While thousands of healthy people, men and women, rejoice over the fact that woman of the modern type is coming to the fore, there are many "calamity howlers," male and female, who bid us pause and consider the direful consequences which they fear (that is, hope), this new stage in the development of mankind will bring to the world. Dr. Arabella Kenealy in "Feminism and Sex Extinction" forebodes the passing of whatever is masculine in the male. Her arguments are not very logical but they are interesting. She believes that "two fates await woman unless she rids herself of contempt for functions and duties purely hers, feminism and feministicism. She is handicapped every month for two or three days by weakness or pain. The craze to do men's work will result in man's emasculation.
"The desire to figure in legislation far from stiffening the manly caliber of weak men will still[Pg 304] further enervate them. Members of either sex are not capable of doing their best work while in association. Sex rivalries are excited. Sex ascendency is created. Man inherits from his mother some of woman's apprehension, foresight and altruism as required to present woman's bent and viewpoint. More of it would be superfluous. The numerical preponderance of women must ultimately swamp masculine initiative in state affairs unless the political functions of the sexes are separated."
Why the process should be more baneful for men than it has been for women who, for countless generations have been decidedly "swamped in state affairs" is not very evident.
Is Man's Virility Declining? An editorial writer in the New York Medical Journal also foresees degeneration ahead unless the male retains his mastery: "The yielding by man to the other sex of masculine essential rights and obligations is a symptom of declining virility, physical and mental."
Another medical writer sounds a different alarm: "Overworked woman may impair the constitutional vigor of man, while she works with him. She is kept up by nervous excitement, by strong tea or drugs. In short, woman is fussy. In a stress of work she will work on with crimson cheeks and[Pg 305] growing irritation, while man will put on his hat and calmly resort to the nearest lunch room. Women by their eternal high pressure as heads of departments are making nervous wrecks of themselves."
Finally there comes Havelock Ellis, usually less panicky, who thinks he has noticed a distinct degeneration in the young man of today. "These weak-chinned, neurotic young men are no match at all for the heavy-jawed resolute young women feminist methods are creating. The yielding to women of masculine rights is a symptom of declining virility. Equality in all things yielded, pride in himself, in his work, gone, he will descend to the state of the decadent savage who keeps as many wives to work for him as their work for him enables him to keep."
There is Undue Pessimism in All Those Warnings. Woman has not become brutish as some writers claim, nor has man become effeminate. Woman has simply gained a clearer knowledge of her latent powers and the war has provided her with a touchstone for her physical resistance and endurance.
The work woman had to do during the war, which she had never suspected she could do, for until then[Pg 306] it had been considered as man's work, has not "masculinised" her but it has rid many "delicate flowers" of their morbid belief in the fragile character of their constitution.
Male man is not in danger of passing out of existence but one variety of man is doomed, the type which has always wished to mate with the two types of women which, in the preceding chapter, I declared doomed, the doll and the flirt.
The Wise Husband. That almost extinct species is the type of husband who speakes of HIS wife, who knows "women" and what is "good" for them, the home Jehovah, all-knowing and all-powerful, who must be served and obeyed, who, on his return from work must find his wife ready to entertain him if so he wishes, or to plunge back into the depths of the kitchen if his mood so requires, the husband who knows that he is the aim and goal of his wife's existence.
A ridiculous old man, abandoned by his too young wife, made to the reporters a statement betraying sadly the infinite conceit of that type: "She will return to me because I love her so."
A most unprepossessing man was bewailing in my office the fact that his wife had grown sexually indifferent to him. I advised him not to compel her[Pg 307] to have intercourse with him against her will, especially as he was diseased. He na?vely remarked: "But she is my wife."
That type of husband, in other words, considers a wife as a chattel, to be submitted to any sort of legal indignity because she is "only a female." He may force motherhood upon her to demonstrate his doubtful virility or to protect his jealous egotism. He would accept with enthusiasm Goldschmidt's theories which I presented for what they were worth in the chapter on Virginity, and according to which, woman is soft wax and characterless, waiting to be shaped into a personality by her husband's caresses.
Scientific investigators of a more reliable type than Goldschmidt and who avoid drawing "yellow" conclusions from their labors, have supplied the reading world with facts which should cause the Jehovah husband to fear for his lofty position.
Is the Male Indispensable? Jacques Loeb and others have demonstrated that as far as the physical results of love, the continuance of the race, is concerned, the male may not be absolutely indispensable.
Loeb had shown that almost anything which causes the protoplasm of the egg to separate itself from its membrane is sufficient to introduce "life"[Pg 308] into that curious organism which until then only holds possibilities of life.
Nature, in order to produce one individual demands two principles, one male and one female principle. She must have one egg which is modified by some product of the male organism, pollen or sperm.
Modern Scientists Have Beaten Nature at Her Own Game of creation; they have taken one egg, the female principle and proceeded to fertilise that egg without any male product whatsoever.
The experiment has only been made on low forms of animal life, sea urchins and the like, but the egg of the sea urchin is not different in any essential respect from the egg of the human species.
By taking unfecundated eggs and placing them for two minutes in a mixture of sea water and acetic, or butyric, or valerianic acid, then placing them back in sea water and twenty minutes later, immersing them for about an hour in hypertonic sea water or sugar ............