If we examine the physical phenomenon of sex as it manifests itself in
the human creature, we find, in the first stages of the individual’s
existence, no difference discernible, by any means we have at present at
our command, between those germs which are ultimately to become male or
female. Later, in the foetal life, at birth, and through infancy though
the organs of sex serve to distinguish the male from the female, there
is in the general structure and working of the organism little or
nothing to divide the sexes.
Even when puberty is reached, with its enormous development of sexual
and reproductive activity modifying those parts of the organism
with which it is concerned, and producing certain secondary sexual
characteristics, there yet remains the major extent of the human
body and of physical function little, or not at all, affected by sex
modification. The eye, the ear, the sense of touch, the general organs
of nutrition and respiration and volition are in the main identical,
and often differ far more in persons of the same sex than in those of
opposite sexes; and even on the dissecting-table the tissues of the male
and female are often wholly indistinguishable.
It is when we consider the reproductive organs themselves and their
forms of activity, and such parts of the organism modified directly
in relation to them, that a real and important difference is found
to exist, radical though absolutely complemental. It is exactly as we
approach the reproductive functions that the male and female bodies
differ; exactly as we recede from them that they become more and more
similar, and even absolutely identical. Taking the eye, perhaps the most
highly developed, complex organ in the body, and, if of an organ the
term may be allowed, the most intellectual organ of sense, we find it
remains the same in male and female in structure, in appearance, and
in function throughout life; while the breast, closely connected with
reproduction, though absolutely identical in both forms in infancy,
assumes a widely different organisation when reproductive activity is
actually concerned.
When we turn to the psychic phase of human life an exactly analogous
phenomenon presents itself. The intelligence, emotions, and desires of
the human infant at birth differ not at all perceptibly, as its sex may
be male or female; and such psychic differences as appear to exist in
later childhood are undoubtedly very largely the result of artificial
training, forcing on the appearance of psychic sexual divergencies long
before they would tend spontaneously to appear; as where sports and
occupations are interdicted to young children on the ground of their
supposed sexual unfitness; as when an infant female is forcibly
prevented from climbing or shouting, and the infant male from amusing
himself with needle and thread or dolls. Even in the fully adult human,
and in spite of differences of training, the psychic activities over
a large extent of life appear to be absolutely identical. The male and
female brains acquire languages, solve mathematical problems, and master
scientific detail in a manner wholly indistinguishable: as illustrated
by the fact that in modern universities the papers sent in by male and
female candidates are as a rule absolutely identical in type. Placed in
like external conditions, their tastes and emotions, over a vast part of
the surface of life, are identical; and, in an immense number of those
cases where psychic sex differences appear to exist, subject to rigid
analysis they are found to be purely artificial creations, for, when
other races or classes are studied, they are found non-existent as
sexual characteristics; as when the female is supposed by ignorant
persons in modern European societies to have an inherent love for bright
colours and ornaments, not shared by the male; while experience of other
societies and past social conditions prove that it is as often the male
who has been even more desirous of attiring himself in bright raiment
and adorning himself with brilliant jewels; or as when, among certain
tribes of savages, the use of tobacco is supposed to be a peculiarly
female prerogative, while, in some modern societies, it is supposed
to have some relation to masculinity. (The savage male of today
when attired in his paint, feathers, cats’ tails and necklaces is an
immeasurably more ornamented and imposing figure than his female, even
when fully attired for a dance in beads and bangles: the Oriental
male has sometimes scarcely been able to walk under the weight of his
ornaments; and the males of Europe a couple of centuries ago, with their
powdered wigs, lace ruffles and cuffs, paste buckles, feathered cocked
hats, and patches were quite as ridiculous in their excess of adornment
as the complementary females of their own day, or the most parasitic
females of this. Both in the class and the individual, whether male or
female, an intense love of dress and meretricious external adornment is
almost invariably the concomitant and outcome of parasitism. Were the
parasite female class in our own societies today to pass away, French
fashions with their easeless and grotesque variations (shaped not for
use or beauty, but the attracting of attention) would die out. And the
extent to which any woman today, not herself belonging to the parasite
class and still labouring, attempts to follow afar off the fashions of
the parasite, may be taken generally as an almost certain indication
of the ease with which she would accept parasitism were its conditions
offered her. The tendency of the cultured and intellectually labouring
woman of today to adopt a more rational type of attire, less shaped to
attract attention to the individual than to confer comfort and abstain
from impeding activity, is often spoken of as an attempt on the part
of woman slavishly to imitate man. What is really taking place is, that
like causes are producing like effects on human creatures with common
characteristics.)
But there remain certain psychic differences in attitude, on the part of
male and female as such, which are inherent and not artificial: and,
in the psychic human world, it is exactly as we approach the sphere
of sexual and reproductive activity, with those emotions and instincts
connected directly with sex and the reproduction of the race, that a
difference does appear.
In the animal world all forms of psychic variations are found allying
themselves now with the male sex form, and then with the female. In the
insect and fish worlds, where the female forms are generally larger
and stronger than the male, the female is generally more pugnacious and
predatory than the male. Among birds-of-prey, where also the female form
is larger and stronger than the male, the psychic differences seem
very small. Among eagles and other allied forms, which are strictly
monogamous, the affection of the female for the male is so great that
she is said never to mate again if the male dies, and both watch over
and care for the young with extreme solicitude. The ostrich male form,
though perhaps larger than the female, shares with her the labour of
hatching the eggs, relieving the hen of her duty at a fixed hour daily:
and his care for the young when hatched is as tender as hers. Among
song-birds, in which the male and female forms are so alike as sometimes
to be indistinguishable, and which are also monogamous, the male and
female forms not only exhibit the same passionate affection for each
other (in the case of the South African cock-o-veet, they have one
answering love-song between them; the male sounding two or three notes
and the female completing it with two or three more), but they build the
nest together and rear the young with an equal devotion. In the case of
the little kapok bird of the Cape, a beautiful, white, fluffy round
nest is made by both out of the white down of a certain plant, and
immediately below the entrance to the cavity in which the little female
sits on the eggs is a small shelf or basket, in which the tiny male sits
to watch over and guard them. It is among certain orders of birds that
sex manifestations appear to assume their most harmonious and poetical
forms on earth. Among gallinaceous birds, on the other hand, where the
cock is much larger and more pugnacious than the female, and which are
polygamous, the cock does not court the female by song, but seizes her
by force, and shows little or no interest in his offspring, neither
sharing in the brooding nor feeding the young; and even at times seizing
any tempting morsel which the young or the hen may have discovered.
Among mammals the male form tends to be slightly larger than the female,
though not always (the female whale, for instance, being larger than the
male); the male also tends to be more pugnacious and less careful of the
young; though to this rule also there are exceptions. In the case of
the South African mierkat, for instance, the female is generally more
combative and more difficult to tame than the male; and it is the
males who from the moment of birth watch over the young with the most
passionate and tender solicitude, keeping them warm under their persons,
carrying them to places of safety in their mouths, and feeding them till
full grown; and this they do not only for their own young, but to any
young who may be brought in contact with them. We have known a male
mierkat so assiduous in feeding young that were quite unrelated to
himself, taking to them every morsel of food given him, that we have
been compelled to shut him up in a room alone when feeding him, to
prevent his starving himself to death: the male mierkat thus exhibiting
exactly those psychic qualities which are generally regarded as
peculiarly feminine; the females, on the other hand, being far more
pugnacious towards each other than are the males.
Among mammals generally, except the tendency to greater pugnacity shown
by the male towards other males, and the greater solicitude for the
young shown generally by the female form, but not always; the psychic
differences between the two sex forms are not great. Between the male
and female pointer as puppies, there is as little difference in mental
activity as in physical; and even when adult, on the hunting ground,
that great non-sexual field in which their highest mental and physical
activities are displayed, there is little or nothing which distinguishes
materially between the male and female; in method, manner, and quickness
they are alike; in devotion to man, they are psychically identical. (It
is often said the female dog is more intelligent than the male; but I
am almost inclined to doubt this, after long and close study of both
forms.) It is at the moment when the reproductive element comes fully
into play that similarity and identity cease. In the intensity of
initial sex instinct they are alike; the female will leap from windows,
climb walls, and almost endanger her life to reach the male who waits
for her, as readily as he will to gain her. It is when the bitch lies
with her six young drawing life from her breast, and gazing with wistful
and anguished solicitude at every hand stretched out to touch them, a
world of emotion concentrated on the sightless creatures, and a whole
body of new mental aptitudes brought into play in caring for them, it is
then that between her and the male who begot them, but cares nothing for
them, there does rise a psychic difference that is real and wide. Alike
in the sports of puppydom and the non-sexual activities of adult age;
alike in the possession of the initial sexual instinct which draws the
sex to the sex, the moment active sexual reproduction is concerned,
there is opened to the female a certain world of sensations and
experiences, from which her male companion is for ever excluded.
So also is our human world: alike in the sports, and joys, and sorrows
of infancy; alike in the non-sexual labours of life; alike even in the
possession of that initial instinct which draws sex to sex, and which,
differing slightly in its forms of manifestation is of corresponding
intensity in both; the moment actual reproduction begins to take place,
the man and the woman enter spheres of sensation, perception, emotion,
desire, and knowledge which are not, and cannot be, absolutely
identical. Between the man who, in an instant of light-hearted
enjoyment, begets the infant (who may even beget it in a state of
half-drunken unconsciousness, and may easily know nothing of its
existence for months or years after it is born, or never at all; and who
under no circumstances can have any direct sensational knowledge of its
relation to himself) and the woman who bears it continuously for months
within her body, and who gives birth to it in pain, and who, if it is to
live, is compelled, or was in primitive times, to nourish it for
months from the blood of her own being--between these, there exists of
necessity, towards a limited but all-important body of human interests
and phenomena, a certain distinct psychic attitude. At this one point,
the two great halves of humanity stand confronting certain great
elements in human existence, from angles that are not identical. From
the moment the universal initial attraction of sex to sex becomes
incarnate in the first concrete sexual act till the developed offspring
attains maturity, no step in the reproductive journey, or in their
relation to their offspring, has been quite identical for the man and
the woman. And this divergence of experiences in human relations must
react on their attitude towards that particular body of human concerns
which directly is connected with the sexual reproduction of the race;
and, it is exactly in these fields of human activity, where sex as sex
is concerned, that woman as woman has a part to play which she cannot
resign into the hands of others.
It may be truly said that in the laboratory, the designing-room, the
factory, the mart, the mathematician’s study, and in all fields of
purely abstract or impersonal labour, while the entrance of woman would
add to the net result of human labour in those fields, and though a
grave injustice is done to the individual woman excluded from perhaps
the only field she is fitted to excel in, that yet woman as woman
has probably little or nothing to contribute in those fields that is
radically distinct from that which man might supply; there would be a
difference in quantity but probably none in kind, in the work done for
the race.
But in those spheres of social activity, dealing especially with
certain relations between human creatures because of their diverse if
complementary relation to the production of human life, the sexes as
sexes have often each a part to play which the other cannot play for
them; have each a knowledge gained from phases of human experience,
which the other cannot supply; here woman as woman has something
radically distinct to contribute to the sum-total of human knowledge,
and her activity is of importance, not merely individually, but
collectively, and as a class.
That demand, which today in all democratic self-governing countries is
being made by women, to be accorded their share in the electoral, and
ultimately in the legislative and executive duties of government, is
based on two grounds: the wider, and more important, that they find
nothing in the nature of their sex-function which exonerates them,
as human beings, from their obligation to take part in the labours of
guidance and government in their state: the narrower, but yet important
ground, that, in as far as in one direction, i.e., in the special form
of their sex function takes, they do differ from the male, they, in so
far, form a class and are bound to represent the interests of, and to
give the state the benefit of, the insight of their class, in certain
directions.
Those persons who imagine that the balance of great political parties
in almost any society would be seriously changed by the admission of its
women in public functions are undoubtedly wholly wrong. The fundamental
division of humans into those inclined to hold by the past and defend
whatever is, and those hopeful of the future and inclined to introduce
change, would probably be found to exist in much the same proportion
were the males or the females of any given society compared: and the
males and females of each class will in the main share the faults, the
virtues, and the prejudices of their class. The individuals may lose by
being excluded on the ground of sex from a share of public labour, and
by being robbed of a portion of their lawful individual weight in their
own society; and the society as a whole may lose by having a smaller
number to select its chosen labourers from; yet, undoubtedly, on the
mass of social, political, and international questions, the conclusions
arrived at by one sex would be exactly those arrived at by the other.
Were a body of humans elected to adjudicate upon Greek accents, or to
pass a decision on the relative fineness of woollens and linens, the
form of sex of the persons composing it would probably have no bearing
on the result; there is no rational ground for supposing that, on a
question of Greek accents or the thickness of cloths, equally instructed
males and females would differ. Here sex plays no part. The experience
and instructedness of the individuals would tell: their sexual
attributes would be indifferent.
But there are points, comparatively small, even very small, in number,
yet of vital importance to human life, in which sex does play a part.
It is not a matter of indifference whether the body called to adjudicate
upon the questions, whether the temporary sale of the female body for
sexual purposes shall or shall not be a form of traffic encouraged
and recognised by the state; or whether one law shall exist for the
licentious human female and another for the licentious human male;
whether the claim of the female to the offspring she bears shall or
shall not equal that of the male who begets it; whether an act of
infidelity on the part of the male shall or shall not terminate the
contract which binds his female companion to him, as completely as an
act of infidelity on her part would terminate her claim on him; it is
not a matter of indifference whether a body elected to adjudicate on
such points as these consists of males solely, or females solely, or of
both combined. As it consists of one, or the other, or of both, so not
only will the answers vary, but, in some cases, will they be completely
diverse. Here we come into that very narrow, but important, region,
where sex as sex manifestly plays its part; where the male as male
and the female as female have each their body of perceptions and
experiences, which they do not hold in common; here one sex cannot
adequately represent the other. It is here that each sexual part has
something radically distinct to contribute to the wisdom of the race.
We, today, take all labour for our province! We seek to enter the
non-sexual fields of intellectual or physical toil, because we are
unable to see today, with regard to them, any dividing wall raised by
sex which excludes us from them. We are yet equally determined to enter
those in which sex difference does play its part, because it is here
that woman, the bearer of the race, must stand side by side with man,
the begetter; if a completed human wisdom, an insight that misses no
aspect of human life, and an activity that is in harmony with the entire
knowledge and the entire instinct of the entire human race, is to exist.
It is here that the man cannot act for the woman nor the woman for the
man; but both must interact. It is here that each sexual half of the
race, so closely and indistinguishably blended elsewhere, has its own
distinct contribution to make to the sum total of human knowledge and
human wisdom. Neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without
the woman, the completed human intelligence.
Therefore;--We claim, today, all labour for our province! Those large
fields in which it would appear sex plays no part, and equally those
smaller in which it plays a part.