Militant feminism

“ Again, one may inquire why, since I have not blinked the fact that the feminist movement is making for a revolution of values in sex—why I have not included any woman who has distinguished herself by defying antiquated conventions which are supposed to rule the relations of the sexes. This requires a serious answer. The adjustment of one's social and personal relations, so far as may be, to accord with one's own convictions—that is not feminism, in my opinion: it is only common sense. ”

“ For such women it was indeed a blessed day when the word that was to deliver them from bondage and to open to them paths of public usefulness was first spoken by the pioneers of feminism, throwing open to the female sex the many professions for which they are as fit, or even fitter—in spite of the equality theory—than men! ”

“ Either alternative is bad; because in either event the ruin of civilization is a mathematical certainty. You cannot eradicate woman’s most vital principles without destroying her usefulness, and yet you cannot tolerate her deteriorating influence if her vital principles are allowed to get out of hand. There remains, therefore, but the alternative of restoring women to the charge of men—an alternative which involves the denial, the overthrow, and the rout of Feminism. ”

“ Every journalist, novelist, poet and public man, with but few exceptions, takes the first principles of Feminism for granted. No one seriously doubts, for instance, that woman has exercised a beneficent influence over civilization; the absurd idealism which represents woman as the unselfish, self-sacrificing, partner in human life, is almost universally accepted. Everybody is inclined to regard man as the unmoral (non-social or anti-social) and woman as the moral (social) sex, and to hold the sexes as otherwise perfectly equal. ”

“ We have pointed out in the last chapter that Modern Feminism has two sides, the positive, definite, and articulate side, which ostensibly claims equality between the sexes, the chief concern of which is the conferring of all the rights and duties of men upon women, and the opening up of all careers to them. The justification of these demands is based upon the dogma, that, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, women are endowed by nature with the same capacity intellectually and morally as men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The only advisable solution lies in the direction, not of changing woman—that would be suicidal to the species—but in limiting her power, in controlling her influence. Feminism, therefore, which aims at the opposite ideal, is wrong—wrong to the root. There must be a revulsion of feeling, or we perish. Woman must be re-defined. ”

“ But now, what if this book did express a new revolt against the woman's new point of view, against "feminism"? It is plainly not a new revolt, but what if it were? Just as certain intellectuals have, in the speed of their progress, again reached a taste for monarchy, so other intellectuals, young and scornful of aspiration, may prick along through their flair for freedom in life and love, and arrive at this identical Victorian conclusion, that the sole self expression for women is love. ”

“ The rebels must accept situations such as the financial responsibility of man, while they struggle to make woman financially independent of man, and it is for this reason that different proposals appear in the works of Ellen Key, Rosa Mayreder, Charlotte Gilman, Olive Schreiner, and others, but these divergences need not trouble us, for Feminism is an inspiration rather than a gospel, and if it lays down a programme, it is a temporary programme. ”

“ There is no doubt that women have certain rights and that they are suffering injustice. They ought to lay claim to a better future, to a wise independence, to a greater participation in knowledge, and to more respect, interest and esteem from men. This future, though, is in their own hands."
This is wisdom itself. It would be impossible to put it more clearly, and to warn women in a better way, that the greatest danger for their cause would be the triumph of what is called by an ironical term—feminism. ”

“ And it sets to work with a conscience so clean, with such a profound conviction of its rectitude, and above all with such a great display of moral indignation, that the more guileless sections of the modern world, always taken in by moral indignation, are almost led to believe that Feminism is a natural and desirable evolutionary development, on which all hope for the future depends. ”

“ It would be absurd for women even to suggest equal rights in a world governed solely by physical force, and Feminism must necessarily assert the ultimate supremacy of moral agencies. Inevitably the two are in eternal opposition. ”

“ Logically, as we shall have occasion to insist upon later on, the principles professedly at the root of Political Feminism are in flagrant contradiction with any that can justify Sentimental Feminism. ”

“ We might suppose, therefore, that Political Feminism, with its theory of sex equality based on the assumption of equal sex capacity, would be in strong opposition in this matter with Sentimental Feminism, which seeks, as its name implies, to attenuate female responsibility on grounds which are not distinguishable from the old-fashioned assumption of inferiority. ”

“ On the other hand it may be noted, that the entire absence of any consciousness of sex antagonism in the attitude of men towards women, combined with an intensification of the old-world chivalry prescribed by tradition towards the so-called weaker sex, exercises, if anything, an increasing sway over male public opinion. Hence the terrific force Feminism has obtained in the world of the early twentieth century. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The claims of women and their apologists for entering upon the functions of men, political, social or otherwise, although put forward from time to time by isolated individuals, received little countenance from public opinion, and still less from the law. What I have called, however, the sentimental aspect of Modern Feminism undoubtedly did make some headway in public opinion by the end of the eighteenth century, and grew in volume during the early years of the nineteenth century. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a matter of fact there is not one single prominent exponent of views hostile to the pretensions of what is called the “Woman's Movement” of the present day, respecting whom there is a tittle of evidence of his not having lived all his life on the best of terms with his woman-kind. ”

“ Was it because he had just been reading an article in a new number of the Quarterly, on "Contemporary Feminism," with mingled amazement and revolt, roused by some of the strange facts collected by the writer? So women everywhere—many women at any rate—were turning indiscriminately against the old bonds, the old yokes, affections, servitudes, demanding "self-realisation," freedom for the individuality and the personal will; rebelling against motherhood, and life-long marriage ”

“ Now, however, when the claims of Feminism are becoming practically recognised in our social life, and some of its largest demands are being granted, it is interesting to observe the appearance of a new attitude. We are, for the first time, beginning to hear of "Masculinism." ”

“ Even in this day when people like my friend Mamie Magen think that feminism has won everything, I suppose there must still be a majority of men like you—men who’ve never even heard of feminism, who think that their women are breed cattle. I judge that from the conversations I overhear in restaurants and street-cars, and these pretty vaudeville jokes about marriage that you love so, and from movie pictures of wives beating husbands, and from the fact that women even yet haven’t the vote. ”

“ If the woman's movement means anything, it means that women are demanding everything. They will not exchange one place for another, nor give up one right to pay for another, but they will achieve all rights to which their bodies and brains give them an implicit title. They will have a larger political life, a larger motherhood, a larger social service, a larger love, and they will reconstruct or destroy institutions to that end as it becomes necessary. They will not be content with any concession or any triumph until they have conquered all experience. ”

“ For the sake of brevity we call the first Political Feminism, for, although its demands are not confined to the political sphere, it is first and foremost a political movement, and its typical claim at the present time, the Franchise, is a purely political one; and the second Sentimental Feminism, inasmuch as it commonly does not profess to be based on any general principle whatever, whether of equity or otherwise, but relies exclusively on the traditional and conventional [52] sex sentiment of Man towards Woman. ”

“ Modern Feminism, tacking itself on to an older tradition which it travesties beyond all recognition, has succeeded in affecting modern public opinion with an overpowering sense of the sacrosanctity of human femality as such. ”

“ These two sides of Modern Feminism are not necessarily combined in the same person. One may, for example, find opponents of female suffrage who are strong advocates of sentimental favouritism towards women in matters of law and its administration. On the other hand you may find, though this is more rare, strong advocates of political and other rights for the female sex, who sincerely deprecate the present inequality of the law in favour of women. ”

“ The above attitude, with all its inconsistencies, has at its back a strong sex-conscious party, [6] or sex union, as we may term it, among women, and a floating mass of inconsequent, slushy sentiment among men. There is more than one popular prejudice which obscures the meaning and significance of Modern Feminism with many people. There is a common theory, for instance, based upon what really obtained to some extent before the prevalence of Modern Feminism, that in any case of antagonism between the two sexes, women always take the man’s side against the woman. ”

“ In dealing with the psychological aspects of the Feminist Movement, the intellectual conditions which paved the way for its acceptance, it is worth while recalling two or three typical instances of the class of “argument” to be heard on occasion from the female advocates for the suffrage. ”

“ While what we have termed Political Feminism vehemently asserts its favourite dogma, the intellectual and moral equality of the sexes—that the woman is as good as the man if not better—Sentimental Feminism as vehemently seeks to exonerate every female criminal, and protests against any punishment being meted out to her approaching in severity that which would be awarded a man in a similar case. ”

“ Now the attitude of Feminism towards our vast army of spinsters and disgruntled wives is that of Socialist organizations all over the world towards discontented labour elements. It is one in which the latent discontent is turned to every possible advantage for the Cause. Feminism offers no bodily solution of the problem presented by our unmated women and our disillusioned wives, and it escapes from the responsibility of so doing by consistently regarding the whole crowd as nothing more than disembodied spirits. ”

“ The feminist movement can be dealt with in two ways: it can be treated as a sociological abstraction, and discussed at length in heavy monographs; or it can be taken as the sum of the action of a lot of women, and taken account of in the lives of individual women. ”

“ They do not realise that the question is not of the physical strength of women as women, but of the whole forces of the State [168] being at the disposal of women to set in motion to gratify their whims and passions. The idea of a sex war in which women take the field against men, such as represents the inwardness of the whole Feminist Movement of to-day, seems to them ridiculous. ”

“ What is there left for active anti-Feminists to do? Now that women have the vote and that they sit in Parliament, now that they have practically the whole of the Press behind them, their battle is surely won, and anti-Feminism is a lost cause! Obviously, however, if anti-Feminism means resisting the further development of Feminism, to prevent it from culminating in some or all of the changes outlined in the previous chapter; if it means a struggle to maintain the natural relations of the sexes, together with the normal functioning of male and female in reproduction ”