*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 51877 ***

Note: Images of the original pages are available through
      Internet Archive. See
      https://archive.org/details/fraudoffeminism00baxerich


Transcriber’s note:

      A row of asterisks represents a thought break.





THE FRAUD OF FEMINISM

by

E. BELFORT BAX

Author of
“Marat: the People’S Friend,” “Problems of
Man, Mind And Morals,” etc.







[Illustration]

London
Grant Richards Ltd.
MDCCCCXIII

Printed by the Riverside Press Limited
Edinburgh




CONTENTS


                                                     PAGE
  PREFACE                                               1

  INTRODUCTION                                          5

  CHAPTER
     I. HISTORICAL                                     11

    II. THE MAIN DOGMA OF MODERN FEMINISM              20

   III. THE ANTI-MAN CRUSADE                           51

    IV. ALWAYS THE “INJURED INNOCENT”                  80

     V. THE “CHIVALRY” FAKE                            98

    VI. SOME FEMINIST LIES AND FALLACIES              109

   VII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MOVEMENT                140

  VIII. THE INDICTMENT                                161




_PREFACE_


_The present volume aims at furnishing a succinct exposure of the
pretensions of the Modern Feminist Movement. It aims at presenting
the case against it with an especial view to tracking down and
gibbetting the infamous falsehoods, the conventional statements, which
are not merely perversions of the truth, but which are directly and
categorically contrary to the truth, but which pass muster by sheer
force of uncontradicted repetition. It is by this kind of bluff that
the claims of Feminism are sustained. The following is a fair example
of the statements of Feminist writers:—“As for accusing the world at
large of fatuous indulgence for womanhood in general, the idea is too
preposterous for words. The true ‘legends of the Old Bailey’ tell, not
of women absurdly acquitted, but of miserable girls sent to the gallows
for murders committed in half delirious dread of the ruthlessness of
hypocritical Society.” Now it is this sort of legend that it is one
of the chief objects of the following pages to explode. Of course the
“fatuous indulgence” for “womanhood in general,” practised by the
“world at large,” is precisely one of the most conspicuous features
of our time, and the person who denies it, if he is not deliberately
prevaricating, must be a veritable Rip van Winkle awakening out of a
sleep lasting at least two generations. Similarly the story of the
“miserable girls sent to the gallows,” etc., is, as far as living
memory is concerned, a pure legend. It is well known that in the cases
referred to of the murder of their new-born children by girls, at the
very outside a year or two’s light imprisonment is the only penalty
actually inflicted. The acquittal of women on the most serious charges,
especially where the victims are men, in the teeth of the strongest
evidence, is, on the other hand, an everyday occurrence. Now it is
statements like the above on which, as already said, the Feminist
Movement thrives; its most powerful argumentative weapon with the man
in the street is the legend that woman is oppressed by man. It is
rarely that anyone takes the trouble to refute the legend in general,
or any specific case adduced as an illustration of it. When, however,
the bluff is exposed, when the real facts of the case are laid bare to
public notice, and woman is shown, not only as not oppressed but as
privileged, up to the top of her bent, then the apostles of Feminism,
male and female, being unable to make even a plausible case out in
reply, with one consent resort to the boycott, and, by ignoring what
they cannot answer, seek to stop the spread of the unpleasant truth so
dangerous to their cause. The pressure put upon publishers and editors
by the influential Feminist sisterhood is well known._

_For the rest, it must not be supposed that this little book makes any
claim to exhaust the subject or to be a scientific treatise. It is, and
is meant to be, a popular refutation of the current arguments in favour
of Feminism, and a brief statement of the case against Feminism. Sir
Almroth Wright’s short treatise, “The Unexpurgated Case against Woman’s
Suffrage,” which deals with the question from a somewhat different
standpoint, may be consulted with advantage by the reader._

_An acknowledgment should be made to the editor of _The New Age_ for
the plucky stand made by that journal in the attempt to dam the onrush
of sentimental slush set free by the self-constituted champions of
womanhood. I have also to thank two eminent medical authorities for
reading the proofs of my second chapter._




INTRODUCTION


In the following pages it is not intended to furnish a treatise on the
evolution of woman generally or of her place in society, but simply to
offer a criticism on the theory and practice of what is known as Modern
Feminism.

By Modern Feminism I understand a certain attitude of mind towards
the female sex. This attitude of mind is often self-contradictory and
illogical. While on the one hand it will claim, on the ground of the
intellectual and moral equality of women with men, the concession of
female suffrage, and commonly, in addition thereto, the admission of
women to all professions, offices and functions of public life; on the
other it will strenuously champion the preservation and intensification
of the privileges and immunities before the law, criminal and civil, in
favour of women, which have grown up in the course of the nineteenth
century.

The above attitude, with all its inconsistencies, has at its back a
strong sex-conscious party, or sex union, as we may term it, among
women, and a floating mass of inconsequent, slushy sentiment among
men. There is more than one popular prejudice which obscures the
meaning and significance of Modern Feminism with many people. There
is a common theory, for instance, based upon what really obtained to
some extent before the prevalence of Modern Feminism, that in any case
of antagonism between the two sexes, women always take the man’s side
against the woman. Now this theory, if it ever represented the true
state of the case, has long ceased to do so.

The powerful female sex union spoken of, in the present day, exercises
such a strong pressure in the formation of public opinion among
women, that it is rapidly becoming next to impossible, even in the
most flagrant cases, where man is the victim, to get any woman to
acknowledge that another woman has committed a wrong. On the other
hand it may be noted, that the entire absence of any consciousness of
sex antagonism in the attitude of men towards women, combined with
an intensification of the old-world chivalry prescribed by tradition
towards the so-called weaker sex, exercises, if anything, an increasing
sway over male public opinion. Hence the terrific force Feminism has
obtained in the world of the early twentieth century.

It is again often supposed, and this is also a mistake, that in
individual cases of dispute between the sexes, the verdict, let
us say of a jury of men, in favour of the female prisoner or the
female litigant is solely or even mainly determined by the fact of
the latter’s good looks. This may indeed play a part; but it is easy
to show from records of cases that it is a subordinate one—that,
whatever her looks or her age may be, the verdict is given her not so
much because she is a _pretty_ woman as because she is a _woman_. Here
again the question of attractiveness may have played a more potent part
in determining male verdicts in the days before Feminist sentiment
and Feminist views had reached their present dominance. But now the
question of sex alone, of being a woman, is sufficient to determine
judgment in her favour.

There is a trick with which votaries of Feminism seek to prejudice the
public mind against its critics, and that is the “fake” that any man
who ventures to criticise the pretensions of Feminism, is actuated by
motives of personal rancour against the female sex, owing to real or
imaginary wrongs suffered by him at the hands of some member or members
of the sex. I suppose it may be possible that there are persons, not
precisely microcephalous idiots, who could be made to believe such
stuff as this in disparagement of him who ventures an independent
judgment on these questions; otherwise the conduct of Feminists in
adopting this line of argument would be incomprehensible. But we
would fain believe that the number of these feeble-minded persons,
who believe there is any connection between a man having independent
judgment enough to refuse to bend the knee to Modern Feminist dogma,
and his having quarrelled with any or all of his female friends or
relations, cannot be very numerous. As a matter of fact there is not
one single prominent exponent of views hostile to the pretensions of
what is called the “Woman’s Movement” of the present day, respecting
whom there is a tittle of evidence of his not having lived all his life
on the best of terms with his womankind. There is only one case known
of indirectly by the present writer, and that not of a prominent writer
or speaker on the subject, that would afford any plausible excuse
whatever for alleging anti-Feminist views to have been influenced by
personal motives of this kind. I am aware, of course, that Feminists,
with their usual mendacity, have made lying statements to this effect
respecting well-nigh every prominent writer on the anti-Feminist side,
in the hope of influencing the aforesaid feeble-minded members of
the public against their opponents. But a very little investigation
suffices to show in every case the impudent baselessness of their
allegations. The contemptible silliness of this method of controversy
should render it unworthy of serious remark, and my only excuse
for alluding to it is the significant sidelight it casts upon the
intellectual calibre of those who resort to it, and of the confidence
or want of confidence they have in the inherent justice of their cause
and the logical strength of their case.




CHAPTER I

HISTORICAL


The position of women in social life was for a long time a matter
of course. It did not arise as a question, because it was taken for
granted. The dominance of men seemed to derive so obviously from
natural causes, from the possession of faculties physical, moral and
intellectual, in men, which were wanting in women, that no one thought
of questioning the situation. At the same time, the inferiority of
woman was never conceived as so great as to diminish seriously, much
less to eliminate altogether, her responsibility for crimes she might
commit. There were cases, of course, such as that of offences committed
by women under coverture, in which a diminution of responsibility was
recognised and was given effect to in condonation of the offence and
in mitigation of the punishment. But there was no sentiment in general
in favour of a female more than of a male criminal. It entered into
the head of no one to weep tears of pity over the murderess of a lover
or husband rather than over the murderer of a sweetheart or wife.
Similarly, minor offenders, a female blackmailer, a female thief, a
female perpetrator of an assault, was not deemed less guilty or worthy
of more lenient treatment than a male offender in like cases. The law,
it was assumed, and the assumption was acted upon, was the same for
both sexes. The sexes were equal before the law. The laws were harsher
in some respects than now, although not perhaps in all. But there was
no special line of demarcation as regards the punishment of offences
as between men and women. The penalty ordained by the law for crime or
misdemeanour was the same for both and in general applied equally to
both. Likewise in civil suits, proceedings were not specially weighted
against the man and in favour of the woman. There was, as a general
rule, no very noticeable sex partiality in the administration of the
law.

This state of affairs continued in England till well into the
nineteenth century. Thenceforward a change began to take place. Modern
Feminism rose slowly above the horizon. Modern Feminism has two
distinct sides to it: (1) an articulate political and economic side
embracing demands for so-called rights; and (2) a sentimental side
which insists in an accentuation of the privileges and immunities which
have grown up, not articulately or as the result of definite demands,
but as the consequence of sentimental pleading in particular cases.
In this way, however, a public opinion became established, finding
expression in a sex favouritism in the law and even still more in its
administration, in favour of women as against men.

These two sides of Modern Feminism are not necessarily combined in the
same person. One may, for example, find opponents of female suffrage
who are strong advocates of sentimental favouritism towards women
in matters of law and its administration. On the other hand you may
find, though this is more rare, strong advocates of political and
other rights for the female sex, who sincerely deprecate the present
inequality of the law in favour of women. As a rule, however, the
two sides go together, the vast bulk of the advocates of “Women’s
Rights” being equally keen on the retention and extension of women’s
privileges. Indeed, it would seem as though the main object of the bulk
of the advocates of the “Woman’s Movement” was to convert the female
sex into the position of a dominant _sexe noblesse_. The two sides
of Feminism have advanced hand in hand for the last two generations,
though it was the purely sentimental side that first appeared as a
factor in public opinion.

The attempt to paint women in a different light to the traditional
one of physical, intellectual and moral inferiority to men, probably
received its first literary expression in a treatise published in
1532 by Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim entitled _De Nobilitate et
Praecellentia Feminei Sexus_ and dedicated to Margaret, Regent of
the Netherlands, whose favour Agrippa was at that time desirous of
courting. The ancient world has nothing to offer in the shape of
literary forerunners of Modern Feminism, although that industrious
collector of historical odds and ends, Valerius Maximus, relates
the story of one Afrania who, with some of her friends, created
disturbances in the Law Courts of ancient Rome in her attempt to make
women’s voices heard before the tribunals. As regards more recent
ages, after Agrippa, we have to wait till the early years of the
eighteenth century for another instance of Feminism before its time,
in an essay on the subject of woman by Daniel Defoe. But it was not
till the closing years of the eighteenth century that any considerable
expression of opinion in favour of changing the relative positions of
the sexes, by upsetting the view of their respective values, founded on
the general experience of mankind, made itself noticeable.

The names of Mary Wollstonecraft in English literature and of Condorcet
in French, will hardly fail to occur to the reader in this connection.
During the French Revolution the crazy Olympe de Gouges achieved
ephemeral notoriety by her claim for the intellectual equality of women
with men.

Up to this time (the close of the eighteenth century) no advance
whatever had been made by legislation in recognising the modern theory
of sex equality. The claims of women and their apologists for entering
upon the functions of men, political, social or otherwise, although
put forward from time to time by isolated individuals, received little
countenance from public opinion, and still less from the law. What
I have called, however, the sentimental aspect of Modern Feminism
undoubtedly did make some headway in public opinion by the end of
the eighteenth century, and grew in volume during the early years
of the nineteenth century. It effectuated in the Act passed in 1820
by the English Parliament abolishing the punishment of flogging for
female criminals. This was the first beginning of the differentiation
of the sexes in the matter of the criminal law. The parliamentary
debate on the Bill in question shows clearly enough the power that
Sentimental[15:1] Feminism had acquired in public opinion in the
course of a generation, for no proposal was made at the same time
to abolish the punishment of flogging so far as men were concerned.
Up to this time the criminal law of England, as of other countries,
made no distinction whatever between the sexes in the matter of crime
and punishment, or at least no distinction based on the principle or
sentiment of sex privilege. (A slight exception might be made, perhaps,
in the crime of “petty treason,” which distinguished the murder of a
husband by his wife from other cases of homicide.) But from this time
forward, legislation and administration have diverged farther and
farther from the principle of sex equality in this connection in favour
of female immunity, the result being that at the present day, assuming
the punishment meted out to the woman for a given crime to represent a
normal penalty, the man receives an additional increment over and above
that accorded to the crime, _for the offence of having been born a man
and not a woman_.

    [15:1] I should explain that I attach a distinct meaning to
    the word _sentimental_; as used by me it does not signify,
    as it does with most people, an excess of sentiment over
    and above what I feel myself, but a sentiment unequally
    distributed. As used in this sense, the repulsion to the
    flogging of women while no repulsion is felt to the flogging
    of men is _sentimentalism_ pure and simple. On the other hand
    the objection to flogging altogether as punishment for men
    or women could not be described as sentimentalism, whatever
    else it might be. In the same way the anti-vivisectionist’s
    aversion to “physiological” experiments on animals, if confined
    to household pets and not extended to other animals, might be
    justly described as sentimentalism; but one who objected to
    such experiments on all animals, no matter whether one agreed
    with his point of view or not, could not be justly charged
    with sentimentalism (or at least, not unless, while objecting
    to vivisection, he or she were prepared to condone other acts
    involving an equal amount of cruelty to animals).

The Original Divorce Law of 1857 in its provisions respecting costs
and alimony, constitutes another landmark in the matter of female
privilege before the law. Other measures of unilateral sex legislation
followed in the years ensuing until the present state of things, by
which the whole power of the State is practically at the disposal of
woman to coerce and oppress men. But this side of the question we
propose to deal with later on.

The present actual movement of Feminism in political and social life
may be deemed to have begun in the early sixties, in the agitation
which preceded the motion of John Stuart Mill in 1867, on the question
of conferring the parliamentary franchise upon women. This was
coincident with an agitation for the opening of various careers to
women, notably the medical faculty. We are speaking, of course, here
of Great Britain, which was first in the field in Europe, alike in the
theory and practice of Modern Feminism. But the publication by the
great protagonist of the movement, John Stuart Mill, of his book, “The
Subjection of Women,” in 1868, endowed the cause with a literary gospel
which was soon translated into the chief languages of the Continent,
and corresponding movements started in other countries. Strangely
enough, it made considerable headway in Russia, the awakening of Russia
to Western ideas having recently begun to make itself felt at the time
of which we are speaking. The movement henceforth took its place as
a permanent factor in the political and social life of this and other
countries. Bills for female suffrage were introduced every year into
the British House of Commons with, on the whole, yearly diminishing
majorities against these measures, till a few years back the scale
turned on the other side, and the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill passed
every year its second reading until 1912, when for the first time for
many years it was rejected by a small majority. Meanwhile both sides
of the Feminist movement, apart from the question of the franchise,
had been gaining in influence. Municipal franchise “on the same terms
as for men” had been conceded. Women have voted for and sat on School
Boards, Boards of Guardians, and other public bodies. Their claim to
exercise the medical profession has been not merely admitted in law but
recognised in public opinion for long past. All the advantages of an
academic career have been opened to them, with the solitary exception
of the actual conferment of degrees at Oxford and Cambridge. Such has
been the growth of the articulate and political side of the theory of
Modern Feminism.

The sentimental side of Feminism, with its practical result of the
overweighting of justice in the interests of women in the courts, civil
as well as criminal, and their practical immunity from the operation
of the criminal law when in the dock, has advanced correspondingly;
while at the same time the sword of that same criminal law is sharpened
to a razor edge against the man even accused, let alone convicted,
of any offence against the sacrosanct majesty of “Womanhood.” Such
is the present position of the Woman question in this country, which
we take as typical, in the sense that in Great Britain, to which we
may also add the United States of America and the British Colonies,
where—if possible, the movement is stronger than in the mother country
itself—we see the logical outcome of Feminist theory and sentiment.
It remains to consider the existing facts more in detail, and the
psychological bearings of that large number of persons who have been
in the recent past, and are being at the present time, influenced to
accept the dogmas of Modern Feminism and the statements of alleged
facts made by its votaries. Before doing so it behoves us to examine
the credibility of the dogmas themselves, and the nature of the
arguments used to support them and also the accuracy of the alleged
facts employed by the Feminists to stimulate the indignation of the
popular mind against the pretended wrongs of women.




CHAPTER II

THE MAIN DOGMA OF MODERN FEMINISM


We have pointed out in the last chapter that Modern Feminism has two
sides, the positive, definite, and articulate side, which ostensibly
claims equality between the sexes, the chief concern of which is
the conferring of all the rights and duties of men upon women, and
the opening up of all careers to them. The justification of these
demands is based upon the dogma, that, notwithstanding appearances
to the contrary, women are endowed by nature with the same capacity
intellectually and morally as men. We have further pointed out that
there is another side in Modern Feminism which in a vague way claims
for women immunity from criminal law and special privileges on the
ground of sex in civil law. The basis of this side of Feminism is a
sentimentalism—_i.e._ an unequally distributed sentiment in favour
of women, traditional and acquired. It is seldom even attempted to
base this sentimental claim for women on argument at all. The utmost
attempts in this direction amount to vague references to physical
weakness, and to the claim for special consideration deriving from
the old theory of the mental and moral weakness of the female sex, so
strenuously combated as out of date, when the first side of Modern
Feminism is being contended for. The more or less inchoate assumptions
of the second or sentimental side of the modern “Woman’s Movement”
amounts practically, as already stated, to a claim for women to be
allowed to commit crimes without incurring the penalties imposed by the
law for similar crimes when committed by men. It should be noted that
in practice the most strenuous advocates of the positive and articulate
side of Feminism are also the sincerest upholders of the unsubstantial
and inarticulate assumptions of the sentimental side of the same creed.
This is noticeable whenever a woman is found guilty of a particularly
atrocious crime. It is somewhat rare for women to be convicted of
such crimes at all, since the influence of sentimental Feminism with
judges and juries is sufficient to procure an acquittal, no matter how
conclusive the evidence to the contrary. Even if women are found guilty
it is usual for a virtually nominal sentence to be passed. Should,
however, a woman by any chance be convicted of a heinous crime, such
as murder or maiming, under specially aggravated circumstances, and a
sentence be passed such as would be unanimously sanctioned by public
opinion in the case of a man, then we find the whole Feminist world
up in arms. The outcry is led by self-styled upholders of equality
between the sexes, the apostles of the positive side of Feminism, who
_bien entendu_ claim the eradication of sex boundaries in political
and social life on the ground of women being of equal capacity with
men, but who, when moral responsibility is in question, conveniently
fall back on a sentiment, the only conceivable ground for which is to
be found in the time-honoured theory of the mental and moral weakness
of the female sex. As illustrations of the truth of the foregoing, the
reader may be referred to the cases of Florence Doughty in 1906, who
shot at and wounded a solicitor with whom she had relations, together
with his son; to Daisy Lord in 1908, for the murder of her new-born
child; to the case of the Italian murderess, Napolitano in Canada,
convicted of the cold-blooded butchery of her husband in his sleep
in 1911, for whose reprieve a successful agitation was got up by the
suffrage societies!

Let us first of all consider the dogma at the basis of the positive
side of Modern Feminism, which claims rational grounds of fact and
reason for itself, and professes to be able to make good its case
by virtue of such grounds. This dogma consists in the assertion of
equality in intellectual capacity, in spite of appearances to the
contrary, of women with men. I think it will be admitted that the
articulate objects of Modern Feminism, taking them one with another,
rest on this dogma, and on this dogma alone. I know it has been argued
as regards the question of suffrage, that the demand does not rest
solely upon the admission of equality of capacity, since men of a
notoriously inferior mental order are not excluded from voting upon
that ground, but the fallacy of this last argument is obvious. In
all these matters we have to deal with averages. Public opinion has
hitherto recognised the average of women as being intellectually below
the voting standard, and the average man as not. This, if admitted,
is enough to establish the anti-suffrage thesis. The latter is not
affected by the fact that it is possible to find certain individual men
of inferior intelligence and therefore less intrinsically qualified
to form a political judgment than certain specially gifted women.
The pretended absurdity of “George Eliot having no vote, and of her
gardener having one” is really no absurdity at all. In the first place,
given the economic advantages which conferred education upon the
novelist, and not upon the gardener, there is not sufficient evidence
available that his judgment in public affairs might not have been even
superior to that of George Eliot herself. Moreover, the possession
of exceptionally strong imaginative faculty, expressing itself as
literary genius or talent in works of fiction, does not necessarily
imply exceptional power of political judgment. But, be this as it may,
where averages are in question, exceptions obviously do not count.

The underlying assumption of the suffrage movement may therefore be
taken to be the average equality of the sexes as regards intellectual
value.[24:1]

    [24:1] I believe there are some Feminist fanatics who pretend
    to maintain the superiority of the female mind, but I doubt
    whether this thesis is taken seriously even by those who put it
    forward. In any case there are limits to the patent absurditie
    which it is worth while to refute by argument.

An initial difficulty exists in proving theoretically the intellectual
inferiority of women to men, or even their relative unsuitability for
fulfilling functions involving a special order of judgment. There are
such things as matters of fact which are open to common observation
and which none think of denying or calling in question unless they
have some special reason for doing so. Now it is always possible to
deny a fact, however evident it may be to ordinary perception, and it
is equally impossible to prove that the person calling in question
the aforesaid evident fact is either lying (or shall we say is
“prevaricating”), or even that he is a person hopelessly abnormal in
his organs of sense-perception.

At the time of writing, the normal person who has no axe to grind in
maintaining the contrary, declares the sun to be shining brightly,
but should it answer the purpose of anyone to deny this obvious fact,
and declare that the day is gloomy and overcast, there is no power of
argument by which I can prove that I am right and he is wrong. I may
point to the sun, but if he chooses to affirm that he doesn’t see it I
can’t prove that he does. This is, of course, an extreme case, scarcely
likely to occur in actual life. But it is in essence similar to those
cases of persons (and they are not seldom met with) who, when they
find facts hopelessly destructive of a certain theoretical position
adopted by them, do not hesitate to cut the knot of controversy in
their own favour by boldly denying the inconvenient facts. One often
has experience of this trick of controversy in discussing the question
of the notorious characteristics of the female sex. The Feminist driven
into a corner endeavours to save his face by flatly denying matters
open to common observation and admitted as obvious by all who are not
Feminists. Such facts are the pathological mental condition peculiar to
the female sex, commonly connoted by the term hysteria; the absence,
or at best the extremely imperfect development of the logical faculty
in most women; the inability of the average woman in her judgment of
things to rise above personal considerations; and, what is largely a
consequence of this, the lack of a sense of abstract justice and fair
play among women in general. The aforesaid peculiarities of women,
as women, are, I contend, matters of common observation and are only
disputed by those persons—to wit Feminists—to whose theoretical
views and practical demands their admission would be inconvenient if
not fatal. Of course these characterisations refer to averages, and
they do not exclude partial or even occasionally striking exceptions.
It is possible, therefore, although perhaps not very probable, that
individual experience may in the case of certain individuals play a
part in falsifying their general outlook; it is possible—although,
as I before said not perhaps very probable—that any given man’s
experience of the other sex has been limited to a few quite exceptional
women and that hence his particular experience contradicts that of
the general run of mankind. In this case, of course, his refusal to
admit what to others are self-evident facts would be perfectly _bona
fide_. The above highly improbable contingency is the only refuge for
those who would contend for sincerity in the Feminist’s denials. In
this matter I only deal with the male Feminist. The female Feminist is
usually too biassed a witness in this particular question.

Now let us consider the whole of the differentiations of the
mental character between man and woman in the light of a further
generalisation which is sufficiently obvious in itself and which has
been formulated with special clearness by the late Otto Weininger in
his remarkable book, “Geschlecht und Charakter” (Sex and Character). I
refer to the observations contained in Section II., Chaps. 2 and 3. The
point has been, of course, previously noted, and the present writer,
among others, has on various occasions called special attention to it.
But its formulation and elaboration by Weininger is the most complete
I know. The truth in question consists in the fact, undeniable to all
those not rendered impervious to facts by preconceived dogma, that,
as I have elsewhere put it, while man _has_ a sex, woman _is_ a sex.
Let us hear Weininger on this point. “Woman is _only_ sexual, man is
_also_ sexual. Alike in time and space this difference may be traced
in man, parts of his body susceptible to sexual excitement are small
in number and strictly localised. In woman sexuality is diffused over
the whole body, every contact on whatever part excites her sexually.”
Weininger points out that while the sexual element in man, owing to
the physiological character of the sexual organs, may be at times more
violent than that in woman, yet that it is spasmodic and occurs in
crises separated by intervals of quiescence. In woman, on the other
hand, while less spasmodic, it is continuous. The sexual instinct with
man being, as he styles it, “an appendix” and no more, he can raise
himself mentally entirely outside of it. “He is conscious of it as
of something which he possesses but which is not inseparate from the
rest of his nature. He can view it objectively. With woman this is
not the case; the sex element is part of her whole nature. Hence, it
is not as with man, clearly recognisable in local manifestations, but
subtly affects the whole life of the organism. For this reason the
man is conscious of the sexual element within him as such, whereas
the woman is unconscious of it as such. It is not for nothing that
in common parlance woman is spoken of as ‘the sex.’ In this sexual
differentiation of the whole life-nature of woman from man, deducible
as it is from physiological and anatomical distinctions, lies the
ground of those differentiations of function which culminate in the
fact that while mankind in its intellectual, moral and technical
development is represented in the main by Man, Woman has continued
to find her chief function in the direct procreation of the race.”
A variety of causes, notably modern economic development, in their
effect on family life, also the illegitimate application of the modern
democratic notion of the equality of classes and races, to that of sex,
has contributed to the modern revolt against natural sex limitations.

Assuming the substantial accuracy of the above statement of fact, the
absurdity and cheapness of the clap-trap of the modern “social purity”
monger, as to having one and the same sexual morality for both sexes
will be readily seen. The recognition of the necessity of admitting
greater latitude in this respect to men than to women is based clearly
on physiology and common-sense. With men sexual instinct manifests
itself locally, and at intervals its satisfaction is an urgent and
pressing need. With woman this is not so. Hence the recognised
distinction between the sexes in this respect is, as far as it goes,
a thoroughly sound one. Not that I am championing the severity of
the restrictions of the current sexual code as regards women. On the
contrary, I think it ought to be and will be, in a reasonable society
of the future, considerably relaxed. I am only pointing out that the
urgency is not so great in the one case as in the other. And this fact
it is which has led to the toleration of a stringency, originally
arising mainly from economic causes (questions of inheritance and
the like), in the case of women, which would not have been tolerated
in that of men, even had similar reasons for its adoption in their
case obtained. Any successful attempt of social purity mongers to run
counter to physiology in enforcing either by legislation or public
opinion the same stringency on men in this respect as on women could
but have the most disastrous consequences to the health and well-being
of the community.

It was a saying of the late Dr Henry Maudsley: “_Sex lies deeper than
culture_.” By this we may understand to be meant that sex differences
are organic. All authorities on the physiological question are agreed
that woman is less well-organised, less well-developed, than man. Dr
de Varigny asserts that this fact is traceable throughout the whole
female organism, throughout all its tissues, and all its functions. For
instance, the stature of the human female is less than that of the man
in all races. As regards weight there is a corresponding difference.
The adult woman weighs, on the average, rather more than 11 lbs. less
than the man; moreover as a rule a woman completes her growth some
years earlier than a man. The bones are lighter in the woman than
in the man; not absolutely but in proportion to the weight of the
body. They are, it is stated, not merely thinner but more fragile.
The difference may be traced even to their chemical composition. The
whole muscular development is inferior in woman to that in man by
about one-third. The heart in woman is smaller and lighter than in
man—being about 10½ oz. in man as against slightly over 8 oz. in
woman. In the woman the respiratory organs show less chest and lung
capacity. Again, the blood contains a considerably less proportion of
red to white corpuscles. Finally, we come to the question of the size
and constitution of the brain. (It should be observed that all these
distinctions of sex show themselves more or less from birth onwards.)

Specialists are agreed that at all ages the size of the brain of woman
is less than that of man. The difference in relative size is greater in
proportion according to the degree of civilisation. This is noteworthy,
as it would seem as though the brain of man grew with the progress of
civilisation, whereas that of woman remains nearly stationary. The
average proportion as regards size of skull between the woman and man
of to-day is as 85 to 100. The weight of brain in woman varies from
38½ oz. to 45½ oz.; in man, from 42 oz. to 49 oz. This represents the
absolute difference in weight, but, according to Dr de Varigny, the
relative weight—_i.e._ the weight in proportion to that of the whole
body—is even more striking in its indication of inferiority. The
weight of the brain in woman is but one-forty-fourth of the weight of
the body, while in man it is one-fortieth. This difference accentuates
itself with age. It is only 7 per cent. in favour of man between twenty
and thirty years; it is 11 per cent. between thirty and forty years.
As regards the substance of the brain itself and its convolutions,
the enormous majority of physiologists are practically unanimous
in declaring that the female brain is simpler and smoother, its
convolutions fewer and more superficial than those of the male brain,
that the frontal lobes, generally associated with the intellectual
faculties, are less developed than the occipital lobes, which are
universally connected with the lower psychological functions. The grey
substance is poorer and less abundant in woman than in man, while
the blood vessels of the occipital region are correspondingly fuller
than those supplying the frontal lobes. In man the case is exactly
the reverse. It cannot be denied by any sane person familiar with
the barest elements of physiology that the whole female organism is
subservient to the functions of child-bearing and lactation, which
explains the inferior development of those organs and faculties which
are not specially connected with this supreme end of Woman.

It is the fashion of Feminists, ignoring these fundamental
physiological sex differences, to affirm that the actual inferiority
of women, where they have the honesty to admit such an obvious fact,
is accountable by the centuries of oppression in which Woman has been
held by wicked and evil-minded Man. The absurdity of this contention
has been more than once pointed out. Assuming its foundation in fact,
what does it imply? Clearly that the girls inherit only through their
mothers and boys only through their fathers, an hypothesis plainly at
variance with the known facts of heredity. Yet those who maintain that
distinction of intelligence, etc., between the sexes are traceable to
external conditions affecting one sex only and inherited through that
sex alone, cannot evade the above assumption. Those, therefore, who
regard it as an article of their faith that Woman would show herself
not inferior in mental power to man, if only she had the chance of
exercising that power, must find a surer foundation for their opinion
than this theory of the centuries of oppression, under which, as they
allege, the female sex has laboured.

We now come to the important question of morbid and pathological
mental conditions to which the female sex is liable and which are
usually connected with those constitutional disturbances of the
nervous system which pass under the name of _hysteria_. The word
is, as everyone knows, derived from _hystera_—_the womb_, and was
uniformly regarded by the ancients as directly due to disease of the
_uterus_, this view maintaining itself in modern medicine up till
well-nigh the middle of the nineteenth century. Thus Dr J. Mason Good
(in his “Study of Medicine,” 1822, vol. iii., p. 528, an important
medical text-book during the earlier half of the nineteenth century)
says: “With a morbid condition of this organ, hysteria is in many
instances very closely connected, though it is going too far to say
that it is always dependent upon such condition, for we meet with
instances, occasionally, in which no possible connexion can be traced
between the disease and the organ,” etc. This is perhaps the first
appearance, certainly in English medicine, of doubts being thrown on
the uterine origin of the various symptoms grouped under the general
term, _hysteria_. Towards the latter part of the nineteenth century
the prevalent view tended more and more to dissociate hysteria from
uterine trouble. Lately, however, some eminent pathologists have shown
a tendency to qualify the terms of the latter view. Thus Dr Thomas
Stevenson in 1902 admits that “it [hysteria] frequently accompanies
a morbid state of the uterus,” especially where inflammation and
congestion are present, and it is not an uncommon thing for surgeons at
the present time to remove the ovaries in obstinate cases of hysteria.
On the other hand Dr Thomas Buzzard, in an article on the subject in
Quain’s _Dictionary of Medicine_, 1902, states that hysteria is only
exceptionally found in women suffering from diseases of the genital
organs, and its relation to uterine and ovarian disturbances is
probably neither more nor less than that which pertains to the other
affections of the nervous system which may occur without any obvious
material cause. Dr Thomas Luff (“Text-Book on Forensic Medicine,”
1895) shows that the derangements of the reproductive functions are
undoubtedly the cause of various attacks of insanity in the female.
Dr Savage, in his book “On Neuroses,” says that acute mania in women
occurs most frequently at the period of adult and mature life, and
may occasionally take place at either extreme age. Acute mania
sometimes occurs at the suppression of the _menses_. The same is true
of melancholia and other pathological mental symptoms. Dr Luff states
that acute mania may replace hysteria; that this happens at periods
such as puberty, change of life and menstruation. These patients in the
intervals of their attacks are often morbidly irritable or excitable,
but as time goes on their energies become diminished and their emotions
blunted (“Forensic Medicine,” ii. 307). Such patients are often seized
with a desire to commit violence; they are often very mischievous,
tearing up clothes, breaking windows, etc. In this mental disorder
the patient is driven by a morbid and uncontrollable impulse to such
acts. It is not accompanied by delusions, and frequently no change
will have been noticed in the individual prior to the commission of
the act, and consequently, says Dr Luff, “there is much difference
of opinion as to the responsibility of the individual” (ii. 297).
Among the acts spoken of Dr Luff mentions a propensity to set fire
to furniture, houses, etc. All this, though written in 1895, might
serve as a commentary on the Suffragette agitation of recent years.
The renowned French professor, Dr Paul Janet (“Les Hysteriques,” 1894)
thus defined hysteria: “Hysteria is a mental affection belonging to
the large group of diseases due to cerebral weakness and debility.
Its physical symptoms are somewhat indefinite, consisting chiefly
in a general diminution of nutrition. It is largely characterised
by moral symptoms, chief of which is an impairment of the faculty
of psychological synthesis, an abolition and a contraction of the
field of consciousness. This manifests itself in a peculiar manner
and by a certain number of elementary phenomena. Thus sensations and
images are no longer perceived, and appear to be blotted out from the
individual perception, a tendency which results in their persistent
and complete separation from the personality in some cases and in the
formation of many independent groups. This series of psychological
facts alternate the one with the other or co-exist. Finally this
synthetic defect favours the formation of certain independent ideas,
which develop complete in themselves, and unattached from the control
of the consciousness of the personality. These ideas show themselves
in affections possessing very various and unique characteristics.”
According to Mr A. S. Millar, F.R.C.S.E. (_Encyclopædia Medica_, vol.
v.), “Hysteria is that . . . condition in which there is imagination,
imitation, or exaggeration. . . . It occurs mostly in females and
persons of nervous temperament, and is due to some nervous derangement,
which may or may not be pathological.” Sir James Paget (“Clinical
Lectures on Mimicry”) says also that hysterical patients are mostly
females of nervous temperament. “They think of themselves constantly,
are fond of telling everyone of their troubles and thus court sympathy,
for which they have a morbid craving. Will power is deficient in one
direction, though some have it very strongly where their interests are
concerned.” He thinks the term “hysteria” in the sense now employed
incorrect, and would substitute “mimicry.” “The will should be
controlled by the intellect,” observes Dr G. F. Still of King’s College
Hospital, “rather than by the emotions and the lack of this control
appears to be at the root of some, at least, of the manifestations of
hysteria.”

Dr Thomas Buzzard, above mentioned, thus summarises the mental
symptoms: “The intelligence may be apparently of good quality, the
patient evincing sometimes remarkable quickness of apprehension; but
carefully tested it is found to be wanting in the essentials of the
highest class of mental power. The memory may be good, but the judgment
is weak and the ability to concentrate the attention for any length
of time upon a subject is absent. So also regard for accuracy, and
the energy necessary to ensure it in any work that is undertaken, is
deficient. The emotions are excited with undue readiness and when
aroused are incapable of control. Tears are occasioned not only by
pathetic ideas but by ridiculous subjects and peals of laughter may
incongruously greet some tragic announcement, or the converse may
take place. The ordinary signs of emotion may be absent and replaced
by an attack of syncope, convulsion, pain or paralysis. Perhaps more
constant than any other phenomenon in hysteria is a pronounced desire
for the sympathy and interest of others. This is evidently only one of
the most characteristic qualities of femininity, uncontrolled by the
action of the higher nervous centres which in a healthy state keep it
in subjection. There is very frequently not only a deficient regard
for truthfulness, but a proneness to active deception and dishonesty.
So common is this, that the various phases of hysteria are often
assumed to be simple examples of voluntary simulation and the title of
disease refused to the condition. But it seems more reasonable to refer
the symptoms to impairment of the highly complex nervous processes
which form the physiological side of the moral faculties” (Quain’s
_Dictionary of Medicine_, 1902).

“It is not uncommon to find hysteria in females accompanied by an
utter indifference and insensibility to sexual relations. Premature
cessation of ovulation is a frequent determining cause. In cases where
the ovaries are absent the change from girl to woman, which normally
takes place at puberty, does not occur. The girl grows but does not
develop, a masculine appearance supervenes, the voice becomes manly
and harsh, sexual passion is absent, the health remains good. The most
violent instances of hysteria are in young women of the most robust and
masculine constitution” (John Mason Good, M.D., “Study of Medicine,”
1822). Other determining causes are given, as painful impressions,
long fasting, strong emotions, imitation, luxury, ill-directed
education and unhappy surroundings, celibacy, where not of choice
but enforced by circumstances, unfortunate marriages, long-continued
trouble, fright, worry, overwork, disappointment and such like nervous
perturbations, all which causes predispose to hysteria. “It attacks
childless women more frequently than mothers and particularly young
widows,” and, says Dr J. Mason Good, “more especially still those who
are constitutionally inclined to that morbid salacity which has often
been called nymphomania . . . the surest remedy is a happy marriage”
(“Study of Medicine,” 1822, iii. 531). Hysteria is, in common with
other nervous disorders, essentially a hereditary malady, and Briquet
(“Traité de l’hysterie,” 1899) gives statistics to show that in nine
cases out of ten hysterical parents have hysterical children. Dr Paul
Sainton of the Faculty of Medicine, Paris, says: “The appearance of
a symptom of hysteria generally proves that the malady has already
existed for some time though latent. The name of a provocative agent of
hysteria is given to any circumstance which suddenly reveals the malady
but the real cause of the disorder is a hereditary disposition. If the
real cause is unique, the provocative agents are numberless. The moral
emotions, grief, fright, anger and other psychic disturbances are the
most frequent causes of hysterical affections and in every walk of life
subjects are equally liable to attacks.”

Hysteria may appear at any age. It is common with children, especially
during the five or six years preceding puberty. Of thirty-three cases
under twelve years which came under Dr Still’s notice, twenty-three
were in children over eight years. Hysteria in women is most frequent
between the ages of fifteen and thirty, and most frequently of all
between fifteen and twenty. As a rule there is a tendency to cessation
after the “change.” It frequently happens, however, that the disease is
continued into an advanced period of life.

“There is a constant change,” says Professor Albert Moll (“Das nervöse
Weib,” p. 165), “from a cheerful to a depressed mood. From being free
and merry the woman in a short time becomes sulky and sad. While a
moment before she was capable of entertaining a whole company without
pause, talking to each member about that which interested him, shortly
afterwards she does not speak a word more. I may mention the well-worn
example of the refusal of a new hat as being capable of converting
the most lively mood into its opposite. The weakness of will shows
itself here in that the nervous woman [by “nervous” Dr Moll means
what is commonly termed “hysterical”] cannot, like the normal one,
command the expression of her emotions. She can laugh uninterruptedly
over the most indifferent matter until she falls into veritable
laughing fits. The crying fits which we sometimes observe belong to
the same category. When the nervous woman is excited about anything
she exhibits outbreaks of fury wanting all the characteristics of
womanhood, and she is not able to prevent these emotional outbursts.
In the same way just as the emotions weaken the will and the woman
cannot suppress this or that action, it is noticeable in many nervous
women that quite independently of these emotions there is a tendency
to continuous alterations in their way of acting. It has been noticed
as characteristic of many nervous persons that their only consistency
lies in their inconsistency. But this must in no way be applied to all
nervous persons. On this disposition, discoverable in the nature of
so many nervous women, rests the craving for change as manifested in
the continual search for new pleasures, theatres, concerts, parties,
tours, and other things (p. 147). Things that to the normal woman are
indifferent or to which she has, in a sense, accustomed herself, are
to the nervous woman a source of constant worry. Although she may
perfectly well know that the circumstances of herself and her husband
are the most brilliant and that it is unnecessary for her to trouble
herself in the least about her material position as regards the future,
nevertheless the idea of financial ruin constantly troubles her. Thus
if she is a millionaire’s wife she never escapes from constant worry.
Similarly the nervous woman creates troubles out of things that are
unavoidable. If in the course of years she gets more wrinkles, and
her attraction for man diminishes, this may easily become a source of
lasting sorrow for the nervous woman.”

We now have to consider a point which is being continually urged by
Feminists in the present day when confronted with the pathological
mental symptoms so commonly observed in women which are usually
regarded as having their origin in hysteria. We often hear it said by
Feminists in answer to arguments based on the above fact: “Oh, but
men can also suffer from hysteria!” “In England,” says Dr Buzzard,
“hysteria is comparatively rarely met with in males, the female sex
being much more prone to the affection.” The proportion of males
to females in hysteria is, according to Dr Pitrè (“Clinical Essay
on Hysteria,” 1891), 1 to 3; according to Bodensheim, 1 to 10; and
according to Briquet, 1 to 20. The author of the article on Hysteria in
_The Encyclopædia Britannica_ (11th edition, 1911) also gives 1 to 20
as the numerical proportion between male and female cases. Dr Pitrè,
in the work above cited, gives 82 per cent. of cases of convulsions in
women as against 22 in men. But in all this, under the concept hysteria
are included, and indeed chiefly referred to, various physical symptoms
of a convulsive and epileptic character which are quite distinct from
the mental conditions rightly or wrongly connected, or even identified,
with hysteria in the popular mind, and by many medical authorities.
But even as regards hysteria in the former sense of the word, a sharp
line of distinction based on a diagnosis of cases was long ago drawn
by medical men between _hysteria masculina_ and _hysteria fœminina_,
and in the present day eminent authorities—_e.g._ Dr Bernard
Holländer—would deny that the symptoms occasionally diagnosed as
hysteria in men are identical with or due to the same causes as the
somewhat similar conditions known in women under the name.

After all, this whole question in its broader bearings is more a
question of common-sense observation than one for medical experts.

What we are here chiefly concerned with as “hysteria” (in accordance
with popular usage of the term) are certain pathological mental
symptoms in women open to everybody’s observation, and denied by no one
unprejudiced by Feminist views. Every impartial person has only to cast
his eye round his female acquaintance, and to recall the various women,
of all classes, conditions and nationalities, that he may have come in
contact with in the course of his life, to recognise those symptoms
of mental instability commonly called hysterical, as obtaining in at
least a proportion of one to every four or five women he has known, in
a marked and unmistakable degree. The proportion given is, in fact,
stated in an official report to the Prussian Government issued some ten
years back as that noticeable among female clerks, post office servants
and other women employed in the Prussian Civil Service. Certainly as
regards women in general, the observation of the present writer, and
others whom he has questioned on the subject, would seem to indicate
that the proportions given in the Prussian Civil Service report as
regards the number of women afflicted in this way are rather under than
over stated.[44:1] There are many medical men who aver that no woman
is entirely free from such symptoms at least immediately before and
during the menstrual period. The head surgeon at a well-known London
hospital informed a friend of mine that he could always tell when this
period was on or approaching with his nurses, by the mental change
which came over them.

    [44:1] The insanities mentioned above are the extremes. There
    are mental disturbances of less severity constantly occurring
    which are connected with the regular menstrual period as
    well as with disordered menstruation, with pregnancy, with
    parturition, with lactation, and especially with the change of
    life.

Now these pathological symptoms noticeable in a slight and more or
less unimportant degree in the vast majority, if not indeed in all
women, and in a marked pathological degree in a large proportion of
women, it is scarcely too much to say do not occur at all in men. I
have indeed known, I think, two men, and only two, in the course of my
life, exhibiting mental symptoms analogous to those commonly called
“hysterical” in women. On the other hand my own experience, and it is
not alone, is that very few women with whom I have come into more or
less frequent contact, socially or otherwise, have not at times shown
the symptoms referred to in a marked degree. If, therefore, we are to
admit the bare possibility of men being afflicted in a similar way it
must be conceded that such cases represent such _raræ aves_ as to be
negligible for practical purposes.

A curious thing in pronounced examples of this mental instability in
women is that the symptoms are often so very similar in women of quite
different birth, surroundings and nationality. I can recall at the
present moment three cases, each different as regards birth, class, and
in one case nationality, and yet who are liable to develop the same
symptoms under the influence of quite similar _idées fixes_.

But it seems hardly necessary to labour the point in question at
greater length. The whole experience of mankind since the dawn of
written records confirmed by, as above said, that of every living
person not specially committed to the theories of Modern Feminism,
bears witness alike to the prevalence of what we may term the
hysterical mind in woman and to her general mental frailty. It is not
for nothing that women and children have always been classed together.
This view, based as it is on the unanimous experience of mankind and
confirmed by the observation of all independent persons, has, I repeat,
not been challenged before the appearance of the present Feminist
Movement and hardly by anyone outside the ranks of that movement.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is not proposed here to dilate at length on the fact, often before
insisted upon, of the absence throughout history of the signs of
genius, and, with a few exceptions, of conspicuous talent, in the
human female, in art, science, literature, invention or “affairs.”
The fact is incontestable, and if it be argued that this absence in
women, of genius or even of a high degree of talent, is no proof of
the inferiority of the average woman to the average man the answer is
obvious.

Apart from conclusive proof, the fact of the existence in all periods
of civilisation, and even under the higher barbarism, of exceptionally
gifted men, and never of a correspondingly gifted woman, does
undoubtedly afford an indication of inferiority of the average woman as
regards the average man. From the height of the mountain peaks we may,
other things equal, undoubtedly conclude the existence of a tableland
beneath them in the same tract of country whence they arise. I have
already, in the present chapter, besides elsewhere, referred to the
fallacy that intellectual or other fundamental inferiority in woman
existing at the present day is traceable to any alleged repression in
the past, since (Weissmann and his denial of transmission of acquired
characteristics apart), assuming for the sake of the argument such
repression to have really attained the extent alleged, and its effects
to have been transmitted to future generations, it is against all
the laws of heredity that such transmission should have taken place
_through the female line alone_, as is contended by the advocates of
this theory. Referring to this point, Herbert Spencer has expressed the
conviction of most scientific thinkers on the subject when he declares
a difference between the mental powers of men and women to result
from “a physiological necessity, and [that] no amount of culture can
obliterate it.” He further observes (the passages occur in a letter of
his to John Stuart Mill) that “the relative deficiency of the female
mind is in just those most complex faculties, intellectual and moral,
which have political action for their sphere.”

One of the points as regards the inferiority of women which Feminists
are willing and even eager to concede, and it is the only point of
which this can be said, is that of physical weakness. The reason why
they should be particularly anxious to emphasise this deficiency
in the sex is not difficult to discern. It is the only possible
semblance of an argument which can be plausibly brought forward to
justify female privileges in certain directions. It does not really
do so, but it is the sole pretext which they can adduce with any
show of reason at all. Now it may be observed (1) that the general
frailty of woman would militate _coetaris paribus_, against their own
dogma of the intellectual equality between the sexes; (2) that this
physical weakness is more particularly a muscular weakness, since
constitutionally the organism of the human female has enormous power
of resistance and resilience, in general, far greater than that of man
(see below, pp. 125-128). It is a matter of common observation that the
average woman can pass through strains and recover in a way few men
can do. But as we shall have occasion to revert to these two points at
greater length later on, we refrain from saying more here.

How then, after consideration, shall we judge of the Feminist
thesis, affirmed and reaffirmed, insisted upon by so many as an
incontrovertible axiom, that woman is the equal, intellectually
and morally, if not physically, of man? Surely that it has all the
characteristics of a true dogma. Its votaries might well say with
Tertullian, _credo quia absurdum_. It contradicts the whole experience
of mankind in the past. It is refuted by all impartial observation in
the present. The facts which undermine it are seriously denied by none
save those committed to the dogma in question. Like all dogmas, it is
supported by “bluff.” In this case the “bluff” is to the effect that
it is the “part, mark, business, lot” (as the Latin grammars of our
youth would have had it) of the “advanced” man who considers himself up
to date, and not “Early Victorian,” to regard it as unchallengeable.
Theological dogmas are backed up by the bluff of authority, either
of scriptures or of churches. This dogma of the Feminist cult is not
vouchsafed by the authority of a Communion of saints but by that of
the Communion of advanced persons up to date. Unfortunately dogma does
not sit so well upon the community of advanced persons up to date—who
otherwise profess to, and generally do, bring the tenets they hold
to the bar of reason and critical test—as it does on a church or
community of saints who suppose themselves to be individually or
collectively in communication with wisdom from on high. Be this as
it may, the “advanced man” who would claim to be “up to date” has to
swallow this dogma and digest it as best he can. He may secretly, it is
true, spew it out of his mouth, but in public, at least, he must make a
pretence of accepting it without flinching.




CHAPTER III

THE ANTI-MAN CRUSADE


We have already pointed out that Modern Feminism has two sides or
aspects. The first formulates definite political, juridical and
economic demands on the grounds of justice, equity, equality and so
forth, as general principles; the second does not formulate in so many
words definite demands as general principles, but seems to exploit
the traditional notions of chivalry based on male sex sentiment, in
favour of according women special privileges on the ground of their
sex, in the law, and still more in the administration of the law.
For the sake of brevity we call the first _Political Feminism_, for,
although its demands are not confined to the political sphere, it is
first and foremost a political movement, and its typical claim at
the present time, the Franchise, is a purely political one; and the
second _Sentimental Feminism_, inasmuch as it commonly does not profess
to be based on any general principle whatever, whether of equity or
otherwise, but relies exclusively on the traditional and conventional
sex sentiment of Man towards Woman. It may be here premised that most
Political Feminists, however much they may refuse to admit it, are at
heart also Sentimental Feminists. Sentimental Feminists, on the other
hand, are not invariably Political Feminists, although the majority of
them undoubtedly are so to a greater or lesser extent. Logically, as we
shall have occasion to insist upon later on, the principles professedly
at the root of Political Feminism are in flagrant contradiction with
any that can justify Sentimental Feminism.

Now both the orders of Feminism referred to have been active for more
than a generation past in fomenting a crusade against the male sex—an
Anti-Man Crusade. Their efforts have been largely successful owing
to a fact to which attention has, perhaps, not enough been called.
In the case of other classes, or bodies of persons, having community
of interests this common interest invariably interprets itself in a
sense of class, caste, or race solidarity. The class or caste has a
certain _esprit de corps_ in its own interest. The whole of history
largely turns on the conflict of economic classes based on a common
feeling obtaining between members of the respective classes; on a
small scale, we see the same thing in the solidarity of a particular
trade or profession. But it is unnecessary to do more than call
attention here to this fundamental sociological law upon which alike
the class struggles of history, and of modern times, the patriotism
of states from the city-state of the ancient world to the national
state of the modern world, is based. Now note the peculiar manner in
which this law manifests itself in the sex question of the present
day. While Modern Feminism has succeeded in establishing a powerful
sex-solidarity amongst a large section of women as against men, there
is not only no sex-solidarity of men as against women, but, on the
contrary, the prevalence of an altogether opposed sentiment. Men hate
their brother-men in their capacity of male persons. In any conflict
of interests between a man and a woman, male public opinion, often
in defiance of the most obvious considerations of equity, sides with
the woman, and glories in doing so. Here we seem to have a very
flagrant contradiction with, as has already been said, one of the
most fundamental sociological laws. The explanations of the phenomena
in question are, of course, ready to hand:—Tradition of chivalry,
feelings, perhaps inherited, dating possibly back to the prehuman stage
of man’s evolution, derived from the competition of the male with his
fellow-male for the possession of the coveted female, etc.

These explanations may have a measure of validity, but I must confess
they are to me scarcely adequate to account for the intense hatred
which the large section of men seem to entertain towards their
fellow-males in the world of to-day, and their eagerness to champion
the female in the sex war which the Woman’s “sex union,” as it has been
termed, has declared of recent years. Whatever may be the explanation,
and I confess I cannot find one completely satisfactory, the fact
remains. A Woman’s Movement unassisted by man, still more if opposed
energetically by the public opinion of a solid phalanx of the manhood
of any country, could not possibly make any headway. As it is, we
see the legislature, judges, juries, parsons, specially those of the
nonconformist persuasion, all vie with one another in denouncing the
villainy and baseness of the male person, and ever devising ways and
means to make his life hard for him. To these are joined a host of
literary men and journalists of varying degrees of reputation who
contribute their quota to the stream of anti-manism in the shape of
novels, storiettes, essays, and articles, the design of which is to
paint man as a base, contemptible creature, as at once a knave and an
imbecile, a bird of prey and a sheep in wolf’s clothing, and all as
a foil to the glorious majesty of Womanhood. There are not wanting
artists who are pressed into this service. The picture of the Thames
Embankment at night, of the drowned unfortunate with the angel’s
face, the lady and gentleman in evening dress who have just got out
of their cab—the lady with uplifted hands bending over the dripping
form, and the callous and brutal gentleman turning aside to light a
cigarette—this is a typical specimen of Feminist didactic art. By
these means, which have been carried on with increasing ardour for a
couple of generations past, what we may term the anti-man cultus has
been made to flourish and to bear fruit till we find nowadays all
recent legislation affecting the relations between the sexes carrying
its impress, and the whole of the judiciary and magistracy acting as
its priests and ministrants.

On the subject of Anti-man legislation, I have already written at
length elsewhere,[55:1] but for the sake of completeness I state the
case briefly here. (1) The marriage laws of England to-day are a
monument of Feminist sex partiality. If I may be excused the paradox,
the partiality of the marriage laws begins with the law relating to
breach of promise, which, as is well known, enables a woman to punish
a man vindictively for refusing to marry her after having once engaged
himself to her. I ought to add, and this, oftentimes, however good
his grounds may be for doing so. Should the woman commit perjury, in
these cases, she is never prosecuted for the offence. Although the
law of breach of promise exists also for the man, it is well known to
be totally ineffective and practically a dead letter. It should be
remarked that, however gross the misrepresentations or undue influences
on the part of the woman may have been to induce the man to marry
her, they do not cause her to lose her right to compensation. As, for
instance, where an experienced woman of the world of thirty or forty
entraps a boy scarcely out of his teens. (2) Again, according to the
law of England, the right to maintenance accrues solely to the woman.
Formerly this privilege was made dependent on her cohabitation with the
man and generally decent behaviour to him. Now even these limitations
cease to be operative, while the man is liable to imprisonment and
confiscation of any property he may have. A wife is now at full liberty
to leave her husband, while she retains her right to get her husband
sent to gaol if he refuses to maintain her—to put the matter shortly,
the law imposes upon the wife no legally enforceable duties whatever
_towards_ her husband. The one thing which it will enforce with iron
vigour is the wife’s right of maintenance _against_ her husband. In
the case of a man of the well-to-do classes, the man’s property is
confiscated by the law in favour of his wife. In the case of a working
man the law compels her husband to do _corvée_ for her, as the feudal
serf had to do for his lord. The wife, on the other hand, however
wealthy, is not compelled to give a farthing towards the support of her
husband, even though disabled by sickness or by accident; the single
exception in the latter case being should he become chargeable to
the parish, in which case the wife would have to pay the authorities
a pauper’s rate for his maintenance. In a word, a wife has complete
possession and control over any property she may possess, as well
as over her earnings; the husband, on the other hand, is liable to
confiscation of capitalised property or earnings at the behest of the
law courts in favour of his wife. A wife may even make her husband
bankrupt on the ground of money she alleges that she lent him; a
husband, on the other hand, has no claim against his wife for any money
advanced, since a husband is supposed to _give_, and not to _lend_, his
wife money, or other valuables. (3) The law affords the wife a right
to commit torts against third parties—_e.g._ libels and slanders—the
husband alone being responsible, and this rule applies even although
the wife is living apart from her husband, who is wholly without
knowledge of her misdeeds. With the exception of murder, a wife is held
by the law to be guiltless of practically any crime committed in the
presence of her husband. (4) No man can obtain a legal separation or
divorce from his wife (save under the Licensing Act of 1902, a Police
Court separation for habitual drunkenness alone) without a costly
process in the High Court. Every wife can obtain, if not a divorce, at
least a legal separation, by going whining to the nearest police court,
for a few shillings, which her husband, of course, has to pay. The
latter, it is needless to say, is mulcted in alimony at the “discretion
of the Court.” This “discretion” is very often of a queer character for
the luckless husband. Thus, a working man earning only twenty shillings
a week may easily find himself in the position of having to pay from
seven to ten shillings a week to a shrew out of his wages.

    [55:1] Cf. _Fortnightly Review_, November 1911, “A Creature of
    Privilege,” also a pamphlet (collaboration) entitled “The Legal
    Subjection of Men.” Twentieth Century Press, reprinted by New
    Age Press, 1908.

In cases where a wife proceeds to file a petition for divorce, the way
is once more smoothed for her by the law, at the husband’s expense. He
has to advance her money to enable her to fight him. Should the case
come on for hearing the husband finds the scale still more weighted
against him; every slander of his wife is assumed to be true until he
has proved its falsity, the slightest act or a word during a moment of
irritation, even a long time back, being twisted into what is termed
“legal cruelty,” even though such has been provoked by a long course of
ill treatment and neglect on the part of the wife. The husband and his
witnesses can be indicted for perjury for the slightest exaggeration
or inaccuracy in their statements, while the most calculated falsity
in the evidence of the wife and her witnesses is passed over. Not
the grossest allegation on the part of the wife against the husband,
even though proved in court to be false, is sufficient ground for the
husband to refuse to take her back again, or from preventing the court
from confiscating his property if he resists doing so. Knowledge of
the unfairness of the court to the husband, as all lawyers are aware,
prevents a large number of men from defending divorce actions brought
by their wives. A point should here be mentioned as regards the action
of a husband for damages against the seducer of his wife. Such damages
obviously belong to the husband as compensation for his destroyed
home life. Now these damages our modern judges in their feminist zeal
have converted into a fund for endowing the adulteress, depriving the
husband of any compensation whatever for the wrong done him. He may not
touch the income derived from the money awarded him by the jury, which
is handed over by the court to his divorced wife. It would take us too
long to go through all the privileges, direct and indirect, conferred
by statute or created by the rulings of judges and the practice of
the courts, in favour of the wife against the husband. It is the more
unnecessary to go into them here as they may be found in detail with
illustrative cases in the aforesaid pamphlet in which I collaborated,
entitled “The Legal Subjection of Men” (mentioned in the footnote to p.
55).

At this point it may be well to say a word on the one rule of the
divorce law which Feminists are perennially trotting out as a proof of
the shocking injustice of the marriage law to women: that to obtain her
divorce the woman has to prove cruelty in addition to adultery against
her husband, while in the case of the husband it is sufficient to prove
adultery alone. Now to make of this rule a grievance for the woman is,
I submit, evidence of the destitution of the Feminist case. In default
of any real injustice pressing on the woman the Feminist is constrained
to make as much capital as possible out of the merest semblance of a
grievance he can lay his hand on. The reasons for this distinction
which the law draws between the husband and the wife, it is obvious
enough, are perfectly well grounded. It is based mainly on the simple
fact that while a woman by her adultery may foist upon her husband a
bastard which he will be compelled by law to support as his own child,
in the husband’s case of having an illegitimate child the wife and her
property are not affected. Now in a society such as ours is, based upon
private property-holding, it is only natural, I submit, that the law
should take account of this fact. But not only is this rule of law
almost certainly doomed to repeal in the near future, but in even the
present day, while it still nominally exists, it is practically a dead
letter in the divorce court, since any trivial act of which the wife
chooses to complain is strained by the court into evidence of cruelty
in the legal and technical sense. As the matter stands, the practical
effect of the rule is a much greater injustice to the husband than to
the wife, since the former often finds himself convicted of “cruelty”
which is virtually nothing at all, in order that the wife’s petition
may be granted, and which is often made the excuse by Feminist judges
for depriving the husband of the custody of his children. Misconduct
on the wife’s part, or neglect of husband and children, does not
weigh with the court which will not on that ground grant relief to
the husband from his obligation for maintenance, etc. On the other
hand, neglect of the wife by the husband is made a ground for judicial
separation with the usual consequences—alimony, etc. “Thus,” as it
has been put, “between the upper and the nether millstone, cruelty on
the one hand, neglect on the other, the unhappy husband can be legally
ground to pieces, whether he does anything or whether he does nothing.”
Personal violence on the part of the husband is severely punished;
on the part of a wife she will be let off with impunity. Even if she
should in an extreme case be imprisoned, the husband, if a poor man,
on her release will be compelled to take her back to live with him.
The case came under the notice of the writer a few years ago in which
a humane magistrate was constrained to let off a woman who had nearly
murdered a husband on the condition of her graciously consenting to a
separation, but she had presumably still to be supported by her victim.

The decision in the notorious Jackson case precluded the husband from
compelling his wife to obey an order of the court for the restitution
of conjugal rights. The persistent Feminist tendency of all case-law is
illustrated by a decision of the House of Lords in 1894 in reference
to the law of Scotland constituting desertion for four years a ground
_ipso facto_ for a divorce with the right of remarriage. Here divorce
was refused to a man whose wife had left him for four years and taken
her child with her. The Law Lords justified their own interpretation
of the law on the ground that the man did not really want her to come
back. But inasmuch as this plea can be started in every case where
it cannot be proved that the husband had absolutely grovelled before
his wife, imploring her to return, and possibly even then—since the
sincerity even of this grovelling might conceivably be called in
question—it is clear that the decision practically rendered this old
Scottish law inoperative for the husband.

As regards the offence of bigamy, for which a man commonly receives
a heavy sentence of penal servitude, I think I may venture to state,
without risking contradiction, that no woman during recent years has
been imprisoned for this offence. The statute law, while conferring
distinct privileges upon married women as to the control of their
property, and for trading separately and apart from their husbands,
renders them exempt from the ordinary liabilities incurred by a male
trader as regards proceedings under the Debtors Acts and the Bankruptcy
Law. See Acts of 1822 (45 & 46 Vict. c. 75); 1893 (56 & 57 Vict. c.
63), and cases Scott _v._ Morley, 57 L.J.R.Q.B. 43. L.R. 20 Q.B.D. In
_re_ Hannah Lines _exparte_ Lester C.A. (1893), 2. 2. B. 113.

In the case of Lady Bateman _v._ Faber and others reported in
Chancery Appeal Cases (1898 Law Reports) the Master of the Rolls
(Sir N. Lindley) is reported to have said: “The authorities showed
that a married woman could not by hook or by crook—even by her own
fraud—deprive herself of restraint upon anticipation. He would say
nothing as to the policy of the law, but it had been affirmed by the
Married Woman’s Property Act” (the Act of 1882 above referred to) “and
the result was that a married woman could play fast and loose to an
extent to which no other person could.” (_N.B._—Presumably a male
person.)

It has indeed been held, to such a length does the law extend its
protection and privileges to the female, that even the concealment
by a wife from the husband at the time of marriage that she was then
pregnant by another man was no ground for declaring the marriage null
and void.

The above may be taken as a fair all-round, although by no means an
exhaustive, statement of the present one-sided condition of the civil
law as regards the relation of husband and wife. We will now pass on to
the consideration of the relative incidence of the criminal law on the
two sexes. We will begin with the crime of murder. The law of murder is
still ostensibly the same for both sexes, but in effect the application
of its provisions in the two cases is markedly different. As, however,
these differences lie, as just stated, not in the law itself but rather
in its administration, we can only give in this place, where we are
dealing with the principles of law rather than with their application,
a general formula of the mode in which the administration of the
law of murder proceeds, which, briefly stated, is as follows: The
evidence even to secure conviction in the case of a woman must be many
times stronger than that which would suffice to hang a man. Should a
conviction be obtained, the death penalty, though pronounced, is not
given effect to, the female prisoner being almost invariably reprieved.
In most cases where there is conviction at all, it is for manslaughter
and not for murder, when a light or almost nominal sentence is passed.
Cases confirming what is here said will be given later on. There is one
point, however, to be observed here, and that is the crushing incidence
of the law of libel. This means that no case of any woman, however
notoriously guilty on the evidence, can be quoted, after she has been
acquitted by a Feminist jury, as the law holds such to be innocent and
provides them with “a remedy” in a libel action. Now, seeing that most
women accused of murder are acquitted irrespective of the evidence, it
is clear that the writer is fatally handicapped so far as confirmation
of his thesis by cases is concerned.

Women are to all intents and purposes allowed to harass men, when they
conceive they have a grievance, at their own sweet will, the magistrate
usually telling their victim that he cannot interfere. In the opposite
case, that of a man harassing a woman, the latter has invariably to
find sureties for his future good behaviour, or else go to gaol.

One of the most infamous enactments indicative of Feminist sex bias
is the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1886. The Act itself was led
up to with the usual effect by an unscrupulous newspaper agitation
in the Feminist and Puritan interest, designed to create a panic in
the public mind, under the influence of which legislation of this
description can generally be rushed through Parliament. The reckless
disregard of the commonest principles of justice and common-sense of
this abominable statute may be seen in the shameless sex privilege it
accords the female in the matter of seduction. Under its provisions a
boy of fourteen years can be prosecuted and sent to gaol for an offence
to which he has been instigated by a girl just under sixteen years,
whom the law, of course, on the basis of the aforesaid sex privilege,
holds guiltless. The outrageous infamy of this provision is especially
apparent when we consider the greater precocity of the average girl as
compared with the average boy of this age.

We come now to the latest piece of Anti-man legislation, the so-called
_White Slave Trade Act of 1912_ (Criminal Law Amendment Act 1912, 2
& 3 Geo. V. c. 20). This statute was, as usual, rushed through the
legislature on the wave of factitious public excitement organised
for the purpose, and backed up by the usual faked statements and
exaggerated allegations, the whole matter being three parts bogus
and deliberate lying. The alleged dangers of the unprotected female
were, for the object of the agitation, purposely exaggerated in
the proverbial proportion of the mountain to the molehill. But as
regards many of those most eager in promoting this piece of Anti-man
legislation, there were probably special psychological reasons to
account for their attitude. The special features of the Bill, the Act
in question, are (1) increased powers given to the police in the matter
of arrest on suspicion, and (2) the flogging clauses.

Up till now the flogging of garrotters was justified against opponents,
by its upholders, on the ground of the peculiarly brutal nature of
the offence of highway robbery with violence. It should be noted that
in the Act in question no such excuse can apply, for it is appointed
to be inflicted for offences which, whatever else they may be, do not
in their nature involve violence, and hence which cannot be described
as brutal in the ordinary sense of the term. The Anti-man nature of
the whole measure, as of the agitation itself which preceded it, is
conclusively evidenced by the fact that while it is well known that the
number of women gaining a living by “procuration” is much greater than
the number of men engaged therein, comparatively little vituperation
was heard against the female delinquents in the matter, and certainly
none of the vitriolic ferocity that was poured out upon the men
alleged to participate in the traffic. A corresponding distinction was
represented in the measure itself by the allocation of the torture of
the lash to men alone. It is clear, therefore, that the zeal for the
suppression of the traffic in question was not the sole motive in the
ardour of the flogging fraternity. Even the Anti-manism at the back of
the whole of this class of legislation seems insufficient to account
for the outbreak of bestial blood-lust, for the tigerish ferocity,
of which the flogging clauses in the Act are the outcome. There is,
I take it, no doubt that psychical sexual aberration plays a not
inconsiderable part in many of those persons—in a word, that they are
labouring under some degree of homo-sexual Sadism. The lustful glee
on the part of the aforesaid persons which greets the notion of the
partial flaying alive, for that is what the “cat” means, of some poor
wretch who has succumbed to the temptation of getting his livelihood by
an improper method, is hardly to be explained on any other hypothesis.
Experts allege that traces of psycho-sexual aberration are latent
in many persons where it would be least expected, and it is, _prima
facie_, likely enough that these latent tendencies in both men and
women should become active under the cover of an agitation in favour
of purity and anti-sexuality, to the point of gratifying itself with
the thought of torture inflicted upon men. A psycho-sexual element
of another kind doubtless also plays a not unimportant rôle in the
agitation of “ladies” in favour of that abomination, “social purity,”
which, being interpreted, generally means lubricity turned upside
down. The fiery zeal manifested by many of those ladies for the
suppression of the male sex is assuredly not without its pathological
significance.

The monstrosity of the recent _White Slave Traffic_ enactment and
its savage anti-male vindictiveness is shown not merely, as already
observed, in the agitation which preceded it, with its exaggerated
vilification of the male offenders in the matter of procuration and its
passing over with comparative slight censure the more numerous female
offenders, or in the general spirit animating the Act itself, but it
is noticeable in the very preposterous exaggeration of its provisions.
For example, in the section dealing with the _souteneur_, the framers
of this Act, and the previous Criminal Law Amendment Acts to which this
latest one is merely supplementary, are not satisfied with penalising
the man who has no other means of subsistence beyond what he derives
from the wages of some female friend’s prostitution, but they strike
with impartial rigour the man who knowingly lives _wholly or in part_
from such a source. If, therefore, the clause were taken in its strict
sense, any poor out-at-elbow man who accepted the hospitality of a
woman of doubtful virtue in the matter of a drink, or a dinner, would
put himself within the pale of this clause in the Act, and might
be duly flayed by the “cat” in consequence. The most flagrant case
occurred in a London police court in March 1913, in which a youth of
eighteen years, against whose general character nothing was alleged
and who was known to be in employment as a carman, was sentenced to a
month’s hard labour under the following circumstances:—It was reported
that he had been living with a woman apparently considerably older than
himself, whom admittedly he had supported by his own exertions and,
when this was insufficient, even by the pawning of his clothes, and
whom as soon as he discovered she was earning money by prostitution he
had left. Would it be believed that a prosecution was instituted by the
police against this young man under the iniquitous White Slave Traffic
Act? But what seems still more incredible is that the magistrate,
presumably a sane gentleman, after admitting that the poor fellow was
“more sinned against than sinning,” did not hesitate to pass on him a
sentence of one month’s hard labour!!! Of course the woman, who was
the head and front of the offending, if offending there was, remained
untouched. The above is a mild specimen of “justice” as meted out in
our police courts, “for men only”! Quite recently there was a case in
the north of England of a carter, who admittedly worked at his calling
but who, it was alleged, was assisted by women with whom he had lived.
Now this unfortunate man was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment
plus flogging. For the judges, of course, any extension of their power
over the prisoner in the dock is a godsend. It is quite evident that
they are revelling in their new privilege to inflict torture. One of
them had the shamelessness recently to boast of the satisfaction it
gave him and to sneer at those of his colleagues who did not make full
use of their judicial powers in this direction.

The bogus nature of the reasons urged in favour of the most atrocious
clauses of this abominable Act came out clearly enough in the speeches
of the official spokesmen of the Government in its favour. For example,
Lord Haldane in the House of Lords besought the assembled peers to
bethink themselves of the unhappy victim of the _souteneur_. He drew
a picture of how a heartless bully might beat, starve and otherwise
ill treat his victim, besides taking away her earnings. He omitted to
explain how the heartless bully in a free country could coerce his
“victim” to remain with him against her will. He ignored the existence
of the police, or of a whole army of social purity busybodies, and
vigilance societies for whom her case would be a tasty morsel only
too eagerly snapped at. If the “victim” does not avail herself of any
of those means of escape, so ready to her hand, the presumption is
that she prefers the company of her alleged brutal tyrant to that of
the chaste Puritan ladies of the vigilance societies. To those who
follow the present state of artificially fomented public opinion in
the matter, Lord Haldane’s suggestion that there was any danger of the
precious “victim” not being sufficiently slobbered over, will seem to
be not without a touch of humour. Furthermore, as illustrating the
utter illogicality of the line taken by the promoters of the Act, for
whom Lord Haldane acted as the mouthpiece, we have only to note the
fact that the measure does not limit the penalties awarded to cases
accompanied by circumstances of aggravation such as Lord Haldane
pictures, which it might easily have done, but extends it impartially
to all cases whether accompanied by cruelty or not. We can hardly
imagine that a man of Lord Haldane’s intellectual power and general
humanity should not have been aware of the hollowness of the case
he had to put as an official advocate, and of the rottenness of the
conventional arguments he had to state in its support. When confronted
with the unquestionably true contention that corporal punishments,
especially such as are of a savage and vindictive kind, are degrading
alike to the inflicters of them and to those who are their victims,
he replied that criminals in the cases in question were already so
degraded that they could not be degraded further. One would imagine
he could hardly have failed to know that he was talking pernicious
twaddle. It is obvious that this argument, in addition to its being
untrue, in fact opens the floodgates to brutal penal legislation all
round, so far at least as the more serious offences are concerned.
One could equally well assert of murder, burglary, even _abus de
confidence_ in some cases, and other offences, that the perpetrators
of them must be so degraded that no amount of brutal punishment could
degrade them further. Everybody can regard the crime to which he has
a pet aversion more than other crimes as indicating the perpetrator
thereof to be outside the pale of humanity.

But as regards the particular case in point, let us for a moment clear
our minds of cant upon the subject. Procuration and also living on
the proceeds of prostitution may be morally abominable methods of
securing a livelihood, though even here, as in most other offences,
there may be circumstances of palliation in individual cases. But after
all is said and done, it is doubtful whether, apart from any fraud
or misrepresentation, which, of course, places it altogether in a
different category, these ought to be regarded as _criminal_ offences.
To offer facilities or to act as an agent for women who are anxious to
lead a “gay life,” or even to suggest such a course to women, _so long
as prostitution itself is not recognised by the law as crime_, however
reprehensible morally, would scarcely seem to transcend the limits of
legitimate individual liberty. In any case, the constituting of such
an action a crime must surely open out an altogether new principle in
jurisprudence, and one of far-reaching consequences. The same remarks
apply even more forcibly to the question of sharing the earnings of a
prostitute. Prostitution _per se_ is not in the eyes of the law a crime
or even a misdemeanour. The woman who makes her living as a prostitute
is under the protection of the law, and the money she receives from
her customer is recognised as her property. If she, however, in the
exercise of her right of free disposition of that property, gives
some of it to a male friend, that friend, by the mere acceptance of
a free gift, becomes a criminal in the eyes of the law. Anything
more preposterous, judging by all hitherto recognised principles of
jurisprudence, can scarcely be imagined. Even from the moral point of
view of the class of cases coming under the purview of the Act, of men
who in part share in the proceeds of their female friends’ traffic,
must involve many instances in which no sane person—_i.e._ one who is
not bitten by the rabid man-hatred of the Feminist and social purity
monger—must regard the moral obliquity involved as not very serious.
Take, for instance, the case of a man who is out of work, who is
perhaps starving, and receives temporary assistance of this kind. Would
any reasonable person allege that such a man was in the lowest depths
of moral degradation, still less that he merited for this breach, at
most, of fine delicacy of feeling, the flaying alive prescribed by
the Act under consideration. Besides all this, it is well known that
some women, shop assistants and others, gain part of their living by
their reputable avocation and part in another way. Now presumably the
handing over of a portion of her regular salary to her lover would not
constitute the latter a flayable criminal, but the endowment of him
with a portion of any of the “presents” obtained by her pursuit of her
other calling would do so. The process of earmarking the permissible
and the impermissible gift strikes one as very difficult even if
possible.

The point last referred to leads us on to another reflection. If the
man who “in whole or in part” lives on the proceeds of a woman’s
prostitution is of necessity a degraded wretch outside the pale of all
humanity, as he is represented to be by the flogging fraternity, how
about the employer or employeress of female labour who bases his or
her scale of wages on the assumption that the girls and women he or
she employs, supplement these wages by presents received after working
hours, for their sexual favours—in other words, by prostitution?
Many of these employers of labour are doubtless to be found among the
noble band of advocates of White Slave Traffic Bills, flogging and
social purity. The above persons, of course, are respectable members of
society, while a _souteneur_ is an outcast.

In addition to the motives before alluded to as actuating the promoters
of the factitious and bogus so-called “White Slave” agitation, there
is one very powerful political and economic motive which must not be
left out of sight. In view of the existing “labour unrest,” it is
highly desirable from the point of view of our possessing and governing
classes that popular attention should be drawn off labour wrongs and
labour grievances on to something less harassing to the capitalist and
official mind. Now the Anti-man agitation forms a capital red herring
for drawing the popular scent off class opposition by substituting sex
antagonism in its place.

If you can set public opinion off on the question of wicked Man and
down-trodden Woman, you have done a good deal to help capitalistic
enterprise to tide over the present crisis. The insistence of public
opinion on better conditions for the labourer will thus be weakened by
being diverted into urging forward vindictive laws against men, and for
placing as far as may be the whole power of the State at the disposal
of the virago, the shrew and the female sharper, in their designs upon
their male victim. For, be it remembered, it is always the worst type
of woman to whom the advantage of laws passed as the result of the
Anti-man campaign accrues. The real nature of the campaign is crucially
exhibited in some of the concrete demands put forward by its advocates.

One of the measures proposed in the so-called “Woman’s Charter” drawn
up with the approval of all prominent Feminists by Lady M‘Laren (now
Lady Aberconway) some four or five years back, and which had been
previously advocated by other Feminist writers, was to the effect
that a husband, in addition to his other liabilities, should be
legally compelled to pay a certain sum to his wife, ostensibly as
wages for her housekeeping services, no matter whether she performs
the services well, or ill, or not at all. Whatever the woman is, or
does, the husband has to pay all the same. Another of the clauses in
this precious document is to the effect that a wife is to be under no
obligation to follow her husband, compelled probably by the necessity
of earning a livelihood for himself and her, to any place of residence
outside the British Islands. That favourite crank of the Feminist, of
raising the age of consent with the result of increasing the number
of victims of the designing young female should speak for itself to
every unbiassed person. One of the proposals which finds most favour
with the Sentimental Feminist is the demand that in the case of the
murder by a woman of her illegitimate child, the putative father should
be placed in the dock as an accessory! In other words, a man should
be punished for a crime of which he is wholly innocent, because the
guilty person was forsooth a woman. That such a suggestion should be
so much as entertained by otherwise sane persons is indeed significant
of the degeneracy of mental and moral fibre induced by the Feminist
movement, for it may be taken as typical. It reminds me of a Feminist
friend of mine who, challenged by me, sought (for long in vain) to find
a case in the courts in which a man was unduly favoured at the expense
of a woman. At last he succeeded in lighting upon the following from
somewhere in Scotland: A man and woman who had been drinking went home
to bed, and the woman caused the death of her baby by “overlaying it.”
Both the man and the woman were brought before the court on the charge
of manslaughter, for causing the death, by culpable negligence, of the
infant. In accordance with the evidence, the woman who had overlaid
the baby was convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, and
naturally the man, who had not done so, was released. Now, in the
judgment of my Feminist friend, in other matters sane enough, the fact
that the man who had not committed any offence was let off, while
his female companion, who had, was punished, showed the bias of the
court in favour of the man!! Surely this is a noteworthy illustration,
glaring as it is, of how all judgment is completely overbalanced
and destroyed in otherwise judicial minds—of how such minds are
completely hypnotised by the adoption of the Feminist dogma. As a
matter of fact, of course, the task my friend set himself to do was
hopeless. As against the cases, which daily occur all over the country,
of flagrant injustice to men and partiality to women on the part of
the courts, there is, I venture to assert, not to be found a single
case within the limits of the four seas of a judicial decision in the
contrary sense—_i.e._ of one favouring the man at the expense of the
woman.

This sex hatred, so often vindictive in its character, of men for men,
which has for its results that “man-made” laws invariably favour the
opposite sex, and that “man-administered justice” follows the same
course, is a psychological problem which is well worth the earnest
attention of students of sociology and thinkers generally.




CHAPTER IV

ALWAYS THE “INJURED INNOCENT”!


While what we have termed Political Feminism vehemently asserts
its favourite dogma, the intellectual and moral equality of the
sexes—that the woman is as good as the man if not better—Sentimental
Feminism as vehemently seeks to exonerate every female criminal, and
protests against any punishment being meted out to her approaching
in severity that which would be awarded a man in a similar case. It
does so on grounds which presuppose the old theory of the immeasurable
inferiority, mental and moral, of woman, which are so indignantly
spurned by every Political Feminist—_i.e._ in his or her capacity as
such. We might suppose, therefore, that Political Feminism, with its
theory of sex equality based on the assumption of equal sex capacity,
would be in strong opposition in this matter with Sentimental Feminism,
which seeks, as its name implies, to attenuate female responsibility on
grounds which are not distinguishable from the old-fashioned assumption
of inferiority. But does Political Feminism consistently adopt this
logical position? Not one whit. It is quite true that some Feminists,
when hard pressed, may grudgingly concede the untenability on rational
grounds of the Sentimental Feminists’ claims. But taken as a whole, and
in their practical dealings, the Political Feminists are in accord with
the Sentimental Feminists in claiming female immunity on the ground of
sex. This is shown in every case where a female criminal receives more
than a nominal sentence.

We have already given examples of the fact in question, and they could
be indefinitely extended. At the end of the year 1911, at Birmingham,
in the case of a woman convicted of the murder of her paramour by
deliberately pouring inflammable oil over him while he was asleep,
and then setting it afire, and afterwards not only exulting in the
action but saying she was ready to do it again, the jury brought in
recommendation to mercy with their verdict. And, needless to say, the
influence of Political and Sentimental Feminism was too strong to allow
the capital sentence to be carried out, even with such a fiendish
wretch as this. In the case of the Italian woman in Canada, Napolitano,
before mentioned, the female franchise societies issued a petition
to Mr Borden, the Premier of Canada, in favour of the commutation of
sentence. The usual course was adopted in this case, as in most others
in which a woman murders a man—to wit, the truly “chivalrous” one of
trying to blacken the character of the dead victim in defence of the
action of the murderess. In other cases, more especially, of course,
where the man is guilty of a crime against a woman, when mercy is
asked for the offender, we are pitifully adjured to “think of the poor
victim.” As we have seen, Lord Haldane trotted out this exhortation in
a case where it was absurdly inappropriate, since the much-commiserated
“victim” had only herself to thank for being a “victim,” and still more
for remaining a “victim.” We never hear this plea for the “victim”
urged where the “victim” happens to be a man and the offender a woman.
Compare this with the case of the boy of nineteen, Beal, whom Mr
M‘Kenna hanged for the murder of his sweetheart, and that in the teeth
of an explanation given in the defence which was at least possible,
if not probable, and which certainly, putting it at the very lowest,
introduced an element of doubt into the case. Fancy a girl of nineteen
being convicted, whatever the evidence, of having poisoned her paramour
or even if, _per impossibile_, she were convicted, fancy her being
given more than a short term of imprisonment! A man murdered by a woman
is always the horrid brute, while the woman murdered by the man is just
as surely the angelic victim. Anyone who reads reports of cases with an
unbiassed mind must admit the absolute accuracy of this statement.

Divine woman is always the “injured innocent,” not only in the graver
crimes, such as murder, but also in the minor offences coming under the
cognisance of the law. At the Ledbury Petty Sessions a woman in the
employment of a draper, who had purloined goods to the amount of £150,
was acquitted on the ground of “kleptomania,” and this notwithstanding
the fact that she had been in the employment of the prosecutor for over
five years, had never complained of illness and had never been absent
from business; also that her landlady gave evidence showing that she
was sound in mind and body. At the very same sessions two men were
sentenced respectively to eight and twelve months’ imprisonment for
stealing goods to the value of £5! (_John Bull_, 12th November 1910).

At this point I may be permitted to quote from the article formerly
alluded to (_Fortnightly Review_, November 1911, case taken from a
report in _The News of the World_ of 28th February 1909): “A young
woman shot at the local postman with a revolver; the bullet grazed his
face, she having fired point blank at his head. Jury returned a verdict
of not guilty, although the revolver was found on her when arrested,
and the facts were admitted and were as follows:—At noon she left her
house, crossing three fields to the house of the victim, who was at
home and alone; upon his appearing she fired point blank at his head;
he banged to the door, and thus turned off the bullet, which grazed
his face and ‘ploughed a furrow through his hair.’ She had by her when
arrested a revolver cocked and with four chambers undischarged.”

Let us now take the crime of violent assault with attempt to do bodily
injury. The following cases will serve as illustrative examples:—From
_The News of the World_, 9th May 1909: A nurse in Belfast sued her lost
swain for breach of promise. _She obtained £100 damages although it was
admitted by her counsel that she had thrown vitriol over the defendant,
thereby injuring him, and the defendant had not prosecuted her!_ Also
it was admitted that she had been “carrying on” with another man.
From _The Morning Leader_ of 8th July 1905 I have taken the following
extraordinary facts as to the varied punishment awarded in cases of
vitriol-throwing: That of a woman who threw vitriol over a sergeant at
Aldershot, and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment without hard
labour while a man who threw it over a woman at Portsmouth was tried
and convicted at the Hants Assizes, on 7th July 1905, and sentenced
by Mr Justice Bigham to twelve years’ penal servitude! As regards the
first case it will be observed that, (notwithstanding a crime, which in
the case of a man was described by the judge as “cowardly and vile”
and meriting twelve years’ penal servitude) the woman was rewarded by
damages for £100, to be obtained from the very victim whom she had done
her best to maim for life (besides being unfaithful to him) and who had
generously abstained from prosecuting.

But it is not merely in cases of murder, attempted murder or serious
assault that justice is mocked by the present state of our law and its
administration in the interests of the female sex. The same attitude is
observed, the same farcical sentences on women, whether the crime be
theft, fraud, common assault, criminal slander or other minor offences.
We have the same preposterous excuses admitted, the same preposterous
pleas allowed, and the same farcical sentences passed—if, indeed, any
sentence be passed at all. The following examples I have culled at
random:—From _John Bull_, 26th February 1910: At the London Sessions,
Mr Robert Wallace had to deal with the case of a well-dressed woman
living at Hampstead, who pleaded guilty to obtaining goods to the
amount of £50 by false pretences. In explanation of her crime it was
stated that she was under a mistaken impression that her engagement
would not lead to marriage, that she became depressed, and that she
“did not know what she said or did,” while in mitigation of punishment
it was urged that the money had been repaid, that her fiancé could
not marry her if she were sent to gaol, and that her life would be
irretrievably ruined, and she was discharged! From _The Birmingham
Post_, 4th February 1902: A female clerk (twenty-six) pleaded guilty to
embezzling £5, 1s. 9d. on 16th November, £2, 2s. 4d. on 21st December
and £5, 0s. 9d. on 23rd December last, the moneys of her employer.
Prosecuting counsel said prisoner entered prosecutor’s employ in
1900, and in June last her salary was raised to 27s. 6d. a week. The
defalcations, which began a month before the increase, amounted to
£134. She had falsified the books, and when suspicion fell upon her
destroyed two books, in order, as she thought, to prevent detection.
Her counsel pleaded for leniency on the ground of her previous good
character _and because she was engaged_! The recorder merely bound her
over, stating that her parents and young man were respectable, and so
was the house in which she lodged! A correspondent mentions in _The
Birmingham Post_ of February 1902 a case where a woman had burned her
employer’s outhouses and property, doing £1800 worth of damage, and got
off with a month’s imprisonment. On the other hand, the _same_ judge,
at the _same_ Quarter Sessions, thus dealt with two male embezzlers:
C. C. (twenty-eight), clerk, who pleaded guilty to embezzling two sums
of money from his master in August and September of 1901 (amounts
not given), was sent to gaol for six calendar months; and S. G.
(twenty-four), clerk, pleaded guilty to embezzling 7s. 6d. and 3s. For
the defence it was urged that the prisoner had been poorly paid, and
the recorder, hearing that a gentleman was prepared to employ the man
as soon as released, sentenced him to three months’ hard labour! O
merciful recorder!

The “injured innocent” theory usually comes into play with magistrates
when a woman is charged with aggravated annoyance and harassing of
men in their business or profession, when, as already stated, the
administrator of the law will usually tell the prosecutor that he
cannot interfere. In the opposite case of a man annoying a woman under
like circumstances he invariably has to find substantial sureties for
his good behaviour or go to gaol. No injured innocence for him!

There is another case in which it seems probable that, animated by
the same fixed idea, those responsible for the framing of laws have
flagrantly neglected an obvious measure for public safety. We refer to
the unrestricted sale of sulphuric acid (vitriol) which is permitted.
Now here we have a substance subserving only very special purposes
in industry, none in household economy, or in other departments,
save for criminal ends, which is nevertheless procurable without let
or hindrance. Is it possible to believe that this would be the case
if men were in the habit of using this substance in settling their
differences with each other, even still more if they employed it by way
of emphasising their disapproval of the jilting of sweethearts? That it
should be employed by women in wreaking their vengeance on recalcitrant
lovers seems a natural if not precisely a commendable action, in the
eyes of a Sentimental Feminist public opinion, and one which, on the
mildest hypothesis, “doesn’t matter.” Hence a deadly substance may be
freely bought and sold as though it were cod-liver oil. A very nice
thing for dastardly viragoes for whom public opinion has only the
mildest of censures! In any reasonable society the indiscriminate sale
of corrosive substances would in itself be a crime punishable with a
heavy term of imprisonment.

It is not only by men, and by a morbid public opinion inflamed by
Feminist sentiment in general, that female criminals are surrounded
by a halo of injured innocence. The reader can hardly fail to notice
that such women have the effrontery to pretend to regard themselves in
this light. This is often so in cases of assault, murder or attempted
murder of lovers by their sweethearts. Such is, of course, particularly
noticeable in the senselessly wicked outrages, of which more anon.
The late Otto Weininger, in his book before quoted, “Geschlecht und
Charakter” (Sex and Character), has some noteworthy remarks on this,
remarks which, whether we accept his suggested theory or not, might
well have been written as a comment on recent cases of suffragette
crimes and criminals. “The male criminal,” says Weininger, “has from
his birth the same relation to the idea of value [moral value] as any
other man in whom the criminal tendencies governing himself may be
wholly absent. The female on the other hand often claims to be fully
justified when she has committed the greatest conceivable infamy. While
the genuine criminal is obtusely silent against all reproaches, a woman
will express her astonishment and indignation that anyone can doubt
her perfect right to act as she has done. Women are convinced of their
being in the right without ever having sat in judgment on themselves.
The male criminal, it may be true, does not do so either, but then he
never maintains that he is in the right. He rather goes hastily out
of the way of discussing right and wrong, because it reminds him of
his guilt. In this fact we have a proof that he has a relationship to
the [moral] idea, and that it is unfaithfulness to his better self
of which he is unwilling to be reminded. No male criminal has ever
really believed that injustice has been done him by punishment. The
female criminal on the other hand is convinced of the maliciousness
of her accusers, and if she is unwilling no man can persuade her that
she has done wrong. Should someone admonish her, it is true that she
often bursts into tears, begs for forgiveness and admits her fault;
she may even believe indeed that she really feels this fault. Such is
only the case, however, when she has felt inclined to do so, for this
very dissolving in tears affects her always with a certain voluptuous
pleasure. The male criminal is obstinate, he does not allow himself
to be turned round in a moment as the apparent defiance of a woman
may be converted into an apparent sense of guilt, where, that is, the
accuser understands how to handle her” (“Geschlecht und Charakter,”
pp. 253-254). Weininger’s conclusion is: “Not that woman is naturally
evil or _anti_-moral, but rather that she is merely _a_-moral, in other
words that she is destitute of what is commonly called ‘moral sense.’”
The cases of female penitents and others which seem to contradict this
announcement Weininger explains by the hypothesis that “it is only in
company and under external influence that woman can feel remorse.”

Be all this as it may, the fact remains that women when most patently
and obviously guilty of vile and criminal actions will, with the most
complete nonchalance, insist that they are in the right. This may be,
and very possibly often is, mere impudent effrontery, relying on the
privilege of the female sex, or it may, in part at least, as Weininger
insists, be traceable to “special deep-lying sex-characteristics.” But
in any case the singular fact is that men, and men even of otherwise
judicial capacity, are to be found who are prepared virtually to accept
the justice of this attitude, and who are ready to condone, if not
directly to defend, any conduct, no matter how vile or how criminal, on
the part of a woman. We have illustrations of this class of judgment
almost every day, but I propose to give two instances of what I should
deem typical, if slightly extreme, perversions of moral judgment on
the part of two men, both of them of social and intellectual standing,
and without any doubt personally of the highest integrity. Dr James
Donaldson, Principal of the University of St Andrews, in his work
entitled “Woman, her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and
Rome and among the Early Christians,” commenting on the well-known
story attributed to the year 331 B.C., which may or may not
be historical, of the wholesale poisoning of their husbands by Roman
matrons, as well as of subsequent cases of the same crime, concludes
his remarks with these words: “It seems to me that we must regard them
[namely these stories or facts, as we may choose to consider them] as
indicating that the Roman matrons felt sometimes that they were badly
treated, that they ought not to endure the bad treatment, and that
they ought to take the only means that they possessed of expressing
their feelings, and of wreaking vengeance, by employing poison” (p.
92). Now though it may be said that in this passage we have no direct
justification of the atrocious crime attributed to the Roman matrons,
yet it can hardly be denied that we have here a distinct condonation
of the infamous and dastardly act, such a condonation as the worthy
Principal of St Andrews University would hardly have meted out to men
under any circumstances. Probably Professor Donaldson, in writing the
above, felt that his comments would not be resented very strongly, even
if not actually approved, by public opinion, steeped as it is at the
present time in Feminism, political and sentimental.

Another instance, this time of direct special pleading to prove a woman
guilty of an atrocious crime to be an “injured innocent.” It is taken
from an eminent Swiss alienist in his work on Sex. Dr Forel maintains
a thesis which may or may not be true to the effect that the natural
maternal instinct is either absent or materially weakened in the case
of a woman who has given birth to a child begotten by rape, or under
circumstances bordering upon rape, and indeed more or less in all
cases where the woman is an unwilling participant in the sexual act.
By way of illustration of this theory he cites the case of a barmaid
in St Gallen who was seduced by her employer under such circumstances
as those above mentioned; a child resulted, who was put out to nurse
at an institution until five years of age, when it was handed over to
the care of the mother. Now what does the woman do? Within a few hours
of receiving the little boy into her keeping she took him to a lonely
place and deliberately strangled him, in consequence of which she was
tried and condemned. Now Dr Forel, in his Feminist zeal, feels it
incumbent upon him to try to whitewash this female monster by urging,
on the basis of this theory, the excuse that under the circumstances
of its conception one could not expect the mother to have the ordinary
instincts of maternity as regards her child. The worthy doctor is
apparently so blinded by his Feminist prejudices that (quite apart
from the correctness or otherwise of his theory) he is oblivious of
the absurd irrelevancy of his argument. What, we may justly ask, has
the maternal instinct, or its absence, to do with the guilt of the
murderess of a helpless child committed to her care? Who or what the
child was is immaterial! That a humane and otherwise clear-headed
man like Dr Forel could take a wretch of this description under his
_ægis_, and still more that in doing so he should serve up such utterly
illogical balderdash by way of argument, is only one more instance of
how the most sane-thinking men are rendered fatuous by the glamour of
Sentimental Feminism.

In the present chapter we have given a few typical instances of the
practice which constitutes one of the most conspicuous features of
Modern Feminism and of the public opinion which it has engendered.
We hear and read, _ad nauseam_, of excuses, and condonation, for
every crime committed by a woman, while a crime of precisely similar
a character and under precisely similar circumstances, where a man
is the perpetrator, meets with nothing but virulent execration from
that truculent ass, British public opinion, as manipulated by the
Feminist fraternity, male and female. This state of public opinion
reacts, of course, upon the tribunals and has the result that women
are practically free to commit any offence they please, with always
a splendid sporting chance of getting acquitted altogether, and a
practical certainty that even if convicted they will receive farcical
sentences, or, should the sentence be in any degree adequate to the
offence, that such sentence will not be carried out. The way in which
criminal law is made a jest and a mockery as regards female prisoners,
the treatment of criminal suffragettes, is there in evidence. The
excuse of health being endangered by their going without their
breakfasts has resulted in the release after a few days of women guilty
of the vilest crimes—_e.g._ the attempt to set fire to the theatre at
Dublin. It may be well to recall the outrageous facts of modern female
immunity and free defiance of the law as illustrated by one quotation
of a description of the merry time of the window-smashers of March 1912
in Holloway prison given by a correspondent of _The Daily Telegraph_.
The correspondent of that journal describes his visit to the aforesaid
prison, where he said there appeared to have been no punishment of any
kind for any sort of misbehaviour. “All over the place,” he writes,
“is noise—women calling to women everywhere, and the officials seem
powerless to preserve even the semblance of discipline. A suffragist
will call out her name while in a cell, and another one who knows her
will answer, giving her name in return, and a conversation will then
be carried on between the two. This chattering obtains all day and far
into the night. The ‘officials’ as the wardresses prefer themselves
called, have already given the prison the name of ‘the monkey-house.’
Certain it is that the prisoners are treated with all deference, the
reason being perhaps that the number of officials is insufficient to
establish proper order. While I was waiting yesterday one lady drove up
in a carriage and pair, in which were two policemen and several bundles
of clothes, to enter upon her sentence and this is the note which seems
to dominate the whole of the prison. Seventy-six of the prisoners
are supposed to be serving sentences with hard labour, but none of
them are wearing prison clothes, and in only one or two instances
have any tasks of any description been given, those generally being
a little sewing or knitting.” Again a member of the Women’s Freedom
League at a meeting on 19th May 1912 boasted that the suffragettes had
a wing of their own at Holloway. “They had nice hot water pipes and
all the latest improvements and were able to climb up to the window
and exchange sentiments with their friends.” She had saved money and
enjoyed herself very much!!

Here we have a picture of the way the modern authorities of the law
recognise the “injured innocence” of female delinquents who claim the
right wantonly to destroy property. Our present society, based as it is
on private property-holding, and which usually punished with the utmost
severity any breach of the sanctity of private property, waives its
claims where women are concerned. Similarly arson under circumstances
directly endangering human life, for which the law prescribes the
maximum sentence of penal servitude for life, is considered adequately
punished by a week or two’s imprisonment when those convicted of the
crime are of the female sex. Oh, but they were acting from political
motives! Good, and have not terrorist anarchists, Fenians and Irish
dynamiters of the Land League days also acted from political motives?
The terrorist anarchist, foolish and indefensible though his tactics
may be, believes honestly enough that he is paving the way for the
abolition of poverty, misery and social injustice, a far more vital
thing than the franchise! The Irish Fenians and dynamiters pursued a
similar policy and there is no reason to doubt their honest belief that
it would further the cause of the freedom and national independence
of Ireland. Yet were these “political” offenders dealt with otherwise
than as ordinary criminals when convicted of acts qualified by the law
as felonies? And their acts, moreover, whatever we may think of them
otherwise, were, in most cases at least, politically logical from their
own point of view, and not senseless injuries to unoffending persons,
as those of the present-day female seekers after the suffrage.




CHAPTER V

THE “CHIVALRY” FAKE


The justification for the whole movement of Modern Feminism in one of
its main practical aspects—namely, the placing of the female sex in
the position of privilege, advantage and immunity—is concentrated
in the current conception of “chivalry.” It behoves us, therefore,
to devote some consideration to the meaning and implication of this
notion. Now this word chivalry is the _dernier ressort_ of those at
a loss for a justification of the modern privileging of women. But
those who use it seldom give themselves the trouble to analyse the
connotation of this term. Brought to book as to its meaning, most
persons would probably define it as deference to, or consideration for,
weakness, especially bodily weakness. Used in this sense, however,
the term covers a very much wider ground than the “kow-towing” to the
female section of the human race, usually associated with it. Boys,
men whose muscular strength is below the average, domestic animals,
etc., might all claim this special protection as a plea of chivalry,
in their favour. And yet we do not find different criminal laws, or
different rules of prison treatment, say, for men whose stamina is
below the average. Neither do we find such men or boys exempted by law
from corporal punishment in consequence of their weakness, unless as an
exception in individual cases when the weakness amounts to dangerous
physical disability. Neither, again, in the general affairs of life
are we accustomed to see any such deference to men of weaker muscular
or constitutional development as custom exacts in the case of women.
Once more, looking at the question from the other side, do we find the
claim of chivalry dropped in the case of the powerful virago or the
muscularly developed female athlete, the sportswoman who rides, hunts,
plays cricket, football, golf and other masculine games, and who may
even fence or box? Not one whit!

It would seem then that the definition of the term under consideration,
based on the notion of deference to mere weakness as such, will hardly
hold water, since in its application the question of sex always takes
precedence of that of weakness. Let us try again! Abandoning for the
moment the definition of chivalry as a consideration for weakness,
considered _absolutely_, as we may term it, let us see whether the
definition of consideration for _relative_ defencelessness—_i.e._
defencelessness in a given situation—will coincide with the current
usage of the word. But here again we are met with the fact that the
man in the hands of the law—to wit, in the grip of the forces of the
State, ay, even the strongest man, were he a very Hercules, is in as
precisely as defenceless and helpless a position relative to those in
whose power he finds himself, as the weakest woman would be in the like
case, neither more nor less! And yet an enlightened and chivalrous
public opinion tolerates the most fiendish barbarities and excogitated
cruelties being perpetrated upon male convicts in our gaols, while it
shudders with horror at the notion of female convicts being accorded
any severity of punishment at all even for the same, or, for that
matter, more heinous offences. A particularly crass and crucial
illustration is that infamous piece of one-sided sex legislation
which has already occupied our attention in the course of the present
volume—to wit, the so-called “White Slave Traffic Act” 1912.

It is plain then that chivalry as understood in the present day
really spells sex privilege and sex favouritism pure and simple, and
that any attempts to define the term on a larger basis, or to give
it a colourable rationality founded on fact, are simply subterfuges,
conscious or unconscious, on the part of those who put them forward.
The etymology of the word chivalry is well known and obvious enough.
The term meant originally the virtues associated with knighthood
considered as a whole, bravery even to the extent of reckless daring,
loyalty to the chief or feudal superior, generosity to a fallen foe,
general open-handedness, and open-heartedness, including, of course,
the succour of the weak and the oppressed generally, _inter alia_, the
female sex when in difficulties. It would be idle, of course, to insist
upon the historical definition of the term. Language develops and words
in course of time depart widely from their original connotation, so
that etymology alone is seldom of much value in practically determining
the definition of words in their application at the present day. But
the fact is none the less worthy of note that only a fragment of the
original connotation of the word chivalry is covered by the term as
used in our time, and that even that fragment is torn from its original
connection and is made to serve as a scarecrow in the field of public
opinion to intimidate all who refuse to act upon, or who protest
against, the privileges and immunities of the female sex.[101:1]

    [101:1] One among many apposite cases, which has occurred
    recently, was protested against in a letter to _The Daily
    Telegraph_, 21st March 1913, in which it was pointed out that
    while a suffragette got a few months’ imprisonment in the
    second division for wilfully setting fire to the pavilion in
    Kew Gardens, a few days previously, at the Lewes Assizes, a man
    had been sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for burning a
    rick!!

I have said that even that subsidiary element in the old original
notion of chivalry which is now well-nigh the only surviving remnant
of its original connotation is torn from its connection and hence
has necessarily become radically changed in its meaning. From being
part of a general code of manners enjoined upon a particular guild or
profession it has been degraded to mean the exclusive right in one
sex guaranteed by law and custom to certain advantages and exemptions
without any corresponding responsibility. Let us make no mistake about
this. When the limelight of a little plain but critical common-sense is
turned upon this notion of chivalry hitherto regarded as so sacrosanct,
it is seen to be but a poor thing after all; and when men have acquired
the habit of habitually turning the light of such criticism upon it,
the accusation, so terrible in the present state of public opinion, of
being “unchivalrous” will lose its terrors for them. In the so-called
ages of chivalry themselves it never meant, as it does to-day, the
woman right or wrong. It never meant as it does to-day the general
legal and social privilege of sex. It never meant a social defence or
a legal exoneration for the bad and even the criminal woman, simply
because she is a woman. It meant none of these things. All it meant was
a voluntary or gratuitous personal service to the forlorn women which
the members of the Knights’ guild among other such services, many of
them taking precedence of this one, were supposed to perform.

So far as courage is concerned, which was perhaps the first of the
chivalric virtues in the old days, it certainly requires more courage
in our days to deal severely with a woman when she deserves it (as a
man would be dealt with in like circumstances) than it does to back up
a woman against her wicked male opponent.

It is a cheap thing, for example, in the case of a man and woman
quarrelling in the street, to play out the stage rôle of the bold and
gallant Englishman “who won’t see a woman maltreated and put upon,
not he!” and this, of course, without any inquiry into the merits of
the quarrel. To swim with the stream, to make a pretence of boldness
and bravery, when all the time you know you have the backing of
conventional public opinion and mob-force behind you, is the cheapest
of mock heroics.

Chivalry to-day means the woman, right or wrong, just as patriotism
to-day means “my country right or wrong.” In other words, chivalry
to-day is only another name for Sentimental Feminism. Every outrageous
pretension of Sentimental Feminism can be justified by the appeal
to chivalry, which amounts (to use the German expression) to an
“appeal from Pontius to Pilate.” This Sentimental Feminism commonly
called chivalry is sometimes impudently dubbed by its votaries,
“manliness.” It will presumably continue in its practical effects
until a sufficient minority of sensible men will have the moral
courage to beard a Feminist public opinion and shed a little of this
sort of “manliness.” The plucky Welshmen at Llandystwmdwy in their
dealings with the suffragette rowdies on a memorable occasion showed
themselves capable of doing this. In fact one good effect generally
of militant suffragetteism seems to be the weakening of the notion of
chivalry—_i.e._ in its modern sense of Sentimental Feminism—amongst
the populace of this country.

The combination of Sentimental Feminism with its invocation of the
old-world sentiment of chivalry which was based essentially on the
assumption of the mental, moral and physical inferiority of woman to
man, for its justification, with the pretensions of modern Political
Feminism, is simply grotesque in its inconsistent absurdity. In
this way Modern Feminism would fain achieve the feat of eating its
cake and having it too. When political and economic rights are in
question, _bien entendu_, such as involve gain and social standing,
the assumption of inferiority magically disappears before the strident
assertion of the dogma of the equality of woman with man—her mental
and moral equality certainly! When, however, the question is of a
different character—for example, for the relieving of some vile female
criminal of the penalty of her misdeeds—then Sentimental Feminism
comes into play, then the whole _plaidoyer_ is based on the chivalric
sentiment of deference and consideration for poor, weak woman. I may
point out that here, if it be in the least degree logical, the plea
for mercy or immunity can hardly be based on any other consideration
than that of an intrinsic moral weakness in view of which the
offence is to be condoned. The plea of physical weakness, if such be
entertained, is here in most cases purely irrelevant. Thus, as regards
the commutation of the death sentence, the question of the muscular
strength or weakness of the condemned person does not come in at all.
The same applies, _mutatis mutandis_, to many other forms of criminal
punishment. But it must not be forgotten that there are two aspects of
physical strength or weakness. There is, as we have already pointed
out, the muscular aspect and the constitutional aspect. If we concede
the female sex as essentially and inherently weaker in muscular power
and development than the male, this by no means involves the assumption
that woman is constitutionally weaker than man. On the contrary, it
is a known fact attested, as far as I am aware, by all physiologists,
no less than by common observation, that the constitutional toughness
and power of endurance of woman in general far exceeds that of man, as
explained in an earlier chapter. This resilient power of the system,
its capacity for enduring strain, it may here be remarked in passing,
is by no means necessarily a characteristic of a specially high stage
of organic evolution. We find it indeed in many orders of invertebrate
animals in striking forms. Be this as it may, however, the existence
of this greater constitutional strength or resistant power in the
female than in the male organic system—as crucially instanced by
the markedly greater death-rate of boys than of girls in infancy and
early childhood—should, in respect of severity of punishment, prison
treatment, etc., be a strong counter-argument against the plea for
leniency, or immunity in the case of female criminals, made by the
advocates of Sentimental Feminism.

But these considerations afford only one more illustration of the utter
irrationality of the whole movement of Sentimental Feminism identified
with the notion of “chivalry.” For the rest, we may find illustrations
of this galore. A very flagrant case is that infamous “rule of the
sea” which came so much into prominence at the time of the _Titanic_
disaster. According to this preposterous “chivalric” Feminism, in the
case of a ship foundering, it is the unwritten law of the seas, not
that the passengers shall leave the ship and be rescued in their order
as they come, but that the whole female portion shall have the right of
being rescued before any man is allowed to leave the ship. Now this
abominable piece of sex favouritism, on the face of it, cries aloud in
its irrational injustice. Here is no question of bodily strength or
weakness, either muscular or constitutional. In this respect, for the
nonce, all are on a level. But it is a case of life itself. A number of
poor wretches are doomed to a watery grave, simply and solely because
they have not had the luck to be born of the privileged female sex.

Such is “chivalry” as understood to-day—the deprivation, the robbery
from men of the most elementary personal rights in order to endow women
with privileges at the expense of men. During the ages of chivalry and
for long after it was not so. Law and custom then was the same for
men as for women in its incidence. To quote the familiar proverb in a
slightly altered form, _then_—“what was sauce for the gander was sauce
for the goose.” Not until the nineteenth century did this state of
things change. Then for the first time the law began to respect persons
and to distinguish in favour of sex.

Even taking the matter on the conventional ground of weakness and
granting, for the sake of argument, the relative muscular weakness
of the female as ground for her being allowed the immunity claimed
by Modern Feminists of the sentimental school, the distinction is
altogether lost sight of between weakness as such and _aggressive_
weakness. Now I submit there is a very considerable difference between
what is due to weakness that is harmless and unprovocative, and
weakness that is _aggressive_, still more when this aggressive weakness
presumes on itself as weakness, and on the consideration extended to
it, in order to become tyrannical and oppressive. Weakness as such
assuredly deserves all consideration, but aggressive weakness deserves
none save to be crushed beneath the iron heel of strength. Woman at
the present day has been encouraged by a Feminist public opinion to
become meanly aggressive under the protection of her weakness. She has
been encouraged to forge her gift of weakness into a weapon of tyranny
against man, unwitting that in so doing she has deprived her weakness
of all just claim to consideration or even to toleration.




CHAPTER VI

SOME FEMINIST LIES AND FALLACIES


By Feminist lies I understand false statements put forward by persons,
many of whom should be perfectly well aware that they are false,
apparently with the deliberate intention of misleading public opinion
as to the real position of woman before the law. By fallacies I
understand statements doubtless dictated by Feminist prepossessions or
Feminist bias, but not necessarily suggesting conscious or deliberate
_mala fides_.

Of the first order, the statements are made apparently with intentional
dishonesty in so far as many of the persons making them are concerned,
since we may reasonably suppose them to have intelligence and knowledge
enough to be aware that they are contrary to fact. The talk about the
wife being a chattel, for example, is so palpably absurd in the face of
the existing law that it is nowadays scarcely worth making (although
we do hear it occasionally even now). But it was not even true under
the old common law of England, which, for certain disabilities on the
one hand, conceded to the wife certain corresponding privileges on
the other. The law of husband and wife, as modified by statute in the
course of the nineteenth century, as I have often enough had occasion
to point out, is a monument of legalised tyranny over the husband in
the interests of the wife.

If in the face of the facts the word chattel, as applied to the wife,
has become a little too preposterous even for Feminist controversial
methods, there is another falsehood scarcely less brazen that we hear
from Feminist fanatics every day. The wife, we are told, is the only
_unpaid servant_! A more blatant lie could scarcely be imagined. As
every educated person possessing the slightest acquaintance with the
laws of England knows, the law requires the husband to maintain his
wife in a manner according with his own social position; has, in other
words, to feed, clothe and afford her all reasonable luxuries, which
the law, with a view to the economic standing of the husband, regards
as necessaries. This although the husband has no claim on the wife’s
property or income, however wealthy she may be. Furthermore, it need
scarcely be said, a servant who is inefficient, lazy, or otherwise
intolerable, can be dismissed or her wage can be lowered. Not so that
privileged person, the legally wedded wife. It matters not whether
she perform her duties well, badly, indifferently, or not at all,
the husband’s legal obligations remain just the same. It will be
seen, therefore, that the wife in any case receives from the husband
economic advantages compared with which the wages of the most highly
paid servant in existence are a mere pauper’s pittance. This talk we
hear _ad nauseam_, from the Feminist side, of the wife being an “unpaid
servant,” is typical of the whole Feminist agitation. We find the same
deliberate and unscrupulous dishonesty characterising it throughout.
Facts are not merely perverted or exaggerated, they are simply turned
upside down.

Another statement commonly made is that women’s lower wages as compared
with men’s is the result of not possessing the parliamentary franchise.
Now this statement, though not perhaps bearing on its face the wilful
deception characterising the one just mentioned, is not any the less a
perversion of economic fact, and we can hardly regard it otherwise than
as intentional. It is quite clear that up to date the wages of men have
not been raised by legislation, and yet sections of the working classes
have possessed the franchise at least since 1867. What legislation
has done for the men has been simply to remove obstacles in the way
of industrial organisation on the part of the workman in freeing the
trade unions from disabilities, and even this was begun, owing to
working-class pressure from outside, long before—as long ago as the
twenties of the last century under the auspices of Joseph Hume and
Francis Place. Now women’s unions enjoy precisely the same freedom as
men’s unions, and nothing stands in the way of working women organising
and agitating for higher wages. Those who talk of the franchise as
being necessary for working women in order to obtain equal industrial
and economic advantages with working men must realise perfectly well
that they are performing the oratorical operation colloquially known as
“talking through their hat.” The reasons why the wages of women workers
are lower than those of men, whatever else may be their grounds, and
these are, I think, pretty obvious, clearly are not traceable to
anything which the concession of the franchise would remove. If it be
suggested that a law could be enacted compulsorily enforcing equal
rates of payment for women as for men, what the result would be the
merest tyro in such matters can foresee—to wit, that it would mean the
wholesale displacement of female by male labour over large branches of
industry, and this, we imagine, is not precisely what the advocates of
female suffrage are desirous of effecting.

Male labour, owing to its greater efficiency and other causes, being
generally preferred by employers to female labour, it is not likely
that, even for the sake of female _beaux yeux_, they are going to
accept female labour in the place of male, on an equal wage basis.
All this, of course, is quite apart from the question referred
to on a previous page, as to the economic responsibilities in the
interests of women, which our Feminist law-makers have saddled on the
man—namely, the responsibility of the husband, and the husband alone,
for the maintenance of his wife and family, obligations from anything
corresponding to which the female sex is wholly free.

In a leaflet issued by the “Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage”
it is affirmed that “many laws are on the statute book which inflict
injustice on Women.” We challenge this statement as an unmitigated
falsehood. Its makers ought to know perfectly well that they cannot
justify it. There are no laws on the statute book inflicting injustice
on women as a Sex, but there are many laws inflicting injustice on
men in the supposed interests of women. The worn-out tag which has so
long done duty with Feminists in this connection—viz. the rule of the
Divorce Court, that in order to procure divorce a wife has to prove
cruelty as well as adultery on the part of a husband, whereas a husband
has to prove adultery alone on the part of a wife—has already been
dealt with and its rottenness as a specimen of a grievance sufficiently
exposed in this work and elsewhere by the present writer. Is what the
authors of the leaflet may possibly have in their mind (if they have
anything at all) when they talk about statutes inflicting injustice
on women, that the law does not carry sex vindictiveness against men
far enough to please them? With all its flogging, penal servitude,
hard labour and the rest, for offences against women, some of them of
a comparatively trivial kind, does the law as regards severity on men
not even yet satisfy the ferocious Feminist souls of the members of the
“Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage”? This is the only explanation
of the statement in question other than that it is sheer bald bluff
designed to mislead those ignorant of the law.

Another flagrant falsehood perpetually being dinned into our ears by
the suffragists is the statement that _women have to obey the same laws
as men_. The conclusion drawn from this false statement is, of course,
that since they have to obey these laws equally with men, they have
an equal claim with men to take part in the making or the modifying
of them. Now without pausing to consider the fallacy underlying the
conclusion, we would point out that it is sufficient for our present
purpose to call attention to the falsity of the initial assumption
itself. It needs only one who follows current events and reads his
newspaper with impartial mind to see that to allege that women _have
to_, in the true sense of the words (_i.e._ are compelled to), obey
the same laws as men is a glaringly mendacious statement. It is
unnecessary in this place to go over once more the mass of evidence
comprised in previous writings of my own—_e.g._ in the pamphlet, “The
Legal Subjection of Man” (Twentieth Century Press), in the article,
“A Creature of Privilege” (_Fortnightly Review_, November 1911), and
elsewhere in the present volume, illustrating the unquestionable fact
that though in theory women may have to obey the law as men have, yet
in practice they are absolved from all the more serious consequences
men have to suffer when they disobey it. The treatment recently
accorded to the suffragettes for crimes such as wilful damage and
arson, not to speak of their previous prison treatment when convicted
for obstruction, disturbance and minor police misdemeanours, is a
proof, writ large, of the mendacity of the statement that women no less
than men have to obey the laws of the country, so far, that is, as any
real meaning is attached to this phrase.

Another suffragist lie which is invariably allowed to pass muster by
default, save for an occasional protest by the present writer, is the
assumption that the English law draws a distinction as regards prison
treatment, etc., as between political and non-political offenders.
Everyone with even the most elementary legal knowledge is aware that
no such distinction has ever been recognised or suggested by the
English law—at least until the prison ordinance made quite recently,
expressly to please the suffragettes, by Mr Winston Churchill when
Home Secretary. However desirable many may consider such a distinction
to be, nothing is more indubitable than the fact that it has never
previously obtained in the letter or practice of the law of England.
And yet, without a word of contradiction from those who know better,
arguments and protests galore have been fabricated on the suffragist
side, based solely on this impudently false assumption.

Misdemeanours and crimes at common law, when wilfully committed,
have in all countries always remained misdemeanours and crimes,
whatever motive can be conveniently put forward to account for them. A
political offence has always meant the expression of opinions or the
advocacy of measures or acts (not of the nature of common law crimes)
which are in contravention of the existing law—_e.g._ a “libel” on
the constituted authorities of the State, or the forcible disregard
of a law or police regulation in hindrance of the right of public
speech or meeting. This is what is meant by political offence in any
country recognising such as a special class of offence entitling
those committing it to special treatment. This is so where the matter
refers to the internal legislation of the country. Where the question
of extradition comes in the definition of political offence is, of
course, wider. Take the extreme case, that of the assassination of a
ruler or functionary, especially in a despotic State, where free Press
and the free expression of opinion generally do not exist. This is
undoubtedly a political, not a common law offence, _in so far as other
countries are concerned_, and hence the perpetrator of such a deed has
the right to claim immunity, on this ground, from extradition. The
position assumable is, that under despotic conditions the progressive
man is at war with the despot and those exercising authority under
him; therefore, in killing the despot or the repositories of despotic
authority, he is striking directly at the enemy. It would, however,
be absurd for the agent in a deed of this sort to expect special
political treatment _within the jurisdiction of the State itself
immediately concerned_. As a matter of fact he never does so. Fancy
a Russian Nihilist, when brought to trial, whining that he is a
political offender and hence to be exempted from all harsh treatment!
No, the Nihilist has too much self-respect to make himself ridiculous
in this way. Hardly even the maddest Terrorist Anarchist would make
such a claim. For example, the French law recognises the distinction
between political and common law offences. But for all this the _bande
tragique_, Bonnot and his associates, did not receive any benefit from
the distinction or even claim to do so, though otherwise they were loud
enough in proclaiming the political motives inspiring them. Even as
regards extradition, running amuck at large, setting fire promiscuously
to private buildings or injuring the ordinary non-political citizen,
as a “protest,” would not legally come into the category of political
offences and hence protect their authors from being surrendered as
ordinary criminals.

The real fact, of course, is that all this talk on the part of
suffragettes and their backers about “political” offences and
“political” prison treatment is only a mean and underhand way of trying
to secure special sex privileges under false pretences. Those who talk
the loudest in the strain in question know this perfectly well.

These falsehoods are dangerous, in spite of what one would think ought
to be their obvious character as such, by reason of the psychological
fact that you only require to repeat a lie often enough, provided you
are uncontradicted, in order for the aforesaid lie to be received as
established truth by the mass of mankind (“mostly fools,” as Carlyle
had it).

It is a preposterous claim, I contend, that any misdemeanour and _a
fortiori_ any felony has, law apart, and even from a merely ethical
point of view, any claim to special consideration and leniency on
the bare declaration of the felon or misdemeanant that it had been
dictated by political motive. In no country, at any time, has the mere
assertion of political motive been held to bring an ordinary crime
within the sphere of treatment of political offences. According to the
legal and ethical logic of the suffragettes, it is perfectly open for
them to set on fire theatres, churches and houses, and even to shoot
down the harmless passer-by in the street, and claim the treatment
of first-class misdemeanants on the ground that the act was done as
a protest against some political grievance under which they imagined
themselves to be labouring. The absurdity of the suggestion is evident
on its mere statement. And yet the above preposterous assumption
has been suffered equally with the one last noted to pass virtually
without protest, and what is more serious, it has been acted upon by
the authorities as though it were indubitably sound law as well as
sound ethics! It may be pointed out that what has cost many an Irish
Fenian in the old days, and many a Terrorist Anarchist at a later date,
a sentence of penal servitude for life, can be indulged in by modern
suffragettes at the expense of a few weeks’ imprisonment in the first
or second division. Of course, this whole talk of “political offences,”
when they are, on the face of them, mere common crimes, is purely and
simply a trick designed to shield the cowardly and contemptible female
creatures who perpetrate these senseless and dastardly outrages from
the punishment they deserve and would receive if they had not the good
fortune to be of the privileged sex. In the case of men this impudent
nonsense would, of course, never have been put forward, and, if it
had, would have been summarily laughed out of court. That it should
be necessary to point out these things in so many words is a striking
illustration of the moral and intellectual atrophy produced by Feminism
in the public mind.

There is another falsehood we often hear by way of condoning the
infamous outrages of the suffragettes. The excuse is often offered when
the illogical pointlessness of the “militant” methods of the modern
suffragette are in question: “Oh! men have also done the same things:
men have used violence to attain political ends!” Now the fallacy
involved in this retort is plain enough.

It may be perfectly true that men have used violence to attain their
ends on occasion. But to assert this fact in the connection in
question is purely irrelevant. There is violence _and_ violence. It
is absolutely false to say that men have ever adopted purposeless and
inane violence _as a policy_. The violence of men has always had an
intelligible relation to the ends they had in view, either proximate
or ultimate. They pulled down Hyde Park railings in 1866. Good! But
why was this? Because they wanted to hold a meeting, and found the
park closed against them, the destruction of the railings being the
only means of gaining access to the park. Again, the Reform Bill riots
of 1831 were at least all directed against Government property and
governmental persons—that is, the enemy with whom they were at war.
In most cases, as at Bristol and Nottingham, there was (as in that of
the Hyde Park railings) a very definite and immediate object in the
violence and destruction committed—namely, the release of persons
imprisoned for the part they had taken in the Reform movement, by the
destruction of the gaols where they were confined. What conceivable
analogy have these things with a policy of destroying private property,
setting fire to tea pavilions, burning boat-builders’ stock-in-trade,
destroying private houses, poisoning pet dogs, upsetting jockeys,
defacing people’s correspondence, including the postal orders of the
poor, mutilating books in a college library, pictures in a public
gallery, etc., etc.? And all these, _bien entendu_, not openly and
in course of a riot, but furtively, in the pursuit of a deliberately
premeditated policy! Have, I ask, men ever, in the course of the
world’s history, committed mean, futile and dastardly crimes such as
these in pursuit of any political or public end? There can be but
one answer to this question. Every reader must know that there is no
analogy whatever between suffragettes’ “militancy” and the violence and
crimes of which men may have been guilty. Even the Terrorist Anarchist,
however wrong-headed he may be, and however much his deeds may be
deemed morally reprehensible, is at least logical in his actions,
in so far as the latter have always had some definite bearing on his
political ends and were not mere senseless “running amuck.” The utterly
disconnected, meaningless and wanton character signalising the policy
of the “militant” suffragettes would of itself suffice to furnish a
conclusive argument for the incapacity of the female intellect to think
logically or politically, and hence against the concession to women of
public powers, political, judicial or otherwise.

Another fallacy analogous to the preceding, inasmuch as it seeks to
counterbalance female defects and weaknesses by the false allegation
of corresponding deficiencies in men, is the Feminist retort sometimes
heard when the question of hysteria in women is raised: “Oh! men can
also suffer from hysteria!” This has been already dealt with in an
earlier chapter, but for the sake of completing the list of prominent
Feminist fallacies I restate it concisely here. Now as we have seen it
is exceedingly doubtful whether this statement is true in any sense
whatever. There are eminent authorities who would deny that men ever
have true hysteria. There are others, of course, again, who would
extend the term hysteria so as to include every form of neurasthenic
disturbance. The question is largely, with many persons who discuss the
subject, one of terminology. It suffices here to cut short quibbling on
this score. For the nonce, let us drop the word hysteria and formulate
the matter as follows:—Women are frequently subject to a pathological
mental condition, differing in different cases but offering certain
well-marked features in common, a condition which seldom, if ever,
occurs in men. This I take to be an incontrovertible proposition based
upon experience which will be admitted by every impartial person.

Now the existence of the so-called hysterical man I have hitherto
found to be attested on personal experience solely by certain Feminist
medical practitioners who allege that they have met with him in their
consulting-rooms. His existence is thus vouchsafed for just as the
reality of the sea-serpent is vouchsafed for by certain sea captains
or other ancient mariners. Far be it from me to impugn the ability,
still less the integrity, of these worthy persons. But in either
case I may have my doubts as to the accuracy of their observation
or of their diagnosis. It may be that the sea-serpent exists and it
may be that hysteria is at times discoverable in male persons. But
while a conclusive proof of the discovery of a single sea-serpent of
the orthodox pattern would go far to justify the yarn of the ancient
mariner, the proof of the occurrence, in an occasional case, of
hysteria in men, would not by far justify the implied contention that
hysteria is not essentially a female malady. If hysterical men are as
common a phenomenon as certain hard-pressed Feminists would make out,
what I want to know is: Where are they? While we come upon symptoms
which would be commonly attributed to hysteria in well-nigh every
second or third woman of whose life we have any intimate knowledge,
how often do we find in men symptoms in any way resembling these?
In my own experience I have come across but two cases of men giving
indications of a temperament in any way analogous to that of the
“hysterical woman.” After all, the experience of the average layman,
and in this I contend my own is more or less typical, is more important
in the case of a malady manifesting itself in symptoms obvious to
common observation, such as the one we are considering, than that of
the medical practitioner, who by reason of his profession would be
especially likely to see cases, if there were any at all, however few
they might be. The possibility, moreover, at least suggests itself,
that the latter may often mistake for hysteria (using the word in the
sense commonly applied to the symptoms presented by women) symptoms
resulting from general neurasthenia or even from purely extraneous
causes, such as alcohol, drugs, etc. That this is sometimes the case is
hardly open to question. That the pathological mental symptoms referred
to as prevalent in the female, whether we attribute them to hysteria
or not, are rarely if ever found in the male sex is an undoubted fact.
The rose, it is said, is as sweet by any other name, and whether
we term these affections symptoms of hysteria, or describe them as
hysteria itself, or deny that they have anything to go with “true
hysteria,” their existence and frequency in the female sex remains
nevertheless a fact. No! whether some of the symptoms of hysteria,
“true” or “so-called,” are occasionally to be found in men or not,
every impartial person must admit that they are extremely rare, whereas
as regards certain pathological mental symptoms, common in women and
popularly identified (rightly or wrongly) with hysteria, there is, I
contend, little evidence of their occurring in men at all. Wriggle and
prevaricate as they may, it is impossible for Suffragists and Feminists
to successfully evade the undoubted truth that the mentality of women
is characterised constitutionally by a general instability, manifesting
itself in pathological symptoms radically differing in nature and in
frequency from any that obtain in men.

Very conspicuous among the fallacies that have done yeoman service in
the Feminist Movement is the assumption that women are constitutionally
the “weaker sex.” This has also been discussed by us in Chapter II.,
but the latter may again be supplemented here by a few further remarks,
so deeply rooted is this fallacy in public opinion. The reason of the
unquestioned acceptance of the assumption is partly due to a confusion
of two things under one name. The terms, “bodily strength” and “bodily
weakness” cover two distinct facts. The attribution of greater bodily
weakness to the female sex than to the male undoubtedly expresses a
truth, but no less does the attribution of greater bodily strength
to the female than to the male sex equally express a truth. In size,
weight and muscular development, average man has an unquestionable,
and in most cases enormous, advantage over average woman. It is in
this sense that the bodily structure of the human female can with some
show of justice be described as frail. On the other hand, as regards
tenacity of life, recuperative power and what we may term toughness of
constitution, woman is without doubt considerably stronger than man.
Now this vigour of constitution may, of course, also be described as
bodily strength, and to this confusion the assumption of the general
frailty of the female bodily organism as compared with the male has
acquired general currency in the popular mind.

The most carefully controlled and reliable statistics of the
Registrar-General and other sources show the enormously greater
mortality of men than of women at all ages and under all conditions
of life. Under the age of five the evidence shows that 120 boys die
to every 100 girls. In adult life the Registrar-General shows that
diseases of the chest are the cause of nearly 40 per cent. more
deaths among men than among women. That violence and accident should
be the occasion of 150 per cent. more deaths amongst men than women
is accounted for, partly, at least, by the greater exposure of men,
although the enormous disparity would lead one to suspect that here
also the inferior resisting power in the male constitution plays a not
inconsiderable part in the result. The report of the medical officer to
the Local Government Board proves that between the ages of fifty-five
and sixty-five there is a startling difference in numbers between the
deaths of men and those of women. The details for the year 1910 are as
follows:—

  Diseases           Males   Females

  Nervous system      1614    1240
  Heart               5762    5336
  Blood vessels       3424    3298
  Respiratory system  3110    2473
  Digestive system    1769    1681
  Kidneys, etc.       2241    1488
  Acute infections    2259    1164
  Violent deaths      1624     436

Various additional causes, connected with the more active and anxious
life of men, the greater strain to which they are subjected, their
greater exposure alike to infection and to accident, may explain a
certain percentage of the excessive death-rate of the male population
as opposed to the female, yet these explanations, even allowing the
utmost possible latitude to them, really only touch the fringe of the
difference, with the single exception of deaths from violence and
accident above alluded to, where liability and exposure may account
for a somewhat larger percentage. The great cause of the discrepancy
remains, without doubt, the enormously greater potentiality of
resistance, in other words of constitutional strength, in the female
bodily organism as compared with the male.

We must now deal at some length with a fallacy of some importance,
owing to the apparatus of learning with which it has been set forth,
to be found in Mr Lester F. Ward’s book, entitled “Pure Sociology,”
notwithstanding that its fallacious nature is plain enough when
analysed. Mr Ward terms his speculation the “Gynœcocentric Theory,”
by which he understands apparently the Feminist dogma of the supreme
importance of the female in the scheme of humanity and nature
generally. His arguments are largely drawn from general biology,
especially that of inferior organisms. He traces the various
processes of reproduction in the lower departments of organic nature,
subdivision, germination, budding, etc., up to the earlier forms
of bi-sexuality, culminating in conjugation or true sexual union.
His standpoint he thus states in the terms of biological origins:
“Although reproduction and sex are two distinct things, and although a
creature that reproduces without sex cannot properly be called either
male or female, still so completely have these conceptions become
blended in the popular mind that a creature which actually brings forth
offspring out of its own body, is instinctively classed as female.
The female is the fertile sex, and whatever is fertile is looked upon
as female. Assuredly it would be absurd to look upon an organism
propagating sexually as male. Biologists have proceeded from this
popular standpoint and regularly speak of ‘mother cells,’ and ‘daughter
cells.’ It, therefore, does no violence to language or to science to
say that life begins with the female organism and is carried on a long
distance by means of females alone. In all the different forms of
a-sexual reproduction, from fission to parthenogenesis, the female may
in this sense be said to exist alone and perform all the functions of
life, including reproduction. In a word, life begins as female.”

In the above remarks it will be seen that Mr Ward, so to say, jumps the
claim of a-sexual organisms to be considered as female. This, in itself
a somewhat questionable proceeding, serves him as a starting-point
for his theory. The a-sexual female (?), he observes, is not only
primarily the original sex, but continues throughout, the main trunk,
though afterwards the male element is added “for the purposes of
fertilisation.” “Among millions of humble creatures,” says Mr Ward,
“the male is simply and solely a fertiliser.” The writer goes on in
his efforts to belittle the male sex in the sphere of biology. “The
gigantic female spider and the tiny male fertiliser, the Mantis insect
with its similarly large and ferocious female, bees, and mosquitoes,”
all are pressed into the service. Even the vegetable kingdom, in so far
as it shows signs of sex differentiation, is brought into the lists in
favour of his theory of female supremacy, or “gynœcocentricism,” as he
terms it.

This theory may be briefly stated as follows:—In the earliest
organisms displaying sex differentiation, it is the female which
represents the organism proper, the rudimentary male existing solely
for the purpose of the fertilisation of the female. This applies
to most of the lower forms of life in which the differentiation of
sex obtains, and in many insects, the Mantis being one of the cases
specially insisted upon by our author. The process of the development
of the male sex is by means of the sexual selection of the female.
From being a mere fertilising agent, gradually, as evolution proceeds,
it assumes the form and characteristics of an independent organism
like the original female trunk organism. But the latter continues to
maintain its supremacy in the life of the species, by means chiefly
of sexual selection, until the human period, _i.e._ more or less (!),
for Mr Ward is bound to admit signs of male superiority in the higher
vertebrates—viz. birds and mammals. This superiority manifests itself
in size, strength, ornamentation, alertness, etc. But it is with man,
with the advent of the reasoning faculty, and, as a consequence, of
human supremacy, that it becomes first unmistakably manifest. This
superiority, Mr Ward contends, has been developed under the ægis of
the sexual selection of the female, and enabled cruel and wicked man
to subject and enslave down-trodden and oppressed woman, who has thus
been crushed by a Frankenstein of her own creation. Although in various
earlier phases of human organisation woman still maintains her social
supremacy, this state of affairs soon changes. Androcracy establishes
itself, and woman is reduced to the rôle of breeding the race and of
being the servant of man. Thus she has remained throughout the periods
of the higher barbarism and of civilisation. Our author regards the
lowest point of what he terms the degradation of woman to have been
reached in the past, and the last two centuries as having witnessed a
movement in the opposite direction—namely, towards the emancipation of
woman and equality between the sexes. (_Cf._ “Pure Sociology,” chap.
xiv., and especially pp. 290-377.)

The above is a brief, but, I think, not unfair skeleton statement
of the theory which Mr Lester Ward has elaborated in the work above
referred to, in great detail and with immense wealth of illustration.
But now I ask, granting the correctness of Mr Ward’s biological
premises and the accuracy of his exposition, and I am not specialist
enough to be capable of criticising these in detail: What does it all
amount to? The “business end” (as the Americans would say) of the whole
theory, it is quite evident, is to afford a plausible and scientific
basis for the Modern Feminist Movement, and thus to further its
practical pretensions. What Mr Ward terms the androcentric theory, at
least as regards man and the higher vertebrates, which is on the face
of it supported by the facts of human experience and has been accepted
well-nigh unanimously up to quite recent times, is, according to him,
all wrong. The male element in the universe of living things is not the
element of primary importance, and the female element the secondary,
but the converse is the case. For this contention Mr Ward, as already
pointed out, has, by dint of his biological learning, succeeded at
least in making out a case _in so far as lower forms of life are
concerned_. He has, however, to admit—a fatal admission surely—that
evolution has tended progressively to break down the superiority of
the female (by means, as he contends, of her own sexual selection)
and to transfer sex supremacy to the male, according to Mr Ward,
hitherto a secondary being, and that this tendency becomes very obvious
in most species of birds and mammals. With the rise of man, however,
out of the _pithecanthropos_, the _homosynosis_, or by whatever other
designation we may call the intermediate organism between the purely
animal and the purely human, and the consequent supersession of
instinct as the dominant form of intelligence by reason, the question
of superiority, as Mr Ward candidly admits, is no longer doubtful, and
upon the unquestionable superiority of the male, in due course of time,
follows the unquestioned supremacy. It is clear then that, granting
the biological premises of our author that the lowest sexual organisms
are virtually female and that in the hermaphrodites the female
element predominates; that in the earliest forms of bi-sexuality the
fertilising or male element was merely an offshoot of the female trunk
and that this offshoot develops, mainly by means of sexual selection on
the part of the female, into an organism similar to the latter; that
not until we reach the higher vertebrates, the birds and the mammals,
do we find any traces of male superiority; and that this superiority
only becomes definite and obvious, leading to male domination, in the
human species—granting all this, I say, what argument can be founded
upon it in support of the equal value physically, intellectually and
morally of the female sex in human society, or the desirability of
its possessing equal political power with men in such society? On the
contrary, Mr Ward’s whole exposition, with his biological facts of
illustration, would seem to point rather in the opposite direction. We
seem surely to have here, if Mr Ward’s premises be accepted as to the
primitive insignificance of the male element—at first overshadowed and
dominated by the female stem, but gradually evolving in importance,
character and fruition, till we arrive at man the highest product of
evolution up to date—a powerful argument for anti-Feminism. On Mr
Ward’s own showing, we find that incontestible superiority, both in
size and power of body and brain, has manifested itself in Androcracy,
when the female is relegated, in the natural course of things, to the
function of child-bearing. This, it can hardly be denied, is simply one
more instance of the general process of evolution, whereby the higher
being is evolved from the lower, at first weak and dependent upon its
parent, the latter remaining dominant until the new being reaches
maturity, when in its turn it becomes supreme, while that out of which
it developed, and of which it was first the mere offshoot, falls into
the background and becomes in its turn subordinate to its own product.

Let us turn now to another scientific fallacy, the result of a good
man struggling with adversity—_i.e._ a sound and honest scientific
investigator, but one who, at the same time, is either himself obsessed
with the principles of Feminism as with a religious dogma, or else is
nervously afraid of offending others who are. His attitude reminds one
of nothing so much as that of the orthodox geologist of the first half
of the nineteenth century, who wrote in mortal fear of incurring the
_odium theologicum_ by his exposition of the facts of geology, and who
was therefore nervously anxious to persuade his readers that the facts
in question did not clash with the Mosaic cosmogony as given in the
Book of Genesis. With Mr Havelock Ellis in his work, “Man and Woman,”
it is not the dogma of Biblical infallibility that he is concerned
to defend, but a more modern dogma, that of female equality, so dear
to the heart of the Modern Feminist. Mr Ellis’s efforts to evade the
consequences of the scientific truths he honestly proclaims are almost
pathetic. One cannot help noticing, after his exposition of some fact
that goes dead against the sex-equality theory as contended for by
Feminists, the eagerness with which he hastens to add some qualifying
statement tending to show that after all it is not so incompatible with
the Feminist dogma as it might appear at first sight.

The _pièce de résistance_, however, of Mr Havelock Ellis is contained
in his “conclusion.” The author has for his problem to get over
the obvious incompatibility of the truth he has himself abundantly
demonstrated in the course of his book, that the woman-type, in every
respect, physiological and psychological, approaches the child-type,
while the man-type, in its proper progress towards maturity,
increasingly diverges from it. The obvious implication of this fact is
surely plain, on the principle of the development of the individual
being a shorthand reproduction of the evolution of the species, or,
to express it in scientific phraseology, of _ontogeny_ being the
abbreviated recapitulation of the stages presented by _philogeny_. If
we proceed on this well-accredited and otherwise universally accepted
principle of biology, the inference is clear enough—to wit, that woman
is, as Herbert Spencer and others have pointed out, simply “undeveloped
man”—in other words, that Woman represents a lower stage of evolution
than Man. Now this would obviously not at all suit the book of Mr
Ellis’s Feminism. Explained away it has to be in some fashion or other.
So our author is driven to the daring expedient of throwing overboard
one of the best established generalisations of modern biology, and
boldly declaring that the principle contained therein is reversed
(we suppose “for this occasion only”) in the case of Man. In this
way he is enabled to postulate a theory consoling to the Feminist
soul, which affirms that adult man is nearer in point of development
to his pre-human ancestor than either the child or the woman! The
physiological and psychological analogies observable between the child
and the savage, and even, especially in early childhood, between the
child and the lower mammalian types—analogies which, notably in
the life of instinct and passion, are traceable readily also in the
human female—all these count for nothing; they are not dreamt of in
Mr Ellis’s Feminist philosophy. The Modern Feminist dogma requires
that woman should be recognised as equal in every respect (except in
muscular strength) with man, and if possible, as rather superior to
him. If Nature has not worked on Feminist lines, as common observation
and scientific research alike testify on the face of things, naughty
Nature must be “corrected,” in theory, at least, by the ingenuity of
Feminist savants of the degraded male persuasion. To this end we must
square our scientific hypotheses!

The startling theory of Mr Havelock Ellis, which must seem, one
would think, to all impartial persons, so out of accord with all the
acknowledged laws and facts of biological science, appears to the
present writer, it must be confessed, the very _reductio ad absurdum_
of Feminist controversial perversity.

I will conclude this chapter on Feminist Lies and Fallacies with a
fallacy of false analogy or false illustration, according as we
may choose to term it. This quasi-argument was recently put forward
in a defence speech by one of the prisoners in a suffragette trial
and was subsequently repeated by George Bernard Shaw in a letter
to _The Times_. Put briefly, the point attempted to be made is as
follows:—Apostrophising men, it is said: “How would you like it if
the historical relations of the sexes were reversed, if the making and
the administrating of the laws and the whole power of the State were
in the hands of women? Would not you revolt in such a condition of
affairs?” Now to this quasi-argument the reply is sufficiently clear.
The moral intended to be conveyed in the hypothetical question put, is
that women have just as much right to object to men’s domination, as
men would have to object to women’s domination. But it is plain that
the point of the whole question resides in a _petitio principie_—to
wit, in the assumption that those challenged admit equal intellectual
capacity and equal moral stability as between the average woman and the
average man. Failing this assumption the challenge becomes senseless
and futile. If we ignore mental and moral differences it is only a
question of degree as to when we are landed in obvious absurdity. In
“Gulliver’s Travels” we have a picture of society in which horses ruled
the roost, and lorded it over human beings. In this satire Swift in
effect put the question: “How would you humans like to be treated by
horses as inferiors, just as horses are treated by you to-day?” I am,
be it remembered, not instituting any comparison between the two cases,
beyond pointing out that the argument as an argument is intrinsically
the same in both.




CHAPTER VII

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MOVEMENT


We have already spoken of two strains in Modern Feminism which,
although commonly found together, are nevertheless intrinsically
distinguishable. The first I have termed Sentimental Feminism and the
second Political Feminism. Sentimental Feminism is in the main an
extension and emotional elaboration of the old notion of chivalry, a
notion which in the period when it was supposed to have been at its
zenith, certainly played a very much smaller part in human affairs
than it does in its extended and metamorphosed form in the present
day. We have already analysed in a former chapter the notion of
chivalry. Taken in its most general and barest form it represents
the consideration for weakness which is very apt to degenerate into
a worship of mere weakness. _La faiblesse prime le droit_ is not
necessarily nearer justice than _la force prime le droit_; although to
hear much of the talk in the present day one would imagine that the
inherent right of the weak to oppress the strong were a first principle
of eternal rectitude. But the theory of chivalry is scarcely invoked
in the present day save in the interests of one particular form of
weakness—viz. the woman as the muscularly weaker sex, and here it has
acquired an utterly different character.[141:1]

    [141:1] As regards this point it should be remarked that
    mediæval chivalry tolerated (as Wharton expressed it in his
    “History of Poetry”) “the grossest indecencies and obscenities
    between the sexes,” such things as modern puritanism would
    stigmatise with such words as “unchivalrous,” “unmanly” and
    the like. The resemblance between the modern worship of women
    and the relations of the mediæval knight to the female sex is
    very thin indeed. Modern claims to immunity for women from the
    criminal law and mediæval chivalry are quite different things.

Chivalry, as understood by Modern Sentimental Feminism, means unlimited
licence for women in their relations with men, and unlimited coercion
for men in their relations with women. To men all duties and no rights,
to women all rights and no duties, is the basic principle underlying
Modern Feminism, Suffragism, and the bastard chivalry it is so fond of
invoking. The most insistent female shrieker for equality between the
sexes among Political Feminists, it is interesting to observe, will, in
most cases, on occasion be found an equally insistent advocate of the
claims of Sentimental Feminism, based on modern metamorphosed notions
of chivalry. It never seems to strike anyone that the muscular weakness
of woman has been forged by Modern Feminists into an abominable weapon
of tyranny. Under cover of the notion of chivalry, as understood by
Modern Feminism, Political and Sentimental Feminists alike would
deprive men of the most elementary rights of self-defence against women
and would exonerate the latter practically from all punishment for the
most dastardly crimes against men. They know they can rely upon the
support of the sentimental section of public opinion with some such
parrot cry of “What! Hit a woman!”

Why not, if she molests you?

“Treat a woman in this way!” “Shame!” responds automatically the crowd
of Sentimental Feminist idiots, oblivious of the fact that the real
shame lies in their endorsement of an iniquitous sex privilege. If the
same crowd were prepared to condemn any special form of punishment
or mode of treatment as inhumane for both sexes alike, there would,
of course, be nothing to be said. But it is not so. The most savage
cruelty and vindictive animosity towards men leaves them comparatively
cold, at most evoking a mild remonstrance as against the inflated
manifestation of sentimental horror and frothy indignation produced by
any slight hardship inflicted by way of punishment (let us say) on a
female offender.

The psychology of Sentimental Feminism generally is intimately bound up
with the curious phenomenon of the hatred of men by their own sex as
such. With women, in spite of what is sometimes alleged, one does not
find this phenomenon of anti-sex. On the contrary, nowadays we are in
presence of a powerful female sex-solidarity indicating the beginnings
of a strong sex-league of women against men. But with men, as already
said, in all cases of conflict between the sexes, we are met with a
callous indifference, alternating with positive hostility towards
their fellow-men, which seems at times to kill in them all sense of
justice. This is complemented on the other side by an imbecile softness
towards the female sex in general which reminds one of nothing so much
as of the maudlin _bonhomie_ of the amiable drunkard. This besotted
indulgence, as before noted, is proof even against the outraged sense
of injury to property.

As we all know, offences against property, as a rule, are those the
average bourgeois is least inclined to condone, yet we have recently
seen a campaign of deliberate wanton destruction by arson and other
means, directed expressly against private property, which nevertheless
the respectable propertied bourgeois, the man of law and order, has
taken pretty much “lying down.” Let us suppose another case. Let us
imagine an anarchist agitation, with a known centre and known leaders,
a centre from which daily outrages were deliberately planned by these
leaders and carried out by their emissaries, all, _bien entendu_, of
the male persuasion.

Now what attitude does the reader suppose “public opinion” of the
propertied classes would adopt towards the miscreants who were
responsible for these acts? Can he not picture to himself the furious
indignation, the rabid diatribes, the advocacy of hanging, flogging,
penal servitude for life, as the minimum punishment, followed by panic
legislation on these lines, which would ensue as a consequence. Yet
of such threatenings and slaughter, where suffragettes who imitate
the policy of the Terrorist Anarchist are concerned, we hear not a
sound. The respectable propertied bourgeois, the man of law and order,
will, it is true, probably condemn these outrages in an academic way,
but there is an undernote of hesitancy which damps down the fire of
his indignation. There is no vindictiveness, no note of atrocity in
his expostulations; nay, he is even prepared, on occasion, to argue
the question, while maintaining the impropriety, the foolishness,
the “unwomanliness” of setting fire to empty houses, cutting up golf
links, destroying correspondence, smashing windows and the like. But
of fiery indignation, of lurid advocacy of barbaric punishments, or of
ferocity in general, we have not a trace. On the contrary, a certain
willingness to admit and even to emphasise the disinterestedness of
these female criminals is observable. As regards this last point, we
must again insist on what was pointed out on a previous page, that
the disinterestedness and unselfishness of many a male bomb-throwing
anarchist who has come in for the righteous bourgeois’ sternest
indignation, are, at least, as unquestionable as those of the female
house-burners and window-smashers. Moreover the anarchist, however
wrong-headed he may have been in his action, as once before remarked,
it must not be forgotten, had at least for the goal of his endeavours,
not merely the acquirement of a vote, but the revolution which he
conceived would abolish human misery and raise humanity to a higher
level.

In this strange phenomenon, therefore, in which the indignation of
the bourgeois at the wanton and wilful violation of the sacredness of
his idol, is reduced to mild remonstrance and its punitive action to
a playful pretence, we have a crucial instance of the extraordinary
influence of Feminism over the modern mind. That the propertied classes
should take arson and wilful destruction of property in general,
with such comparative equanimity because the culprits are women,
acting in the assumed interest of a cause that aims at increasing the
influence of women in the State, is the most striking illustration we
can have of the power of Feminism. We have here a double phenomenon,
the unreasoning hatred of man as a sex, by men, and their equally
unreasoning indulgence towards the other sex. As we indicated above,
not only is the sense of _esprit de corps_ entirely absent among modern
men as regards their own sex, while strongly present in modern women,
but this negative characteristic has become positive on the other side.
Thus the modern sex problem presents us with a reversal of the ordinary
sociological law of the solidarity of those possessing common interests.

It remains to consider the psychological explanation of this fact.
Why should men so conspicuously prefer the interests of women before
those of their own sex? That this is the case with modern man the
history of the legislation of the last fifty years shows, and the
undoubted fact may be found further illustrated in the newspaper
reports of well-nigh every trial, whether at civil or criminal law,
quite apart from the ordinary “chivalric” acts of men in the detail of
social life. This question of sex, therefore, as before said, forms
the solitary exception to the general law of the _esprit de corps_ of
those possessing common characteristics and interests. It cannot be
adequately explained by a reference to the evolution of sex functions
and relations from primitive man onwards, since it is at least in
the extreme form we see it to-day, a comparatively recent social
phenomenon. The theory of the sacrosanctity of women by virtue of their
sex, quite apart from their character and conduct as individuals,
scarcely dates back farther than a century, even from its beginnings.
The earlier chivalry, where it obtained at all, applied only to the
woman who presented what were conceived of as the ideal moral feminine
characteristics in some appreciable degree. The mere physical fact of
sex was never for a moment regarded as of itself sufficient to entitle
the woman to any special homage, consideration, or immunity, over and
above the man. No one suggested that the female criminal was less
guilty or more excusable than the male criminal. No one believed that
a woman had a vested right to rob or swindle a man because she had had
sexual relations with him. This notion of the mere fact of sex—of
femality—as of itself constituting a title to special privileges
and immunities, apart from any other consideration, is a product of
very recent times. In treating this question, in so far as it bears
on the criminal law, it is important to distinguish carefully between
the softening of the whole system of punishment due to the general
development of humanitarian tendencies and the special discrimination
made in favour of the female sex. These two things are very often
inadequately distinguished from one another. Punishment may have become
more humane where men are concerned, it may have advanced up to a
certain point in this direction, but its character is not essentially
changed. As regards women, however, the whole conception of criminal
punishment and penal discipline has altered. Sex privilege has been now
definitely established as a principle.

Now a complete investigation of the psychology of this curious
phenomenon we have been considering—namely, the hatred so common with
men for their fellow-men as a sex—is a task which has never yet been
properly taken in hand. Its obverse side is to be seen on all hands in
the conferring and confirming of sex prerogative on women. Not very
long ago, as we have seen, one of its most striking manifestations
came strongly under public notice—namely, the “rule of the sea,” by
which women, by virtue of their sex, can claim to be saved from a
sinking ship before men. The fact that the laws and practices in which
this man-hatred and woman-preference find expression are contrary to
every elementary sense of justice, in many cases conflict with public
policy, and can obviously be seen to be purely arbitrary, matters not.
The majority of men feel no _sense_ of the injustice although they may
admit the fact of the injustice, when categorically questioned. They
are prepared when it comes to the point to let public policy go by
the board rather than entrench upon the sacred privilege and immunity
of the female; while as to the arbitrary and unreasoning nature of
the aforesaid laws and practices, not being troubled with a logical
conscience, this does not affect them. I must confess to being unequal
to the task of accurately fathoming the psychological condition of the
average man who hates man in general and loves woman in general to the
extent of going contrary to so many apparently basal tendencies of
human nature as we know it otherwise. The reply, of course, will be
an appeal to the power of the sexual instinct. But this, I must again
repeat, will not explain the rise, or, if not the rise, at least the
marked expansion of the sentiment in question during the last three
generations or thereabouts. Even apart from this, while I am well aware
of the power of sexual love to effect anything in the mind of man as
regards its individual object, I submit it is difficult to conceive how
it can influence so strongly men’s attitude towards women they have not
seen, or, even where they have seen them, when there is no question of
sexual attraction, or, again, as regards the collectivity of women—the
abstract category, Woman (in general).

We have already dealt with the Anti-man campaign in the Press,
especially in modern novels and plays. This, as we have remarked, often
takes the form of direct abuse of husbands and lovers and the attempt
to make them look ridiculous as a foil to the brilliant qualities of
wives and sweethearts. But we sometimes find the mere laudation of
woman herself, apart from any direct anti-manism, assume the character
of an intellectual emetic. A much-admired contemporary novelist,
depicting a wedding ceremony in fashionable society circles, describes
the feelings of his hero, a young man disgusted with the hollowness
and vanity of “Society” and all its ways, as follows:—“The bride was
opposite him now, and by an instinct of common chivalry he turned
away his eyes; it seemed to him a shame to look at that downcast head
above the silver mystery of her perfect raiment; the modest head full,
doubtless, of devotion and pure yearnings; the stately head where no
such thought as ‘How am I looking this day of all days, before all
London?’ had ever entered: the proud head, where no such fear as, ‘How
am I carrying it off?’ could surely be besmirching. . . . He saw below
the surface of this drama played before his eyes; and set his face, as
a man might who found himself assisting at a sacrifice.” Now, I ask,
can it be believed that the writer of the above flamboyant feminist
fustian is a novelist and playwright of established reputation who
undoubtedly has done good work. The obvious criticism must surely
strike every reader that it is somewhat strange that this divinely
innocent creature he glorifies should arise straight out of a _milieu_
which is shown up as the embodiment of hollowness and conventional
superficiality. If men can lay the butter on thick in their laudation
of womanhood, female idolaters of their own sex can fairly outbid
them. At the time of writing there has just come under my notice a
dithyramb in the journal, _The Clarion_, by Miss Winnifred Blatchford,
on the sacrosanct perfections of womanhood in general, especially
as exemplified in the suicidal exploits of the late lamented Emily
Wilding Davidson of Epsom fame, and a diatribe on the purity, beauty
and unapproachable glory of woman. According to this lady, the glory of
womanhood seems to extend to every part of the female organism, but, we
are told, is especially manifested in the hair (oozing into the roots
apparently). Evidently there is something especially sacred in woman’s
hair! This prose ode to Woman, as exemplified in Emily Davidson,
culminates in the invocation: “Will the day ever come when a woman’s
life will be rated higher . . . than that of a jockey?” Poor jockey!
We will trust not, though present appearances do indicate a strong
tendency to regard a woman as possessing the prerogatives of the sacred
cow of Indian or ancient Egyptian fame!

It is impossible to read or hear any discussion on, say, the marriage
laws, without it being apparent that the female side of the question is
the one element of the problem which is considered worthy of attention.
The undoubted iniquity of our existing marriage laws is always spoken
of as an injustice to the woman and the changes in the direction of
greater freedom which are advocated as a relief to the wife bound to
a bad or otherwise unendurable husband. That the converse case may
happen, that that reviled and despised thing, a husband, may also have
reason to desire relief from a wife whose angelic qualities and vast
superiority to his own vile male self he fails to appreciate, never
seems to enter into the calculation at all.

That no satisfactory formulation of the psychology of the movement of
Feminism has yet been offered is undoubtedly true. For the moment, I
take it, all we can do is co-ordinate the fact as a case of what we
may term social hypnotism, of those waves of feeling uninfluenced by
reason which are a phenomenon so common in history—witchcraft manias,
flagellant fanaticisms, religious “revivals,” and similar social
upheavals. The belief that woman is oppressed by man, and that the
need for remedying that oppression at all costs is urgent, partly, at
least, doubtless belongs to this order of phenomena. That this feeling
is widespread and held in various degrees of intensity by large numbers
of persons, men no less than women, is not to be denied. That it is of
the nature of a hypnotic wave of sentiment, uninfluenced by reason,
is shown by the fact that argument does not seem to touch it. You may
show conclusively that facts are opposed to the assumption; that, so
far from women being oppressed, the very contrary is the case; that
the existing law and its administration is in no essential respect
whatever unfavourable to women, but, on the contrary, is, as a whole,
grossly unfair to men—it is all to no purpose. Your remonstrances,
in the main, fall on deaf ears, or, shall we say, they fall off the
mind coated with Feminist sentiment as water falls from the proverbial
duck’s back. The facts are ignored and the sentiment prevails; the same
old catchwords, the same lies and threadbare fallacies are repeated.
The fact that they have been shown to be false counts for nothing.
The hypnotic wave of sentiment sweeps reason aside and compels men to
believe that woman is oppressed and man the oppressor, and believe
it they will. If facts are against the _idée fixe_ of the hypnotic
suggestion, so much the worse for the facts. Thus far the Feminist
dogma of the oppression of the female sex.

As regards the obverse side of this Sentimental Feminism which issues
in ferocious sex-laws directed against men for offences against
women—laws enacting barbarous tortures, such as the “cat,” and
which are ordered with gusto in all their severity in our criminal
courts—this probably is largely traceable to the influence of Sadic
lusts. An agitation such as that which led to the passing of the
White Slave Traffic Act, so-called, of 1912, is started, an agitation
engineered largely by the inverted libidinousness of social purity
mongers, and on the crest of this agitation the votaries of Sadic
cruelty have their innings. The foolish Sentimental Feminist at large,
whose indignation against wicked man is fanned to fury by bogus
tales and his judgment captured by representations of the severities
requisite to stamp out the evil he is assured is so widespread, lends
his fatuous support to the measures proposed. The judicial Bench
is, of course, delighted at the increase of power given it over the
prisoner in the dock, and should any of the _puisnes_ happen to have
Sadic proclivities they are as happy as horses in clover and the “cat”
flourishes like a green bay tree.

Let us now turn to the question of the psychology of Political
Feminism. Political Feminism, as regards its immediate demand of female
suffrage, is based directly on the modern conception of democracy.
This is its avowed basis. With modern notions of universal suffrage
it is declared that the exclusion of women from the franchise is
logically incompatible. If you include in the parliamentary voting
lists all sorts and conditions of men, it is said, it is plainly a
violation of the principle of democracy to exclude more than one half
of the adult population from the polls. As Mill used to say in his
advocacy of female suffrage, so long as the franchise was restricted
to a very small section of the population, there may have been nothing
noteworthy in the exclusion of women. But now that the mass of men
are entitled to the vote and the avowed aim of democracy is to extend
it to all men, the refusal to extend it still further to women is an
anomaly and a manifest inconsistency. But in this, Mill, and others
who have used his argument, omitted to consider one very vital point.
The extensions of the suffrage, such as have been demanded and in
part obtained by democracy up to the present agitation, have always
referred to the removal of class barriers, wealth barriers, race
barriers, etc.—in a word, social barriers—but never to the removal
of barriers based on deep-lying organic difference—_i.e._ barriers
determining not sociological but biological distinctions. The case of
sex is unique in this connection, and this fact vitiates any analogy
between the extension of suffrage to women and its extension to fresh
social strata such as democracy has hitherto had in view, terminating
in the manhood suffrage which is the ultimate goal of all political
democrats. Now sex constitutes an organic or biological difference,
just as a species constitutes another and (of course) a stronger
biological difference. Hence I contend the mere fact of this difference
rules out the bare appeal to the principle of democracy _per se_ as an
argument in favour of the extension of the suffrage to women. There is,
I submit, no parity between the principle and practice of democracy as
hitherto understood, and the new extension proposed to be given to
the franchise by the inclusion of women within its pale. And yet there
is no question but that the apparent but delusive demand of logical
consistency in this question, has influenced and still influences many
an honest democrat in his attitude in this matter.

But although the recognition of the difference of sex as being
an organic difference and therefore radically other than social
differences of caste, class, wealth, or even race, undoubtedly
invalidates the appeal to the democrat on the ground of consistency, to
accept the principle of female suffrage, yet it does not necessarily
dispose of the question. It merely leaves the ground free for the
problem as to whether the organic distinction implied in sex does or
does not involve corresponding intellectual and moral differences in
the female sex which it is proposed to enfranchise; and furthermore
whether such differences, if they exist, involve general inferiority,
or at least an unfitness _ad hoc_ for the exercise of political
functions. These questions we have, I think, sufficiently discussed
already in the present work. The fact of the existence of exceptionally
able women in various departments, does undoubtedly mislead many men
in their judgment as to the capacity of the average woman to “think
politically,” or otherwise to show herself the effective equal of the
average man, morally and intellectually. The reasons for answering
this question in the negative we have already briefly indicated in the
course of our investigations. This renders it unnecessary to discuss
the matter any further here.

In dealing with the psychological aspects of the Feminist Movement,
the intellectual conditions which paved the way for its acceptance,
it is worth while recalling two or three typical instances of the
class of “argument” to be heard on occasion from the female advocates
for the suffrage. Thus, when the census was taken in 1911 and the
Women’s Political and Social Union conceived, as they thought, the
brilliant idea of annoying the authorities and vitiating the results
of the census by refusing to allow themselves to be enrolled, one
of the leaders, when interviewed on the point, gave her reason for
her refusal to be included, in the following terms:—“I am not a
citizen” (meaning that she did not possess the franchise) “and I am
not going to pretend to be one.” The silliness of this observation
is, of course, obvious, seeing that the franchise or even citizenship
has nothing whatever to do with the census, which includes infants,
besides criminals, lunatics, imbeciles, etc. Again, in a manifesto of
the Women’s Political and Social Union defending window-smashing and
other “militant” outrages, it was pointed out that the coal strike
had caused more injury than the window-smashing and yet the strikers
were not prosecuted as the window-smashers were—in other words, the
exercise of the basal personal right of the free man to withhold his
labour save under the conditions agreed to by him, is paralleled with
criminal outrage against person and property! Again, some three or
four years ago, when the Women’s Suffrage Bill had passed the Commons,
on its being announced by the Government that for the remainder of
the Session no further facilities could be given for private members’
Bills, save for those of a non-contentious character, one of these
sapient females urged in the Press that, seeing that there were
persons to be found in both the orthodox political camps who were
in favour of female suffrage, therefore the Bill in question must
be regarded as of a non-contentious character! Once more, a lady,
writing a few months ago to one of the weekly journals, remarked that
though deliberate window-breaking, destruction of letters, and arson,
might be illegal acts, yet that the punishing of them by imprisonment
with hard labour, they being political offences, was also an illegal
act, with the conclusion that the “militants” and the authorities,
both alike having committed illegal acts, were “quits”! These choice
specimens of suffragettes’ logic are given as throwing a significant
light on the mental condition of women in the suffragette movement,
and indirectly on female psychology generally. One would presumably
suppose that the women who put them forward must have failed to see
the exhibition they were making of themselves. That any human being
out of an asylum, could have sunk to the depth of fatuous inconsequent
idiocy they indicate would seem scarcely credible. Is the order of
imbecility which the above and many similar utterances reflect,
confined to suffragette intelligence alone, or does it point to radical
inferiority of intellectual fibre, not in degree merely, but in kind,
in the mental constitution of the human female generally? Certainly it
is hard to think that any man, however low his intelligence, would be
capable of making a fool of himself precisely in the way these women
are continually doing in their attempts to defend their cause and their
tactics.

In the foregoing pages we have endeavoured to trace some of the leading
strands of thought going to make up the Modern Feminist Movement.
Sentimental Feminism clearly has its roots in sexual feeling, and
in the tradition of chivalry, albeit the notion of chivalry has
essentially changed in the course of its evolution. For the rest,
Sentimental Feminism, with its double character of man-antipathy and
woman-sympathy, as we see it to-day, has assumed the character of one
of those psychopathic social phenomena which have so often recurred in
history. It can only be explained, like the latter, as an hypnotic wave
passing over society.

As for Political Feminism, we have shown that this largely has its
root in a fallacious application of the notion of democracy, partaking
largely of the logical fallacy known technically as _a dicto secundum
quid ad dictum simpliciter_. This logical fallacy of Political Feminism
is, of course, reinforced and urged forward by Sentimental Feminism.
As coming under the head of the psychology of the movement, we have
also called attention to some curious phenomena of logical imbecility,
noticeable in the utterances of educated women in the suffragette
agitation.




CHAPTER VIII

THE INDICTMENT


Feminism, or, as it is sometimes called, the emancipation of woman,
as we know it in the present day, may be justifiably indicted as a
gigantic fraud—a fraud in its general aim and a fraud alike in its
methods of controversy and in its practical tactics. It is through
and through disingenuous and dishonest. Modern Feminism has always
professed to be a movement for political and social equality between
the sexes. The claim for this equalising of position and rights in
modern society is logically based upon the assumption of an essential
equality in natural ability between the sexes. As to this, we have
indicated in the preceding pages on broad lines, the grounds for
regarding the foregoing assumption as false. But quite apart from this
question, I contend the fraudulent nature of the present movement can
readily be seen by showing it to be not merely based on false grounds,
but directly and consciously fraudulent in its pretensions.

It uniformly professes to aim at the placing of the sexes on a footing
of social and political equality. A very little inquiry into its
concrete demands suffices to show that its aim, so far from being
equality, is the very reverse—viz. to bring about, with the aid of
men themselves, as embodied in the forces of the State, a female
ascendancy and a consolidation and extension of already existing female
privileges. That this is so may be seen in general by the constant
conjunction of Political and Sentimental Feminism in the same persons.
It may be seen more particularly in detail, in the specific demands
of Feminists. These demands, as formulated by suffragists as a reason
why the vote is essential to the interests of women, amount to little
if anything else than proposals for laws to enslave and browbeat men
and to admit women to virtual if not actual immunity for all offences
committed against men. It is enough to consult any suggestions for a
woman’s “charter” in order to confirm what is here said. Such proposals
invariably suggest the sacrificing of man at every turn to woman.[162:1]

    [162:1] This is arrived at by the clever trick of appealing
    to the modern theory of the equal mental capacity of the
    sexes when it is a question of political and economic rights
    and advantages for women, and of counterappealing to the
    traditional sentiment based on the belief in the inferiority
    of the female sex, when it is a question of legal and
    administrative privilege and consideration. The Feminist thus
    succeeds by his dexterity in the usually difficult feat of
    “getting it both ways” for his fair clients.

In the early eighties of the last century appeared a skit in the form
of a novel from the pen of the late Sir Walter Besant, entitled “The
Revolt of Man,” depicting the oppression of man under a Feminist
régime, an oppression which ended in a revolt and the re-establishment
of male supremacy. The ideas underlying this _jeu d’esprit_ of the
subjection of men would seem to be seriously entertained by the female
leaders of the present woman’s movement. It is many years ago now since
a minister holding one of the highest positions in the present Cabinet
made the remark to me:—“The real object, you know, for which these
women want the vote is simply to get rascally laws passed against men!”
Subsequent Feminist agitation has abundantly proved the truth of this
observation. An illustration of the practical results of the modern
woman’s movement is to be seen in the infamous White Slave Traffic Act
of 1912 rushed through Parliament as a piece of panic legislation by
dint of a campaign of sheer hard lying. The atrocity of this act has
been sufficiently dealt with in a previous chapter.[163:1]

    [163:1] There is one fortunate thing as regards these savage
    laws aimed at the suppression of certain crimes, and that is,
    as it would seem, they are never effective in achieving their
    purpose. As Mr Tighe Hopkins remarks, apropos of the torture
    of the “cat” (“Wards of the State,” p. 203):—“The attempt to
    correct crime with crime has everywhere repaid us in the old
    properly disastrous way.” It would indeed be regrettable if it
    could be shown that penal laws of this kind were successful.
    Far better is it that the crimes of isolated individuals should
    continue than that crimes such as the cold-blooded infliction
    of torture and death committed at the behest of the State, as
    supposed to represent the whole of society, should attain their
    object, even though the object be the suppression of crimes of
    another kind perpetrated by the aforesaid individuals within
    society. The successful repression of crimes committed by
    individuals, by a crime committed by State authority, can only
    act as an encouragement to the State to continue its course of
    inflicting punishment which is itself a crime.

Other results of the inequality between the sexes so effectively urged
by present-day Feminism, may be seen in the conduct of magistrates,
judges and juries, in our courts civil and criminal. This has been
already animadverted upon in the course of the present work, and
illustrative cases given, as also in previous writings of the present
author to which allusion has already been made. It is not too much to
say that a man has practically no chance in the present day in a court
of law, civil or criminal, of obtaining justice where a woman is in the
case. The savage vindictiveness exhibited towards men, as displayed
in the eagerness of judges to obtain, and the readiness of juries to
return, convictions against men accused of crimes against women, on
evidence which, in many cases, would not be good enough (to use the
common phrase) to hang a dog on, with the inevitable ferocious sentence
following conviction, may be witnessed on almost every occasion when
such cases are up for trial. I have spoken of the eagerness of judges
to obtain convictions. As an illustration of this sort of thing, the
following may be given:—In the trial of a man for the murder of a
woman, before Mr Justice Bucknill, which took place some time ago, it
came out in evidence that the woman had violently and obscenely abused
and threatened the man immediately before, in the presence of other
persons. The jury were so impressed with the evidence of unusually
strong provocation that they hesitated whether it was not sufficient to
reduce the crime to that of manslaughter, and, unable to agree offhand
on a verdict of murder, asked the judge for further guidance. Their
deliberations were, however, cut short by the judge, who remarked on
the hesitation they had in arriving at their verdict, finally adding:
“Only think, gentlemen, how you would view it had this been your own
wife or sister who was cruelly done to death!” With the habitual
obsequiousness of a British jury towards the occupant of the Bench, the
gentlemen in question swallowed complacently the insult thrown at their
wives and sisters in putting them in the same category with a foul
strumpet, and promptly did what the judge obviously wanted of them—to
wit, brought in a verdict of wilful murder. The cases on the obverse
side, where the judge, by similar sentimental appeal, aims at procuring
the acquittal of female prisoners notoriously guilty on the evidence,
that palladium of rogues, the English law of libel, precludes me from
referring to individually. As regards the disparity in punishment,
however, we have an apt and recent illustration in the execution of
the youth of nineteen, convicted on doubtful evidence of the murder
of his sweetheart, and the reprieve of the woman convicted on her own
admission of the murder of her paramour by soaking him in paraffin
during his sleep and setting him alight!

Another effect of the influence of Sentimental Feminism, is seen in
crimes of the “unwritten law” description, the _crime passionel_ of
the French. The most atrocious and dastardly murders and other crimes
of violence are condoned and even glorified if they can but be covered
by the excuse that they are dictated by a desire to avenge a woman’s
“honour” or to enable her to obtain the object of her wishes. The
incident in Sir J. M. Barrie’s play of the lady who murders a man by
throwing him out of a railway carriage over a dispute respecting the
opening of a window, and gets acquitted on the excuse that her little
girl had got a cold, represents a not exaggerated picture of “modern
justice”—for women only! The outrageous application of the principles,
if such you may call them, of Sentimental Feminism in this country
in the case of the suffragettes, has made English justice and penal
administration the laughing-stock of the world. But the way in which
the crimes of the suffragettes have been dealt with, is after all only
a slight exaggeration of the immunity from all the severer penalties of
the law enjoyed by female convicts generally. This has been carried in
the case of suffragette criminals to the utmost limits of absurdity.
In fact, the deference exhibited towards these deliberate perpetrators
of crimes of wanton destruction is sometimes comic, as in the case
of the Richmond magistrate who rebuked the policeman-witness in an
arson charge for omitting the “Miss” in referring to one of the female
prisoners in the dock: as well as in the “high character” usually
attributed to the perpetrators of these deeds of outrage and violence
even by certain functionaries of Church and State. They did not speak
in this strain morebetoken, when mere male anarchists or Fenians were
involved in difficulties with the law due to overzeal for their cause!

The whole movement, it is quite evident, depends for its success,
largely, at least, on the apathy of men. The bulk of men undoubtedly do
not sympathise with the pretensions of the Feminist agitation, but the
bulk of men are indifferent one way or the other. They do not take the
Feminist Movement seriously. The bare notion of women, as such, being
a danger to men as such, strikes them as absurd. They do not realise
that the question is not of the physical strength of women as women,
but of the whole forces of the State being at the disposal of women
to set in motion to gratify their whims and passions. The idea of a
sex war in which women take the field against men, such as represents
the inwardness of the whole Feminist Movement of to-day, seems to
them ridiculous. The feeling at the root of most men’s good-humoured
patronage of, or indifference to, Modern Feminist claims, is roughly
expressed in a remark of the late William Morris in replying to some
animadversions of mine on the subject:—“What does it matter? A man
ought to be always able to deal with a woman if necessary. Why, I could
tackle a half dozen women at once for that matter!” This is a common
attitude of mind on the subject among otherwise sane and sensible men.
The absurdity of it is manifest when one considers that the issue of
man versus woman as units of physical strength respectively, is purely
irrelevant. It is not a question of the man tackling the woman or any
number of women. It is the question of the whole force of the State
tackling the man _in favour_ of the woman. The prevalent idea in many
men’s minds seems to be that of the State drawing a ring-fence around
the disputant man and woman and letting them fight the matter out
between themselves, which, to speak the language of the great geometer
of antiquity—“is absurd.”

Modern Feminism, tacking itself on to an older tradition which it
travesties beyond all recognition, has succeeded in affecting modern
public opinion with an overpowering sense of the sacrosanctity of human
femality as such. It is not content with respect for the ideal of
_good_ womanhood but it would fain place on a pedestal the mere fact
of femalehood in itself. This is illustrated in a thousand ways. Thus
while public opinion tolerates the most bestial and infamous forms
of corporal punishment for men in gaols, it will regard the slight
chastisement by the medical head of an institution for mental cases, of
a girl who is admittedly obstinate and refractory rather than mentally
afflicted in the ordinary sense of the term, as “degrading.”

Again, in order to sustain its favourite thesis, the intellectual
equality of woman with man, it resorts, whenever a plausible case
presents itself, to its usual policy of the falsification of fact. Take
the instance of Madame Curie. When radium was first discovered in the
laboratory of the late Professor Curie we were told that the latter
had made the discovery, it being at the same time mentioned that he
possessed in his wife a valuable aid in his laboratory work. We were
afterwards told that the discovery of radium was the joint work of
both, the implication being that the honours were equally divided. Now,
Feminist influence has succeeded in getting Madame Curie spoken of
as herself the discoverer of radium! I venture to affirm that there
is no evidence whatever for assuming that radium would ever have seen
the light had the late Professor Curie not himself experimented in his
laboratory, not to speak of his predecessor Becquerel.

We have seen that Feminists are, in this country, at least, zealous in
championing the Puritan view of sexual morality. Many of them, in the
vehemence of their Anti-man crusade, look forward with relish to the
opportunity they anticipate will be afforded them when women get the
vote, of passing laws rigorously enforcing asceticism on men by means
of severe penal enactments. All forms of indulgence (by men), sexual or
otherwise, uncongenial to the puritanic mind, would be equally placed
under the ban of the criminal law! Anyone desirous of testing the truth
of the above statement has only to read the suffragette papers and
other expositions of the gospel of Feminism as held by its most devoted
advocates.

One point should not be lost sight of, and that is the attitude of the
Press. Almost all journals are ready to publish any argument in favour
of the suffrage or of the other claims of the movement on behalf of
women. In defiance of this fact, a prominent Feminist prelate some time
ago, in a letter to _The Times_, alleged among the other so-called
grievances of women at the present day, and apparently as in some
sort a condonation of “militancy,” that the Press was closed to women
anxious to air their grievances! A statement more directly the reverse
of the truth could hardly have been made. Open any paper of general
circulation—say any of the morning dailies—and you will find letters
galore advocating the Feminist side of the question! According to my
own observation, they are in the proportion of something like three or
four in favour to one against. The fact is useless denying that this
sex-agitation has every favour shown it by current “public opinion,”
including even that of its opponents. Female “militants” of the
suffrage have pleas urged in condonation of their criminal acts, such
as their alleged “high character,” which would be laughed at in the
case of men—and yet they whine at being boycotted.

The readiness, and almost eagerness, with which certain sections of
British public opinion are ready to view favourably anything urged
on behalf of female suffrage, is aptly illustrated by the well-known
argument we so often hear when the existence of “militancy” is pointed
out as a reason for withholding the suffrage—the argument, namely, as
to the unfairness of refusing the franchise to numbers of peaceable
and law-abiding women who are asking for it, because a relatively
small section of women resort to criminal methods of emphasising
their demand. Now let us examine the real interpretation of the facts.
It is quite true that the majority of the women agitating for the
suffrage at the present day are themselves non-militants. But what
is and has been their attitude towards their militant sisters? Have
they ever repudiated the criminal tactics of the latter with the
decision and even indignation one might reasonably have expected had
they really regarded the campaign of violence and wanton outrage with
strong disapprobation, not to say abhorrence? The answer must be a
decided negative. At the very most they mildly rebuke the unwisdom of
militant methods, blessing them, as it were, with faint blame, while,
as a general rule, they will not go even so far as this, but are
content, while graciously deigning to tell you that, although their own
methods are not those of militancy, yet that they and the militants
are alike working for the same end, notwithstanding they may differ
as to the most effective methods of attaining it. The non-militant
woman suffragist is always careful never to appear an _anti_-militant.
Everyone can see that had the bulk of the so-called “peaceable and
law-abiding” suffragists, to whose claims we are enjoined to give
ear, honestly and resolutely set their faces against, and vigorously
denounced, the criminal campaign, refusing to have anything to do with
it or its authors, the campaign in question would have come to an end
long ago. But no! this would not have suited the book of the “peaceable
and law-abiding” advocates of woman’s suffrage. Their aim has been, and
is still, to run with the “militant” hare and hunt with the “peaceable
and law-abiding” hounds. While themselves abstaining from any unlawful
act they are perfectly willing and desirous that they and their
movement shall reap all the advantages of advertisement and otherwise
that may accrue from the militant policy. That the above is a true
state of the case as regards the “peaceful and law-abiding” elements
in the suffragist movement, which we are assured so largely outnumber
the militant section, one would think must be plain to everyone,
however obtuse, who has followed with attention the course of the
present agitation. And yet there are fools of the male sex who consider
seriously this preposterous plea of the injustice of refusing to
concede the suffrage to a large number of “peaceable and law-abiding”
women who are demanding it, because of the action of a small body of
violent females—with whom, _bien entendu_, the aforesaid large body of
“peaceable and law-abiding” women (while keeping themselves carefully
aloof from active participation in militancy), do not pretend to
conceal their sympathy!

The whole modern woman’s movement is based, in a measure, at least,
on an assumption which is absolutely unfounded—to wit, that man has
systematically oppressed woman in the past, that the natural tendency
of evil-minded man is always to oppress woman, or, to put it from the
other side, that woman is the victim of man’s egoism! The unsoundness
of this view ought to be apparent to every unbiassed student of
history, anthropology, and physiology. The Feminist prefers to see
evidence of male oppression in the place woman has occupied in social
and political life, rather than the natural consequence of her organic
constitution, her secondary sexual characteristics, and the natural
average inferiority which flows therefrom. As regards the personal
relations between men and women, an impartial view of the case must
inevitably lead to the conclusion that whatever else man in general
may have on his conscience, no reasonable reproach lies to his score
as regards his treatment of woman. The patience, forbearance, and
kindliness, with which, from Socrates downwards, men as a rule have
encountered the whims, the tempers, and the tantrums of their often
unworthy womankind is indeed a marvel. But it is a still greater marvel
that Modern Feminism in this, as in other things, should have succeeded
in hocussing public opinion into the delusion that the exact opposite
of the truth represents the real state of the case. This, however, is a
marvel which runs through the history of the controversial exploits of
the whole Feminist Movement.

In the foregoing pages we have striven to unmask the shameless
imposture which, in the main, this movement represents. We have tracked
down one dishonest argument after another. We have pointed out how the
thinnest and hollowest of subterfuges are allowed to pass muster, and
even to become current coin, by dint of unrefuted reiteration. The
Feminist trick of reversing the facts of the case, as, for example, the
assertion that man-made law and its administration is unjust to women,
and then raising a howl of indignation at the position of affairs they
picture, such being, of course, the diametrical opposite of the real
facts—all this has been exposed. In conclusion I can only express the
hope that honest, straightforward men who have been bitten by Feminist
wiles will take pause and reconsider their position. Whatever sentiment
or sympathy they may have with the aims of the movement intrinsically,
it ought to be not too much to expect them to view with contempt
and abhorrence the mass of disingenuous falsehood and transparent
subterfuge, which the votaries of Feminism systematically seek to palm
off upon a public opinion—only too easily gullible in this matter—as
true fact and valid argument.




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber’s note:

Variations in spelling and hyphenation remain as in the original.

Ellipses match the original.

The following corrections have been made to the original text:

    Page 28: mankind in its intellectual,[comma missing in
    original] moral and technical development

    Page 31: only 7 per cent.[period missing in original] in favour
    of man

    Page 32: the occipital lobes, which[original has “whith”] are
    universally

    Page 38: side of the moral faculties”[quotation mark missing in
    original]

    Page 42: “In England,” says Dr Buzzard,[original has extraneous
    quotation mark] “hysteria is

    Page 43: in hysteria is, according to Dr Pitrè[original has
    “Pitré”]

    Page 43: authorities—_e.g._[second period missing in original]
    Dr Bernard Holländer

    Page 45: represent such raræ[original has œ] aves

    Page 73: But after all is[word “is” missing in original] said
    and done, it is doubtful

    Page 111: we hear _ad nauseam_[original has “nauseum”], from
    the Feminist side

    Page 127: nearly 40 per cent. [original has extraneous word
    “of”] more deaths among men

    Page 134: offshoot, falls into the background[original has
    “backgrouud”]

    Page 162: Such proposals invariably[original has “invaribly”]
    suggest the sacrificing

    [24:1] even by those who put it[original has “sit”] forward

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 51877 ***