Double standard

“ Was there a justification for the double standard, and should not the twentieth century change the double into a single standard? If changed, should men become as chaste as women or should womankind be pulled down into the gutter of sensuality to meet the demands of men? ”

“ And there are signs that some of those who nowadays inveigh against the white man's double standard are in reality desirous of substituting, not the single standard of the Christian ideal, but the single standard of the savage. ”

“ With the evolution of the double moral standard and its application to the conduct of these two sets of individuals in the state, there grows up in the life of both classes no little confusion in respect to moral ideas, no little confusion in respect to ideas of right and wrong. Nor is this surprising. The results of such a double standard of morals could not possibly be different so long as human nature is what it is. ”

“ As one reflects on these conditions and then looks back upon conditions amongst white people, it would seem that all the civilised races have done is to set up a double standard of sexual morality as against the single standard of the savage. ”

“ Darling—you know I've never reproached you—even in my own mind—for anything that may have happened before you knew me—and I know, that much as you wish now it never had happened—still you can comfort yourself with the old platitudes of 'the double standard.' 'All men do this some time—or nearly all men. ”

“ Double standards are inspiration to men of letters, but they are apt to be fatal to politicians. ”

“ He is amenable to a higher jurisdiction, and while all is well with Heaven, he can pity the errors, and smile at the malice of his enemies! Whatever cuts men off from their dependence on common opinion or obvious appearances, must open a door to evasion and cunning, by setting up a standard of right and wrong in every one’s own breast, of the truth of which nobody can judge but the person himself. ”

“ Their influence, while it is strong enough to make him a chronic hypocrite, is not so strong as to show him the hypocrite he is. Deprived on the one hand of the support of a true ethical standard, embodied in the life of the society of which he is a member, he is duped, on the other, by lip-worship of an impotent ideal. ”

“ And we will suffer hence.
If women are not treated with respect, and made to exercise an influence over the social world, the standard of private virtue and public opinion will be lowered, and the morals of men will suffer. ”

“ Is it really fair to say to them that their moral standards are going down, that they have no sense now of morality or self-respect? I tell you that if one has to make a choice between the suppression of one half—and that so beautiful a half—of human nature, and its degradation, I would not sit in judgment on those who chose either way. ”

“ All that society has the right then to demand is that all the obligations which have been assumed shall be honorably fulfilled. But a relationship registered in mistake or under delusion should be subject to revision, and, with certain safeguards, to dissolution, otherwise the standard of morality is degraded and marriage itself is brought to contempt, and can be used, as indeed too often it is, as a cloak of protection for every kind of immorality. ”

“ How are we, who have many friends, many neighbours, on whom our standards must react, to judge their lives? We can tell who has gone through a legal ceremony and who refuses to do so. That is a nice convenient rule by which we can judge and condemn such people. But we cannot go poking into people's lives and studying their motives and judging their fundamental moral standards! ”

“ First, that in all cases where such marked distinctions, and deeply rooted jealousies exist between the different sections of society, the open slanders and covert insinuations of the one against the other, should be received with the most liberal allowances for prejudice. ”

“ Until we do this, we shall not be able to talk away, or to argue away, this prejudice. We cannot talk our way into our rights; we must work our way, think our way, into them. And you will find that just in proportion as we do this, we are going to get all we deserve. ”

“ How guarded should he be who converses with a boy, forgetting with what power each word is fraught by the mere force of years,—how the flattery of equality destroys judgment, and saps all power of discrimination,—and, more than all, how dangerous it is to graft upon the tender sapling the ripe fruits of experience, not knowing how, in such, they may grow to very rankness! ”

“ If that last be true, why then all those other men, the Normalists—aye, our severest judges—those others whether good or bad, whether vessels of honour or dishonour, who are not in their love-instincts as are we—the millions against our tens of thousands, even if some of us are to be respected—why they do right to cast us out of society! ”

“ It is a mockery of our fellow creatures' wrongs to call them equal in rights, when by the bitter compulsion of their wants we make them inferior to us in all that can soften the heart, or dignify the understanding. ”

“ Tolerance and common sense should always hold wounded vanity and prejudice in check. How often one sees happy and united old couples who in the meridian of their lives have each looked elsewhere, but have had the good taste and judgment to make no public protest about the matter, and thus have given each other time to regain command of vagrant fancies and return to the fold of convention! ”

“ The Lovelace or the Lauzun could never have been more than an exception in our stirring country, where pursuits and responsibility are in the lot of all. They may, however, be noted as proofs that where the political standard is low, the moral standard will be still lower. ”

“ I mean the foolish trick of treating all the world as though there was perfect equality there—as though a little shaver like you had the same rights of speech and remark as grown-up people who have served their apprenticeship, and gone through their training—as though your opinions were of the least consequence to anybody, and you had any right to air them when they are not wanted, and to have any say in the way in which your affairs are regulated. ”

“ Every paradox was to him a self-evident truth; every prejudice an undoubted absurdity. The weight of authority, the sanction of ages, the common consent of mankind, were vouchers only for ignorance, error, and imposture. ”

“ Why, it ought, and it, doubtless, would be said of him, that his conduct was a libel on both man and womankind; that his name ought, for ever, to be synonymous with baseness and nastiness, and that in no age and in no nation, not marked by a general depravity of manners, and total absence of all sense of shame, every associate, male or female, of such a man, or of his filthy mate, would be held in abhorrence. Public morality would drive such a hateful pair from society, and strict justice would hunt them from the face of the earth. ”

“ But under the system of duelling, society offers an alternative; the only effect of which, as far as it operates, is unmixed evil. Instead of saying, absolutely, you must abstain from brutal insolence of demeanour, on pain of being excluded from our circle, it says, you must either abstain from insolence, or be ready to expose your life; instead of requiring a woman to abstain from levity of conduct, and defamatory language, on pain of forfeiting the countenance of respectable people, it proposes the alternative of either observing those rules, or the being prepared to encounter the ordeal ”

“ We find that we have really been the offender, going about with a moral tape-measure graduated by ourselves, and measuring the opposite party with a serene conceit which has called itself principle or honor, or some high-sounding name, while it was really nothing but prejudice. ”

“ You hold these compliments so cheap that you are even willing, to throw a part of your reason, and your honor, into the bargain, if we will only accept them. We are such delicate plants that we-cannot flourish in the wild climate of masculine brutality, without a protecting hedge and cover — that is the sense of the compliments in which you clothe your last proofs against our equality of rights.
Men would very soon come to recognize our human rights, even without compliments, if we had the power to enforce them. ”

“ These peoples have and exercise mutual confidence, esteem and appreciation of their common rights! These peoples dissolve into one people! The bare statement of the case condemns it as impracticable, illusory, in the extreme. And, yet, these two peoples, so different in character, in education and material condition, were turned loose to enjoy the same benefits in common—to be one! ”

“ I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to himself may seriously affect, both through their sympathies and their interests, those nearly connected with him, and in a minor degree, society at large. When, by conduct of this sort, a person is led to violate a distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, the case is taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to moral disapprobation in the proper sense of the term. ”

“ Instead, therefore, of recognizing its right to defame us, we put that society upon its defense, and say to it, Come out of your infidelities, and your crimes, and your pretenses; seek out the law of righteousness, and deal justly with woman. ”

“ He's like a pillar of sanity and law in this house of shams and swollen vanities, where people stalk about with a sort of mad-house dignity, each one fancying himself a king or a pope. If you could have heard that woman talk of him! Why she thinks him stupid, bigoted, blinded by middle-class prejudices. ”

“ Fifthly, and lastly, Others make it a common Rule to be observ'd in Controversy, that the Disputants should consider each other's Arguments impartially, without the Byass of Prejudice and Interest. And a very good Rule this is, if Men would but put it into Practice. But I shall long despair of such Impartiality in Controversy. Such is the Power of [Pg 12] Prejudice and Interest, that they will influence Men to believe against the most apparent Reason and Truth. Even Prejudice will much darken the Eyes of Mens Understandings, but Interest will put them quite out. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Your common-place moralist likes to call everything black or white; he despises all qualifications as casuistical refinements, and plumes himself on the decisive verdict, saint or sinner, with which he labels the adherents and opponents of his party. And yet we know as a fact, how absurd are such judgments. We know how men are betrayed into bad causes from good motives, or put on the right side because it happens to harmonise with their lower interests. ”

“ And if to do evil is to cause unhappiness and illfare, then to cause these things to one individual or race is evil just as certainly as to cause them to any other individual or race. And if to put one’s self in the place of others, and to act toward them as one would wish them to act toward him, is the one great rule—the Golden Rule—by which men are to gauge their conduct when acting toward each other, then this is also the one great rule—the Golden Rule—by which men are to regulate their conduct toward all beings. There is no escape from these conclusions, except for the savage and the fool. ”

“ Nevertheless people keep harping on this theme; with the exalted tone of intimate conviction they inveigh against our social organization, cursing the malice of others, but show themselves perfectly incapable of resolving the contradictions which gave rise to their thirst for liberty and justice. ”

“ In other cases, erroneous opinions spring from criminal indifference, from prejudice, from indolence, from pride, from evil passions, or from selfish interest. In all such cases, men deserve blame for their pernicious opinions, and the evils which flow from them.
But, it maybe asked, how are men to decide, when their fellow-men are guilty for holding wrong opinions; when they deserve blame, and when they are to be regarded only with pity and commiseration by those who believe them to be in the wrong? ”

“ Therefore, the society had unconsciously sought to eliminate the reasons for struggle.
What bred the hatreds and jealousies among men? What caused one group to fight another?
Society had decided that intolerance and hatred were caused by inequality. The jealousy of the inferior toward his superior; the scorn of the superior toward his inferior. The Have-not envies the Have, and the Have looks down upon the Have-not. ”

“ Words cease to have a par value even with the stickler for verbal accuracy the instant their own arguments are applied to the other sex. Eloquently men can and do portray the wrongs, the outrages, the abuses which always have arisen, which always must arise from class legislation—from that condition which makes it impossible for one class or condition of citizens of a country to make their needs, desires, preferences and opinions felt in the organic law of their country on an equal and level footing with their fellows. ”

“ Shall the true justice prevail, which by a right discrimination would confer power and influence in accordance with inner distinction; or shall that so-called justice prevail—for no man acknowledges open injustice—which recommends itself as equality of opportunity, but in practice, by confusing the distinctions of age, sex, and character, comes at last to the brutal doctrine that might makes right, whether that might be the material strength of money or the jealous tyranny of numbers? ”

“ But, by the outrageous insults put upon them, by the violation of every human right in their regard, by the inaction to which they were forced, by imposing on them the simple and pathetic character of victims, their part was made so easy to play that they became objects of interest without having to take the smallest pains to excite that sentiment. ”