V.

The facts stated in the foregoing chapters are familiar and undeniable,

the argument seems clear; yet the mind reacts violently from the

conclusions it is forced to admit, and tries to find relief in the

commonplace conditions of every-day life. From this looming phantom of

the over-sexed female of genus homo we fly back in satisfaction to

familiar acquaintances and relatives,—to Mrs. John Smith and Miss

Imogene Jones, to mothers and sisters and daughters and sweethearts and

wives. We feel that such a dreadful state of things cannot be true, or

we should surely have noticed it. We may even perform that acrobatic

feat so easy to most minds,—admit that the statement may be

theoretically true, but practically false!

Two simple laws of brain action are responsible for the difficulty of

convincing the human race of any large general truths concerning itself.

One is common to all brains, to all nerve sensations indeed, and is

cheerfully admitted to have nothing to do with the sexuo-economic

relation. It is this simple fact, in popular phrase,—that what we are

used to we do not notice. This rests on the law of adaptation, the

steady, ceaseless pressure that tends to fit the organism to the

environment. A nerve touched for the first time with a certain

impression feels this first impression far more than the hundredth or

thousandth, though the thousandth be far more violent than the first. If

an impression be constant and regular, we become utterly insensitive to

it, and only respond under some special condition, as the ticking of a

clock, the noise of running water or waves on the beach, even the

clatter of railroad trains, grows imperceptible to those who hear it

constantly. It is perfectly possible for an individual to become

accustomed to the most disadvantageous conditions, and fail to notice

them.

It is equally possible for a race, a nation, a class, to become

accustomed to most disadvantageous conditions, and fail to notice them.

Take, as an individual instance, the wearing of corsets by women. Put a

corset, even a loose one, on a vigorous man or woman who never wore one,

and there is intense discomfort, and a vivid consciousness thereof. The

healthy muscles of the trunk resent the pressure, the action of the

whole body is checked in the middle, the stomach is choked, the process

of digestion interfered with; and the victim says, “How can you bear

such a thing?”

But the person habitually wearing a corset does not feel these evils.

They exist, assuredly, the facts are there, the body is not deceived;

but the nerves have become accustomed to these disagreeable sensations,

and no longer respond to them. The person “does not feel it.” In fact,

the wearer becomes so used to the sensations that, when they are

removed,—with the corset,—there is a distinct sense of loss and

discomfort. The heavy folds of the cravat, stock, and neckcloth of

earlier men’s fashions, the heavy horse-hair peruke, the stiff high

collar of to-day, the kind of shoes we wear,—these are perfectly

familiar instances of the force of habit in the individual.

This is equally true of racial habits. That a king should rule because

he was born, passed unquestioned for thousands of years. That the eldest

son should inherit the titles and estates was a similar phenomenon as

little questioned. That a debtor should be imprisoned, and so entirely

prevented from paying his debts, was common law. So glaring an evil as

chattel slavery was an unchallenged social institution from earliest

history to our own day among the most civilized nations of the earth.

Christ himself let it pass unnoticed. The hideous injustice of

Christianity to the Jew attracted no attention through many centuries.

That the serf went with the soil, and was owned by the lord thereof, was

one of the foundations of society in the Middle Ages.

Social conditions, like individual conditions, become familiar by use,

and cease to be observed. This is the reason why it is so much easier to

criticise the customs of other persons or other nations than our own. It

is also the reason why we so naturally deny and resent the charges of

the critic. It is not necessarily because of any injustice on the one

side or dishonesty on the other, but because of a simple and useful law

of nature. The Englishman coming to America is much struck by America’s

political corruption; and, in the earnest desire to serve his brother,

he tells us all about it. That which he has at home he does not observe,

because he is used to it. The American in England finds also something

to object to, and omits to balance his criticism by memories of home.

When a condition exists among us which began in those unrecorded ages

back of tradition even, which obtains in varying degree among every

people on earth, and which begins to act upon the individual at birth,

it would be a miracle past all belief if people should notice it. The

sexuo-economic relation is such a condition. It began in primeval

savagery. It exists in all nations. Each boy and girl is born into it,

trained into it, and has to live in it. The world’s progress in matters

like these is attained by a slow and painful process, but one which

works to good ends.

In the course of social evolution there are developed individuals so

constituted as not to fit existing conditions, but to be organically

adapted to more advanced conditions. These advanced individuals respond

in sharp and painful consciousness to existing conditions, and cry out

against them according to their lights. The history of religion, of

political and social reform, is full of familiar instances of this. The

heretic, the reformer, the agitator, these feel what their compeers do

not, see what they do not, and, naturally, say what they do not. The

mass of the people are invariably displeased by the outcry of these

uneasy spirits. In simple primitive periods they were promptly put to

death. Progress was slow and difficult in those days. But this severe

process of elimination developed the kind of progressive person known as

a martyr; and this remarkable sociological law was manifested: that the

strength of a current of social force is increased by the sacrifice of

individuals who are willing to die in the effort to promote it. “The

blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” This is so commonly

known to-day, though not formulated, that power hesitates to persecute,

lest it intensify the undesirable heresy. A policy of “free speech” is

found to let pass most of the uneasy pushes and spurts of these stirring

forces, and lead to more orderly action. Our great anti-slavery

agitation, the heroic efforts of the “women’s rights” supporters, are

fresh and recent proofs of these plain facts: that the mass of the

people do not notice existing conditions, and that they are not pleased

with those who do. This is one strong reason why the sexuo-economic

relation passes unobserved among us, and why any statement of it will be

so offensive to many.

The other law of brain action which tends to prevent our perception of

general truth is this: it is easier to personalize than to generalize.

This is due primarily to the laws of mental development, but it is

greatly added to by the very relation under discussion. As a common law

of mental action, the power to observe and retain an individual

impression marks a lower degree of development than the power to

classify and collate impressions and make generalizations therefrom.

There are savages who can say “hot fire,” “hot stone,” “hot water,” but

cannot say “heat,” cannot think it. Similarly, they can say “good man,”

“good knife,” “good meat”; but they cannot say “goodness,” they cannot

think it. They have observed specific instances, but are unable to

collate them, to generalize therefrom. So, in our common life,

individual instances of injustice or cruelty are observed long before

the popular mind is able to see that it is a condition which causes

these things, and that the condition must be altered before the effects

can be removed. A bad priest, a bad king, a bad master, were long

observed and pointedly objected to before it began to be held that the

condition of monarchy or the condition of slavery must needs bear fruit,

and that, if we did not like the fruit, we might better change the tree.

Any slaveholder would admit that there were instances of cruelty,

laziness, pride, among masters, and of deceit, laziness, dishonesty,

among slaves. What the slaveholder did not see was that, given the

relation of chattel slavery, it inevitably tended to produce these

evils, and did produce them, in spite of all the efforts of the

individual to the contrary. To see the individual instance is easy. To

see the general cause is harder, requires a further brain development.

We, as a race, have long since reached the degree of general

intelligence which ought to enable us to judge more largely and wisely

of social questions; but here the deteriorating effect of the

sexuo-economic relation is shown.

The sex relation is intensely personal. All the functions and relations

ensuing are intensely personal. The spirit of “me and my wife, my son

John and his wife, us four, and no more,” is the natural spirit of this

phase of life. By confining half the world to this one set of functions,

we have confined it absolutely to the personal. And man that is born of

woman is reared by her in this same atmosphere of concentrated

personality, and afterward spends a large part of his life in it. This

condition tends to magnify the personal and minimize the general in our

minds, with results that are familiar to us all. The difficulty of

enforcing sanitary laws, where personal convenience must be sacrificed

to general safety, the size of the personal grievance as against the

general, the need of “having it brought home to us,” which hinders every

step of public advancement, and our eager response when it is “brought

home to us,”—these are truisms. So far as a comparison can be made,

women are in this sense more personal than men, more personally

sensitive, less willing to “stand in line” and “take turns,” less able

to see why a general restriction is just when it touches them or their

children. This is natural enough, inevitable enough, and only mentioned

here as partially explaining why people do not see the general facts as

to our over-sexed condition. Yet they are patent everywhere, not only

patent, but painful. Being used to them, we do not notice them, or,

forced to notice them, we attribute the pain we feel to the evil

behavior of some individual, and never think of it as being the result

of a condition common to us all.

If we have among us such a condition as has been stated,—a state of

morbid and excessive sex-development,—it must, of course, show itself in

daily life in a thousand ways. The non-observer, not having seen any

such manifestation, concludes that there is none, and so denies the

alleged condition,—says it sounds all right, but he does not see any

proof of it! Having clearly in mind that, if such proof exists, such

commensurate evil in common life as would naturally result from an

abnormal sex-distinction, these evils must be so common and habitual as

to pass unobserved; and, farther, that, when forced upon our notice, we

only see them as matters of personal behavior,—let us, in spite of these

hindrances, see if the visible results among us are not such as must

follow such a cause, and let us seek them merely in the phenomena of

every-day life as we know it, not in the deeper sexual or social

results.

A concrete instance, familiar as the day, and unbelievable in its ill

effects, is the attitude of the mother toward her children in regard to

the sex-relation. With very few exceptions, the mother gives her

daughter no warning or prevision of what life holds for her, and so lets

innocence and ignorance go on perpetuating sickness and sin and pain

through ceaseless generations. A normal motherhood wisely and

effectively guards its young from evil. An abnormal motherhood,

over-anxious and under-wise, hovers the child to its harm, and turns it

out defenceless to the worst of evils. This is known to millions and

millions personally. Only very lately have we thought to consider it

generally. And not yet do we see that it is not the fault of the

individual mother, but of her economic status. Because of our abnormal

sex-development, the whole field has become something of an offence,—a

thing to be hidden and ignored, passed over without remark or

explanation. Hence this amazing paradox of mothers ashamed of

motherhood, unable to explain it, and—measure this well—lying to their

children about the primal truths of life,—mothers lying to their own

children about motherhood!

The pressure under which this is done is an economic one. The girl must

marry: else how live? The prospective husband prefers the girl to know

nothing. He is the market, the demand. She is the supply. And with the

best intentions the mother serves her child’s economic advantage by

preparing her for the market. This is an excellent instance. It is

common. It is most evil. It is plainly traceable to our sexuo-economic

relation.

Another instance of so grossly unjust, so palpable, so general an evil

that it has occasionally aroused some protest even from our dull

consciousness is this: the enforced attitude of the woman toward

marriage. To the young girl, as has been previously stated, marriage is

the one road to fortune, to life. She is born highly specialized as a

female: she is carefully educated and trained to realize in all ways her

sex-limitations and her sex-advantages. What she has to gain even as a

child is largely gained by feminine tricks and charms. Her reading, both

in history and fiction, treats of the same position for women; and

romance and poetry give it absolute predominance. Pictorial art, music,

the drama, society, everything, tells her that she is _she_, and that

all depends on whom she marries. Where young boys plan for what they

will achieve and attain, young girls plan for whom they will achieve and

attain. Little Ellie and her swan’s nest among the reeds is a familiar

illustration. It is the lover on the red roan steed she planned for. It

is Lancelot riding through the sheaves that called the Lady from her

loom at Shalott: “he” is the coming world.

With such a prospect as this before her; with an organization specially

developed to this end; with an education adding every weight of precept

and example, of wisdom and virtue, to the natural instincts; with a

social environment the whole machinery of which is planned to give the

girl a chance to see and to be seen, to provide her with

“opportunities”; and with all the pressure of personal advantage and

self-interest added to the sex-instinct,—what one would logically expect

is a society full of desperate and eager husband-hunters, regarded with

popular approval.

Not at all! Marriage is the woman’s proper sphere, her divinely ordered

place, her natural end. It is what she is born for, what she is trained

for, what she is exhibited for. It is, moreover, her means of honorable

livelihood and advancement. _But_—she must not even look as if she

wanted it! She must not turn her hand over to get it. She must sit

passive as the seasons go by, and her “chances” lessen with each year.

Think of the strain on a highly sensitive nervous organism to have so

much hang on one thing, to see the possibility of attaining it grow less

and less yearly, and to be forbidden to take any step toward securing

it! This she must bear with dignity and grace to the end.

To what end? To the end that, if she does not succeed in being chosen,

she becomes a thing of mild popular contempt, a human being with no

further place in life save as an attachée, a dependant upon more

fortunate relatives, an old maid. The open derision and scorn with which

unmarried women used to be treated is lessening each year in proportion

to their advance in economic independence. But it is not very long since

the popular proverb, “Old maids lead apes in hell,” was in common use;

since unwelcome lovers urged their suit with the awful argument that

they might be the last askers; since the hapless lady in the wood prayed

for a husband, and, when the owl answered, “Who? who?” cried, “Anybody,

good Lord!” There is still a pleasant ditty afloat as to the “Three Old

Maids of Lynn,” who did not marry when they could, and could not when

they would.

The cruel and absurd injustice of blaming the girl for not getting what

she is allowed no effort to obtain seems unaccountable; but it becomes

clear when viewed in connection with the sexuo-economic relation.

Although marriage is a means of livelihood, it is not honest employment

where one can offer one’s labor without shame, but a relation where the

support is given outright, and enforced by law in return for the

functional service of the woman, the “duties of wife and mother.”

Therefore no honorable woman can ask for it. It is not only that the

natural feminine instinct is to retire, as that of the male is to

advance, but that, because marriage means support, a woman must not ask

a man to support her. It is economic beggary as well as a false attitude

from a sex point of view.

Observe the ingenious cruelty of the arrangement. It is just as humanly

natural for a woman as for a man to want wealth. But, when her wealth is

made to come through the same channels as her love, she is forbidden to

ask for it by her own sex-nature and by business honor. Hence the

millions of mismade marriages with “anybody, good Lord!” Hence the

million broken hearts which must let all life pass, unable to make any

attempt to stop it. Hence the many “maiden aunts,” elderly sisters and

daughters, unattached women everywhere, who are a burden on their male

relatives and society at large. This is changing for the better, to be

sure, but changing only through the advance of economic independence for

women. A “bachelor maid” is a very different thing from “an old maid.”

This, then, is the reason for the Andromeda position of the

possibly-to-be-married young woman, and for the ridicule and reproach

meted out to her. Since women are viewed wholly as creatures of sex even

by one another, and since everything is done to add to their young

powers of sex-attraction; since they are marriageable solely on this

ground, unless, indeed, “a fortune” has been added to their

charms,—failure to marry is held a clear proof of failure to attract, a

lack of sex-value. And, since they have no other value, save in a low

order of domestic service, they are quite naturally despised. What else

is the creature good for, failing in the functions for which it was

created? The scorn of male and female alike falls on this sexless thing:

she is a human failure.

It is not strange, therefore, though just as pitiful,—this long chapter

of patient, voiceless, dreary misery in the lives of women; and it is

not strange, either, to see the marked and steady change in opinion that

follows the development of other faculties in woman besides those of

sex. Now that she is a person as well as a female, filling economic

relation to society, she is welcomed and accepted as a human creature,

and need not marry the wrong man for her bread and butter. So sharp is

the reaction from this unlovely yoke that there is a limited field of

life to-day wherein women choose not to marry, preferring what they call

“their independence,”—a new-born, hard-won, dear-bought independence.

That any living woman should prefer it to home and husband, to love and

motherhood, throws a fierce light on what women must have suffered for

lack of freedom before.

This tendency need not be feared, however. It is merely a reaction, and

a most natural one. It will pass as naturally, as more and more women

become independent, when marriage is not the price of liberty. The fear

exhibited that women generally, once fully independent, will not marry,

is proof of how well it has been known that only dependence forced them

to marriage as it was. There will be needed neither bribe nor punishment

to force women to true marriage with independence.

Along this line it is most interesting to mark the constant struggle

between natural instinct and natural law, and social habit and social

law, through all our upward course. Beginning with the natural functions

and instincts of sex, holding her great position as selector of the best

among competing males, woman’s beautiful work is to improve the race by

right marriage. The feeling by which this is accomplished, growing finer

as we become more civilized, developes into that wide, deep, true, and

lasting love which is the highest good to individual human beings.

Following its current, we have always reverenced and admired “true

love”; and our romances, from the earliest times, abound in praise of

the princess who marries the page or prisoner, venerating the selective

power in woman, choosing “the right man” for his own sake. Directly

against this runs the counter-current, resulting in the marriage of

convenience, a thing which the true inner heart of the world has always

hated. Young Lochinvar is not an eternal hero for nothing. The

personified type of a great social truth is sure of a long life. The

poor young hero, handsome, brave, good, but beset with difficulties,

stands ever against the wealth and power of the bad man. The woman is

pulled hither and thither between them, and the poor hero wins in the

end. That he is heaped with honor and riches, after all, merely

signifies our recognition that he is the higher good. This is better

than a sun-myth. It is a race-myth, and true as truth.

So we have it among us in life to-day, endlessly elaborated and weakened

by profuse detail, as is the nature of that life, but there yet. The

girl who marries the rich old man or the titled profligate is condemned

by the popular voice; and the girl who marries the poor young man, and

helps him live his best, is still approved by the same great arbiter.

And yet why should we blame the woman for pursuing her vocation? Since

marriage is her only way to get money, why should she not try to get

money in that way? Why cast the weight of all self-interest on the

“practical” plane so solidly against the sex-interest of the individual

and of the race? The mercenary marriage is a perfectly natural

consequence of the economic dependence of women.

On the other hand, note the effect of this dependence upon men. As the

excessive sex-distinction and economic dependence of women increase, so

do the risk and difficulty of marriage increase, so is marriage deferred

and avoided, to the direct injury of both sexes and society at large. In

simpler relations, in the country, wherever women have a personal value

in economic relation as well as a feminine value in sex-relation, an

early marriage is an advantage. The young farmer gets a profitable

servant when he marries. The young business man gets nothing of the

kind,—a pretty girl, a charming girl, ready for “wifehood and

motherhood”—so far as her health holds out,—but having no economic value

whatever. She is merely a consumer, and he must wait till he can “afford

to marry.” These are instances frequent everywhere, and familiar to us

all, of the palpable effects in common life of our sexuo-economic

relation.

If there is one unmixed evil in human life, it is that known to us in

all ages, and popularly called “the social evil,” consisting of

promiscuous and temporary sex-relations. The inherent wrong in these

relations is sociological before it is legal or moral. The recognition

by the moral sense of a given thing as wrong requires that it be wrong,

to begin with. A thing is not wrong merely because it is called so. The

wrongness of this form of sex-relation in an advanced social state rests

solidly on natural laws. In the evolution of better and better means of

reproducing the species, a longer period of infancy was developed. This

longer period of infancy required longer care, and it was accordingly

developed that the best care during this time was given by both parents.

This induced a more permanent mating. And the more permanent mating,

bound together by the common interests and duties, developed higher

psychic attributes in the parents by use, in the children by heredity.

That is why society is right in demanding of its constituent individuals

the virtue of chastity, the sanctity of marriage. Society is perfectly

right, because social evolution is as natural a process as individual

evolution; and the permanent parent is proven an advantageous social

factor. But social evolution, deep, unconscious, slow, is one thing; and

self-conscious, loud-voiced society is another.

The deepest forces of nature have tended to evolve pure, lasting,

monogamous marriage in the human race. But our peculiar arrangement of

feeding one sex by the other has tended to produce a very different

thing, and has produced it. In no other animal species is the female

economically dependent on the male. In no other animal species is the

sex-relation for sale. A coincidence. Where, on the one hand, every

condition of life tends to develope sex in women, to crush out the power

and the desire for economic production and exchange, and to develope

also the age-long habit of seeking all earthly good at a man’s hands and

of making but one return; where, on the other hand, man inherits the

excess in sex-energy, and is never blamed for exercising it, and where

he developes also the age-long habit of taking what he wants from women,

for whose helpless acquiescence he makes an economic return,—what should

naturally follow? Precisely what has followed. We live in a world of

law, and humanity is no exception to it. We have produced a certain

percentage of females with inordinate sex-tendencies and inordinate

greed for material gain. We have produced a certain percentage of males

with inordinate sex-tendencies and a cheerful willingness to pay for

their gratification. And, as the percentage of such men is greater than

the percentage of such women, we have worked out most evil methods of

supplying the demand. But always in the healthy social heart we have

known that it was wrong, a racial wrong, productive of all evil. Being a

man’s world, it was quite inevitable that he should blame woman for

their mutual misdoing. There is reason in it, too. Bad as he is, he is

only seeking gratification natural in kind, though abnormal in degree.

She is not only in some cases doing this, but in most cases showing the

falseness of the deed by doing it for hire,—physical falsehood,—a sin

against nature.

It is a true instinct that revolts against obtaining bread by use of the

sex-functions. Why, then, are we so content to do this in marriage?

Legally and religiously, we say that it is right; but in its reactionary

effect on the parties concerned and on society at large it is wrong. The

physical and psychical effects are evil, though modified by our belief

that it is right. The physical and psychical effects of prostitution

were still evil when the young girls of Babylon earned their dowries

thereby in the temple of Bela, and thought it right. What we think and

feel alters the moral quality of an act in our consciousness as we do

it, but does not alter its subsequent effect. We justify and approve the

economic dependence of women upon the sex-relation in marriage. We

condemn it unsparingly out of marriage. We follow it with our blame and

scorn up to the very doors of marriage,—the mercenary bride,—but think

no harm of the mercenary wife, filching her husband’s pockets in the

night. Love sanctifies it, we say: love must go with it.

Love never yet went with self-interest. The deepest antagonism lies

between them: they are diametrically opposed forces. In the beautiful

progress of evolution we find constant opposition between the instincts

and processes of self-preservation and the instinct and processes of

race-preservation. From those early forms where birth brought death, as

in the flowering aloe, the ephemeral may-fly, up to the highest glory of

self-effacing love; these two forces work in opposition. We have tied

them together. We have made the woman, the mother,—the very source of

sacrifice through love,—get gain through love,—a hideous paradox. No

wonder that our daily lives are full of the flagrant evils produced by

this unnatural state. No wonder that men turn with loathing from the

kind of women they have made.