“In your _force_ or marriage system your ancestors, as we have seen,
took their wives by stealing or forcibly taking them perhaps from other
tribes. From that primitive time to this, the force part in matrimony
has of course gradually diminished. The woman was allowed more and more
privileges and freedom from that time to this. But during all this
time, when physical force and man-made laws were used, the man got the
woman so completely under his control by his superior physical power
and by placing her in an atmosphere of masculine dependence, that she
has largely and often unconsciously become his industrial, social and
sexual slave. He hems her in by almost insuperable difficulties on
all sides, and then uses her as his slave and sexual tool under the
sanctity of his particularly established system of matrimony.
“Your man, in the sexual world, closely resembles your landlord in the
industrial world. The landlord fences the laborer off from the vacant
land so that the laborer can not apply his labor to land, from which
all wealth must come, and then makes a contract with the laborer to
the laborer’s great disadvantage. So your man, in order to get sexual
dominion, first creates an industrial and social world, in which a
free, independent woman can scarcely make a living, no matter how hard
and long she toils. _He_ makes the money pass through his hands and
makes all the other laws to suit his purpose. Your men deprive your
women of nearly everything that the man considers sacred.
“In the social world, your man appoints himself suitor, and compels
his sweetheart to remain at home, waiting for his appearance, for his
courtship. If she goes forth to solicit the love of her choice, he
buries her with contempt, so that none of his masculine companions will
choose her thereafter for a life partner. By this he dooms her to his
contemptible financial and industrial world, where she has to earn her
own living under great disadvantages. In the sexual world, your man is
still more cruel and aggressive. Instead of letting the woman regulate
the sexual affairs to suit herself, like all other chaste creatures do,
the man seems to be the lord and manager there too. We want to keep in
mind that with the higher inferior animal, which enjoys comparatively
perfect sexual freedom, and which lives a comparatively chaste life,
the female regulates all sexual relations.
“But this is not all by any means. Do you not think that under your
marriage system there are many mothers now that would not be mothers
if women were not dependent on man industrially? Do you not think
that women, as well as men, would be much freer and happier, if women
enjoyed social equality and freedom? Do you not think that your wives
give birth to many children that would not be born in a state of
sexual freedom, if women were not the dupes of men and of the marriage
superstition, in which the man appoints himself manager and his wedded
wife obeyer? Do you not think that thousands upon thousands of married
men and women live or stay together that do not really love each other,
that would not stay together an hour in a world like ours, where one
is as capable of supporting himself or herself as another? Do you not
think that the artificial constraint of marriage tends to produce an
abnormal sexual passion? Do you not think that a large number of women
are driven to houses of sin and shame by your marriage system? Some
that are ‘unfortunately’ married, and others that wanted to marry, but
could not marry to suit themselves? Do you not think that your bonds
of matrimony creates an unsatisfied novelty for sex relations that can
be properly adjusted only by a wider range of individual freedom? Do
you not think that a married woman, under your social and industrial
system, is a slave to husband and family, no matter how good and kind
they may treat her as a wife or a mother?
“Do you not think that bearing and nursing offspring is productive
labor? Should not mothers receive equal pay for administering maternal
cares to dependent children as a laborer receives for his physical
labor? But are your men doing that? Are they not putting off more than
half of all the physical productive labor onto the women, and then
incidentally, and often superstitiously, burdening them with bearing
and nursing unwelcome offspring? Do you not think that the thoughts,
the temperament and the state of happiness and contentment of the
mother are transmitted to the child long before it is born? How can the
babe be otherwise than the parental natures out of which it is built?
Do you think that a frowny, irritated, poverty-stricken, overburdened,
careworn, slavish mother can give birth to a child having directly
opposite traits and temperament? Do you not think that your marriage
system produces untidy, slovenly and careless men and women, while, on
the contrary, our system is just the opposite? Notice how much more
slovenly and untidy your married men and women are, as a rule, than
those who are not married. We are beaux and sweethearts as long as we
live. A rude, careless, untidy, cruel person is not appreciated in our
society. He is not likely to leave many offspring. The survival of the
fittest with us is in full bloom; with you, in the human family, it is
comparatively dead; because, if they are once married, they are bound
to stay together, whether they are tidy or filthy and slovenly. Do you
not think that your marriage system has caused the abnormal sexual
function in your human being as we now find him on earth? Do you not
take the management of the sex relations out of the hands of the women,
where it properly belongs, and place it practically under the control
of the man?”
“It is true, no doubt, that a husband and wife often ignore the rule
of sexual purity, according to your standard of it,” said Rev. Dudley;
“but I do not see why men and women should be more excessive sexually
in a wedded state than in a state of sexual freedom. Why cannot purity
be practiced in matrimony?”
“There are many reasons why there can be no sexual purity, as a whole,
in your wedlock.
“The vast majority of the wedded people, as near as I can ascertain,
believe that there can be no sexual excesses between a married husband
and wife. They seem to believe that as soon as an officer or priest
has mumbled a few words over the contracting parties, the law of
sexual purity can thereafter not be broken.
“In your marriage system, too, you have everything perverted and
twisted out of the natural order. Let us look at a few of these
perversions. We find, as I have told you, that the females of the
inferior animals, as well as the highly developed Marsites, regulate
their own sexual affairs; that the female solicits the sexual
co-operation of the male whenever she desires procreative assistance.
The male, as a rule, does not meddle with sexual affairs, only when
the female solicits his love, and he keeps on loving until the female
rejects further love, when he will cease, or is forced to cease by an
independent, self-reliant female. We see here, then, that the male
has not the faculty of properly adjusting and regulating the sexual
function to such a high degree as the female, but that he receives
the guidance _from_ the female. This holds good in the orders of the
inferior animals and with the Marsites.
“In your marriage system things are just the reverse. You instituted,
as I believe, your system of marriage by compulsion. You first
captured, then bought, etc., your wife or wives. Under these
conditions, you took the sexual control away from your women and
vested it in the man. But, as we have seen, the man does not possess
an excellent faculty for properly regulating and adjusting the sexual
relation. He was deficient here in what he undertook to do. He
forcibly made himself a guide in a field of labor where, by his very
organization, he naturally required guidance himself.
“So the man, by forcibly assuming control of the sexual relations,
has not only caused an abnormal sexual function in himself, but by
his excesses has caused an excess in the woman also; so that if the
woman could be free at once and assume control of the sexual affairs,
she could, with her present excess, not begin immediately to live a
perfectly chaste life, but would require some time of freedom and
independence to make a harmonious and normal sexual adjustment, which
can never be brought about in a state of wedlock, in which a woman is
socially and industrially dependent on the man. Thus, we see, that
the excessive passions have been transmitted and accumulated from
generation to generation, and therefore require some time for their
elimination.
“Your promiscuous retirement is another cause of your sexual excess.
Each individual should have his or her separate apartment and nightly
retire alone.
“You will notice a vast difference between our mothers and yours. Our
mothers have no particular cares. They need not gather eggs to buy
a baby’s frock with. They need not ask a husband for a nickel or a
dollar. They have no jealous husband to watch them and to dictate to
them. They have nothing to frown about. They have all the money they
want without asking for it, and earn more every day. They receive as
much pay per day as the strongest man or the greatest genius. They
can write to, or converse with, any man, woman, or child. No one can
be jealous, for they belong to no one but themselves. They have not
given themselves away and ‘promised to obey.’ They can go out walking
or riding with whom they please or with whom they can get. They are at
liberty to invite any one, be invited by any one, or go and see any
one they please, if they can make a mutual agreement. The mothers, or
those who are about to be mothers, can visit in any family, community,
or nation where the family usher finds room for them, and still receive
the same daily pay as a man or woman who works at home. Besides all
this, she receives, in her maternal work, all the assistance possible.
In a word, she is perfectly free and independent, economically,
socially and sexually.
“Just think if one of our girls or mothers were compelled to live a
while in your cruel, poor, superstitious and jealous world! Would they
not think that they were in a worse than an orthodox hell? Burdened
down with the labor and care and robbed of personal freedom! Do you not
think that they would make every effort to return to their native world
of wealth, of true love, and of unbounded freedom?
“Of course, our ancient history shows, that our world passed through
similar cruel, poor, and slavish stages as your world is in now, and it
is almost positive that the evolution of a higher state of intelligence
will wipe out of existence all your present poverty, superstition,
jealousy, and slavery, and put in place of it a social and industrial
system that will produce, by voluntary co-operation, an unlimited
amount of wealth; and, at the same time, provides a boundless degree of
individual freedom to every man, woman and child, for, with a certain
amount of intelligence, always goes a certain stage of social and
industrial development.”
“I must admit, Mr. Midith, that your system of sexual freedom would be
a grand one if our men and women were ripe for it,” said Rev. Dudley;
“but I fear that we do not possess sufficient culture to make a success
of it yet. I fear that we are, as you said, too cruel, jealous, and
too superstitious. But there is one question I would like to ask, and
that is, how do you, in a state of sexual freedom, prevent premature
maternity? Must a woman be of a certain age before she is allowed to
become a mother?”
“In the first place, we have no such a word as _must_ in our social
and sexual system,” replied Mr. Midith. “If premature motherhood is
objectionable, it should be discouraged and discontinued for the evil
and wrong it produces. If it does not bring evil consequences on any
one, it can not be said to be premature. We believe, however, that it
may be premature in a certain geologic age, and that it does entail
evil consequences. Under these conditions it arrests physical and
mental development. But, in time, under sexual freedom, the procreative
function will be so accurately adjusted that it will act only in accord
with the most vigorous life, and then there can be no more a desire
for premature maternity. We instruct our children on these points of
premature motherhood as clearly as we can, beginning at the age of
childhood. We esteem physical and mental perfection above all other
things. Anything that impairs them is strenuously avoided. Public
opinion, the strongest social force, is also against it.”