(1) Man’s Part

“God said to Adam: Thou shalt have dominion over all beasts; and herein would seem to consist his advantage and superiority. Now, since man has dominion also over woman, who can be so mad as to deny that woman is rather a beast than a Man?

…

“I think I have shown by fifty irrefragable testimonies from Holy Writ that woman does not belong to the same species as man, and is therefore incapable of eternal life.”—Horatio Plata (quoted by W. H. Beveridge, in John and Irene).

In the last chapter it was asserted that the only sex-antagonism that really exists is that arising from the attempts of one sex to repress or get the better of the other. This is, in effect, to deny that the interests of the two sexes can be permanently opposed, and that, however much individuals, from the fallibility of human nature, may fall short of a proper treatment of each other, there is any excuse whatever for laws and institutions, which should be based on ethical considerations, being, as they still are, discriminative against one sex. So strong indeed is the notion still that[157] the interests of the sexes really are opposed, that any suggestion for legislation in the interests of women is met by the outcry that it is against men. The recent debates on the Maternity Benefit are admirable illustrations of this. When it was proposed that the thirty shillings, to be devoted to the care of the mother, should be given direct to the mother, there were some men who exclaimed that this was “interfering between husband and wife,” and others, that it was “legislating against men.” This shows an extraordinary confusion of mind; for the only men “legislated against” in such a provision are the bad men, who would, if they were given the chance, steal the woman’s benefit. No good husband would be aggrieved at his wife’s own money being given into her own hands. As why indeed should he? No woman feels aggrieved that her husband should have his wages paid into his own hands. If anyone thinks that the money is in reality his, because of the paltry fourpences that he has paid (and of which the working housewife has, by her work, contributed at least half), he should read the words of Medea—
“And then, forsooth, ’tis they that face the call
Of war, while we sit sheltered, hid from all
Peril!—False mocking! Sooner would I stand
Three times to face their battles, shield in hand,
Than bear one child.”

While civilisation is young, and human beings still scarcely conscious, it is natural for the stronger to have the illusion that he will be the gainer by using his strength, even tyrannically, against the[158] creature with whom his life is inextricably entwined. It is human to be selfish; women as well as men feel the temptation; but men, by their greater strength, have more often had the power to follow their impulses, even if they were injurious to women.

There is a queer kind of apologist for brutality, who suggests that “men are so,” and that nothing better need ever be expected of them, thereby showing himself blind to all the improvements which knowledge and intelligence have already made in men’s treatment of women. Does it not matter to men that women should be injured? To read a recent volume, entitled Sex Antagonism, by Walter Heape, F.R.S., one would indeed suppose that it did not. Seven chapters of this book are devoted to a criticism of Dr. Frazer’s theories on totemism and exogamy. These are matters for experts, and I do not propose to express an opinion upon them, further than to say that Mr. Heape has made out a very good case for his views on the origin of these two institutions of primitive man. He does not, however, make one wish to hand over the relations of the sexes in the world we live in to even the most expert of expert biologists, for his very concentration on particular points makes him unfit for a wide view. It is to Mr. Heape’s eighth and last chapter, on “Primitive and Modern Sex Antagonism,” that I wish to take exception, and this can be done without calling into question the greater part of the book, with which it has scarcely any necessary connection.

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I need not quarrel with his assertion of the original difference between man and woman with regard to sexual relations. “I think,” he writes, “it cannot be denied that while sexual passions and sexual gratification are of far more moment to the Male, the idea of the family is, in its turn, essentially a Female sentiment. The former inculcates and stimulates the roving freedom which is characteristic of the Male, the latter consolidates the family, and for the first time establishes the Female as an essential part of a social structure.” (The last sentence is dark to me, but let it pass.) The statement may be taken as broadly true of primitive man. Further, it is quite clear that Mr. Heape is uttering almost a platitude, when he states (p. 195) that “The Male and Female are complementary; they are in no sense the same, and in no sense equal to one another; the accurate adjustment of society depends upon proper observance of this fact.” No one thinks Male and Female are “the same,” nor when people speak of “equality” do they in fact use the word in a mathematical sense. What people do wrap up, in confused and misleading terms, is, that although women are not the same as men, they have many of the same properties and therefore many of the same requirements. Shylock’s plea for the Jew has been quoted with much force by women and on behalf of women: “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with[160] the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

Men cannot deny that women need food, like men, and that women catch infectious diseases, like men, and that women, like men, need satisfaction for their sexual nature, although by their actions men sometimes do not demonstrate their knowledge. But there are other needs—of the human spirit—less demonstrable, which women have as much as men: the need for freedom and joy, for pride in themselves and their work, for consciousness that the sacrifices they make are willing, not enforced. And, when women demand “equality” with men, what they are asking is, that they shall have equal opportunities to do the things they feel able to do, and also that they should have for their peculiarly feminine work—the work which men cannot do—more help, more training, more expenditure of public money, and more scope altogether to do it in ways adapted to the modern world they live in.

We start out, then, with the recognition of the difference between men and women, and I wish I could see in Mr. Heape a recognition also of the likeness and of the common interests. But this is where he comes to grief so badly. He asserts (p. 199) that “increase of luxury tends to reduce[161] both the inclination to breed and the power of producing offspring among women, while it increases the sexual activity of men.” This is not the place to make an exhaustive analysis of this assertion, but stated roundly, like this, it seems to me to need considerable modification. If, however, we take it as proved, it would represent a serious state of things, requiring the most earnest consideration and determination on the part of all civilised men and women to face it in all its results for the whole human family. It would seem to thoughtful persons that any social condition leading to a marked widening between the reciprocal desires of the sexes was, by that very fact, a bad condition, and that if luxury really widens the breach between men and women and causes sex-antagonism, this is a very strong reason for discouraging luxury in a far more determined way than has ever been attempted. Mr. Heape has himself insisted that the female is concerned for the race and the male is only concerned for his appetitive satisfaction. His contribution to the difficult problem he has himself propounded is, to suggest that women (solely concerned for the race, mind you!) must be overridden by men; that what he calls the “errant male” should freely roam and satisfy his ever-growing appetites where and how he can; and that women should on no account be given “extended power” to face these difficulties together with men. In fact, having made out that the situation is infinitely more[162] difficult and extreme than it is, he does his little best to envenom and embitter it by passages of this kind: “Thus extended power given to women threatens to result in legislation for the advantage of that relatively small class of spinsters who are in reality but a superfluous portion of the population (italics mine); and since their interests are directly antagonistic to the interests of the woman who is concerned in the production of children, legislation enacted on their behalf will tend to be opposed to the interests of the mothers themselves.” This dark saying is nowhere explained or illustrated, and as I am quite unable to imagine what it means, I can only suppose that Mr. Heape is using the old device of trying to sow dissension in the enemy’s ranks. For there is no mistake at all about the fact that, to Mr. Heape, woman is the enemy. But he will find it hard to convince the women in the movement that the interests of maidens are opposed to the interests of wives. It will be even more difficult than to convince us that our interests are really opposed to those of men. We think that this is “The Great Illusion,” and the other is too patently absurd, since a maiden is liable at any moment to become a wife, and, in these days, it is becoming increasingly difficult to say at what age this liability ceases. Progressive women do not for one moment admit that marriage unsexes a woman, and that the moment she secures a husband she becomes hostile to the maidens, or ceases to understand them. If Mr. Heape would[163] look at the world he is actually living in, he would see that some of the needs of the mothers in the administration of the Insurance Act were more effectively put and urged by unmarried women than by married men. I knew a woman who had a very warm discussion with a man on sex questions, what time his wife sat silent by. The man constantly declaimed about “what women wanted, what women thought,” and still the wife never spoke. Later, when the two women were alone, the one expressed a hope that she had not spoken too strongly and offended the wife, who replied, “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you said what you did. You see, I can’t, because I’m his wife.”

Mr. Heape proceeds in this elegant style: “Those of us who are strongly in favour of gaining assistance from women who are qualified to give it may well be drastically opposed to the claims made by those who are responsible for the present agitation; for we are thus confronted with the probability that extended power given to women will result in the waste products of our Female population gaining power to order the habits and regulate the work of those women who are of real value to us as a nation” (italics mine). In the next paragraph he declares that he finds it difficult to “refer with equanimity” to the books and pamphlets of the women’s movement, and he mentions one odd publication, which he appears to attribute to feminists and which, he avers, holds up man to[164] execration as “the brute beast.” We are bound to believe that Mr. Heape has seen such a pamphlet, and that he did not write it himself, but the description he himself gives of man in his book would entirely warrant the use of such a term. Men in the mass are not what ............