Male citizen

“ I once heard a diplomatist say, that a young man, in order to form his manners and judgment, ought to choose his female society from among ladies not under thirty, and his male companions from gentlemen not under forty years of age; but certainly, if manners and judgment are to be acquired only on such terms, our state of society is such that our young men must for ever remain deficient in them. ”

“ This separation of duties and offices is a plain dictate of common sense, and has obtained in all ages and in every, condition of society. Among the rudest nations, the business of war and the chase, and all the more athletic offices, have always been assumed exclusively by the male sex. ”

“ As the vigorous and aggressive activities of the male have a very conspicuous value for the group when exercised for the benefit of the group, they become particularly harmful when directed against the safety or interests of the group or the members of the group, and we find that civil and criminal law, and contract, and also conventional morality, are closely connected with the motility of the male. ”

“ It is important to note, further, that our civil justice takes in to-day only a very small part of the male population, as those who are called to the colors are under the jurisdiction of the courts martial. ”

“ I have convinced myself, by personal observation and inquiry, that my description of the male attitude in this respect is in no way exaggerated. It has, for instance, fallen to my lot, over and over again, to discuss with men—most of them distinctly above the average in intelligence—questions affecting the welfare and conditions of women. ”

“ We have seen that owing to the ascendency which the masculine element in human society gained during the period designated as the Latter Status of barbarism, the popular ideas evolved since that time concerning the origin and development of government, social usages, religion, and law, have been in accordance with the then established assumption that within the male organism lies not only the active, aggressive element, but98 the progressive principle as well. ”

“ He must be taught what he must be in private life, that he may do honor to his domestic relations. He must be taught his duty as a citizen, that, in the performance of that duty, he may become eminent, and that society and the state may be the better for his having lived in them. ”

“ Whatever gratification of pride there is in the possession of power, and whatever personal interest in its exercise, is in this case not confined to a limited class, but common to the whole male sex. Instead of being, to most of its supporters, a thing desirable chiefly in the abstract, or, like the political ends usually contended for by factious, of little private importance to any but the leaders ”

“ Let others solve their own problems! But can women share the male tasks that make and keep us a Nation, amid a jarring and environing host of Nations?—an Empire, with the guardianship of half the world on its shoulders? ”

“ As a body they do not aspire to the higher political honors, and among them there is no concerted action in that direction. By male office-seekers and by Government alike, they are sought and welcomed as valued supporters of men and men's measures, but this is virtually as far as an invitation to their participation in political rewards goes. ”

“ Every citizen of age to fulfil his duties as a citizen, whether he be a father or husband, teacher or pupil, master or servant, official or subordinate, has the right, and owes it as a duty, to know the facts of sexual inversion, to combat and to prevent debauchery, crime and vice, to learn and to teach others the place of inversion in Society, and its morals, the duties of the134 invert towards himself, and towards other inverts, towards the normal man, and towards women and children. ”

“ This seclusion of the young girls is in itself a sufficient comment upon the sentiments of honor and duty which are current among the male portion of the population, and it is plain that this condition of affairs can find little betterment until the nation finds new social ideals. ”

“ Hence different civic rights are properly given to the male, in some respects; not because it is right to empower him to consume upon the promotion of his natural well-being that of his sister, but because, on the whole, the well-being of both sexes is thus most promoted. ”

“ Neither society nor science entertains the notion that those instincts which the laws of France and Italy tolerate, under certain restrictions, can be simply natural in a certain percentage of male persons. ”

“ He would learn, to his infinite surprise, that even in a Western democratic city men would be welcomed in society whose hand no pure woman or honorable man ought to touch, while he, a gentleman by birth, education, and especially character, would not be recognized at all. ”

“ And when you have begotten boys, are you going to introduce them into the body of citizens as plucked creatures too? A fine citizen and senator and orator! Is this the kind of young men we ought to pray to have born and brought up for us? ”

“ Sir, what does the gentleman understand by 'political subjects'? Everything in which the house has an agency—everything which relates to peace and relates to war, or to any other of the great interests of society. Are women to have no opinions or actions on subjects relating to the general welfare? Where did the gentleman get this principle? ”

“ As the country was too young for club-life, the masculine portion of the community expressed its masculinity by herding together in the saloons,—the ministers and missionaries being the only exceptions to this mode of expression. ”

“ For as there is in all men, both male and female, a desire and power of generation more active than is ever universally exerted, the restraints which they lie under must proceed from some difficulties in their situation, which it belongs to a wise legislature carefully to observe and remove. ”

“ It is a laborious task, for which the male sex is infinitely better fitted than the female sex; and after proper consideration and discussion of the measures that may divide the country from time to time, the duty devolves upon those who are responsible for the government, at times and places to be fixed by law, to meet and by ballot to decide the great questions of government upon which the prosperity of the country depends. ”

“ But a mere handful, whom Nature endowed with unusual brain power, have been leaders in war and politics. In the United States, I dare instance only Mohammed, Henry the Eighth, Louis the Fourteenth, and Bismarck. But leaders of the American nation have belonged to this tremendously virile class. I dare not name them because cultured society, with their present mediæval ideas on sex, severely censure men of this class as "bestial." ”

“ Whether this altogether proceeds from constitutional deficiency on these points in the masculine character, or is one result among many of the code of bye-laws which obtains in men's moral education from the cradle, is a question on which everybody has their own opinion. For the present the young gentlemen may appropriate whichever theory they prefer, and we will go back to the story. ”

“ The truth is palpable, that our men are not all gentlemen, nor our women all ladies, nor our children all docile and obliging. In that small and insignificant circle which is called 'Society,' which, small and insignificant as it is, gives the tone to the manners of the nation, the chief efforts seem to be, to cleanse the outside of the platter, to conceal defects by gloss and glitter. ”

“ Would he be admitted to an equal share in your political rights?—would he ever be allowed to cross the threshold of your doors?—would any of you give your daughter to his son, or your son to his daughter?—would you, in any one particular, admit him to the footing of equality which any man with a white skin would claim, whose ability and worth had so raised him from the lower degrees of the social scale. ”

“ For truly these two great truths are [Pg 43] what we male men have considered the very ground work and underpinnin' of our strongest and most unanswerable arguments agin Wimmen's Suffrage, Marriage—Home—Clean Children—Housework—Good Vittles—oh, how sweet them words have always sounded in men's ears and are still a soundin', and how eminently fitted to wimmen's weak tender minds and patient confidin' naters. And how obnoxious and loathsome to every male ear have been and are now, the words Justice—Freedom—Equality. ”

“ Encourage the boy to sit always by the fireside, and studiously shun conversation with the opposite sex, or put the girl forward and incite her to a bold and boisterous manner, and their mutual influence is diminished and soon lost. You transgress a plain law of the Creator.
So in the society of adults. Let men group themselves together, and they will converse only of their farms, their merchandize, and their manufactures, or of governments and administrations. Insulate the female sex, and they shall discourse 22upon dress, or the minor affairs of their neighbors, far too exclusively. ”

“ There are groups in which both sexes require protection in an exactly equal degree, and others (I think) in which the male requires most protection, and I feel the greatest confidence that these will ultimately support my view, although I do not yet know the facts they may afford. ”

“ I tell you agin it is a perilous and agonizin' epock of time for the male sect at home and abroad. Men in America havin' to set curled up on a bench by the side of the road, and see weak wimmen, underlin's, a marchin' by 'em in the center of the street with brass bands and banners a flyin'. And in England the highest official of the Empire held by the collar and shook by a weak female jest like a spitball thrower of a schoolboy, and couldn't resent it in court owin' to his havin' so much dignity at the stake. ”

“ When we witness political, judicial or financial gatherings, and see no form and hear no voice but those of men—when we urge our way through the busy street, amid the rude trampings and loud greetings of men, it seems as though everything was managed by our own sex. ”

“ Real and comprehensive knowledge, physical and moral, equally and impartially given by education, and by all other means to both sexes, is the key to such higher enjoyments....
“Demand with mild but unshrinking firmness, perfect equality with men: demand equal civil and criminal laws, an equal system of morals, and, as indispensable to these, equal political laws, to afford you an equal chance of happiness with men, from the development and exercise of your faculties.” ”

“ With such an invigorating prospect spreading before us, it becomes our imperative duty, laying aside the gay frivolities of youth, to betake ourselves to the serious consideration of our country's politics, her wants and her resources ”

“ Almost all Men that have had a liberal, and good Education know, what is due to Good Manners, and civil Company. But till they have been us’d a little to Our Society, their Modesty sits like Constraint upon ’em, and looks like a forc’d Compliance to uneasie Rules, and Forms of Civility. Conversing frequently with us makes ’em familiar to Men, and when they are convinc’d, as well of the Easiness, as the Necessity of ’em, they are soon reconcil’d to the Practice. ”

“ Of the working men, at least in the more advanced countries of Europe, it may be pronounced certain, that the patriarchal or paternal system of government is one to which they will not again be subject. ”

“ On the other hand, the social duties of an American gentleman, in particular, require of him a tone of feeling and a line of conduct that are of the last importance to the country. One of the first of his obligations is to be a guardian of the liberties of his fellow citizens. ”

“ If not, enquire whether all human propensities, duly governed, be not a benefit and a blessing to the nature in which they are inherent.
Human beings, of whatever sex or class! examine dispassionately and narrowly the influence which the control here recommended will produce throughout society. Reflect whether it will not lighten the burdens of one sex, while it affords scope for the exercise of the best feelings of the other. Consider whether its tendency be not benignant and elevating; conducive to the exercise of practical virtue, and to the permanent welfare of the human race. ”

“ The rough contests of the political world are not suited to the dignity and the delicacy of your sex; but you possess the intelligence to know how much of that happiness which you are entitled to hope for, both for yourselves and for your children, depends on the right administration of government, and a proper tone of public morals. ”

“ The first thing a male child is taught is love, deep respect, and obedience to his governor, and in this he is, as a general rule, a paragon. If the father be ill, he will lie by his side day and night, nursing him, and giving him courage ”

“ There are other virtues, such as warlike courage, love of justice, or a passion for truth, which, though happily not the monopoly of either sex, are, whether rightly or not, deemed to be specially masculine. ”

“ And hence it is that these men and women who themselves had sprung from the people and who had spontaneously renounced all the joys of family to consecrate to the good of their fellov/ men, in those peaceful associations, their youth, their talent, their strength, and their lives, were treated as malefactors as if they had formed criminal associations, and have been excluded from the common and prescriptive rights at the very time when men are speaking loudest of liberty. ”

“ This growth of public sentiment has been occasioned by the needs of the children and the working-women of that great State. I come here to ask you to make a niche in the statesmanship and legislation of the nation for the domestic interests of the people. You recognize that the masculine thought is more often turned to the material and political interests of the nation. I claim that the mother thought, the woman element needed, is to supplement the concurrent statesmanship of American men on political and industrial affairs with the domestic legislation of the nation. ”

“ Just as their system of Government is patriarchal, so also the junior members of their community treat each other with a consideration and good nature one would be glad to see more of, among blood-brothers in other lands. ”