Misogyny

“ We exalt woman's compassion or curse her cruelty for equally irrefutable reasons, according to whether we are momentarily disposed to owe her gratitude or hatred. So what good are all these fruitless discussions; for in the eternal battle of the sexes, we are always conquered—and we can do nothing about it—and none of us as yet, be he misogynist or feminist, has found a more perfect instrument of pleasure, or any other means of reproduction, than woman. ”

“ When, however, the question is of a different character—for example, for the relieving of some vile female criminal of the penalty of her misdeeds-then Sentimental Feminism comes into play, then the whole plaidoyer is based on the chivalric sentiment of deference and consideration for poor, weak woman. I may point out that here, if it be in the least degree logical, the plea for mercy or immunity can hardly be based on any other consideration than that of an intrinsic moral weakness in view of which the offence is to be condoned. ”

“ It is by this kind of bluff that the claims of Feminism are sustained. The following is a fair example of the statements of Feminist writers:—“As for accusing the world at large of fatuous indulgence for womanhood in general, the idea is too preposterous for words. The true ‘legends of the Old Bailey’ tell, not of women absurdly acquitted, but of miserable girls sent to the gallows for murders committed in half delirious dread of the ruthlessness of hypocritical Society.” Now it is this sort of legend that it is one of the chief objects of the following pages to explode. ”

“ It is the fashion of Feminists, ignoring these fundamental physiological sex differences, to affirm that the actual inferiority of women, where they have the honesty to admit such an obvious fact, is accountable by the centuries of oppression in which Woman has been held by wicked and evil-minded Man. ”

“ That the propertied classes should take arson and wilful destruction of property in general, with such comparative equanimity because the culprits are women, acting in the assumed interest of a cause that aims at increasing the influence of women in the State, is the most striking illustration we can have of the power of Feminism. We have here a double phenomenon, the unreasoning hatred of man as a sex, by men, and their equally unreasoning indulgence towards the other sex. ”

“ This is no exaggerated statement; it is a fact that women of education and of high standing speak of a certain class of women as if there were a third sex—a creature resembling woman in all outward appearance but sterile in propagation, sterile in morals, and sterile in intellectual capacity, a slave to men, and a creature of contempt in the eyes of women. ”

“ They get hold of facts by the wrong end; they cut into the middle of a chain, and look upon the woman as the aggressor, and contemplate her as an unclean bird of prey. They do not in the least realize the slight and morally trivial things that cast too many of our working-class girls down into the pit of hell that skirts their daily path—often as mere children who know not what they do, often from hunger and desperation, often tricked and drugged, and always heavily bribed. ”

“ But the subtle humiliations of women possessed of wealth, education, and genius, men on the same plane can not see or feel, and yet can any misery be more real than invidious distinctions on the ground of sex in the laws and constitution, in the political, religious, and moral position of those who in nature stand the peers of each other? And not only do such women suffer these ever-recurring indignities in daily life, but the literature of the world proclaims their inferiority and divinely decreed subjection in all history, sacred and profane, in science, philosophy, poetry, and song. ”

“ The hardening exposures, the gnawing jealousies, of overmuch fashionable society, with its shallow and bitter emulations, do far more to contract and sour the spirit of woman, to falsify and deprave her heart, to belittle and spoil her mind, to degrade and veneer her character, than any professional career can well be supposed to do. ”

“ If I could be saved from my fate by a defence seemingly so impregnable, I was willing to be so saved, but to-day I would be a coward and a disgrace to my sex if, in face of the generous action of this woman, I allowed a falsehood of whatever description to place her in peril, or to stand between me and the doom that probably awaits me. ”

“ Didn't it lay up needless future misery to go on deceiving helpless women into putting a preposterous overvaluation upon the mere possession of their sex? Lastly, and above all, wasn't it a colossal libel on all womanhood to accept the strut and mannerism born of this deception as the true essentials of "womanliness"? ”

“ There is, indeed, a touch of melodrama in the sharp contrast exhibited between their proud prickliness towards mankind and their idolatry of The Man. Few women have written more bitterly of our idle vanity, our heartless neglect and supreme selfishness, our blind folly, and our indifference to moral standards. None has spoken with more biting emphasis of woman’s natural superiority, or of the grinding tyranny which, for so many generations, she is herein shown to have stupidly endured. ”

“ How he shows us the woman, when she takes her stand on the false masculine ground of intellect, working out her own moral punishment, by destroying in herself the tender heart of flesh, which is either woman's highest blessing or her bitterest curse; how she loses all feminine sensibility to the under-current of feeling in us poor world-worn, case-hardened men, and falls from pride to sternness, from sternness to sheer inhumanity. ”

“ But, whether this fear be the voice of truth or the suggestion of prejudice, that woman shall not be held blameless, who, under the influence of indolence, pride, fashion, or avarice, shall neglect, abuse, or oppress, the humblest of her sex who goes forth from these walls into the broad and dangerous path of life. ”

“ But those same moralizers, who condemn such degradation, are capable, at any moment, to deluge any woman who happens to attract their attention by rosy cheeks, or sparkling eyes, or a luxuriant figure, with flatteries and assurances, every letter of which is a hypocrisy, and every phrase of which contains a humiliation. ”

“ Likewise she ought to avoid an errour into which I have seen many women fall, which is that of saying and of willingly listening to evil about other women. For those women who, on hearing the unseemly ways of other women described, grow angry thereat and seem to disbelieve it and to regard it almost monstrous that a woman should be immodest,—they, by accounting the offence so heinous, give reason to think that they do not commit it. ”

“ Instead of denying her impulsive intention of rendering pedal acceleration to the padre’s outward movement, when I reproved her for the meditated unfeminine act, which in consummation would have given rise to great scandal, she innocently asked, “what else could a woman do when there was no broom handy?” Then she continued, in extenuation, “If men come into the houses of good peoples, dressed like women in petticoats, and don’t behave properly, as they ought, it’s right that they should be served by a woman as a man would treat them if he dared!” ”

“ Our compassion and disgust are simultaneously aroused, when we see so many women whose education has given them no other knowledge than to teach them how to flatter the taste of others at the expense of Christian modesty.
How many women there are who, from their youth, have renounced the dignity and glorious privileges of their sex, calmly resigning themselves to play the inferior and humiliating role that the prejudices and passions of a frivolous society impose upon them! ”

“ But outside of this community they are destroying the sex, ruining all they can, and then they boast of their villainy. Shall I say that the women are short-sighted? I will say they are weak; I will say that it is in their nature to confide in and look to the sterner sex for guidance, and thus they are the more liable to be led astray and ruined. It is the decree of the Almighty upon them to lean upon man as their superior, and he has abused his privilege as their natural protector and covered them with abuse and dishonor. ”

“ For it should not be forgotten that woman risks more than comfort and health, and that the underpayment of her sex often forces her to degradation.
Conscious of the temporary inferiority of woman, an inferiority traceable to centuries of neglect and belittling patronage, the Feminists propose to increase woman's power by making her fitter for power. ”

“ We have learned, after ages of misconception and suffering, that the relations between the sexes are so intimate and vital, that woman must be elevated and ennobled, to ennoble man; that if her affections are dwarfed and crushed, and her legitimate field of labor and of influence curtailed —if, in aught, the full development of her powers be hampered—man, as well as woman, incurs the penalty of such abuse. ”

“ One would wish for every girl who is growing up to womanhood that it might be brought home to her by some refined and ethically-minded member of her own sex how insufferable a person woman becomes when, like a spoilt child, she exploits the indulgence of man ”

“ Here were women disguised as men, and men in the attire of women, hiding vice of every vileness and crime of every enormity,—at once the most disgusting, the most appalling, and the most unnatural that the heart of man has conceived. ”

“ The immeasurable depth of degradation into which those women fall, whose sex is thoroughly debased, who have intensified the physical instincts of the brute by the mental power for evil possessed by the human being, indicates the mighty character of sexual power over the nature of woman for corruption. ”

“ The whole modern woman's movement is based, in a measure, at least, on an assumption which is absolutely unfounded—to wit, that man has systematically oppressed woman in the past, that the natural tendency of evil-minded man is always to oppress woman, or, to put it from the other side, that woman is the victim of man's egoism! ”

“ We hear and read, ad nauseam, of excuses, and condonation, for every crime committed by a woman, while a crime of precisely similar a character and under precisely similar circumstances, where a man is the perpetrator, meets with nothing but virulent execration from that truculent ass, British public opinion, as manipulated by the Feminist fraternity, male and female. ”

“ The records of Quarter Sessions and of the courts of Summary Jurisdiction yield the same result, an enormous majority of male offenders,—though there be more women than [Pg 28] men in England and Wales! And yet, in the face of such official figures, of the evidence of every employer, man cherishes a belief in woman's dishonesty! One reason, no doubt, is that woman's emotional nature leads her, when she is criminal, to criminality of an aggravated kind. ”

“ If there is one thing more than another in this whole accursed tissue of false society, which makes me angry, it is the asinine stupidity which with the true phlegm of impenetrable dullness says, "Why don't the women leave!" ”

“ And if she distrusted men, she both distrusted and despised women. She distrusted and despised them because they were poor workers, because they were idlers by nature, because they allowed themselves to be cheated, slighted, underpaid, underfed, and oppressed, and, most of all, she despised them because they were the victims of their own emotions. ”

“ A multitude of women, innocent at first, have been turned aside from the right path by men who do not think as you do. They now avenge themselves upon your sex for the evil it has done them. They corrupt and ruin men who, in their company, lose all sense of morality, who learn to laugh at what you believe and venerate, and undermine and destroy their health. ”

“ You begin by saying that you by no means desired to treat of the inequality of the sexes, but that half a dozen insurgent women with ink-stained fingers having defied you to discuss the question, you will establish by facts and documents the physical, intellectual and moral inferiority of woman ”

“ She had no foregone conclusion to arrive at, no wish to find evidence in favour of the woman which would prove the man wrong. Only, coming across so many sneers at the incapacity of women, she fell insensibly into the habit of asking why. The question to begin with was always: "Why are women such inferior beings?" ”

“ And I should, indeed, have cause to blush, if, after having had time for reflection, I could really think this necessary. Shall I, then, sign the unjust decree, that women are incapable of energy and fortitude? Have I exercised my understanding, without ever intending to apply my principles to practice? Do I mean always to deplore the prejudices which have, systematically, weakened the female character, without making any effort to rise above them? ”

“ The whole experience of mankind since the dawn of written records confirmed by, as above said, that of every living person not specially committed to the theories of Modern Feminism, bears witness alike to the prevalence of what we may term the hysterical mind in woman and to her general mental frailty. It is not for nothing that women and children have always been classed together. ”