WOMAN AND THE NEW MORALITY
Upon the shoulders of the woman conscious of her freedom rests the
responsibility of creating a new sex morality. The vital difference
between a morality thus created by women and the so-called morality of
to-day, is that the new standard will be based upon knowledge and
freedom while the old is founded upon ignorance and submission.
What part will birth control play in bringing forth this new standard?
What effect will its practice have upon woman's moral development?
Will it lift her to heights that she has not yet achieved, and if so,
how? Why is the question of morality always raised by the objector to
birth control? All these questions must be answered if we are to get a
true picture of the relation of the feminine spirit to morals. They
can best be answered by considering, first, the source of our present
standard of sex morals and the reasons why those standards are what
they are; and, second, the source and probable nature of the new
morality.
We get most of our notions of sex morality from the Christian
church--more particularly from the oldest existing Christian church, known
as the Roman Catholic. The church has generally defined the "immoral
woman" as one who mates out of wedlock. Virtually, it lets it go at
that. In its practical workings, there is nothing in the church code
of morals to protect the woman, either from unwilling submission to
the wishes of her husband, from undesired pregnancy, nor from any
other of the outrages only too familiar to many married women. Nothing
is said about the crime of bringing an unwanted child into the world,
where often it cannot be adequately cared for and is, therefore,
condemned to a life of misery. The church's one point of insistence is
upon the right of itself to legalize marriage and to compel the woman
to submit to whatever such marriage may bring. It is true that there
are remedies of divorce in the case of the state, but the church has
adhered strictly to the principle that marriage, once consummated, is
indissoluble. Thus, in its operation, the church's code of sex morals
has nothing to do with the basic sex rights of the woman, but
enforces, rather, the assumed property rights of the man to the body
and the services of his wife. They are man-made codes; their vital
factor, as they apply to woman, is submission to the man.
Closely associated with and underlying the principle of submission,
has been the doctrine that the sex life is in itself unclean. It
follows, therefore, that all knowledge of the sex physiology or sex
functions is also unclean and taboo. Upon this teaching has been
founded woman's subjection by the church and, largely through the
influence of the church, her subjection by the state to the needs of
the man.
Let us see how these principles have affected the development of the
present moral codes and some of their shifting standards. When we have
finished this analysis, we shall know why objectors to birth control
raise the "morality" question.
The church has sought to keep women ignorant upon the plea of keeping
them "pure." To this end it has used the state as its moral policeman.
Men have largely broken the grip of the ecclesiastics upon masculine
education. The ban upon geology and astronomy, because they refute the
biblical version of the creation of the world, are no longer
effective. Medicine, biology and the doctrine of evolution have won
their way to recognition in spite of the united opposition of the
clerics. So, too, has the right of woman to go unveiled, to be
educated, and to speak from public platforms, been asserted in spite
of the condemnations of the church, which denounced them as
destructive of feminine purity. Only in sex matters has it succeeded
in keeping the bugaboo alive.
It clings to this last stronghold of ignorance, knowing that woman
free from sexual domination would produce a race spiritually free and
strong enough to break the last of the bonds of intellectual darkness.
It is within the marriage bonds, rather than outside them, that the
greatest immorality of men has been perpetrated. Church and state,
through their canons and their laws, have encouraged this immorality.
It is here that the woman who is to win her way to the new morality
will meet the most difficult part of her task of moral house cleaning.
In the days when the church was striving for supremacy, when it needed
single-minded preachers, proselyters and teachers, it fastened upon
its people the idea that all sexual union, in marriage or out of it,
is sinful. That idea colors the doctrines of the Church of Rome and
many other Christian denominations to this hour. "Marriage, even for
the sake of children was a carnal indulgence" in earlier times, as
Principal Donaldson points out in "_The Position of Women Among the
Early Christians._" [Footnote: Contemporary Review, 1889.] It was held
that the child was "conceived in sin," and that as the result of the
sex act, an unclean spirit had possession of it. This spirit can be
removed only by baptism, and the Roman Catholic baptismal service even
yet contains these words: "Go out of him, thou unclean spirit, and
give place unto the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete."
In the _Intellectual Development of Europe_, John William Draper,
speaking of the teaching of celibacy among the Early Fathers,
[Footnote: 2-Vol. 1, page 426.] says: "The sinfulness of the marriage
relation and the preeminent value of chastity followed from their
principles. If it was objected to such practices that by their
universal adoption the human species would soon be extinguished and no
man would remain to offer praises to God, these zealots, remembering
the temptations from which they had escaped, with truth replied that
there would always be sinners enough in the world to avoid that
disaster, and that out of their evil work, good would be brought.
Saint Jerome offers us the pregnant reflection that though it may be
marriage that fills the earth, it is virginity that replenishes
heaven."
The early church taught that there were enough children on earth. It
needed missionaries more than it needed babies, and impressed upon its
followers the idea that the birth wails of the infant were a protest
against being born into so sordid a world.
Thus are we presented with one of the enormous inconsistencies of the
church in sex matters. The teachings of the "Early Fathers" were
effect the advocacy of an attempt to enforce birth control through
absolute continence, while later it reverted, as it reverts to-day, to
the Mosaic injunction to "be fruitful and multiply."
The very force of the sex urge in humanity compelled the church to
abandon the teaching of celibacy for its general membership. Paul, who
preferred to see Christians unmarried rather than married, had
recognized the power of this force. In the seventh chapter of the
First Epistle to the Corinthians (according to the Douay translation
of the Vulgate, which is accepted by the Church of Rome), he said:
"8--But I say unto you the unmarried and the widows; it is good if
they continue even as I.
"9--But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry, for it is
better to marry than to be burnt."
When the church became a political power rather than a strictly
religious institution, it needed a high birth rate to provide laymen
to support its increasingly expensive organization. It then began to
exploit the sex force for its own interest. It reversed its position
in regard to children. It encouraged marriage under its own control
and exhorted women to bear as many children as possible. The world was
just as sordid and the birth wails of the infants were just as
piteous, but the needs of the hierarchy had changed. So it modified
the standard of sex morality to suit its own requirements--marriage
now became a sacrament.
Shrewd in changing its general policy from celibacy to marriage, the
church was equally shrewd in perpetuating the doctrine of woman's
subjection for its own interest. That doctrine was emphatically stated
in the Third Chapter of the First Epistle of Peter and the Fifth
Chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. In the Douay version of
the latter, we find this:
"22--Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord.
"23--Because the husband is the head of the wife; as Christ is the
head of the Church.
"24--Therefore, as the Church is subject to Christ, so let the wives
be to their husbands in all things."
These doctrines, together with the teaching that sex life is of itself
unclean, formed the basis of morality as fixed by the Roman church.
Nor does the St. James version of the Bible, generally used by
Protestant churches to-day, differ greatly in these particulars from
the accepted Roman Catholic version, as a comparison will show.
If Christianity turned the clock of general progress back a thousand
years, it turned back the clock two thousand years for woman. Its
greatest outrage upon her was to forbid her to control the function of
motherhood under any circumstances, thus limiting her life's work to
bringing forth and rearing children. Coincident with this, the
churchmen deprived her of her place in and before the courts, in the
schools, in literature, art and society. They shut from her heart and
her mind the knowledge of her love life and her reproductive
functions. They chained her to the position into which they had thrust
her, so that it is only after centuries of effort that she is even
beginning to regain what was wrested from her.
"Christianity had no favorable effect upon women," says Donaldson,
"but tended to lower their character and contract the range of their
activity. At the time when Christianity dawned upon the world, women
had attained great freedom, power and influence in the Roman empire.
Tradition was in favor of restriction, but by a concurrence of
circumstances, women had been liberated from the enslaving fetters of
the old legal forms. They enjoyed freedom of intercourse in society.
They walked in the public thoroughfares with veils that did not hide
their faces. They dined in the company of men. They studied literature
and philosophy. They took part in political movements. They were
allowed to defend their own law cases if they liked, and they helped
their husbands in the government of provinces and the writing of
books."
And again: "One would have imagined that Christianity would have
favored the extension of woman's freedom. In a very short time women
are seen only in two capacities--as martyrs and deaconesses (or nuns).
Now what the early Christians did was to strike the male out of the
definition of man, and human being out of the definition of woman. Man
was a human being made to serve the highest and noblest purposes;
woman was a female, made to serve only one."
Thus the position attained by women of Greece and Rome through the
exercise of family limitation, and in a considerable degree of
voluntary motherhood, was swept away by the rising tide of
Christianity. It would seem that this pernicious result was
premeditated, and that from the very early days of Christianity, there
were among the hierarchy those who recognized the creative power of
the feminine spirit, the force of which they sought to turn to their
own uses. Certain it is that the hierarchy created about the whole
love life of woman an atmosphere of degradation.
Fear and shame have stood as grim guardians against the gate of
knowledge and constructive idealism. The sex life of women has been
clouded in darkness, restrictive, repressive and morbid. Women have
not had the opportunity to know themselves, nor have they been
permitted to give play to their inner natures, that they might create
a morality practical, idealistic and high for their own needs.
On the other hand, church and state have forbidden women to leave
their legal mates, or to refuse to submit to the marital embrace, no
matter how filthy, drunken, diseased or otherwise repulsive the man
might be--no matter how much of a crime it might be to bring to birth
a child by him.
Woman was and is condemned to a system under which the lawful rapes
exceed the unlawful ones a million to one. She has had nothing to say
as to whether she shall have strength sufficient to give a child a
fair physical and mental start in life; she has had as little to do
with determining whether her own body shall be wrecked by excessive
child-bearing. She has been adjured not to complain of the burden of
caring for children she has not wanted. Only the married woman who has
been constantly loved by the most understanding and considerate of
husbands has escaped these horrors. Besides the wrongs done to women
in marriage, those involved in promiscuity, infidelities and rapes
become inconsequential in nature and in number.
Out of woman's inner nature, in rebellion against these conditions, is
rising the new morality. Let it be realized that this creation of new
sex ideals is a challenge to the church. Being a challenge to the
church, it is also, in less degree, a challenge to the state. The
woman who takes a fearless stand for the incoming sex ideals must
expect to be assailed by reactionaries of every kind. Imperialists and
exploiters will fight hardest in the open, but the ecclesiastic will
fight longest in the dark. He understands the situation best of all;
he best knows what reaction he has to fear from the morals of women
who have attained liberty. For, be it repeated, the church has always
known and feared the spiritual potentialities of woman's freedom.
And in this lies the answer to the question why the opponent of birth
control raises the moral issue. Sex morals for women have been
one-sided; they have been purely negative, inhibitory and repressive. They
have been fixed by agencies which have sought to keep women enslaved;
which have been determined, even as they are now, to use woman solely
as an asset to the church, the state and the man. Any means of freedom
which will enable women to live and think for themselves first, will
be attacked as immoral by these selfish agencies.
What effect will the practice of birth control have upon woman's moral
development? As we have seen in other chapters, it will break her
bonds. It will free her to understand the cravings and soul needs of
herself and other women. It will enable her to develop her love nature
separate from and independent of her maternal nature.
It goes without saying that the woman whose children are desired and
are of such number that she can not only give them adequate care but
keep herself mentally and spiritually alive, as well as physically
fit, can discharge her duties to her children much better than the
overworked, broken and querulous mother of a large, unwanted family.
Thus the way is open to her for a twofold development; first, through
her own full rounded life, and next, through her loving, unstrained,
full-hearted relationship with her offspring. The bloom of mother love
will have an opportunity to infuse itself into her soul and make her,
indeed, the fond, affectionate guardian of her offspring that
sentiment now pictures her but hard facts deny her the privilege of
being. She will preserve also her love life with her mate in its
ripening perfection. She will want children with a deeper passion, and
will love them with a far greater love.
In spite of the age-long teaching that sex life in itself is unclean,
the world has been moving to a realization that a great love between a
man and woman is a holy thing, freighted with great possibilities for
spiritual growth. The fear of unwanted children removed, the assurance
that she will have a sufficient amount of time in which to develop her
love life to its greatest beauty, with its comradeship in many
fields--these will lift woman by the very soaring quality of her innermost
self to spiritual heights that few have attained. Then the coming of
eagerly desired children will but enrich life in all its avenues,
rather than enslave and impoverish it as do unwanted ones to-day.
What healthier grounds for the growth of sound morals could possibly
exist than the ample spiritual life of the woman just depicted? Free
to follow the feminine spirit, which dwells in the sanctuary of her
nature, she will, in her daily life, give expression to that high
idealism which is the fruit of that spirit when it is unhampered and
unviolated. The love for her mate will flower in beauty of deeds that
are pure because they are the natural expression of her physical,
mental and spiritual being. The love for desired children will come to
blossom in a spirituality that is high because it is free to reach the
heights.
The moral force of woman's nature will be unchained--and of its own
dynamic power will uplift her to a plane unimagined by those holding
fast to the old standards of church morality. Love is the greatest
force of the universe; freed of its bonds of submission and unwanted
progeny, it will formulate and compel of its own nature observance to
standards of purity far beyond the highest conception of the average
moralist. The feminine spirit, animated by joyous, triumphant love,
will make its own high tenets of morality. Free womanhood, out of the
depths of its rich experiences, will observe and comply with the inner
demands of its being. The manner in which it learns to do this best
may be said to be the moral law of woman's being. So, in whatever
words the new morality may ultimately be expressed, we can at least be
sure that it will meet certain needs.
First of all, it will meet the physical and psychic requirements of
the woman herself, for she cannot adequately perform the feminine
functions until these are met. Second, it will meet the needs of the
child to be conceived in a love which is eager to bring forth a new
life, to be brought into a home where love and harmony prevail, a home
in which proper preparation has been made for its coming.
This situation implies in turn a number of conditions. Foremost among
them is woman's knowledge of her sexual nature, both in its physiology
and its spiritual significance. She must not only know her own body,
its care and its needs, but she must know the power of the sex force,
its use, its abuse, as well as how to direct it for the benefit of the
race. Thus she can transmit to her children an equipment that will
enable them to break the bonds that have held humanity enslaved for
ages.
To achieve this she must have a knowledge of birth control. She must
also assert and maintain her right to refuse the marital embrace
except when urged by her inner nature.
The truth makes free. Viewed in its true aspect, the very beauty and
wonder of the creative impulse will make evident its essential purity.
We will then instinctively idealize and keep holy that physical-spiritual
expression which is the foundation of all human life, and in that
conception of sex will the race he exalted.
What can we expect of offspring that are the result of "accidents"--who
are brought into being undesired and in fear? What can we hope for
from a morality that surrounds each physical union, for the woman,
with an atmosphere of submission and shame? What can we say for a
morality that leaves the husband at liberty to communicate to his wife
a venereal disease?
Subversion of the sex urge to ulterior purposes has dragged it to the
level of the gutter. Recognition of its true nature and purpose must
lift the race to spiritual freedom. Out of our growing knowledge we
are evolving new and saner ideas of life in general. Out of our
increasing sex knowledge we shall evolve new ideals of sex. These
ideals will spring from the innermost needs of women. They will serve
these needs and express them. They will be the foundation of a moral
code that will tend to make fruitful the impulse which is the source,
the soul and the crowning glory of our sexual natures.
When women have raised the standards of sex ideals and purged the
human mind of its unclean conception of sex, the fountain of the race
will have been cleansed. Mothers will bring forth, in purity and in
joy, a race that is morally and spiritually free.