SEX DIFFERENCES
"Woman is an integral constituent of the processes of
civilisation, which, without her, becomes unthinkable. The
present moment is a turning point in the history of the feminine
world. The woman of the past is disappearing, to give place to
the woman of the future, instead of the bound, there appears the
free personality."--IWAN BLOCH.
At length we are ready, clear-minded and well-prepared, to deal with
the question of woman's present position in society. Our minds are
clear, for we have freed them from the age-long error that the
subjection of the female to the male is a universal and necessary part
of Nature's scheme; we are well prepared to support an exact opposite
view, with a knowledge founded on some at least of the facts that
prove this, by the actual position that women have held in the great
civilisations of the past and still hold among primitive peoples, as
well as by a sure biological basis. We are thus far advanced from the
uncertainty with which we started our inquiry; our investigation has
got beyond the statement of evidence drawn from the past to a stage
whence the status of woman in the social order to-day, and the meaning
of her relation to herself, to man, and to the race may be estimated.
The point we have reached is this: the primary value of the sexes has
to some extent, at least, been reversed under the patriarchal idea,
which has pushed the male destructive power into prominence at the
expense of the female constructive force. This under-valuing of the
one-half of life has lost to society the service of a strong
unsubjugated motherhood.
I am now, in this third and last section of my book, going to deal
with what seems to me the practical applications of the truth we have
arrived at. And the preliminary to this is a searching question: To
what extent must we accept a different natural capacity for women and
men? or, in other words, How far does the predominant sexual activity
of woman separate her from man in the sphere of intellectual and
social work? The whole subject is a large and difficult one and is
full of problems to which it is not easy to find an answer. We are
brought straight up against the old controversy of the organic
differences between the sexes. This must be faced before we can
proceed further.
To attempt to do this we must return to the position we left at the
end of the fifth chapter. We had then concluded from our examination
of the sexual habits of insects, mammals, and birds that a marked
differentiation between the female and the male existed already in the
early stages of the development of species, and that such divergence,
or sex-dimorphism, to use the biological term, becomes more and more
frequent and conspicuous as we ascend to the higher types. The
essential functions of females and males become more separate, their
habits of life tend to diverge, and to the primary differences there
are added all manner of secondary peculiarities. We found, however,
especially in our study of the familial habits, that these
supplementary differences could not be regarded as fixed and
unalterable in either the female or the male organism; but rather
that the secondary sexual characters must be considered as depending
on environmental conditions, among which are included the occupational
activities, the scarcity or abundance of the food supply, the relative
numbers of the two sexes, and, in particular, the brain development
and the strength of the parental emotions. We followed the development
of the female element and the male element. The male at first an
insignificant addendum to the female, but the long process of love's
selection, carrying on the expansion and aggrandisement of the male,
led to the reversal of the early superiority of the female, replacing
it by the superiority of the male. The female led and the male
followed in the evolution process. We saw that there are many curious
alternations in the superiority of one sex over the other in size and
also in power of function. Below the line, among backboneless animals,
there is much greater constancy of superiority among the females, and
this predominance persists in many higher types. Even among birds, who
afford the most perfect examples of sexual development, the cases are
not infrequent in which the female equals, and sometimes even exceeds,
the male in size and strength and in beauty of plumage. The curious
case of the Phalaropes furnished us with a remarkable example of a
reversal of the role of the sexes. We found further that (1) an
extravagant development of the secondary sexual characters was not
really favourable to the reproductive process, the males thus
differentiated belonging to a lower grade of sexual evolution, being
bad fathers and unsocial in their conduct; (2) that the most oppressed
females are as a rule very faithful wives, and (3) that the highest
expression of love among the birds must be sought in the beautiful
cases in which the sexes, though maintaining the essential
constitutional distinctions, are, through the higher individuation of
the females more alike, equal in capacity, and co-operate together in
the race-work.
It were well to keep these facts clearly in sight; for, in the light
of them, it becomes evident that there is an error somewhere in the
common opinion of the true relationship of the sexes. Let us go first
to the very start of the matter. It is always held that the sperm
male-cell represents the active, and the germ female-cell the passive
principle in sexuality, and on this assumption there has been based by
many a fixed standard for the supposed natural relation between man
and woman--he active and seeking, she passive and receiving.
But is this really a fair statement of the reproduction process? The
hunger-driven male-cell certainly seeks the female--but what happens
then? The female cellule, the ovule, _preserves its individuality and
absorbs the masculine cellule, or is impregnated by it_. Thus, to use
the term "passive" in this connection is surely curiously misleading;
as well call the snake passive when, waiting motionless, it charms and
draws towards it the victim it will devour. Illustrations are apt to
mislead, nevertheless they do help us to see straight, and until we
have come to find the truth here we shall be fumbling for the grounds
of any safe conclusion as to the natural relationship of the female
and the male. I think we must take a wider view of the sexual
relationship, and conclude that the passivity of the female is not
real, but only an apparent passivity. We may even go so far as to say
that the female element has from the very first to play the more
complex and difficult, the more important part. Herein, at the very
start of life, is typified in a manner at once simple and convincing
that differentiation which divides so sharply the sexual activity of
the female from that of the male. The serious part in sex belongs to
the one who gives life, while in comparison the activity of the male
can almost be regarded as trifling. And I believe that this view will
be found to be amply supported by facts if we turn now to consider the
later and human relation of the sexes. In all cases it is the same,
the serious business in sex belongs to the woman. As it was in the
beginning, so, it seems to me, it continues to the end--it is woman
who really leads, she who in sex absorbs and uses the male.
"The passivity of the female in love," it has been said wisely by
Marro in his fine work _La Puberta_, "is the passivity of the magnet,
which in its apparent immobility is drawing the iron towards it. An
intense energy lies behind such passivity, an absorbed pre-occupation
in the end to be attained."[313] In the examples we have studied of
the courtships of birds we saw that it is by no means a universal law
that the male is eager and the female coy. I need only recall the
instance noted by Darwin[314] in which a wild duck forced her love on
a male pintail, and such cases, as is well known, are frequent.
High-bred bitches will show sudden passions for low-bred or mongrel
males. According to breeders and observers it is the female who is
always much more susceptible of sentimental selection; thus it is
often necessary to deceive mares. Among many primitive peoples it is
the woman who takes the initiative in courtship. In New Guinea, for
instance, where women hold a very independent position, "the girl is
always regarded as the seducer. 'Women steal men.' A youth who
proposed to a girl would be making himself ridiculous, would be called
a woman, and laughed at by the girls. The usual method by which a girl
proposes is to send a present to the youth by a third party, following
this up by repeated gifts of food; the young man sometimes waits a
month or two, receiving presents all the time, in order to assure
himself of the girl's constancy before decisively accepting her
advances."[315]
In the face of this, and many similar cases, it becomes an absurdity
to continue a belief in the passivity of the female as a natural law
of the sexes. Such openness of conduct in courtship is, of course,
impossible except where woman holds an entirely independent position.
Still, it would not be difficult to bring forward similar
manifestations of the initiative being taken by the woman--though
often exercised unconsciously as the expression of an instinctive
need--in the artificial courtships of highly civilised peoples. But
enough has perhaps been said; and such examples can, I doubt not, be
readily supplied by each of my readers for themselves. I will only
remark that the true nature of the passivity of the woman in courtship
is made abundantly clear from the ease with which the pretence is
thrown off in every case where the necessity arises.
Nothing is more astounding to me than this delusion that the man is
the active partner in sex. I believe, as I have once before stated,
that Bernard Shaw[316] is right here when he says that men set up the
theory to save their pride. Having taken to themselves the initiative
in all other matters, they claim the same privilege in love; and women
have acquiesced and have helped them, so that the duplicity has become
almost ineradicable. Few women are brave enough to admit this even if
they have clear sight to see the truth; they know that it is not
permitted to them to exercise openly their right of choice. They
understand that the male pride of possession--the hunter's and the
fighter's joy--must be respected. But this makes not the least
difference to the result, only to the way in which that result is
gained. So the whole of our society is filled with half-concealed
sex-snares and pitfalls set by women for the capture of men. The woman
waits _passive_! Yes, precisely, she often does. But exactly the same
may be said of the female spider when she has spun her web, from which
she knows full well the victim fly will not escape.
There is another point that must be noticed. Under our present sexual
relationships the price the woman asks from the man for her favours is
marriage as the only means of gaining permanent maintenance for
herself and for her children. Now that these economic considerations
have entered into love she has to act with a new and greater caution,
for she has to gain her own ends as well as Nature's ends. In the
matriarchal society the girl was allowed openly to pick her lover, and
forthwith he went with her. But to the modern woman, under the
patriarchal ideals, if she shows the modesty that convention requires
of her, all that is permitted is the invitation of a lowered eyelid, a
look, or perchance a touch, at one time given, at another withheld.
Now, I find it the opinion of most of my men friends that such
half-concealed encouragements, such evasions and drawings back are a
necessary part of the love-play--the woman's unconscious testing of
the fussy male. There is one friend, a doctor, who tells me that the
woman's dissimulation of her own inclination has come to be a
secondary sexual characteristic, a manifestation of the operation of
sexual selection, diluted, perhaps, and altered by civilisation, but
an essential feature in every courtship, so that the woman follows a
true and biologically valuable instinct when she temporises and
dissembles, and tests and provokes, and entices and repels. She is
proving herself and testing her lovers before she permits that awful
"merging" that no after-thought can undo.
Now, on the face of it this seems true. There is a passionate
uncertainty that all true lovers feel. It is, I think, a holding back
from the yielding up of the individual ego--an unconscious revolt from
the sacrifice claimed by the creative force before which both the
woman and the man alike are helpless agents. It is very difficult to
find the truth. Throughout Nature love only fulfils its purpose after
much expenditure of energy. But dissimulation on the side of the woman
is not, I am sure, a true or necessary incitement to love. Love, as I
see it, is a breaking down of the boundaries of oneself, the casting
aside of reserve and defences, with a necessary throwing off of every
concealment.
In our restricted society, where the sexual instincts are at once both
unnaturally repressed and unnaturally stimulated, this openness may
not be possible. Concealments and evasions may be an aid at one stage
of sex evolution. Just as the half-concealed body is often a more
powerful sensual stimulus than nudity; the less one sees, the more
does the imagination picture. But the need of such artificial
excitants speaks of the poverty of love and not of its fullness. For
most of us the strain of sensuality in our loves is very strong. To
have lived in the bonds of slavery makes us slaves, and the price that
woman has paid is the sacrifice of her purity. The feeling of shame in
love, like chastity, arose in the property value of the woman to her
owner; it is no more a part of the woman's character than of the
man's. Woman must capture her mate because the race must perish
without her travail; she is fulfilling Nature's ends, as well as her
own, whatever means she uses.
So I am certain that, as woman's right of selection is given back to
her to exercise without restraint, we shall see a freer and more
beautiful mating. With greater liberty of action she will be far
better armed with knowledge to demand a finer quality in her lovers.
Her unborn children importuning her, her choice will be guided by the
man's fitness alone, not, as now it is, by his capacity and power for
work and protection. We are only awakening to the terrible evils of
these powerful economic restraints, which now limit the woman's range
of choice. It is this wastage of the Life-force that, as I believe,
above all else has driven women into revolt.
The free power of Selection in Love! Yes; that is the true Female
Franchise. It must be regained by woman, to be used by her to ennoble
the sex relation and thereby to cleanse society of the unfit. The
means by which this most important end can be attained will be brought
about by giving woman such training and education and civic rights, as
well as the framing of such laws and changes in the rights of property
inheritance, as shall render her economically independent. Existing
marriage is a pernicious survival of the patriarchal age. The
"patriarch's" wife was significantly reckoned in the same category
with a man's "ox" and his "ass," which any other male was forbidden
"to covet." The wife was the husband's--her owner's private
property--and the curse of this dependence and the old ferocious
_potestas_ and _manus_, from which the Roman wife freed herself, are
upon women to-day. With the regaining of their economic freedom by
women--by whatever means this is to be accomplished--a truer marriage
will be brought within reach of every one, and the sexual relationship
will be freed from the jealous chains of ownership that cause such
bitter mistrusts in the wreckage of our loves.
Mating will be a much more complex affair, and yet one much more
directly in harmony with the welfare of the race. A recognition of the
pre-natal claims of the child is the new Ethic that is slowly but
surely dawning on womankind and on man. He who destroys human life,
however unfit that life may be, is remorselessly punished by society,
but the woman and man who beget diseased and imbecile children--the
necessarily unfit--are not only exonerated from sin, but applauded by
both Church and State. Could moral inconstancy go further than this?
It is only in the begetting of men that breeding from the worst stocks
may be said to be the rule. As long as in our ideas on these questions
superstition remains the guide there is nothing to hope for and much
to fear. The new ideal is only beginning, and beginning with a
tardiness that is a reproach to human foresight. But herein lies the
glad hope of the future. I place my trust in the enlightened
conscience of the economically emancipated mothers, and in the
awakened fathers, to work out some scheme of sexual salvation as will
ensure a race of sounder limb and saner intelligence than any that has
yet appeared in our civilisation.
It is woman, not man, who must fix the standard in sex. The problems
of love are linked on to the needs of the race. Nature has, as we have
seen, made various experiments as to which of the sexes was to be the
predominant partner in this relation. But the decision has been made
in the favour of the mother. She it is who has to play the chief part
in the racial life. There is no getting away from this, in spite of
the many absurdities that man has set up, as, for instance, St. Paul's
grandmotherly old Tory dogma, making "man the head of the woman."
The differences between woman and man are deep and fundamental. And,
lest there be any who fear the giving back to woman of her power, let
me say that in this change there will be no danger of unsexing, least
of all of the unsexing of woman. Nature would not permit it, even if
she in any foolishness of revolt sought such a result, for it is her
body that is the sanctuary of the race. Love and courtship will not,
indeed, be robbed of any charm, that would be fatal, but they will be
freed from the mockeries of love that have always selfishness in them,
jealous resentments and fearing distrusts--the man of the woman, not
less than the woman of the man. To-day coquetry serves not only as a
prelude to marriage, but very often serves as a substitute for it; an
escape from the payment of the sacrifices which fulfilled love claims.
There is a confusion of motives which now force women and men alike
from their service to the race. Sex must be freed from all unworthy
necessities. Courtship must be regarded, not as a game of chance, but
as the opening act in the drama of life. And the woman who comes to
know this must play her part consciously, realising in full what she
is seeking for; then, indeed, no longer will her sex be to her a light
or a saleable thing. At present economic and social injustices are
strangling millions of beautiful unborn babes.
There is another error that I would wish to clear up now. It is a
tenet of common belief that in all matters of sex-feeling and
sex-morality the woman is different from, and superior to, the man. I
find in the writings of almost all women on sex-subjects, not to speak
of popular novels, an insistence on men's grossness, with a great deal
in contrast about the soulful character of woman's love. Even so
illuminated a writer as Ellen Key emphasises this supposed trait of
the woman again and again. Another woman writer, Miss May Sinclair,
in a brilliant "Defence of Men" (_English Review_, July 1912), speaks
of "the superior virtue of women" as being "primordially and
fundamentally Nature's care." And again, woman "has monopolised virtue
at man's expense," which the writer, with the most perfect humour and
irony, though apparently quite unconscious, regards as "men's
tragedy." The woman has received the laurel crown by "Nature's
consecration of her womanhood to suffering," the man "has paid with
his spiritual prospects as she has paid with her body."
Now, from this view of the sex relationship I most utterly dissent. I
believe that any difference in virtue, even where it exists in woman,
is not fundamental, that it is against Nature's purpose that it should
be so; rather it has arisen as a pretence of necessity, because it has
been expected of her, nourished in her, and imposed on her by the
unnatural prohibitions of religious and social conventions. The female
half of life has not been pre-ordained to suffer any more than the
male half: this belief has done more to destroy the conscience of
woman than any other single error. You have only to repeat any lie
long enough to convince even yourself of its truth. But assuredly free
woman will have to yield up her martyr's crown.
I grant willingly that men often talk brutally of sex, but I am
certain that few of them think brutally. We women are so easily
deceived by the outside appearance of things. The man who calls "a
spade a spade" is not really inferior to him who terms it "an
agricultural implement for the tilling of the soil." And women also
express their sensuality in orgies of emotion, in hypocrisies of
chastity, and in many other ways that are really nothing but a subtle
sensuality disguised.
I confess that I doubt very much the existence of any special soulful
character in woman's love. I wish that I didn't. But my experience
forces me to admit that this is but another of those delusions which
woman has wrapped around herself. Of course I may be wrong. I find
Professor Forel and other distinguished psychologists lending their
support to this idol of the woman's superior sexual virtue.
Krafft-Ebing goes much further, holding "that woman is naturally and
organically frigid." It may be then that some difference does exist in
the driving force of passion in men and women. I do not know the exact
character of men's love to compare it with my own, and I hesitate to
write with that assurance of the passions of the other sex with which
they have written of mine. Yet I believe that the male receiving life
from the female is not more mindful of the physical needs of love than
the woman, though possibly she has less understanding of its joys. For
the woman with a much more complex sexual nature is carried by passion
further than the male; the continuance of life rests with her. Under
this imperative compulsion woman, if needs be, will break every
commandment in the Decalogue and suffer no remorse for having done so.
I think this seeking to give life remains a necessary element in the
loves of all women. At its lowest it will stoop to any unscrupulousness.
Bernard Shaw tells us that "if women were as fastidious as men, morally
or physically, there would be an end to the race." Perhaps this is
true. Yet I think woman's love is always different in its fundamental
essence from the excitements of the male. We throw the whole burden of
sex-desire on to men, because we have not yet faced the truth that they
are our helpless agents in carrying on Nature's most urgent work. It
has been so from the beginning, since that first primordial mating when
the hungry male-cell gained renewal of life from the female, it is so
still, I believe it will be thus to the end.
It is when we come to the emotions and actions connected with the
maternal instinct in woman that we reach the real point of the
difference between the sexes. In its essential essence this belongs to
women alone. The male may be infected with the reproduction energy (we
have witnessed this in its finest expression among birds, where the
parental duties are shared in and, in some cases, carried out entirely
by the male), but man possesses, as yet, its faint analogy only. It is
the most primary of all woman's qualities, and, being fundamental, it
is, I believe, unalterable, and any attempt to minimise its action is
very unlikely to lead to progress. It is a two-sexed world; women and
men are not alike; I hope that they never will be.
This radical truth is so plain. Yet it seems to me that in the present
confusion many women are in danger of overlooking it. We saw in an
earlier chapter how very early in the development of life it was found
by Nature's slow but certain experiments that the establishment of two
sexes in different organisms, and their differentiation, was to the
immense advantage of progress. This initial difference leads to the
functional distinctions between the female and the male, but it goes
much further than this, finding its expression in many secondary
qualities, not on the physical side alone, but on the mental and
psychical, and is, indeed, a saturating influence that determines the
entire development of the organism into the feminine or the masculine
character. Take again the fact that this dynamic action of sex has
manifested itself in a continual progress through the uncounted
centuries. Developed by love's selection, the differentiation of the
sexes increased in the evolution of species, and as the
differentiation increased the attraction also increased, until in all
the higher forms we find two markedly different sexes, strongly drawn
together by the magnetism of sex, and fulfilling together their
separate uses in the reproductive process. These are the natural
features of sex-distinction and sex-union.
The belief, therefore, is forced upon us that the characteristic
feminine and masculine characters are an inherent part of the normal
woman and man, a duality that goes back to the very threshold of
sexuality. So Nature created them, female and male created she them.
To change the metaphor, we have the woman and the man=the unit--the
race. While there is no fixing of the precise nature of this
constitutional difference between the two sexes, we may yet, broadly
speaking, reach the truth. The female, as the giver and keeper of
life, is relatively more constructive, relatively less disruptive than
the male. It is here, I believe, we touch the spring of those sex
differences, which do exist, in spite of all efforts to explain them
away between the woman and the man. It is a quality that crops up in
many diverse directions and penetrates into every expression of the
feminine character.
Now, we cannot get away from a difference so fundamental, so
primordial as this. The consecration of the woman's body as the
sanctuary of life--that perpetual payment in giving is not safely to
be altered. And this I contest against all the Feminists: the real
need of the normal woman is the full and free satisfaction of the
race-instinct. Do I then accept the subjection of the woman. Assuredly
not! To me it is manifest that it is just because of her sex-needs and
her sex-power that woman must be free. To leave such a force to be
used without understanding is like giving a weapon to a child, in
whose hands a cartridge suddenly goes off, leaving the empty and
smoking shell in his trembling hands.
It is well to remember, however, that for all women there is
conceivably no one simple rule. It is quite possible that the maternal
instincts may be overlaid and even destroyed, being replaced by others
more clearly masculine. In our artificial social state this is indeed
bound to be so. It may be regretted, but it cannot be blamed. And each
woman must be free to make her own choice; no man may safely decide
for her; she must give life gladly to be able to give it well. This is
why any effort to force maternity, even as an ideal, upon women is so
utterly absurd. To-day woman is coming slowly and hesitatingly to a
new consciousness of herself, and this at present is perhaps
preoccupying her attention. But the freed woman of to-morrow will have
no need to centre her thoughts in herself, for by that time she will
understand. There will come a day when women will no longer live in a
prison walled up with fear of love and life. And when she has done
with discovering herself and playing at conquests, she will come to
the most glorious day of all, when she will know herself for what she
is. And to those of us who see already the goal the way is surely
clear--let us work to find how best it can be made easy for all women
to love gladly and to bring forth their children in joy.
Hitherto, dating from the times of the subjection of mother-right to
father-right, the woman's insecure position, with her need of
protection during the period of motherhood, has forced her into a
state of dependence and subordination to men, which has accentuated
and made permanent that physical disadvantage which, apart from
motherhood, would scarcely exist, and even with motherhood would not
become a source of weakness, under a wiser social organisation, which,
understanding the primary importance of the mother, so arranged its
domestic and social relationships as to place its women in a position
of security. We have seen how this was done in Egypt, and how happy
were the results; we have seen, too, that among all primitive peoples
women are practically as strong as the men, and as capable in the
social duty of work. It is only under the fully established
patriarchal system, with its unequal development of the sexes, that
motherhood is a source of weakness to women. From the time that
society comes again to recognise the position of mothers and their
right as the bearers of strength to the race, not only to protection
while they are fulfilling that essential function for the community,
but to their freedom after they have fulfilled it--the same freedom
that men claim for the work they do for the community--from that time
will arise a new freedom of women which will once again unite
mother-right with father-right. This change will touch and vitally
affect many of the deepest problems of the sexual relationship and the
race.
We hear much to-day of women, and also men, being over-sexed; to me it
seems much nearer the truth to say we are wrongly sexed. It is
unquestionable that the progress of civilisation has resulted in a
markedly accentuated differentiation between the sexes, which, through
inheritance and custom, has become continually more sharply defined.
Now, up to a certain point sex differences lead to sex-attraction, but
whenever such variability--whether initiated by some natural process
or by some intentional guidance of the pressure of civilisation--is
unduly exaggerated, the way is opened up for sex-antagonism. That
this, indeed, occurs may be seen from the fact we have already
established, that an exaggerated outgrowth of the secondary sexual
characters is not really favourable to development; the species thus
differentiated being bad parents and unsocial in their conduct. The
large felines, which are often inclined to commit infanticide in their
own interests, the male turkey and other members of the gallinaceae
afford examples, and so does the female phalarope, whose maternal
instincts are completely atrophied. Another illustration may be drawn
from the debased position of the Athenian women, where the sharp
separation between the sexes led, without doubt, not only to the
debasing of the marriage relationship, but to the establishment of the
_hetairae_, and also to the common practice of homo-sexual love.
Under our present civilisation, and mainly owing to the unnatural
relation of the sexes, which has unduly emphasised certain qualities
of excessive femininity, sex-feeling has been at once over-accentuated
and under-disciplined. Thus, an extreme outward sex-attraction has
come to veil but thinly a deep inward sex-antipathy, until it seems
almost impossible that women and men can ever really understand one
another. Herein lie the roots, as I believe, of much of the brutal
treatment of women by men and the contempt in which too often they are
held. For what is the truth here? In this so-called "duel of sex,"
while woman's moral equality has not been recognised, women have
employed their sex-differences as the most effective weapon for
compassing their own ends, and men in the mass--unmindful of the truth
that love is an understanding of the contrasted natures, a solution of
the riddle--have wished to have it so. What significance arises out of
this in the so-much-lauded cry, "Woman's influence!" "By thy
submission rule," really means in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,
"Rule by sex-seduction and flattery." Yes, we women cannot burk the
truth--the seduction and flattery of man by woman is writ large over
the face of our present society, it speaks in our literature and in
our art. It is to this prostitution of love that sex-differences have
carried us.
There is, of course, nothing new in these conditions; and there have
always been times when men have rebelled against this sexual tyranny
of woman. Misogyny is an old story. It is Euripides who betrays to us
the real meaning of such revolt. In a fragment of his we read, _The
most invincible of all things is a woman!_ Men are so little sure of
themselves that they fear suffering from woman an annihilation of
their own personality. There is nothing surprising in this; rather it
is one of Nature's laws that may not be overlooked, traceable back to
that first coalescence when the female cellule absorbs the male. In
one way or another, for Nature's ends or for her own, the female will
always absorb the male--the woman the man; she is the river of life,
he but the tributary stream. Paracelsus long ago gave utterance to the
profound truth, "Woman is nearer to the world than man." Hence the
army of misogynists--a Schopenhauer, a Strindberg, a Weininger, even a
great Tolstoi, alike moved in a rebellion of disillusion, or satiety,
against the power of woman that has been turned into turbid channels
of misusage. Thence, too, the hateful Christian doctrine of the
fundamentally sinful, evil, devilish nature of woman.
This rebellion of men, and their efforts to free themselves from the
thrall of women has been of little avail. We have reached now a new
stage in the age-long conflict of the sexes--the rebellion of the
woman. There has come a time when the old cry, "Woman, what have I to
do with you?" is being changed. It is woman who is whispering to
herself and to her sisters, and, as she gains in courage, crying it
aloud, "Men, what have we to do with you? We belong to ourselves." It
is to this impasse in the confusion and antagonism of the present
moment of transition that sex-differences are bringing us.
In face of this we may well pause.
What to do is another matter. But I am mainly concerned just now in
trying to see facts clearly. And to me it often seems that woman is
in grave danger to-day of becoming intoxicated with herself. She
stands out self-affirming, postulating her own--or what she thinks to
be her own--nature. In her, perhaps too-sudden, awakening to an
entirely new existence of a free personality, an over-consciousness of
her rights has arisen, causing a confusion of her instincts, so she
fails to see the revelation begotten in her inmost self.
There is no getting away from the truth that there is this vital
organic distinction between woman and man; and further, that this
sexual difference does, and it is well that it should, find its
expression in a large number of detailed characters of femaleness and
maleness, various in value, some, perhaps, trivial, and some
important. These characters are natural in origin and natural also in
having survived ages of eliminative selection. But the point I want to
make clear is that, side by side with these fundamental differences,
have arisen in women a number of what may be called coercive
differentiations, inconsistent with, and absolutely hurtful to the
natural distinctions, being destructive to the love and understanding
of woman and man, and not less destructive to the vigour of the race.
This misdifferentiation of women, it is true, is passing, but the
progressive gain in this direction is counterbalanced by a new and
hardly less grave danger.
I am dealing here with what seems to me to be a perilous quicksand in
woman's struggle for free development. To hear many women talk it
would appear that the new ideal was a one-sexed world. A great army of
women have espoused the task of raising their sex out of subjection.
For such a duty the strength and energy of passion is required. Can
this task be performed if the woman to any extent indulges in
sex--otherwise subjection to man. Sexuality debases, even reproduction
and birth are regarded as "nauseating." Woman is not free, only
because she has been the slave to the primitive cycle of emotions
which belong to physical love. The renunciation, the conquest of
sex--it is this that must be gained. As for man, he has been shown up,
women have found him out; his long-worn garments of authority and his
mystery and glamour have been torn into shreds--woman will have none
of him.
Now obviously these are over-statements, yet they are the logical
outcome of much of the talk that one hears. It is the visible sign of
our incoherence and error, and in the measure of these follies we are
sent back to seek the truth. Women need a robuster courage in the face
of love, a greater faith in their womanhood, and in the scheme of
Life. Nothing can be gained from the child's folly in breaking the
toys that have momentarily ceased to please. The misogamist type of
woman cannot fail to prove as futile as the misogamist man. Not "Free
_from_ man" is the watch-cry of women's emancipation that surely is to
be, but "Free _with_ man."
Let us pass to a somewhat different instance--the perversion of the
natural instincts of woman which has led to the attempt to establish
what has been called a "third sex,"[317] a type of woman in whom the
sexual differences are obscured or even obliterated--a woman who is,
in fact, a temperamental neuter. Economic conditions are compelling
women to enter with men into the fierce competition of our disordered
social State. Partly due to this reason, though much more, as I think,
to the strong stirring in woman of her newly-discovered self, there
has arisen what I should like to call an over-emphasised
Intellectualism. Where sex is ignored there is bound to lurk danger.
Every one recognises the significance of the advance in particular
cases of women towards a higher intellectual individuation, and the
social utility of those women who have been truly the pioneers of the
new freedom; but this does not lessen at all the disastrous influence
of an ideal which holds up the renunciation of the natural rights of
love and activities of women, and thus involves an irreparable loss to
the race by the barrenness of many of its finest types. The
significance of such Intellectuals must be limited, because for them
the possibility of transmission by inheritance of their valuable
qualities is cut off, and hence the way is closed to a further
progress. And, thus, we are brought back to that simple truth from
which we started; there are two sexes, the female and the male, on
their specific differences and resemblances blended together in union
every true advance in progress depends--on the perfected woman and the
perfected man.
FOOTNOTES:
[313] See Havelock Ellis, "The Sexual Impulse in Woman," _Psychology
of Sex_, Vol. III. p. 181, who gives this quotation from Marro.
[314] See page 111.
[315] Haddon, "Western Tribes of Torres Straits," _Journal of the
Anthropological Society_, Vol. XIX., Feb. 1890; cited by Ellis, _op.
cit._, p. 185.
[316] See page 66.
[317] E. von Wolzogen gives this name, _The Third Sex_, to a romance
in which he describes a kind of barren, stunted woman, capable,
however, of holding her place in all work in competition with men. The
writer compares these types of women to the workers among ants and
bees. _See_ p. 62. I have quoted from Iwan Bloch, _The Sexual Life of
Our Times_, p. 13.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IX
APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING CHAPTER WITH SOME FURTHER REMARKS ON SEX
DIFFERENCES
I.--_Women and Labour_
A further examination of the sexual differences--The knowledge we
have gained does not enable us definitely to settle the
problem--The necessity of considering Nurture--Woman's
character to some extent the result of circumstance, to some
extent organic--The difficulties of the problem--Standards of
comparison--Incompleteness of our knowledge--New researches
on sex-differences--The confusion of opinions--Women and men
different, but neither superior to the other--The position of
women in society to-day--The increasing surplus of women--How
can a remedy be found?--Woman's place in the home--The
changes in modern conditions--Women and labour--The damning
struggle for life--Sweated work--Women's wages--The
marketable value of woman's sex--This the explanation of the
smallness of women's wages--The prostitute better paid than
the worker--Woman's strength as compared with man's--Are
women really the weaker sex?--Woman's work capacity equal to
man's, but different--The Spanish women--The intolerable
conditions of labour in commercial countries--Women more
deeply concerned than men--The real value of women's
work--This must be recognised by the State--The social
service of child-bearing--The primary and most important work
of women--The present revolt of women--How far is this
justifiable--A caution and some reflections.
II.--_Sexual Differences of the Mind and the Artistic Impulse in
Women_
The mental and psychical sexual differences--Ineradicability of
these--Can they be modified or disregarded?--The masculine
and feminine intellectual qualities--Caution necessary in
making any comparison--Example, a tenacious memory--Is this a
feminine characteristic?--Woman's intuition--Its value--Each
sex contributes to the thought power of the other--The
artistic impulse--Is genius to be regarded as an endowment of
the male?--An examination of the grounds for this
view--Untenability of the opinion of the greater variational
tendency of men--The question needs reopening--The influence
of environment and training on woman's mind--What woman can,
or can not, do as yet unproved--Woman's talent for
diplomacy--The separation between the mental life of the
sexes--The result on woman's mind--The revolt against
repression--Woman as she is represented in literature--The
woman of the future--Woman the cause of emotion in men--Part
played by women in early civilisations--What men learnt from
them--Woman's emotional endowment--Her affectability and
response to suggestion--These the qualities essential to
success in the arts--A comparison between the qualities of
genius and the qualities of woman--This opens up questions of
startling significance--What women may achieve in the
future--Some suggestions as to the effect of the entrance of
women into the arts.
III.--_The Affectability of Woman--Its Connection with the Religious
Impulse_
Woman's aptitude for religion--Her need for a
protection--Relation between the sexual and religious
emotions--Deprivation of love and satiety of love the sources
of religious needs--Religious prostitution--Religio-erotic
festivals--Sexual mysticism in Christianity--The lives of the
saints--Religious sexual perceptions--Their influence on the
emotional feminine character--A personal experience--The
association between love and salvation--The same sense of the
eternal in the religious and the sexual
impulse--Asceticism--Its origin in the sexual
emotions--Preoccupation of the ascetic with sex needs--The
transformation of the sex-impulse into spiritual
activities--Examples--The modern ascetic--The fear of
love--This the ultimate cause of the contempt of
woman--Example of Maupassant's priest--In love the way of
salvation.