate for the
productive work of the nation, and, with this final blow at the
spiritual and physical qualifications of both sexes, women will overrun
every department of production. This development was adumbrated during
the Great War, when it was found that, although 5,000,000 men had left
their work, girls and women easily took it over. Hundreds of thousands
of these men imagined that they had been doing both skilled and manly
work. The ease with which they were replaced by inexperienced girls and
women proved that they were wrong. It also proved, incidentally, that
such was the extent of our urban degeneration and emasculation that only
the fewest among the peace-occupations of the country were essentially
masculine or demanded masculine qualifications.
Meanwhile, owing to health having suffered a further decline, owing to
motherhood having become more and more distressing, and owing to sexual
and bodily joys having become more completely suspect, celibacy among
women will be more common than it is at present, and legislation may
have to be passed to compel a greater percentage of wage-earners to
marry. To help increase the population, greater benefits will be
conferred on parents than ever before. But, as by this time it will be
becoming more and more plain that man is growing superfluous except as a
fertilizer and a soldier, and as, through his contemptible condition,
the feeling will be gaining ground that it is an indignity for a free
female citizen to live in intimacy with him simply in order to provide
the state with children, there may be an attempt to legalize marriage by
proxy, accompanied by scientific fertilization without actual congress
with any man personally known to the woman. Artificial impregnation will
tend to become common, and women—the wealthiest and most embittered
foremost—will soon give up ordinary marriage altogether and choose to
have children without concourse with the other sex. The whole act of
fertilization will be consummated in the surgery, just as vaccination is
now. There are signs even to-day that this revolt against cohabitation
is spreading, and there are not a few women who, either in their
Puritanism or jealousy of their happier sisters, would be glad to see it
become more common.
Keeping pace with these changes, lactation will wholly disappear, and,
even among the lowest women, it will be regarded very much as
cannibalism is to-day. Pictures and statues of women in the act of
suckling will be mutilated, destroyed, or hidden from the public view,
just as a certain class of Greek statues are now mutilated and
concealed; while the ideal of beauty in the female will be a creature
completely flat-chested and with the hips of a youth. Girls and women
who happen to throw back to the ancestral type will be pitied, and may
even be operated upon, just as people with facial blemishes are now.
Meanwhile modifications will have occurred in the relations of the
sexes. The congress of male and female will have begun to seem much more
guilty and disgusting even than it is to-day, and as the male will still
be looked upon (as he is now) as the principal culprit in the matter,
the age of consent will probably be extended to thirty-five or forty, if
not to the menopause. Seduction and rape will be punished brutally,
probably by means of emasculation; and men of vigorous sexuality will be
eliminated in order to make way for a generation of low-sexed, meek, and
sequacious lackeys.
It will not be long before even the necessity for male soldiers will
vanish. When the manipulation of the engines of war becomes as simple as
typing or making tea, girls and women will make just as efficient
soldiers as men; and, since war will then be carried on without
visualizing the enemy, all that will be required will be an army of
obedient operatives, who will not need the traditional courage and
endurance of the male in the face of the foe.
When once artificial impregnation is an every-day occurrence, a
Parliament of women will doubtless pass legislation to make it illegal
for any man to procreate a child naturally, if it is the wife’s desire
to have one by the intermediation of science; and, no matter how many
children she may wish to have in this way, he will be compelled to
support them. This, however, will be the final blow to marriage.
Hundreds of thousands of women will still be naturally fertilized, but
they will be despised, and form a class apart. Social prejudice will be
against them, and movements will be started to emancipate and rescue
them, just as there are movements to-day to rescue harem-women. Jealousy
will still play a part in this movement; but, owing to the deplorable
degeneration of men as lovers and mates, it will be fainter than ever
before.
There will, of course, be fluctuations in this development, and some
decades will reveal shameful lapses into matrimony and natural
fertilization. Then the Lysistratas of the Feminist world, burning with
indignation once more, will be heard crying aloud, just as Lysistrata
cried over two thousand years ago in Greece:
“ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν αὐτὰς ἀποσχεῖν οὐκέτι οἵα τ᾽ ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνδρῶν· διαδιδράσκουσι
γάρ.”
(I can no longer hold the minxes. They are running to the men; they are
deserting).—Aristophanes, _Lysistrata_, ll. 718-9.
But the aggravated horrors of childbirth, and the alarming increase in
the performance of the Cæsarian section, together with the general
surfeit of the body and the intensified loathing of men, will cause
these retrograde movements to diminish, and very soon such a clamour
will arise for extra-corporeal gestation that science will be allowed no
rest until a technique is discovered that will meet the public demand.
The results achieved by men like Alexis Carrel, Ebleing, and Fische, all
of whom are now working with success on tissue-culture and the
transplantation of anatomical structures from one living organism to
another, will be improved upon, and a means will be discovered by which
the fertilized ovum will be matured outside the female body.
At first, we venture to predict, this will occur by again enlisting the
cow or the ass into our service. Science already suspects that vital
fluids are not specific, and it is probable, therefore, that in the
early days of extra-corporeal gestation, the fertilized human ovum will
be transferred to the uterus of a cow or an ass, and left to mature as a
parasite on the animal’s tissues, very much as the newborn baby is now
made the parasite of the cow’s udder. And, with this innovation, we
shall probably suffer increased besotment, and intensified bovinity or
asininity, according to the nature of the quadruped chosen. Thus
extra-corporeal gestation, or “ectogenesis” (to use a word coined by Mr
J. B. S. Haldane for the purpose) will become a possibility, and the
Feminist ideal of complete emancipation from the thraldom of sex will be
realized.
Fresh legislation will now be passed, which will make it a felony for a
man to give a woman a child in the old corporeal sense, and any male
found guilty of such an offence will be sentenced to death or else to a
long term of hard labour. In view of the initial heavy cost of
extra-corporeal gestation, however, public centres will be provided
where the Borough Council will undertake to “grow” children for the
destitute and the poor.
A little later on, of course, this artificial aid will be perfected, and
even the cow will become unnecessary. The fertilized ovum, cultivated in
embryonic tissue-juice, will then be independent of the foster uterus of
animals, and will mature very much as chickens now do in incubators.
These discoveries are all potential in the scientific achievements of
our day, and implicit in our values. All they need to bring them into
existence is the further direction of these values, together with the
continued anti-sexual and anti-masculine bias of Feminism.
With this final blow levelled at the corporeal equipment of sex,
triumphant Feminism will probably reach its zenith, and in a few
generations a kind of woman will appear the only vestige of whose sex
will be her smooth face and primary genital glands. Men will then be
frankly regarded as quite superfluous. Having lost their powers, first
as spiritual and bodily leaders, secondly as masters and lovers, thirdly
as skilled craftsmen and soldiers, and fourthly as specialized workers,
their social use will have lapsed, and their numbers will begin to be
felt as a source of irritation and even indignation.
At this stage the social muddle will have become so intricate, and have
grown so alarmingly out of hand, that nothing but the most drastic and
sweeping changes will be able to prolong the life of the community. A
shortage of food, occasioned by difficulties arising in the Government
Department responsible for food-preparation and food-distribution, will
give the signal for the last and most bitter sex-struggle. Either
through incompetent administration or the revolt of the workers, there
will be a threat of starvation. No food will be made for weeks, stores
will be on the point of being depleted, and panic will reign everywhere;
when suddenly a few of the leading women will perceive with apocalyptic
clarity not only that the superfluity of men has become a burden on the
community and a menace to the food of the children, but also that the
reduction of their numbers to the barest minimum indispensable for the
purposes of fertilization would be a twofold boon—it would relieve the
food-crisis both for the moment and possibly also for the future, and
obviate for ever the danger of a masculine or slave rising.
A sex-fight at the distributing station of a large store will suffice to
light the first spark of this new conflagration. A dead set will be made
against the men, not only round the original focus of the trouble, but
everywhere. The legislature, recognizing their opportunity, will support
the popular fury, and proceed to a systematic slaughter of males, until,
with the help of the regular troops, it will be found necessary to
protect and preserve a small nucleus for next year’s fertilization.
By that time, however, a significant precedent will have been
established, and a lesson learnt that will not easily be forgotten. The
superfluousness of men above a certain essential minimum (about 5 to
every 1,000 women) will have become recognized officially and
unofficially as a social fact. The legislature will establish laws to
guarantee that this minimum should not be surpassed, and in a very short
while it will become a mere matter of routine to proceed to an annual
slaughter of males who have either outlived their prime or else have
failed to fulfil the promise of their youth in meekness, general
emasculateness, and stupidity.
The only circumstance that can avert this ultimate development is the
discovery by science of a means of determining the sex of the ovum. If
this can be done, then, of course, only a certain small number of males
(½%) will be reared every year, and the periodical slaughter will be
avoided. But in this connection it should be remembered that man will
long since have grown too dull to be capable of scientific wonders of
any kind; and, as it is not in woman’s nature to be inventive or to make
great discoveries, the probability is that society will petrify at the
level of mechanical and scientific progress reached at the moment of
man’s most serious decline, and, therefore, that the periodical
slaughter of males will remain just as much a necessity with the human
female workers as with the worker-bees.
Meanwhile, to these millions of workers life will have become little
more than a dreary, colourless, and hopeless round of toil and
self-sacrifice. The only sources of excitement and pleasure will be the
pastimes offering chances for public parade and appeals to vanity, the
criticism of the latest Government foods and their corresponding
digestive aids, and the reading in the papers about the prosecution of
refractory female characters, either for sedition, immorality, or
indolence. Under immorality will be included all attempts at writing,
reading, or circulating any poem, novel, or treatise faintly reminiscent
of love as we now know it, all attempts at unearthing or recalling the
“obscene” literature of former ages—particularly the romantic fiction of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and all efforts to draw, paint,
carve, or otherwise represent any graphic image of barbaric woman, when
she still bore on her body the traces of the corporeal equipment for
motherhood.
Looking round upon this cold, hard, and business-like world, however, in
which the unremitting industry, so much exalted by Maeterlinck, will be
the only activity and almost the only interest, it is not unlikely that
millions of these female workers will ask themselves, with ever
increasing perplexity and distress, what purpose it all serves, what
good it all does, and what advantage or pleasure they derive from it. In
their lives of stoic “purity” and monotonous bread-winning alone, they
are likely to discover that even waiting for the end is intolerable, and
many who will regard the normal term of human life as an unmerciful
prolongation of their inexplicable misery will have recourse to all
possible means of terminating their hardships. Gradually it will dawn
upon a few independent and rebellious spirits that to have attempted to
live like spirits before the spirit-world was reached, to have attempted
to extinguish the joys and thrills of the body and to taste of the
interests of angels, before having shuffled off this mortal coil—in fact
to have planned and organized an æsthetic phenomenon such as life
without retaining its æsthetic side, was a tragic and utterly brutal
blunder. By the time, however, that this inevitable discovery is
made—the only great discovery that an exclusively female community is
ever likely to make—those who will be responsible for it will look
aghast upon their own and their sisters’ bodies; and, perceiving with
horror the impossibility at that late hour of recovering the functions,
powers, and bodily parts, which centuries of disuse and degeneration
will have withered to nothing, they will, if they still have enough
spirit left, execrate and curse the memory of those who first envisaged
their state as a future possibility, and who, having once conceived it
as desirable, deliberately planned and schemed to bring it about.
“Almighty God,” they will cry in desperation, “mercifully spared the
bees our consciousness!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------