Ladies and Gentlemen:--If it were not often tragic and always
humiliating, it would be exceedingly amusing to observe the results of a
method of thought and a civilization which has proceeded always upon the
idea that man is the race and that woman is merely an annex to him and
because of his desires, needs and dictum.
Strangely enough, the bigotry or sex bias and pride does not carry this
theory below the human animal. Among scientists and evolutionists, and,
indeed, even among the various religious explanations of the source and
cause of things, the male and female of all species of animals, birds
and insects come into life and tread its paths together and as equals.
The male tiger does not assume to teach his mate what her "sphere" is,
and the female hippopotamus is supposed to have sufficient brain
power of her own to enable her to live her own life and plan her own
occupations, decide upon her own needs and generally regulate her own
existence, without being compelled to call upon the gentleman of
her family in particular, and all of the gentlemen of her species in
general, to decide for her when she is doing the proper thing. The laws
of their species are not made and executed by one sex for the other,
and the same food, sun, covering, educational and general conduct and
opportunities of life which open to the one sex are equally open
and free for the other. No protective tariff is put upon masculine
prerogative to enable him to control all the necessaries of life for
both sexes, to assure to him all the best opportunities, occupations,
education and results of achievement which is the common need of their
kind. In short, the female is in no way his subordinate.
In captivity it is the female which has been, as a rule, most prized,
best cared for and preserved. In the barnyard, field and stable alike,
it is deemed wise to sell or kill most of the males. They are looked
upon as good food, so to speak, but not as useful citizens. What they
add to the world is not thought so much of--their capacities for
the future are less valued than are those of the other sex. Even the
man-made, religious legends bring all of these animals into life in
pairs. Neither has precedence of the other. Neither is subject to the
other.
But when it comes to the human animal--the final blossom of creative
thought, as religionists word it, or of universal energy, as scientists
put it--the male, for the first time, becomes the whole idea.
A helpmate for him is an after-thought, and according to man's teaching
up to the present time, an after-thought only half matured and very
badly executed. In spite of all the practice on other pairs--one of each
sex--it remained for the Almighty, or nature, to make the mistake (for
the first time) of creating the human race with one of its halves a mere
"annex" to the other. A subject. A subordinate. Without brains to do its
own thinking, without judgment to be its own guide. This blunder is not
made with any other pair. In the case of all other animals each sex has
its own brain power with which it directs its own affairs, makes its own
laws of conduct, and so preserves its own individuality, its personal
liberty, its freedom of action and of development.
I am not ignorant of, nor do I forget, the scientific fact that in
nature among ants, birds and beasts there are tribes and communities
where some are slaves or are subject to others; but what I do assert
is this, that this is not a sex distinction or degradation. It is not
infrequently the males who are the subjects in these communities where
liberty is not equal and where, therefore, the very basic principal of
equality is impossible or unknown. And did it ever occur to you that
a community or a people which recognizes in its fundamental laws and
customs--in its very forms of expression--that it is right to preserve
inequality of opportunity, of education, of emolument and of conduct has
yet to learn the meaning of the words "liberty" and "justice?"
Nowhere in all nature is the mere fact of sex--and that the
race-producing sex--made a reason for fixed inequality of liberty,
of subjugation, of subordination and of determined inferiority of
opportunity in education, in acquirement, in position--in a word, in
freedom. Nowhere until we reach man!
Here, where for the first time in nature there enter artificial social
conditions and needs, these artificial demands coupled with the great
fact of maternity (everywhere else in nature absolutely under its
own control), maternity under sex subjection, linked with financial
dependence upon the one not so burdened, has fixed this subordinate
status upon that part of the race which is the producer of the race.
This fact alone is enough to account for the slow, the distorted, the
diseased and the criminal progress of humanity.
Subordinates cannot give lofty character. Servile temperaments cannot
blossom into liberty-loving, liberty-giving descendants. Many of the
lower animals destroy their young if they are born in captivity. They
demand that maternity shall be free. Free from man's conditions or
captivity, as it always has been free from the tyranny of sex control in
their own species. *
* While reading the proof for this book this corroborative
and interesting illustration appeared in the New York World
of date June 24:
The tragedy which has been expected to occur any time at the
Zoo was enacted yesterday, when Alice, the lioness who gave
birth to three whelps on Wednesday morning, ate one and
killed another. The third was only rescued by strategy.
Animals never kill their young in their wild state, except
the male lion, from whom the female hides the young. In
captivity it's a common thing.
Keeper Downey first discovered the deed, and when the
Director arrived Alice was just finishing one of her
offspring. Another lay dead in the corner and the third had
crawled away and was crying pitifully. Director Smith had
the door raised which leads into another cage and Alice was
coaxed inside. Then the door was let down and Keepers Downy
and Snyder caught the only survivor and secured the body of
the other. It was a dangerous proceeding, as Alice was
terribly angry and beat her great body against the thick
iron bars.
The dead cub was sent to the Museum of Natural History, and
after a good deal of skirmishing around by Keepers Downey
and Shannon a Newfoundland dog belonging to an employee of
Clausen's Brewery, on East Fifty-fifth street, who
yesterday morning gave birth to eight pups, was found, and
last evening the survivor of the triplets was taken to the
brewery.
The Director will pay the owner of the dog $3 per week for
the baby's board and lodging, and, to the credit of the
generous-hearted mother dog, she has taken the little
lioness to her breast without so much as a questioning look.
She licked it and snuggled it as she did her own and
caressed it into nursing. After it is a few weeks old and is
strong it can be taken away from the dog and, with little
trouble, can be brought up on a bottle.
It is the fashion in this country now-a-days to say that women are
treated as equals. Some of the most progressive and best of men truly
believe what they say in this regard. One of our leading daily papers,
which insists that this is true, and even goes so far as to say that
American gentlemen believe in and act upon the theory that their mothers
and daughters are of a superior quality--and are always of the very
first consideration to and by men--recently had an editorial headlined
"Universal Suffrage the Birthright of the Free Born." I read it through,
and if you will believe me, the writer had so large a bump of sex
arrogance that he never once thought of one-half of humanity in
the entire course of an elaborate and eloquent two-column article!
"Universal" suffrage did not touch but one sex. There was but one sex
"free born." There was but one which was born with "rights." The words
"persons," "citizens," "residents of the state" and all similar terms
were used quite freely, but not once did it dawn upon the mind of the
writer that every one of those words, every argument for freedom, every
plea for liberty and justice, equality and right, applied to the human
race and not merely to one-half of that race.
Sex bias, sex arrogance, sex pride, sex assumption is so ingrained that
it simply does not occur to the male logicians, scientists, philosophers
and politicians that there is a humanity. They see, think of and argue
for and about only a sex of man--with an annex to him--woman. They call
this the race; but they do not mean the race--they mean men. They write
and talk of "human beings;" of their needs, their education, their
capacity and development; but they are not thinking of humanity at all.
They are thinking of, planning for and executing plans which subordinate
the race--the human entity--to a subdivision, the mark and sign of which
is the lowest and most universal possession of male nature--the mere
procreative instinct and possibility. And this has grown to be the habit
of thought until in science, in philosophy, in religion, in law, in
politics--one and all--we must translate all language into other terms
than those used. For the word "universal" we must read "male;" for
the "people," the "nation," we must read "men." The "will of the
majority--majority rule"--really means the larger number of masculine
citizens. And so with all our common language, it is in a false
tense. It is mere democratic verbal gymnastics, clothing the same old
monarchial, aristocratic mental beliefs, with man now the "divine right"
ruler and with woman his subject and perquisite. Its gender is misstated
and its import multiplied by two. It does not mean what it says, and it
does not say what it means.
Our thoughts are adjusted to false verbal forms, and so the thoughts do
not ring true. They are merely hereditary forms of speech. All masculine
thought and expression up to the present time has been in the language
of sex, and not in the language of race; and so it has come about that
the music of humanity has been set in one key and played on one chord.
It has been well said that an Englishman cannot speak French correctly
until he has learned to think in French. It is far more true that no one
can speak or write the language of human liberty and equality until he
has learned to think in that language, and to feel without stopping to
argue with himself, that right is not masculine only and that justice
knows no sex. Were the claim to superior opportunity, status and
position based upon capacity, character or wealth, upon perfection
of form or grace of bearing, one could understand, if not accept, the
reasonableness of the position, for it would then rest upon some sort of
recognized superiority, but while it is based upon sex--a mere accident
of form carrying with it a brute instinct, which is not even glorified
by the capacity to produce, and seldom throughout nature, to suffer for
and protect the blossom of that instinct--surely no lower, less vital or
more degraded a basis could possibly be chosen.
Not long ago a heated argument arose here in Chicago over the teaching
of German in the public schools. This argument was used by one of the
leading contestants in one of the leading journals:
The whole amount of education that 95 per cent, of our public school
pupils receive is lamentably small. It is far less than we could wish it
to be.
Most of these children, who are to be the citizens, and by their ballots
the rulers of this nation, can often remain but a few years in the
schoolroom. For the average American citizen who is not a professional
man, or who is not destined for diplomatic service abroad, English can
afford all the mental and intellectual pabulum needed.
Now here is an amusing and also a humiliating illustration of the way
these matters are handled, and it is for that reason, only, that I have
used a local question here. "Ninety-five per cent, of our public school
pupils," etc., "by their ballots are to be rulers of the nation,"
etc., "future citizens," forsooth! Now it simply did not occur to the
gentleman who wrote this, and to the hundreds who so write and speak
daily, that the most of those 95 per cent have no ballots, do not
"rule," are not "future citizens," but that they belong to the
proscribed sex, have committed the crime of being girls, even before
they entered the public schools, and so have permanently outlawed
themselves for citizenship in this glorious republic of "equals." But
his entire argument (made upon so large a per cent) really rests upon a
much smaller number. But the girls made good ballast for the argument.
They answered to fill in the "awful example," but they are not allowed
the justice of real citizenship, nor to be the future "rulers" for and
because of whom the whole argument is made, for whose educational rights
and needs, alone, because of their future ballots, he cares so tenderly.
It will not do to attempt to avoid this issue by the hackneyed plea.
"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." Every one knows that
this is not true in the sense in which it is used. It is true, alas! in
a sense never dreamed of by politician and publican.
It is true that the degraded status of maternity has ruled and does rule
the world, in that it has been, and is, the most potent power to keep
the race from lofty achievement. Subject mothers never did, and subject
mothers never will, produce a race of free, well poised, liberty-loving,
justice-practicing children. Maternity is an awful power. It blindly
strikes back at injustice with a force that is a fearful menace to
mankind. And the race which is born of mothers who are harassed,
bullied, subordinated and made the victims of blind passion or power,
or of mothers who are simply too petty and self-debased to feel their
subject status, cannot fail to continue to give the horrible spectacles
we have always had of war, of crime, of vice, of trickery, of
double-dealing, of pretense, of lying, of arrogance, of subserviency, of
incompetence, of brutality, and, alas! of insanity, idiocy and disease
added to a fearful and unnecessary mortality.
To a student of anthropology and heredity it requires no great brain
power to trace these results to causes. We need only remember that
the mental, as well as the physical conditions, capacities and
potentialities are inherited, to understand how the dead level of
hopeless mediocrity must be preserved as the rule of the race so long as
the potentialities of that race must be filtered always through and
take its impetus from a mere annex to man's power, ambition, desires and
opinions.
Let me respond right here to those who will--who always do--insist that
woman is not so held to-day at least in England and America. That her
present status is a dignified, an equal or even a superior one. I
will illustrate: In a recent speech by the Hon. William E. Gladstone he
pleaded most eloquently and earnestly for the right of Irishmen to rule
and govern themselves. Among many other things he said: "The principal
weapons of the opposition are bold assertion, persistent exaggeration,
constant misconstruction and copious, arbitrary and baseless prophecies.
True there are conflicting financial arrangements to be dealt with, but
among the difficulties nothing exists which ought to abash or terrify
men desirous to accomplish a great object. For the first time in ninety
years the bill will secure the supremacy of parliament as founded upon
right as well as backed by power."
Had these remarks been made with an eye single to the "woman question,"
they could not have been more exactly descriptive of the facts in
the case; but with Irishmen only on his mind he continued thus: "The
persistent distrust of the Irish people, despite all they can do, comes
simply to this, that they are to be pressed below the level of civilized
mankind. When the boon of self government is given to the British
colonies is Ireland alone to be excepted from its blessings? To deny
Ireland home rule is to say that she lacks the ordinary faculties of
humanity."
He said "Irish people," but he meant Irish men only. But see to what
his argument leads. He says it is "pressing them below the level of
civilized mankind" to deny them the right to stand erect, to use their
own brains and wills in their own government; and a great party in his
own country and a great party in this country echo with mad enthusiasm
his opinions--for men! They call it "mankind." They mean one-half of
mankind only, for not even Mr. Gladstone is able to rise high enough
above his sex bias to see that the denial of all self-government, all
representation in the making of the laws she is to obey "presses woman
below the level of civilized mankind." Words cease to have a par
value even with the stickler for verbal accuracy the instant their
own arguments are applied to the other sex. Eloquently men can and do
portray the wrongs, the outrages, the abuses which always have arisen,
which always must arise from class legislation--from that condition
which makes it impossible for one class or condition of citizens of a
country to make their needs, desires, preferences and opinions felt
in the organic law of their country on an equal and level footing with
their fellows. Men have needed no great ability to enable them to prove
that tyranny unspeakable always did and always will follow unlimited
power over others so long as their arguments applied between man and
man, but the instant the identical arguments are used to apply between
man and woman that instant their whole attitude changes.
That instant words lose all par value. That instant all men, including
those who have but just waxed eloquent over the injustice and the real
danger of permitting inequality before the law, become aristocrats.
Claiming to be the logical sex, man throws logic to the winds. Claiming
to have fought and bled to enthrone "liberty," he forgets its very name!
Asserting that in his own hand alone can the scales of justice be held
level, he makes of justice, of liberty and of equality a mockery and a
pretense! He has so far read all of those words in the masculine gender
only. He has not yet learned to think them in a universal language. He
stultifies his every utterance and makes of his mind a jailer, and of
his laws slave drivers, for all who cannot by physical force wrench from
him the right to their own liberty and to their human status of equality
of opportunity.
Men have everywhere grown to believe that they have been born and that
they rule women by divine right. Woman is a mere annex to and for his
glory. She exists for him to rule, to think for, to adore, to tolerate
or to abuse as he sees fit, or as is his type or nature. Her appeal must
not be to an equal standard of justice which she has helped to
frame, administer and live by; but it must be to his generosity, his
tenderness, his toleration or his chivalry--in short, to his absolute
power over her. "No people can be free without an equal legal footing
for all of its citizens!" exclaims the statesman, and drums beat and
trumpets blare and men march and countermarch in enthusiastic response
to the sentiment. "We must have a government of the people, by the
people, for the people" is cheered to the echo whenever heard, and
nobody realizes that what is meant always is a government of men, by
men, for men, with woman as an annex.
Only three weeks ago all of our papers had leaders, editorials and
cablegrams to announce that "universal suffrage has been granted in
Belgium." They all grew enthusiastic over it. One of our leading New
York editors said (and I use his editorial simply because it is a very
good example of what almost all of our important journals said):
"The triumph of the Belgian democracy is an event of the first
significance. The masses had long appealed in vain for a removal of the
property qualification which restricted the right of suffrage to
140,000 persons out of a population of over 6,-000,000 but the chambers,
dominated by the wealthy classes, resolutely refused to comply with the
demand until a dangerous revolution was inaugurated.
"Even how the change in the constitution granting universal suffrage is
coupled with the right of plural voting by the property-owners, but it
is quite certain that this obnoxious feature will be soon abandoned by
the chambers and universal suffrage will prevail, as in the adjoining
nations of France and Germany.
"When these newly enfranchised electors choose the next legislature
important changes may be expected in the laws applicable to the
employment of labor, which have hitherto been framed solely in the
interest of the mine-owners and the manufacturers. Fortunately for
the king, he seems to be in sympathy with this effort of the masses to
acquire a fair representation in the government. In the recent riots the
hostility of the people was directed against the assembly rather than
against the crown. It is very evident that the democratic spirit is
gaining ground throughout Europe. Its influence is manifest in the home
rule movement in England, in the hostility to the army bill in Germany,
and in the rapid changes of the ministers of France. It steadily
advances in every direction and never loses ground once acquired. It
progresses peacefully if it can, but forcibly if it must. Its triumph in
Belgium is one of the signs of the times in the old world."
"The people" are all male in Belgium, in France, Germany and America,
or else all of these statements are mere figures of speech, are wholly
untrue, for the women of Belgium, of France, of Germany--and, alas! of
democratic America, were not even thought of when the words "people,"
"citizens," "masses," "laborers," etc., were used. They are counted in
the estimates of the population as all of these. They are used to fill
vacancies, to swell estimates, to round out statistics, but in the
result of these arguments and statistics, in the victories won for
liberty to the individual, woman has no part. She is the one outlaw in
human progress. In a recent magazine this passage occurs:
"Austria.--On April 2 Dr. Victor Adler, a socialist leader, spoke to
about 4,000 workingmen in favor of universal suffrage. He said that
two-thirds of the adult men had not the suffrage. Only half-civilized
countries, like Russia and Spain, now placed their citizens in such
inequality before the law. The workingmen of Austria had never before
this winter suffered such hardships, and now in Vienna 26,000 workmen
were without shelter."
Yet there is no report that Dr. Adler nor the editor of the magazine,
who waxed eloquent over it, saw any special "hardship" or "inequality"
in a degraded status for all women. "Universal suffrage," indeed! And
has Austria no women citizens? Were the working women who have not
the ballot, better sheltered than the men? Or do they need no shelter?
Another editor says: "Don't talk about a free ballot while the bread of
the masses is in the giving of the classes."
Yet, had a venturesome girl type-setter made it read, "Don't talk about
a free ballot, a democracy or freedom while the bread of women is in the
giving of men," the editor would have said: "She is insane, and besides
that, she is talking unwomanly nonsense."
It is the same in science, in literature, in religion. All estimates are
made on and for the "human race," "the people of a country," etc. The
"will of the people" is spoken of; we are told all about the brain size
and capacity and convolutions, etc., of the different "peoples"; we hear
learned discourses about it all, and when you sift them, woman--one-half
of the race talked about--is used always simply and only as ballast,
as filling to make a point in man's favor. She does not figure in the
benefits. He is the race--she his annex.
Not long ago an amusing illustration of this came to my knowledge. As
you may perhaps know, there is more money invested in life insurance
than in any other great financial enterprise in the world.
This is the way insurance experts look at the woman question. The
estimates of longevity, desirability of risk, etc., are based upon male
standards. This is not in itself unnatural or unreasonable, since men
have been the chief insurers, but few companies, indeed, being willing
to insure women at all. But not long ago a lady applied for a policy
on her life in a first-class company. She had three little children for
whom she wished to provide in case of her death. She believed that she
could properly support them so long as she lived. To her surprise she
was told that the rate at which she must pay was $5 on each $1,000 more
than her brother had to pay at the same age. She asked the actuary--a
very profound man--why this was so. He told her that women had been
found to be not so good risks as men, since they were subject to more
dangers of death than were men, and that to make the companies safe it
had been found necessary to charge women a higher rate.
She had heard much and eloquently all her life long of the dangers of
men's lives; of the shielded, sheltered state of feminine humanity, and
she had never dreamed that it was--from a mortuary point of view--"extra
hazardous" to be a woman. She assumed, however, that it must be so and
paid her extra hazardous premium, just as if she belonged to the army or
was a blaster or miner or "contemplated going up in a balloon." A short
time afterward her mother, an elderly lady, had some money to invest.
She did not wish to care for it herself, as she had never had the least
business experience. She applied to the same actuary to know how much
of an annual income or annuity she could buy for the sum she had. He
figured on it for a while and told her. It was a good deal less than a
man could get for the same amount. She had the temerity to ask why.
"Well," said the actuary, gazing benignly over his glasses at her in a
congratulatory fashion, "you see women live longer than men do--"
"But you told my daughter that they did not live so long, and so she
pays at a higher rate on insurance to make you safe lest she should die
too young. Now you charge me more for an annuity on the theory that a
woman lives longer than a man."
"Well," said he, readjusting his glasses and going carefully over the
mortuary table again, "that does seem to be the fact. If a woman assures
her life she beats the company by dying sooner than a man and if she
takes an annuity she beats us by living longer than he would. Don't know
how it happens, but we charge extra to cover the facts as we find 'em."
Such is masculine logic upon feminine perversity even in death.
Yet men say that they understand us and our needs so much better than we
do ourselves that they abandon all of their reasoning, logic, enthusiasm
and beliefs on the great fundamental principles of justice, equality,
liberty and law the moment their own arguments are applied to women
instead of to "labor," the "Irish question" or to any other phase of
class legislation as applied between man and man. The fact is simply
and only this, that the arrogance of sex power and perversion is now so
thoroughly ingrained that man really believes himself to be--by divine
right--the human race and that woman is his perquisite. He has no
universal language. He thinks in the language of sex. But more than
this, and worse than this, he insists upon no one else being allowed to
think in the language of humanity, and to translate that thought into
action.