Kitabı oku: «The Fraud of Feminism», sayfa 7

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.⁶

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.