Suffrage is but part of the greater propaganda; while Suffragism desires
to remove an inequality, Feminism purports to alter radically the mental
attitudes of men and women. The sexes are to be induced to recognize
each other's status, and to bring this recognition to such a point that
equality will not even be challenged. Thus Feminists are interested
rather in ideas than in facts; if, for instance, they wish to make
accessible to women the profession of barrister, it is not because they
wish women to practice as barristers, but because they want men to view
without surprise the fact that women may be barristers. And they have no
use for knightliness and chivalry.
Therein lies the mental revolution: while the Suffragists are content to
attain immediate ends, the Feminists are aiming at ultimate ends. They
contend that it is unhealthy for the race that man should not recognize
woman as his equal; that this makes him intolerant, brutal, selfish, and
sentimentally insincere. They believe likewise that the race suffers
because women do not look upon men as their peers; that this makes them
servile, untruthful, deceitful, narrow, and in every sense inferior.
More particularly concerned with women, it is naturally upon them and
their problems that they are bringing their first attention to bear.
The word "inferior" at once arouses comment, for here the Feminist often
distinguishes himself from the Suffragist. He frequently accepts woman's
present inferiority, but he believes this inferiority to be transient,
not permanent. He considers that by removing the handicaps imposed upon
women, they will be able to win an adequate proportion of races. His
case against the treatment of women covers every form of human relation:
the arts, the home, the trades, and marriage. In every one of these
directions he proposes to make revolutionary changes.
The question of the arts need not long detain us. It is perfectly clear
that woman has had in the past neither the necessary artistic training,
nor the necessary atmosphere of encouragement; that families have been
reluctant to spend money on their daughter's music, her painting, her
literary education, with the lavishness demanded of them by their son's
professional or business career. Feminists believe that when men and
women have been leveled, this state of things will cease to prevail.
In the trades, English Feminists resent the fact that women are excluded
from the law, generally speaking, the ministry, the higher ranks of
business and of the Civil Service and so forth, and practically from
hospital appointments; also that women are paid low wages for work
similar to that of men.
They complain too that the home demands of woman too great an
expenditure of energy, too much time, too much labor; that the
concentration of her mind upon the continual purchasing and cooking of
food, on cleaning, on the care of the child, is unnecessarily developed;
they doubt if the home can be maintained as it is if woman is to develop
as a free personality.
With marriage, lastly, they are perhaps most concerned. Though they are
not in the main prepared to advocate free union, they are emphatically
arrayed against modern marriage, which they look upon as slave union.
The somewhat ridiculous modifications of the marriage service introduced
by a few couples in America and by one in England, in which the word
"obey" was deleted from the bride's pledge, can be taken as indicative
of the Feminist attitude. Their grievances against the home, against the
treatment of women in the trades, are closely connected with the
marriage question, for they believe that the desire of man to have a
housekeeper, of woman to have a protector, deeply influence the
complexion of unions which they would base exclusively upon love, and it
follows that they do not accept as effective marriage any union where
the attitudes of love do not exist. For them who favor absolute
equality, partnership, sharing of responsibilities and privileges,
modern marriage represents a condition of sex-slavery into which woman
is frequently compelled to enter because she needs to live, and in which
she must often remain, however abominable the conditions under which the
union is maintained, because man, master of the purse, is master of the
woman.
Generally, then, the Feminists are in opposition to most of the world
institutions. For them the universe is based upon the subjection of
woman: subjection by law, and subjection by convention. Before
considering what modifications the Feminists wish to introduce into the
social system, a few words must be said as to this distinction between
convention and the law.
2
Convention, which is nothing but petrified habit, has lain upon woman
perhaps more heavily than any law, for the law can be eluded with
comparative ease, and she who eludes it may very well become a heroine,
merely because we are mostly anarchists and dislike the law. Every man
is in himself a minority, and is opposed to the law because the law is
the expression of the will of the majority, that is to say, the will of
the vulgar, of the norm. But convention is far more subtle: it is the
result of the _common_ agreement of wills. Therefore, as it is a product
of unanimity, the penalties which follow on the infractions of its
behests are terrible; she who infringes it becomes, not a heroine, but
an outcast. The law is, then, nothing by the side of etiquette.
Hence Feminist propaganda. While the Suffragists wish to alter the law,
the Feminists wish to alter also the conventions. It may not be too much
to say that they would almost be content with existing laws if they
could change the point of view of man, make him take for granted that
women may smoke, or ride astride, or fight; cease to be surprised
because Madame Dieulafoy chooses to wear trousers; briefly, renounce the
subjective fetich of sex. Still, as they realize that states become more
socialistic every day, they realize also that through the law only can
they hope to change manners. The mental revolution which they intend to
effect must therefore be prefaced by a legal revolution.
The first Feminist intention is economic,--proceeds on two lines:
1. They intend to open every occupation to women.
2. They intend to level the wages of women and men.
As regards the first point, they are not as a rule unreasonable. If they
demand that women should practice the law as they do in France, preach
the Gospel as they do in the United States of America, bear arms, as in
Dahomey, it is not because they attach any great value to these
occupations, but because they consider that any limitation put upon
woman's activities is intrinsically degrading; so keenly do they feel
this, that some serious Feminists took part some years ago in the
controversy on, "Are there female angels?"
The second point is more important. It is a well-established fact that
women are paid less than men for the same work: for instance, in
England, women begin at wages which are less than those of men as
teachers, post-office and other civil servants. The Feminists are not
prepared to agree that this condition is due to some inherent
inferiority of woman: in their view her _inferiority_ is transitory, is
due to her _inferior_ position. One Feminist, C. Gascoigne Hartley, in
_The Truth About Women_, outlines a bold hypothesis: "What, then, is the
real cause of the lowness of remuneration offered to women for work
when compared with men? Thousands of women and girls receive wages that
are insufficient to support life. They do not die, they live; but how?
The answer is plain. Woman possesses a marketable value attached to her
personality which man has not got. The woman's sex is a saleable thing."
Briefly, if a woman works less well than a man, less fast, less
continuously, it is because she is inadequately rewarded. They reverse
the common position that woman is not well paid because woman is not
competent, basing themselves on the parallel that liberty alone fits men
for liberty. They argue that woman is not competent because she is not
well paid; consequently, those Feminists who are inclined toward
Radicalism in politics demand a minimum wage in all trades, which shall
be the same for women and men.
The economic change will be brought about by revolutionary methods, by
sex strikes and sex wars. The gaining of the vote is, in the Feminist's
view, nothing but an affair of outposts. Conscious propagandists do not
intend to allow the female vote to be split as it might recently have
been between Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Taft. They intend to use
the vote to make women vote as women, and not as citizens; that is to
say, they propose to sell the female vote _en bloc_ to the party that
bids highest for it in the economic field. To the party that will, as a
preliminary, pledge itself to level male and female wages in government
employ, will be given the Feminist vote; and if no party will bid, then
it is the Feminist intention to run special candidates for all offices,
to split the male parties, and to involve them in consecutive disasters
such as the one which befell the Republican party in the last
presidential election in the United States.
Side by side with this purely political action, Feminists intend to use
industrial strikes in exactly the same manner as do the Syndicalist
railwaymen, miners, and postmen of Europe; well aware that they have
captured a number of trades, such as millinery, domestic service,
restaurant attendance, and so forth, and large portions of other trades,
such as cotton-spinning in Lancashire, they propose to use as a basis
the vote and the political education that follows thereon, to induce
women to group themselves in women's trade-unions, by means of which
they will hold up trades, and when they are strong enough, hold up
society itself.
I enunciate these views with full sympathy, which can hardly be refused
when one realizes that the sweated trades are almost entirely in the
hands of women,--laundry, box-making, toys, artificial flowers, and the
like. The fact that the underpaid trades are women's trades, and that
the British Government has been compelled to institute wage-boards to
bring up women's pay from four cents an hour to the imposing figure of
six cents, and the recent white-slavery investigations in America, are
evidence enough that public opinion should hesitate before blaming any
industrial steps women may choose to take. For it should not be
forgotten that woman risks more than comfort and health, and that the
underpayment of her sex often forces her to degradation.
Conscious of the temporary inferiority of woman, an inferiority
traceable to centuries of neglect and belittling patronage, the
Feminists propose to increase woman's power by making her fitter for
power. They are well aware that the enormous majority of women receive
but an inferior education, that in their own homes, especially in the
South of England, they are not encouraged to read the newspaper (which I
believe to be a more powerful instrument of intellectual development
than the average serious book), and that any attempt on their part to
acquire more information, to attend lectures, to join debating clubs,
tends to lower their "charm value" in the eyes of men. That point of
view they are determined to alter in the male. They propose to kill the
prejudice by the homoeopathic method: that is to say, to educate woman
more because man thinks she is already too educated. Briefly, to kill
poison by more poison. For this purpose they intend to throw open
education of all grades to women as well as to men, to remove such
differences as exist in England, where a woman cannot obtain an Oxford
or Cambridge degree. They propose to raise the school age of both sexes,
and to not less than sixteen. The object of this, so far as women are
concerned, is to prevent the exploitation of little girls of fourteen,
notably as domestic servants.
Some Feminists favor co-education, on the plea that it enables the sexes
to understand each other, and these build principally on the success of
American schools. A more violent section, however, desires to place the
education of girls entirely in the hands of women, partly because they
wish to enhance the sex war, and partly because they consider that
continual intercourse between the sexes tends to deprive ultimate love
of its mystery and its charm. But both sections fully agree that the
broadest possible education must be given to every woman, so as to fit
her for contest with every man.
3
So much, then, for the mental revolution and its eventual effects on the
position of women in the arts, the trades, and the schools. In the
industrial section, especially, we have already had an indication of the
main line of the Feminist attitude, a claim to a right to choose. This
right is indeed the only one for which the Feminists are struggling, and
they struggle for those obscure reasons which lie at the root of our
wish to live and to perpetuate the race. It is no wonder, then, that the
Feminists should have designs upon the most fundamental of human
institutions, marriage and motherhood.
In the main, Feminists are opposed to indissoluble Christian marriage.
Some satisfaction has been given to them in a great many states by the
extension of divorce facilities, but they are not content with piecemeal
reform such as has been carried out in the United States, for they
realize quite well that divorce cuts both ways, and that it is not
satisfactory for a wife to be married in one state, and divorced under a
slack law in another. Indeed I believe that one of the first Feminist
demands in America would be for a federal marriage law.
But alterations in the law are minor points by the side of the emotional
revolution that is to be engineered. Roughly speaking, we have to-day
reasonable men and instinctive women. Such notably was Ibsen's view:
"Woman cannot escape her primitive emotions." But he thought she should
control these inevitables so far as possible: "As soon as woman no
longer dominates her passions, she fails to achieve her objects."[6] The
distinction between reason and instinct, however, is not so wide as it
seems; for reason is merely the conscious use of observation, while
instinct is the unconscious use of the same faculty; but as the trend of
Feminism is to make woman self-conscious and sex-conscious, the
Feminists can be said broadly to be warring against instinct, and on the
side of reason. They look upon instinct as indicative of a low
mentality. For instance, the horse is less instinctive than the zebra,
and a curious instance of this was yielded by certain horses in the
South African war, which were unable to crop the grass because they had
always eaten from mangers. Civilization, we may say, had caused the
horses to degenerate, but nobody will contend that the horse is not more
intelligent than the zebra, more capable of love, even of thought.
Briefly, the horse approximates more closely to a reasonable being than
does the instinctive wild beast.
[6] _La Femme dans le Theatre d'Ibsen_, by FRIEDERICKE BOETTCHER.--THE
AUTHOR.
The Feminists therefore propose, by training woman's reason, to place
her beyond the scope of mere emotion and mere prejudice, to enable her
to judge, to select a mate for herself and a father for her children,--a
double and necessary process.
There is a flavor of eugenics about these ideas: the right to choose
means that women wish to be placed in such a position that, being
economically independent to the extent of having equal opportunities,
they will not be compelled to sell themselves in marriage as they now
very often do. I do not refer to entirely loveless marriages, for these
are not very common in Anglo-Saxon states, but to marriages dictated by
the desire of woman to escape the authority of her parents, and to gain
the dignity of a wife, the possession of a home and of money to spend.
In the Feminist view, these are bad unions because love does not play
the major part in them, and often plays hardly any part at all. The
Feminists believe that the educated woman, informed on the subject of
sex-relations, able to earn her own living, to maintain a political
argument, will not fall an easy prey to the offer held out to her by a
man who will be her master, because he will have bought her on a truck
system.
Under Feminist rule, women will be able to select, because they will be
able to sweep out of their minds the monetary consideration; therefore
they will love better, and unless they love, they will not marry at all.
It is therefore probable that they will raise the standard of masculine
attractiveness by demanding physical and mental beauty in those whom
they choose; that they will apply personal eugenics. The men whom they
do not choose will find themselves in exactly the same position as the
old maids of modern times: that is to say, these men, if they are unwed,
will be unwed because they have chosen to remain so, or because they
were not sought in marriage. The eugenic characteristic appears, in that
women will no longer consent to accept as husbands the old, the
vicious, the unpleasant. They will tend to choose the finest of the
species, and those likely to improve the race. As the Feminist
revolution implies a social revolution, notably "proper work for proper
pay", it follows that marriage will be easy, and that those women who
wish to mate will not be compelled to wait indefinitely for the
consummation of their loves. Incidentally, also, the Feminists point out
that their proposals hold forth to men a far greater chance of happiness
than they have had hitherto, for they will be sure that the women who
select them do so because they love them, and not because they need to
be supported.
This does not mean that Feminism is entirely a creed of reason; indeed a
number of militant Feminists who collected round the English paper, _The
Freewoman_, have as an article of their faith that one of the chief
natural needs of woman and society is not less passion, but more. If
they wish to raise women's wages, to give them security, education,
opportunity, it is because they want to place them beyond material
temptations, to make them independent of a protector, so that nothing
may stand in the way of the passionate development of their faculties.
To this effect, of course, they propose to introduce profound changes
in the conception of marriage itself.
Without committing themselves to free union, the Feminists wish to
loosen the marriage tie, and they might not be averse to making marriage
less easy, to raising, for instance, the marriage age for both sexes;
but as they are well aware that, in the present state of human passions,
impediments to marriage would lead merely to an increase in irregular
alliances, they lay no stress upon that point. Moreover, as they are not
prepared to admit that any moral damage ensues when woman contracts more
than one alliance in the course of her life,--which view is accepted
very largely in the United States, and in all countries with regard to
widows,--they incline rather to repair the effects of bad marriages,
than to prevent their occurrence.
Plainly speaking, the Feminists desire simpler divorce. They are to a
certain extent ready to surround divorce with safeguards, so as to
prevent the young from rushing into matrimony; indeed they might "steep
up" the law of the "Divorce States." On the other hand, they would
introduce new causes for divorce where they do not already exist, and
they would make them the same for women and men. For instance, in Great
Britain a divorce can be granted to a man on account of the infidelity
of his wife, while it can be granted to a woman only if to infidelity
the husband adds cruelty or desertion. Such a difference the Feminists
would sweep away, and they would probably add to the existing causes
certain others, such as infectious and incurable diseases, chronic
drunkenness, insanity, habitual cruelty, and lengthy desertion. It
should be observed that the campaign is thus as favorable to men as it
is to women, for many men who have now no relief would gain it under the
new laws. As Feminism is international, the programme of course includes
the introduction of divorce where it does not exist,--in Austria, Spain,
South American states, and so forth.
What exact form the new divorce laws would take, I cannot at present
say, for Feminism is as evolutionary as it is revolutionary, and
Feminists are prepared to accept transitory measures of reform. Thus, in
the existing circumstances, they would accept a partial extension of
divorce facilities, subject to an adequate provision for all children.
In the ultimate condition, to which I refer later on, this might not be
necessary, but as a temporary expedient, Feminists desire to protect
woman while she is developing from the chattel condition to the
free-woman condition. Until she is fit for her new liberty, it is
necessary that she should be enabled to use this liberty without paying
too heavy a price therefor. Indeed this clash between the transitory and
the ultimate is one of the difficulties of Feminism. The rebels must
accept situations such as the financial responsibility of man, while
they struggle to make woman financially independent of man, and it is
for this reason that different proposals appear in the works of Ellen
Key, Rosa Mayreder, Charlotte Gilman, Olive Schreiner, and others, but
these divergences need not trouble us, for Feminism is an inspiration
rather than a gospel, and if it lays down a programme, it is a temporary
programme.
Personally, I am inclined to believe that the ultimate aim of Feminism
with regard to marriage is the practical suppression of marriage and the
institution of free alliance. It may be that thus only can woman develop
her own personality, but society itself must so greatly alter, do so
very much more than equalize wages and provide work for all, that these
ultimate ends seem very distant. They lie beyond the decease of
Capitalism itself, for they imply a change in the nature of the human
being which is not impossible when we consider that man has changed a
great deal since the Stone Age, but is still inconceivably radical.
Ultimate ends of Feminism will be attained only when socialization shall
have been so complete that the human being will no longer require the
law, but will be able to obey some obscure but noble categorical
imperative; when men and women can associate voluntarily, without thrall
of the State, for the production and enjoyment of the goods of life. How
this will be achieved, by what propaganda, by what struggles and by what
battles, is difficult to say; but in common with many Feminists I
incline to place a good deal of reliance on the ennobling of the nature
of the male. That there is a sex war, and will be a sex war, I do not
deny, but the entry of women into the modern world of art and business
shows that an immense enlightenment has come over the male, that he no
longer wishes to crush as much as he did, and therefore that he is
loving better and more sanely. Therein lies a profound lesson: if men do
not make war upon women, women will not make war upon men. I have spoken
of sex war, but it takes two sides to make a war, and I do not see that
in the event of conflict the Feminists can _alone_ be guilty.