The E. Belfort Bax Reader

The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

2 Introduction

Contents Introduction...... 6 Who was ? ...... 7 Biography by Ted Crawford...... 8 Ernest Belfort Bax, Thinker and Pioneer...... 9 Some Bourgeois Idols; or Ideals, Reals, and Shams (1886)...... 14 Some Heterodox Notes on the Women Question (1887) ...... 21 No Misogyny But True Equality (1887)...... 29 A Word for the Men (1890) ...... 36 Courage – The Logic, Phenomenology, and History of a Concept (1890)...... 37 Marriage (1891)...... 47 Equality, Not Privilege (1893) ...... 53 The Woman Question (1895) ...... 54 Bebel’s Woman and (1895)...... 57 “Free Love” and Socialism – A Criticism (1895) ...... 59 The Everlasting Female Again! (1895) ...... 61 Some Current Fallacies on the Woman Question (1897) ...... 66 Legal Encouragements to Blackmail (1897) ...... 72 Sexual Ethical Twaddle (1899) ...... 78 A Bundle of Fallacies (1901) ...... 82 Blacks, Whites and “Fads” (1901) ...... 88 Outraged Feminism (1901) ...... 90 Ferri and the Woman Question (1902)...... 95 Shaw and Fabianism (1902)...... 96 Feminism in extremis (1902) ...... 99 Female Suffrage and Its Implications – An Address to the Central Branch of the SDF (1904)...... 107 Socialism and the Family (1906)...... 116 The “Monstrous Regiment” of Womanhood (1907) ...... 119 Socialism and the Family (1907)...... 134 Anti-Feminism. (1908)...... 136 Mr. Belfort Bax Replies to his Feminist Critics. (1908)...... 138 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) ...... 142 Preface To New Edition...... 142 Preface...... 143 I The Legend...... 144 II The Facts...... 145 3 Matrimonial Privileges of Women...... 147 Non-matrimonial Privileges of Women ...... 166 The Criminal Law...... 166 The Civil Law...... 179 The Actual Exercise Of Women's Sex Privileges...... 183 3 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Muscular Inferiority and Sex-privilege...... 186 A Sex Noblesse...... 187 Socialists And Feminists ...... 187 “The Oppressed Woman.”...... 188 A Study in Socialist Heresy-Hunting – Why I Am Opposed to Female Suffrage (1909) ...... 190 Why I Am an Anti-Suffragist (1909) ...... 194 Burrows as Feminist (1909) ...... 198 Contemptible Methods (1909) ...... 199 Women’s Privileges and “Rights” (1909) ...... 200 A Different Interpretation (1909)...... 204 The Legal Subjection of Men (1909) ...... 206 Woods on Women (1910) ...... 207 Uni-Sexual Criminal Law. (1910)...... 209 Feminism and Female Suffrage (1910)...... 211 Re Woods (1910) ...... 215 A Symposium on Women’s Suffrage. (1911) ...... 216 A Creature of Privilege (1911)...... 219 The Problem of Modern Feminism (1912)...... 232 The Problem of Sex and Sentiment (1912) ...... 239 The Marriage Relation Under Socialism (1912) ...... 245 Marriage Under Socialism (1912)...... 247 The Suffrage Outrages (1912)...... 248 Cant, Cowardice and Cruelty. (1912)...... 249 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) ...... 251 Note by Transcriber, Ted Crawford ...... 251 Preface to the 1921 Reissue ...... 254 Preface...... 255 Introduction...... 257 Chapter I – Historical...... 258 Chapter II. The Main Dogma of Modern Feminism ...... 262 Chapter III. The Anti-Man Crusade ...... 276 Chapter IV. Always the “Injured Innocent”!...... 288 Chapter V. The “Chivalry” Fake...... 295 Chapter VI. Some Feminist Lies and Fallacies ...... 300 Chapter VII. The Psychology of the Movement ...... 314 Chapter VIII. The Indictment...... 322 The Woman Question and Marxian Historical Materialism (1918)...... 330 The Helpless League. (1923) ...... 331 R.B. Tobias and M.E. Marcy, Women as Sex Vendors (1918)...... 333 Contents ...... 333 Chapter I: Why Women are Conservative...... 333 Chapter II: Youth and Maid ...... 340

4 Introduction Chapter III: The Evolution of the Family...... 343 Chapter IV: The Future ...... 347

5 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Introduction The present volume is a compilation of the writings of Ernest Belfort Bax concerning feminism. Bax was a somewhat unusual free thinker of the Socialist movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. His writings on the subject of the women’s movement, feminism, female suffrage, as well as questions on men’s rights and the family and sexuality that it provokes, are profound and provide perhaps one of the earliest testimonies of systematic thought in anti-feminism and men’s rights issues. For the most part (with the exception of A Creature of Privilege, transcribed and corrected by the editor; and The Legal Subjection of Men based on text transcribed by Thomas Pollock and revised by the editor for proper paragraph breaks based on the book), the majority of this material has been collected from the Marxists’ Internet Archive, where it has been meticulously transcribed by Ted Crawford., with the help of Einde O’Callaghan, and Chris Clayton, to whom goes our deepest gratitude. Ironically, Ted Crawford as the Socialist movement in its entirety disagree quite strongly with Bax’ anti-feminist thought. All the more should the intellectual honesty of these men be praised for having taken upon themselves the labor of transcribing and organizing this sizeable amount of text. The present volume was compiled in January 2014 by Gunther Schadow (the editor), and is being released without much commentary. Due to the large volume of Bax’ writings on anti- feminism, a commentary to summarize Bax’ thought should be forthcoming at a later date. At this time it should be important to preface this entire volume with a statement about the odd fact that a socialist has been the most prolific anti-feminist writer of the early days of organized feminism. Bax has been timelessly accurate in his clear description of the myths, lies of the Feminist Fallacies, such as the myth of the oppression of women in history, the denial of the existence of substantial female privileges, as well as the anti-male roots and effects of feminism. The insight Bax gives us into contemporary issues of and equality are astounding and belie the things told to the post-modern man of how women were oppressed “because they were denied the vote.” Bax gives us a direct insight into the status of women just before universal female suffrage as he delivers reasoned arguments against it. As a socialist, Bax’s view of the family is basically negative as he expresses ideas of “true equality” and the abolition of marriage, notions which, may have faded into lesser importance in the later part of Bax’s writing. It is worthwhile to listen to his reasoning and process it. However, with today’s knowledge we should question if, even if Bax had had free hand to have abolished all unjust laws and privileges for women at the time, and only implement his Socialist ideas of “true equality”, the resultant redistribution of wealth would

6 Introduction still have created a net cash flow from men to women, and would unduly undermine the position of the father in relation to his children and their mother. Given what we know today about female sexuality and the behavior of the liberated woman (e.g., filing 70% of divorces because she gains, or having out of wedlock children because she is shielded from the responsibility), facts of which Bax had some awareness at the time, women would continue to financially exploit men, while reaping havoc on the personality of the generations of fatherless children which they raise.1 Therefore, the reader must be cautioned to remain skeptical of socialism and any collectivist ideas which seek to reduce man’s freedom for security or ideas of “social justice”. It is not without reason that feminism has found its most ardent supporters in socialism and it is not without cause that Bax’ anti-feminist reason has become all but an obscure historical oddball in the socialist movement.

Who was Ernest Belfort Bax? Ernest Belfort Bax (23 July 1854 – 26 November 1926) was a British socialist journalist and philosopher, associated with the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). Born into a nonconformist religious family in Leamington, he was first introduced to Marxism while studying in Germany. He combined Karl Marx's ideas with those of , and Eduard von Hartmann. Keen to explore possible metaphysical and ethical implications of socialism, he came to describe a " of socialism" as a means to overcome the dichotomy between the personal and the social, and also that between the cognitive and the emotional. He saw this as a replacement for organised religion, and was a fervent atheist, keen to free workers from what he saw as the moralism of the middle-class. Bax moved to and worked as a journalist on the Evening Standard. On his return to England in 1882, he joined the SDF, but grew disillusioned and in 1885 left to form the Socialist League with . After anarchists gained control of the League, he rejoined the SDF, and became the chief theoretician, and editor of the party paper Justice. He opposed the party's participation in the Labour Representation Committee, and eventually persuaded them to leave. Almost throughout his life, he saw economic conditions as ripe for socialism, but felt this progress was delayed by a lack of education of the working class. Bax supported over , but Kautsky had little time for what he saw as Bax's

1 See Daniel Amneus. The Garbage Generation. 1989. 7 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader utopianism, and supported Theodore Rothstein's efforts to spread a more orthodox Marxism in the SDF. Initially very anti-nationalist, Bax came to support the British in World War I, but by this point he was concentrating on his career as a barrister and did little political work. Bax was an ardent antifeminist since, according to Bax, feminism was a part of the "anti- man crusade". According to Bax, "anti-man crusades" were responsible for "anti-man laws" during the time of men-only voting in England. Bax wrote many articles in The New Age and elsewhere about English laws partial to women against men, and women's privileged position before the law, and expressed his view that women's suffrage would unfairly tip the balance of power to women.2 In 1908 he wrote The Legal Subjection of Men3 as a response to 's 1869 essay "The Subjection of Women." In 1913 he published an essay, The Fraud of Feminism,4 detailing feminism's adverse effects. Section titles included "The Anti-Man Crusade", "The 'Chivalry' Fake", "Always The 'Injured Innocent'", and "Some Feminist Lies and Fallacies". Bax died in London.

Biography by Ted Crawford Bax was born at Leamington of wealthy non-Conformist parents, became a barrister and was an important propagandist and historian. He is important as the first source through which many of the Marxist and materialist ideas of history were disseminated through the English speaking world. Marx noted his efforts with approval in a letter to Sorge. He studied music at the Stuttgart Conservatoire (his nephew was the composer) and he had been a music critic with Bernard Shaw, whom he knew well and is named as a philosopher by Shaw in the prologue to Major Barbara. He took part in the foundation of the Social Democratic Federation and collaborated in its organ, Justice, and in the monthly, To-Day, which he first tried to run independently but, owing to lack of funds, had to make over to Hyndman in 1884. He broke with Hyndman at the end of 1884 and together with Morris and -Aveling, etc, helped to form the Socialist League, which, however, later fell under anarchist influence. He went back to the SDF in 1889 and stayed with Hyndman thereafter. After the death of Morris his increasingly eccentric views about feminism came to the fore though he had a high opinion of “Fraulein Luxemburg” as appears in a polemic with Bernstein in Justice in 1896 on the Colonial question where he had an excellent

2 E. Belfort Bax, "Mr. Belfort Bax Replies to his Feminist Critics", The New Age, 8 August 1908. Retrieved on 3 January 2013. 3 E. Belfort Bax, The Legal Subjection of Men. 4 E. Belfort Bax, The Fraud of Feminism. 8 Introduction position. Finally, during the First World War he went over to chauvinist positions seeing the main threat to his rather romanticised Republican France in the anti-democratic and aristocratic Junkers of Germany. He mourned Karl Liebknecht and denounced Noske and Scheidmann as reactionaries in his autobiography (1918) and his memorial biography was written by “Robert Arch” Archibald Harold Mann Robertson, a member of Hyndman’s surviving but tiny rump organisation. He married twice and had seven children by his first wife, none by his second. There are today a number of his descendants. Further reading on Bax Reminiscences and Reflexions of a Mid and late Victorian, Belfort Bax, Allen and Unwin, 1918, reprinted by Kelley (New York 1967) autobiography An obituary in the Times (21.11.1926) Robert Arch, EB Bax, Thinker and Pioneer, (1927)) Hyndman Literary Committee, Hyndman Club and Institute, 54 Colebroke Row, N1, [24 p.] The Victorian Encounter with Marx: a study of Ernest Belfort Bax, John Cowley London: British Academic Press, 1992, with a bibliography. Marxism and Social Democracy, The Revisionist Debate, 1896-1898 Edited by Henry Tudor, J. M. Tudor, CUP, July 1988,400 pp. | ISBN: 0521340497 Entry by Phillip E. Koerper in Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals, 1988, Harvester-Wheatsheaf. A much more useful entry in The Dictionary of Labour Biography Vol X, 2000

Ernest Belfort Bax, Thinker and Pioneer Robert Arch, E.B. Bax, Thinker and Pioneer, (1927), Hyndman Literary Committee, Hyndman Club and Institute, 54 Colebroke Row, N1, [24 p.] Robert Arch was the pseudonym of Archibald Harold Mann Robertson. Archibald Robertson (1886-1961) the free thinker and historian. He was a prolific author and academic associated with the South Place Ethical Society. He was close to the CP and towards the end of his life defended Russia actions in Hungary in 1956. He was a close associate of Hyndman and wrote an enormous amount in Justice as a member of the National Socialist Party after the 1916 split. Transcribed: by Ted Crawford.

9 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader IF any reader of this pamphlet should happen never to have heard of Ernest Belfort Bax (a perfectly possible contingency, for his name was singularly little before the public), I will begin by reminding them that in George Bernard Shaw’s preface to Major Barbara written in 1906, that author declares that he is indebted for his characteristic ideas to certain British authors, and asks why, if his critics must give the credit of his plays to a philosopher, they do not give it to an English philosopher, whom he names. That philosopher was Bax.

XVII. Anti-Feminism Bax was always hostile to the claims of women to equal rights with men in politics and in the professions. On this subject he was opposed to the overwhelming majority of Socialists both here and abroad, and his attitude, extraordinarily bitter as it was, alienated many, and maimed his otherwise magnificent work. His earliest published utterance on the subject (in “The Religion of Socialism,” 1886) is a comparatively temperate statement. At one time, says Bax, the claim to equality amounted to a legitimate movement for the removal of certain undoubted grievances. But for some time past the tendency of legislation and sentiment has been, under the pretext or equality, to confer privileges on women at the expense of men. Various instances are adduced in support of this contention, e.g., the Married Women’s Property Act protects the property of a wife from spoliation by her husband, while notwithstanding this, the husband is liable for his wife’s debts and torts, and is obliged, moreover, to maintain her however flagrant may be her unworthiness. Feminist sentiment, according to Bax, is responsible for the infliction of the punishment of flogging on men for certain forms of sexual misconduct, while at the same time exempting women in any circumstances from similar punishment. As long as women enjoy such privileges, he argues, their claim to political equality with men is nothing short of an addition of insult to injury. Nevertheless, in the early passage I am quoting, Bax looks forward to the realisation, under Socialism, of a “real equality between the sexes,” based on the economic, independence of women, as opposed to the “sham equality” of present-day society, which really amounts to the subjection of men. In Bax’s later pronouncements on this question, all saving clauses and qualifications are thrown to the winds. In his later years he seems to have systematically searched the police- court and other news for instances of real or imaginary injustice to men in the interests of women. As a result, he produces a cumulative indictment of judges, juries, magistrates and legislators which, if taken at its face value, would force us to the conclusion that these makers and administrators of the law – most of whom, strange to say are themselves men – are in a nefarious conspiracy to grind the male sex under the tyrannical high heel of the feminine boot. Men are flogged; women are not. The seduction by a man of a girl under sixteen is a criminal offence; the seduction by a women of a boy under that age is not. A

10 Introduction man convicted of murder is usually hanged, especially if the victim be a woman; a murderess is almost invariably reprieved. And this intellectually inferior sex, rolling in privilege, injustice and oppression, have the impudence to treat it as a grievance that they are unable to vote on the same terms as men

XVIII. What Bax Failed to See An adequate criticism of the foregoing argument would take too long. A just review of the case would, I think, take note of the following considerations. Firstly, the fact that nature lays upon women the whole burden of bearing and rearing the next generation makes it in no way anomalous, but merely just that the law, in so far as it affects sex as such, should take special account of women’s natural disabilities. The distinction between the case of the two sexes as regards, e.g., the age of consent should have been obvious to Bax. Quite apart from the objections to premature sexual experience which apply to both sexes alike, a young girl seduced by a man is exposed to the risk of bearing an illegitimate child, and consequently (under present conditions) to pains and penalties in the shape of social opprobrium which have no counterpart in the case of a boy. Differential legislation for the sexes in such matters as this does not justify the charge of sex-privilege. As regards the incidence of the criminal law on the two sexes, it is surprising that Bax should have failed to see that the exemption of women from flogging, for example, is due to the average male legislator’s aversion (rooted, of course, in the sexual instinct) to the idea of flogging the opposite sex, and not to any specific feminine demand for exemption. His polemic on the subject, however, has the merit of at least forcing one to think, and will have served a good purpose if it converts any men, who object on instinctive grounds to hanging and flogging women, into consistent opponents of the judicial murder and torture of any human being regardless of sex. Secondly, while it is probable that the average woman is inferior in brain-power to the average man, it is not true that every woman is inferior to every man.. The abilities of each sex vary enormously. We might roughly state the fact by saying that the abilities of men range from 0 to 100, and the abilities of women from 0 to 80. To admit any and every man to the practice of the professions and the exercise of political functions, while excluding any and every woman, would therefore be not only an unjust, but a socially wasteful policy, amounting to a refusal to make the best use of the talents at the disposal of the community, which could not he justified by the mere fact of inequality between the average abilities of the two sexes. Thirdly, Bax shows himself singularly unphilosophical in ignoring the economic roots of modern Feminism, and in treating it as an unaccountable perversity introduced among us, presumably, from the nether pit. He should have realised that industrialism, by breaking up

11 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader the old system of domestic industry and forcing women, as well as men, into the labour market, is the real driving force of Feminism. For a Socialist, who believes in united working-class activity against capitalism, to attempt to deny woman their share in that activity is grotesque. Women are in the industrial and political movements by force of circumstances; and one may say to the anti-feminist in the words of Scripture: “Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.”

XIX. Concluson. After the publication of his Reminiscences in 1918, Bax wrote little. The Real, the Rational and the Alogical, published in 1920, and the essay contributed by him to Professor J.H. Muirhead’s symposium of Contemporary British Philosophy in 1924, were recapitulations of his philosophical position, to which little was added. Occasional articles from his pen still appeared in Justice, the Literary Guide, and the Freethinker. But his work was past. His annual visits to England in the summer months were spent in rendezvous, chiefly at the National Liberal Club, with his circle of friends, conversation and discussion with whom delighted him to the end. Though he could be truculent with his pen, he was personally the most gentle and unassuming of men, and displayed an engaging interest in the ideas even of the youngest of us. In 1925 his services to philosophy were recognised by a public dinner at which Lord Haldane presided, and which was attended by a large company of Bax’s admirers. But the end was nearer than any of us suspected. The health of his wife caused him increasing anxiety; and in the autumn of 1926 it became necessary to move her to a nursing-home in South London. Deprived of the kindly care that had sustained his declining years, Bax was soon to join her in death. A chance misadventure on his part led to blood- poisoning; and on November 26th both husband and wife passed away. So ended the life and work of Ernest Belfort Bax. Even more than when he began to write it is evident to-day that the world is in the midst of a social, political and. religious revolution equalled in importance only by that which culminated 1,600 years ago in the establishment of Christianity. From that epoch to the present, we have been taught that the whole function of the ordinary man or woman is to suffer evil and injustice patiently in this world with a view to compensation in a hypothetical future life. The religious synthesis of to-morrow, which Bax believed would supersede Christianity in name and fact, and which will assuredly supersede in fact what has passed in history under that name, will recognise human happiness, not in a hypothetical world to come, but in this world here and now, as the only worthy object of our common endeavour. This is the religion of Socialism, as Bax preached it; and, although the political and economic path to its fulfilment may be more devious than he sometimes supposed, he will be remembered hereafter as one who never lost the assurance, in the words of Thomas Hardy: –

12 Introduction “That the rages Of the ages Shall be cancelled, and deliverance offered from the darts that were, Consciousness the Will informing, till It fashion all things fair!” Note by the editor who compiled this volume: The above refutation of a contemporary of Bax was included as evidence to see what a lone voice he was for his anti-feminist position in the socialist movement. All the more should Bax be praised for his courage.

13 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Some Bourgeois Idols; or Ideals, Reals, and Shams (1886) Bourgeois Idols, Commonweal, April 1886, pp.25 & 26. Reprinted in E. Belfort Bax, Religion of Socialism, pp.106-110. There are certain catchwords which have a marvellous charm to calm the breast political, a magic power to levitate the mind captivated by them, out of the regions of mere argument and recognition of facts. Such a hold do these words and the deified abstractions they cover have on the average man of the nineteenth century, that they and they alone are worshipped as the ultimate manifestation of goodness, beauty, and truth. To be opposed to these abstractions is to be condemned as blasphemous against the first principles of rectitude, moral and political. Let us take Liberty. What a charming phrase that is, what a word to conjure with! What a thrill can be evoked from an average audience by the tub-thumper who waves his hand and pronounces the magic formula “liberty of conscience” or “liberty of contract.” Little recks the applauding bourgeois whether he has the living reality itself, or merely the empty hull from which the soul has long since fled. Little recks he whether the thing he clasps be human or not. Liberty as expressed in Liberty of contract, of conscience, etc., as understood by the bourgeois of to-day, has been dead well-nigh this three centuries and buried since the French Revolution; the shibboleth that now stalks in its semblance is its vampire, and, like other vampires, if has but one function, to suck the life-blood from its living kin – real liberty. Time was when our modern “liberty of contract.” was the expression of a living reality. Feudal oppression said in effect to the labourer, “You shall only work for one master, for him who is your lord, under whom you were born: you shall work for him for ever, even though he be unjust, harsh, or cruel, and you shall render him his accustomed dues whatever they may be.” As against this principle of traditional status the rising bourgeois world invoked “liberty of contract.” “Liberty of contract” was then a reality as against its negation, the tyranny of status. The victory of contract over status having been once definitively assured, one might have imagined that liberty was thereby assured also. And this is what the bourgeois, thought and thinks still. He will not recognise the subtle change that has come over “liberty of contract” in the moment of its supremacy – that the tyranny to which it opposed itself is now absorbed into itself. So long as the barren form is there, it matters not to him that by means of the modern revolution in the conditions of production and distribution, its content, its living principle is no longer what it was, but the opposite of what it was – that the body of liberty is animated by the soul of slavery. If once the horror of the ordinary Radical at the sacrilegious hand that would boldly transfix the vampire-body,

14 Some Bourgeois Idols; or Ideals, Reals, and Shams (1886) notwithstanding the honoured shape it bears. He feels the blow struck at liberty of contract is a blow struck at himself, at the core of his being. And in this he is surely not unreasonable. For is he not himself the embodiment of a contract-system? What bourgeois sentiment really cares for and has cared for, in its revolt against status, is not liberty, but the development of the bourgeois world. “Liberty of contract” was essential to this development in its war with status and therefore received honour at its hands, not because of liberty, but because of contract – the power of contract being its only means of realisation. Liberty is the bait held out to the proletarian fish covering the hook of contract. Unless labour can be contracted for, i.e., caught by the capitalist, it is of no more use to them than the fish that remain in the sea are to the fisherman. “Liberty” in the sense of the orthodox economist, is, then, in brief, an empty abstraction which stands in flagrant antagonism to the real, the concrete liberty of the Socialist. The abstract liberty of the economist is the liberty to die quickly of starvation or slowly of the same. The Socialist knows no such liberty as this. He cares not for the liberty to change masters with identical conditions in either case; he cares not for the liberty to refuse work and starve quickly or accept it and starve slowly. He would be glad to see such liberty for ever abolished. The liberty he values is the concrete liberty for individuality to assert itself, the leisure or freedom from work and care which is essential thereto, and which, with comfortable circumstances and good surroundings, make up the sine qua non of all real liberty. Thus the “liberty” which to the mind of the latter Middle Ages was an ideal, and which became a real in the earlier phases of the modern world, has evaporated to a sham in the world of to-day. “Liberty of conscience” is, again, another of the glib phrases so neatly rolled off the tongue, and which are supposed to crush an opponent against whom they are invoked by their mere intrinsic weight. This, too, as employed by the ordinary Freethinker and Radical, is often but a vampire, a semblance of a reality which has ceased to be. The typical British “Freethinker” would regard with horror as a violation of that sacred idol “liberty of conscience,” any attempt under any circumstances to prevent the infusion into mind, incapable of judgment of doctrines which he would admit to be injurious morally and perhaps even physically. His sheet-anchor is argument and reasonable persuasion. But let us take a case. A child or person intellectually incapable either naturally or through ignorance or both, comes under the influence of the Salvation Army or the worst kind of Catholic priest, it matters not which, is terrified by threats of the wrath of God into “conversion,” becomes the slave of General Booth or the “Church,” is warped morally and mentally for life, and in the worst case possibly driven to religious mania. There’s the result of liberty of conscience! The bourgeois Freethinker, hide-bound in this abstraction, is quite oblivious of the fact that, though the form of liberty is there, it does but enshrine the reality of slavery; that it is a liberty to deprive others of liberty. It would be intolerance, forsooth, to suppress the Salvation Army, he will tell you – liberty of conscience demands that the Salvation

15 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Army and every other body or individual shall have the privilege of enslaving the mind, of the young or the ignorant by threats or cajolery, of fooling them to the top of their bent. Against this the only weapon he permits himself is argument or persuasion. He forgets that argument is only a reliable weapon when employed against argument, i.e., against a doctrine avowedly based on reason, and that against one which makes its appeal, not to reason, but to faith, fear, and ignorance, argumentative persuasion must be a broken reed. The freedom to hold and propound any proposition, however absurd, as a theory to be judged of, and accepted or rejected at the bar of Reason, is quite another thing from the liberty of the “hot gospeller,” who claims to hold a speculative pistol to the ear of ignorant and weak-minded people by threatening them with damnation if they reject his teaching. The one is of the essence of real liberty, the other is the vampire of a dead liberty of conscience which was only living and real when it was opposed to the positive power of the representatives of dogma over men’s persons and lives. As Gabriel Deville well puts it, “The aim of collectivity is to assure liberty to each, understanding by this the means of self-development and action, since there can be no liberty where there is the material or moral incapacity of consciously exercising the faculty of will ... To permit by religious practices the cerebral deformation of children is in reality a monstrous violation of liberty of conscience, which can only become effective after the proscription of what at present passes muster for religious liberty, the odious licence in favour of some to the detriment of all.” The vampire, bourgeois liberty of conscience, must in short be impaled, before true liberty of conscience can become a healthy living reality. Let us take another idol. This time we tread on sacred ground indeed – equality between the sexes. Well may the iconoclastic hand tremble before levelling a blow at this new Serapis. Nevertheless here also – as the phrase is understood by the ordinary modern woman’s right, advocate – we are bound to recognise a vampire. In earlier stages of social development, woman was placed in a condition of undoubted social inferiority to man. Into the grounds of this inferiority it is unnecessary here to enter. Suffice it to say it existed, and that against the state of things it implied the cry of “equality between the sexes” was raised, at first in a veiled, and afterwards in an open manner. For some time it represented a real tendency towards equality by the removal of certain undoubted grievances. But for some time past the tendency of the bourgeois world, as expressed in its legislation and sentiment, has been towards a factitious exaltation of the woman at the expense of the man – in other words, the cry for “equality between the sexes” has in the course of its realisation become a sham, masking a de facto inequality. The inequality in question presses as usual, heaviest on working-man, whose wife, to all intents and purposes has him completely in her power. If dissolute or drunken, she can sell up his goods or break up his home at pleasure, and still compel him to keep her and live with her to her life’s end. There is no law to protect him. On the other hand, let him but raise a finger in a moment of exasperation against this

16 Some Bourgeois Idols; or Ideals, Reals, and Shams (1886) precious representative of the sacred principle of “womanhood,” and straightway he is consigned to the treadmill for his six months amid the jubilation of the D.T. and its kindred, who pronounce him a brute and sing paeans over the power of the “law” to protect the innocent and helpless female. Thus does bourgeois society offer sacrifice to the idol “equality between the sexes.” For the law jealously guards, the earnings or property of the wife from possible spoliation. She on any colourable pretext can obtain magisterial separation and “protection.” Again, we have the same principle illustrated in the truly bestial outcry raised every now and again by certain persons for the infliction of the punishment of flogging on men, for particular offences, notably “assaults on women and children.” As a matter of fact, in the worst cases of cruelty to children, women are the criminals. Some few months back there was a horrible instance in which a little girl was done to death by a stepmother in circumstances of the most loathsome barbarity: yet these horror-stricken advocates of the lash never venture to support flogging as a wholesome corrective to viragos of this description. It would be opposed to middle-class sentiment, which would regard such a proposition as blasphemy against the sacred principle of “femality.” No other explanation is possible, since it can hardly be assumed that even the bourgeois mind is incapable of grasping the obvious fact that a man pinioned and in the hands of half a dozen prison- warders, is in precisely as helpless a condition as any woman in a like cage, and that, therefore, the brutality or cowardice of the proceeding is no greater in the one case than in the other. The bourgeois conception of “equality between the sexes” is aptly embodied in that infamous clause of the “Criminal Law Amendment Act,” which provides that in case of illicit intercourse, between a boy and girl under sixteen years of age, though the girl escapes scot free, the boy is liable, to five years imprisonment in a reformatory. Even the great Radical nostrum which is supposed to involve the quintessence of political equality, is, when closely viewed, the hollowest of shams. The revolutionary socialist perhaps does not much concern himself about questions of the suffrage, esteeming but lightly the privilege of electing men to help to carry on the present system of society, which he believes destined to perish before long. But looked at from the ordinary point of view, it is quite clear that considering the fact that the female population of England is in excess of the male by about a million, female suffrage, in spite of its apparent embodiment of the principle of equality, really means, if it means anything at all (which may be doubtful) the handing over of the complete control of the state to one sex. These are only a few of the illustrations which might be multiplied almost indefinitely, of the truth that the tendency of the modern middle-class world, is, while proclaiming the principle of “equality between the sexes” in opposition to the feudal subjection of woman, to erect, the female sex into a quasi- privileged class. The real equality between the sexes aimed at by socialism is as, I take it,

17 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader much opposed to this Brummagem sentiment and sham equality, as it is to the female slavery of ancient times of which, of course, we do not wish to deny that survivals remain even at the present day. With the economic emancipation of woman and the gradual transformation of the state-system of to-day into an international league free communes, the feudal subjection of women to man and the middle-class subjection of man to woman will be alike at an end. Yet another bourgeois idol – the rights of majorities. The Radical mind, instead of placing before it the concrete ideal – Human Happiness, – erects an abstract idol in its room as the supreme end of all endeavour. The Radical’s first question is not, does such or such a course conflict with social well-being, but does it not violate one of our supreme dogmas? There is no more frequent charge brought against the revolutionary Socialist than that of despotic interference with the right of the majority. Socialism, it is indeed true, in pursuit of its central purpose, treats with scant reverence the household gods of the Radical. The abstract principle of the right of the majority is of as small concern to the Socialist as the equally abstract principle of “liberty of contract” or “ liberty of conscience.” And why? Because, like the rest, the bourgeois “right of the majority” is the vampire of a dead reality. Feudalism, and the centralising monarchical tendency which succeeded feudalism proper, opposed the will of the feudal few or of the monarchies) one to the will of the majority of propertied persons, – i.e., the ruling middle class. The ascendancy of this rising middle class then represented the extent of popular aspiration. The decaying principle was Feudalism and the monarchical Absolutism it left behind it. As against the privilege and traditional status upon which this based itself, Liberalism asserted as its ideal the right of the majority of the people as then understood – i.e., of the middle classes – to self-government. Hard upon the realisation of this ideal has followed its reduction to sham. Conditions are changed in the Western Europe of to-day. With the entrance upon the arena of the modern proletariat of capitalism and the differentiation of class interests therein involved, the old popular sovereignty has become a meaningless phrase. The old majority has ceased to be the majority, – has become a minority, and the new majority is in the thraldom of this minority (the franchise notwithstanding). Capitalist fraud has succeeded to feudal force: the castle has given place to the factory. The new majority, consisting of the proletariat and all those who suffer from the present system, are in the thrall of Capitalism. With no leisure for thought or education, they are necessarily the victims of every sophism of middle-class economists and politicians, even where they are not directly coerced or cajoled by their masters. The majority know that they suffer, they know that they want not to suffer, but they know not why they suffer, and they know not how they may cease to suffer. The majority, therefore, under a capitalist system will necessarily for the most part vote for the maintenance of that system under one guise or

18 Some Bourgeois Idols; or Ideals, Reals, and Shams (1886) another, not because they love it, but out of sheer ignorance and stupidity. It is by the active minority from out the stagnant inert mass that the revolution will be accomplished. It is to this Socialist minority that individuals, acting during the revolutionary period, are alone accountable. The Socialist, leader or delegate, as such, does not take account of the absolute majority of the population, which consists of two sections – i.e., of those who are interested in the maintenance of the present system and those who are blind or inert enough to be misled by them. To disregard the opinion (if such it, can be called) of these latter is no more tyranny than it is tyranny to hold a drunken man back by force when he seeks to get out of the door of a railway carriage with the train going at full speed. The man does not want to be maimed or killed: he is simply misled by his drunken fancy as to what is conducive to his welfare. In the same way the workman who sides with one or other of the various political parties against Socialism, does not want to be the slave of capital, never certain of his next week’s lodging and food. In coercing him, if necessary, that is, in negativing his apparent aims, you are affirming his real aims, which are, if nothing more, of least to live in comfort and sufficiency. Yet to grant him the semblance of right, the right to perpetuate his own misery through blindness and to deny him the reality of right by keeping him a slave – the slave of free contract – this is the object of the Liberal and Radical, – an object he hopes to accomplish by, among other things, flaunting in his face the nostrum of the inalienable “rights” of numerical majorities to control of the executive machinery of the state, at all times and in all circumstances. Of course, as soon as Socialism becomes an accomplished fact, the inert mass of indifferentism which now clings to the status quo, not from real class interest, but merely through ignorance and laziness, will be dissolved, and its elements pass over to the new status quo of Socialism. The Socialist party will then cease to exist as a party, and become transformed into the absolute majority of the population. Then, and then only, will the right of the majority and the sovereignty of the people be transformed from a sham into a reality – a fuller reality than it ever has been yet. A few words on one more “idol,” to wit on “justice,” as embodied in the “rights of property.” It is unjust the Bourgeois will tell you, to nationalise or communise the property now in the hands of private persons, since they as individuals have received it in the natural course of things as guaranteed by social conditions present and past. This notion of the right of every man to the exclusive possession of wealth he has acquired without breach of the criminal law, and of the injustice of depriving him of it, is part and parcel of the system of vampire-dogmas and nostrums of which Liberalism and Radicalism are composed. It has been, like the rest, the ideal principle of the middle-class world in its conflict with Feudalism. In the days of the “ small industry,” the artificer and the merchant asserted this principle in opposition to the feudal lord. The middle-class world affirmed the absolute right of the individual over all his belongings as against the claims of the overlord and his prescriptive dues, as against tenure in fee generally, and above all as against the dearest

19 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader right of the mediaeval baron, the right of plunder and dispossession by force of arms. Security of personal property has ever been the middle-class watchword. Hence this new notion of justice. In the ancient world it would have been deemed “unjust” for the “tribe,” the “people,” or the “city” to suffer, so long as an individual citizen possessed ought that could relieve that suffering. In the medieval world it would have been “unjust” for the inferior to retain ought that his feudal superior required: while in same cases it would have been “unjust” for the rich man to refuse to give alms to the needy. It would have been “unjust” in the medieval guildsman to have used material of an inferior quality in his work or to have employed more apprentices and journeymen than the rules of his guild permitted. But as we have said, to the corruption and rapacity which characterised the decaying feudal classes at the break up of the mediaeval system, the bourgeois opposed his thesis of the inviolability of private property and of the ideal of justice consisting in the absolute control of his property by the individual. But, like the rest, this principle unimpeachable as it seemed, had no sooner realised itself, than its reality began to wane. Now, in this last quarter of the nineteenth century it is dead, and stalks the world as perhaps the ghastliest “vampire” of all. The immediate cause of its transition from the living to the lifeless is the change from small individual production to co-operative production, – a change which has reached its consummation in the “great industry.” Yet strange to say, the Liberal or Radical can still mouth about the injustice of expropriating the wealthy few for the good of the whole. To him there is no “injustice” in the chronic starvation of myriads of his fellow-men, in the robbery of their labour and health and lives by the rich man by means of his wealth: yet there is “injustice” in depriving the Vanderbilt of a single hundred or the Duke of Argyll of a single acre! But it is time to drop the curtain on the grim procession. Veritably this last of the bloodless spectres – bourgeois “Justice” – will not bear looking on. It is death on the pale horse habited in nineteenth century humbug. The hope and aim of the Socialist must be to lay these troubled ghosts – to consign them to their lower resting-place. Then will “liberty,” “equality,” “right,” and “justice” once more flourish living and real, not in their old forms indeed, which are henceforth for ever dead and meaningless, but in higher and nobler ones. The evolution which we have: traced in them through their seeming negation to a higher reality is but one instance of the inherent dialectic of the world, in which death and destruction evince themselves the inseparable conditions of life and progress. E. BELFORT BAX

20 Some Heterodox Notes on the Women Question (1887)

Some Heterodox Notes on the Women Question (1887) To-day July 1887, pp. 24-32. The above is one of those questions on which a particular species of traditional nonsense is expected of one. The “advanced” writer starts from certain dogmas, which the “advanced” reader has had handed down to him in the apostolical succession of “advanced” thought for a century past. These dogmas of “advanced” faith in the Woman Question are (1) that a natural equality of the sexes obtains in all respects save that of physical strength; (2) that women have always formed an oppressed class, but that the advance of civilization may be measured by the lightening of this oppression (here, of course, we get into the tail of the great bourgeois Panegyric of Civilization); (3) the convenient corollary from the first position, namely, that women ought to have all the rights of intellectual capacity with all the privileges of physical weakness, otherwise expressed, all the rights of men, and none of the duties or hardships of men. For it is a significant and amusing fact that no mention is ever made by the advocate of women’s claims of the privileges which have always been accorded the ΄weaker sex.‘ These privileges are quietly pocketed as a matter of course, without any sort of acknowledgment, much less any suggestion of surrender. I may add yet another thesis to the dogmas of ΄advanced‘ bourgeois thought on the Woman Question. This is what I may term the theory of ΄womanhood.‘ It is to be found in its most formulated and definite guise in the Comtian worship of woman with its virgin mother and other accessories; But in a general loose way it pervades a large section of modern Radicalism, and consists in the notion of the sacredness of the female sex as such. The sentiment, when analysed, may, I think, be traced to two sources. One is the sentiment of consideration for weakness, laudable in itself, but which has got transformed into that of the right of weakness to privilege or domination over strength which is, of course, a very different thing. But the other and most potent factor is, I fancy, a survival of the ancient worship of the principle of generation. The exponents of Cuniform tell us that a well known symbol of the alone, corresponding to the Greek Θ, is to be taken to signify the word ΄woman.‘ Now, I think there is a certain moral attached to this piece of Cuniform lore. Woman is, and has been emphatically the sex. The veneration of the generative principles in their grosser form is of course impossible to civilised man. And while male man has ceased to represent a sex, in developing into the human personality complete up to date; woman still represents a sexual principle; her personality centres in sex, in fact she still remains for the most part, an amplified, beautified, embellished sexual organ. Otherwise expressed, sex

21 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader enters into the substance of woman, while in man it is only an accident.5 Man has a sexual side which he recognises as something more or less distinct from himself – ΄He‘ is not the male principle of humanity in the same way that ΄she‘ is the female principle. With man sex enters into and affects the personality it is true, but is clearly distinguished from the personality as such; with woman, sex is identified with, and indistinguishable from the personality as a whole. This is easily seen in the incapacity of the average woman to abandon herself to interest in any impersonal question. Discourse in any drawing room with the ΄ladies‘ there assembled and you have an irresistible but uneasy sense that, however well-feigned may be the interest in the subject of conversation, the real interest of the woman centres round the fact that she is female and you are male, and in the various conventional barriers with which this fact is surrounded. The way otherwise shrewd men let themselves be deceived by the very thinnest assumption of interest in their pursuits on the part of their wives is to the last degree amusing. A friend seriously speaks of his wife’s opinion, say on some literary point; on being introduced to the wife she tells you she thinks Shakespeare must have been a very clever man! The real interest of the good woman is, of course, entirely absorbed in the personal matters springing directly from the sexual relation of married life. In modern gyneolotry I think then we may see the survival of the cultes genatrices of antiquity exhibiting itself, not in the coarse form of the worship of the actual organ, but in the refined one of deference for the representatives of the principle of sex6 par excellence. In the course of this digression I have forestalled one or two points in the subsequent argument. However, I will now jot down in succinct manner a few criticisms of the cardinal dogmas of modern gyneolotry. Like the dogmas of the Christian theology, and of the Bourgeois economy, these dogmas are supported by one or two stock pseudo-arguments of a conventional nature, the rottenness of which is manifest at a glance. For instance, in support of the potential intellectual equality of women with men, in face of the obvious actual inequality, the fiction is promulgated that women have been cut off from the possibilities of culture which men have had. Now this, I submit, is very much on a level with the Bourgeois argument in support of a class-society, which consists in trotting out the virtuous man of

5 This does not, of course, touch the question as to the relative strength of the actual sexual appetite in the two sexes. The latter may quite consonantly with the argument be, as some physiologists allege, greater in man than in woman. The statement in the text is best illustrated by the two aims of the “respectable” woman, which are (1), to maintain her virginity, or (2) to make a good marriage. 6 Christianity, in accentuating as the first of virtues, the essentially female morality of sex, really, tended to drag men down to the level of mere males. When “sex” interpenetrates the whole personality a sexual ethic is obviously the dominant one. Chastity – as in the case of women – becomes the first of virtues. Where sex is merely one side of the personality, the sex-morality necessarily loses its importance, even if it is not formally abrogated. 22 Some Heterodox Notes on the Women Question (1887) industry and frugality, and the vicious man of indolence and extravagance. There is a grain of truth, of course, in both arguments, but it is imbedded in a mountain of error. It may be true in isolated cases, and under special circumstances, that women have suffered from the lack of training in special departments which men have enjoyed, just as it may have been true in some few cases that wealth has been the result of industry in a sense, and poverty of laziness. The objection of course is, that as arguments they are inept, if for no other reason than that they fail to account for ninety-nine per cent of the facts. The curriculum of higher education has until recently, by general consent, been adverse rather than propitious to the development of intelligence in those subject to it. Years devoted to Latin verse-making can hardly be deemed stimulating to general mental development. This, at all events, women have been spared. Secondly, it has only been in a few departments of learning that at the best, men have had any considerable advantage over women. From the days of Sappho, there has never been any obstacle, real or conventional, in the way of women ΄taking to‘ literature or the fine arts in any of their forms. Yet what (in comparison to men) have they ever achieved in any of these departments? It is said that women have always been taught to limit their interests to home, & c. This may be true, of the Englishwoman of a generation ago and to a less extent even of to-day. But it was not true of the cultivated Greek hetaira, or of the Roman lady of the Augustan age. It has never in modern times been true of a large section of women in France, or in numberless other instances that might be mentioned. Besides, we find that with men individual character and genius has always shown itself precisely in the overcoming of such obstacles of environment. This is also true of women who have attained distinction. There was nothing, for instance, in the training of George Eliot different from that of the ordinary Englishwoman. The argument from social and educational disadvantage therefore plainly breaks down. It is not this which has prevented the average woman intellectually equalling the average man, or the exceptional woman the exceptional man. The argument for equality, drawn from examination statistics, is hardly worth mentioning. That by great efforts some women can equal men in capacity for ΄cramming‘ proves nothing. The ΄examination‘ intellect means little more, in plain English, than a good memory and an acquired facility in using it. It is, in fact, an improved calculating machine, which is comparatively rarely accompanied by general or special ability otherwise. What senior wrangler or tripos man has ever been heard of by the world after his examinations are passed and forgotten? Let us now consider the question of the physical strength of women. The inferiority of bodily or muscular strength is supposed to entitle woman to special privileges. That all weakness is entitled to consideration (though not to domination) goes without saying. But I submit that in the ordinary life of the modern world the question of muscular strength or

23 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader weakness has very little significance. Even on those rare occasions when it becomes pressing, the invention of firearms has reduced its importance very considerably. A woman flourishing a loaded revolver could hold a room-full of able-bodied men in check. Again, on this argument the consideration shown to weakness ought to be shown quâ weakness and not quâ sex, as it is at present. But the chief form of female privilege is the assumed constitutional “frailty” of the sex. We come now to an important point. Muscular weakness is commonly confounded with constitutional; strength of body with strength of health and vital power. Woman, because she is muscularly “frail” has obtained the credit of being constitutionally “frail.” But is this belief in accord with facts? Does muscular frailty involve constitutional frailty? If it does of course there remains a certain basis of reason in some, though not all, of the exemptions and privileges of women. But I contend it is contrary to facts open to everyone. It is a universally admitted fact that the female infant is much stronger and more easily reared than the male infant. The registrar-general’s statistics alone illustrate this, as broadly as could be desired. The number of male births is enormously in excess of female. The numerical proportions of adult men and women is, as is well-known, just the reverse. This superior vigour of the female infant would of itself lend probability, in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, for assuming certainly not less vital power in the female than in the male adult. And what evidence is there to the contrary? A widespread assumption and nothing more. In observations (relating to this matter) extending over some years of accidents, severe illnesses, injuries, & c., I have noted the excess of women over men who ΄pull through,‘ as the expression is, to be enormous. While inviting the reader to take careful note of his personal observations and his newspaper in this respect for the next six or twelve months I may recall haphazard one or two instances of female toughness of constitution, probably exceeding that of any man on record. It is well known that to be sentenced to the knout in Russia was only deemed a euphemism for a sentence of death. The only recorded instance of anyone passing through the ordeal unscathed is that of Mme. Lapuchin, who was knouted by order of Elizabeth of Russia, survived without serious impairment of health, was deported to the mines of Siberia, survived that also, and returning to St. Petersburg; died at a green old age. Most of us recollect the instance of the old Scotchwoman, the winter before last, who being in ill-health, was on her voyage from the Shetlands to the Mainland in quest of medical advice, was wrecked, drifted about on a raft in intensely cold weather, without food of any kind, for nearly a week, when she was picked up by a passing vessel, was taken ashore, and tended, and in a few days completely recovered. Not so very long ago, a woman experienced but slight constitutional disturbance after jumping from the Clifton Suspension Bridge, a height of some 800 feet. A case came within my personal knowledge recently of a young woman

24 Some Heterodox Notes on the Women Question (1887) having to undergo an exceptionally severe surgical operation for internal tumour, involving removal and replacement of a portion of the intestines. ΄She’ll never get over it‘ was remarked to me. ΄It may seem incredible,‘ I replied, ΄still strong is the female constitution and will probably prevail.‘ The truth of my observation was attested when in a few weeks after her two or three hours surgical vivisection she was better than she had ever been before. Now these instances, which are taken merely at random, as they occur to me while writing, and which might be indefinitely multiplied, may be termed exceptional, if you like, but allowing the utmost latitude to their exceptional character, I contend they altogether upset the traditional assumption of the ΄frailty‘ of women as regards constitutional vigour and the capacity for endurance. The fact is the ΄lady‘ of civilisation is brought up to regard herself as a ΄frail‘ creature, is always being told ΄my dear, this is too much for you,‘ that it is fatal for her to stand on her feet for a few minutes together and so on, till at last she persuades herself it is true, or at least proper and womanly for her to pretend it is. Among the proletariat where these fancies are an unattainable luxury the equality of health and staying- power between men and, women is much more obvious; so, also, to a somewhat lesser extent with those women among the educated classes who have to earn their own livelihood by teaching or literary work. The injustice to men which the conventional superstition of the ΄frailty‘ of woman, with its customary rites entails is seen on various occasions. In an omnibus on a wet morning how often does it happen that one of that unhappy class of exploited employees, the city warehouse clerk, with health undermined by long hours in a vitiated atmosphere is driven to dangerous exposure to make room for some fat, hulking matron, out to do her ΄shopping,‘ who has probably ten times his physical stamina. I think we may fairly conclude then (1) that no case has, as yet, been made out for reconsidering the opinion dictated by the obvious facts of the problem as it stands, viz. that women are radically inferior in mental power to men;7 on the other hand, (2) that there is a very good case, supported by a large mass of evidence, for reconsidering the received opinion of the inferiority in constitutional strength or vital power, of women as compared with men, an opinion which is accepted like most traditional beliefs, in the absence of evidence, and without examination. The second main position of orthodox Radicalism, that women are, and have been in the past, grievously oppressed by men, is, on one side of it wholly false, and on the other true only to a very limited extent. It is a common fallacy in this connection to represent women as an oppressed class. Now, as a matter of fact, at no period of the world’s history has the female sex constituted a disinherited or oppressed class. Women may have been liable to

7 I have refrained from entering into the strictly scientific questions of embryology and craniology which nevertheless make entirely in favour of the above thesis, partly from incompetence to deal with them adequately, partly because they would extend this paper too much. 25 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader certain disabilities. But these have been always compensated and often more than compensated by exemptions and special privileges. Economically, although dependent on men, women have for the most part had the ΄lion’s share at the banquet of life.‘ The real state of the case is that the condition of women has been determined by that of the men of the class to which they belonged. Women of the privileged class have always been privileged, women of an oppressed class have been oppressed, not as women, but as belonging to an economically inferior section of the population. We repeat that women as a sex have never been at any time treated as an inferior class to be exploited, in the same way that the slave class of ancient times, the villein class of mediaeval times, or the Proletarian class of modern times, has. The, analogy sometimes attempted to be drawn between the female sex and an oppressed class is therefore altogether inept. Coming to the present day, the talk of male oppression, in any form or degree is simply the grossest and most impudent piece of cant. Law, custom, and opinion, in this and in most other western countries are wholly and absolutely on the side at women as against men. It is hopeless for a man to attempt to get justice where his adversary is a woman. This has reached a condition of scandal in this country that every assizes shows a crop of spurious charges of indecent assault brought by women against men, without a single instance of one of these women being prosecuted for perjury. There was an atrocious case, recently, of a woman who, charged an unfortunate workman in the same factory with her, because he refused to give her money. Baron Huddleston who tried the case remarked that the woman ought to be prosecuted. Was she? Not a bit. Now suppose these cases were reversed. Suppose men of the baser sort to have discovered a way of blackmailing ΄ladies.‘ Conceive the yell of indignation that would well up from press and platform; conceive the proposals to apply the ΄cat‘ to the dastardly ruffians; conceive the sentences of penal servitude for life which would re-echo from the walls of every tribunal! Imagination pales before the terrific ebullition of Bourgeois fury that would ensue. But, of course, when it is men who are the sufferers, and women who are the assailants it is only a matter on which Mr. Stead may exercise his small wit. Again, it is a fact, the explanation of which for obvious reasons, cannot be given here, that severe corporal punishment is more likely to injure young boys than girls. Yet if there is a case of a female child receiving a very mild castigation it is invariably magnified into a violent assault and emotionally commented on from the bench, and this in face of the brutal flogging systematically inflicted on the unfortunate lads on board government training ships, and in industrial schools. Yet again, take the case of the law of husband and wife. The husband is compelled to maintain his wife, under all circumstances, while the wife, who has her earnings protected, can sell him up for drink or to keep a paramour at her sweet will and pleasure. If he remonstrates she may proceed to rejoin with a chair, or a flat-iron, or a poker;

26 Some Heterodox Notes on the Women Question (1887) and should he then be rash enough to stay the uplifted arm, he has committed an assault, she proceeds with wailing to the nearest police-court; commiseration from magistrates for her and six months ΄hard‘ for him – la voila – she is but an ill-used matron, and a convict-felon he. And this is what you call advancing toward equality between the sexes. The success of Barnum and its maiden tribute agitations, Langworthy marriages, & c., shows the ease with which a cheap conventional indignation can be trumped up on any question supposed to point the moral and adorn the tale of the fiendish malignity of man and the angelic innocence of woman. How different is it with any infamy perpetrated not for the immediate satisfaction of an imperious passion (however unnatural or perverted) but in the cold-blooded pursuit of gain. A few months ago a fishmonger at Hammersmith, was sentenced by the stipendiary to a month’s imprisonment for one of the most revolting crimes a man can commit-he had tried to sell to the poor of the neighbourhood a portion of a putrid cod, which, had it been eaten, must, the medical officer stated, inevitably have produced inflammation of the intestines, probably resulting in a horrible death. This fishmonger appealed, the already ridiculous sentence was quashed, on account of ΄previous good character,‘ and a fine of ten pounds substituted. Did the humane philanthropic Bourgeois make the welkin ring with his protestations? Oh dear no. This was done in pursuance of a legitimate branch of trade. (It cannot be said in excuse that such offences are not common for it is admitted that only in the most extreme instances, and not always then, are they brought to justice, and notwithstanding, scarcely a week passes without one appearing at one or other of the London police courts.) This same Bourgeois philanthropist can foam at the mouth, gnash his teeth and vomit an ocean of gushing indignation over the chance seduction of a girl under eighteen! The latter has nothing to do with trade, and is connected with the wellspring of traditional emotion, so you have only to turn the tap on, and out spouts the sentiment ready brewed. Notwithstanding the state of law, public opinion, and custom, the ΄shrieking sisterhood,‘ and their male lackeys continue to invoke male ΄chivalry‘ in defence of every usurpation or act of injustice perpetrated in the interest of female domination. This invocation of chivalry now is about on a level with the capitalist’s invocation of ΄freedom of contract.‘ With both ideas, while their form remains intact the content has entirely changed. Under an Individualist system of production, ΄freedom of contract‘ between employer and employed had a meaning; under the great industry it has none – it is merely an excuse for exploitation by the Capitalist class. In the early middle ages, when strength of arm was commonly called into requisition for defence, ΄chivalry‘ had a meaning; in the nineteenth century it has none, and is merely an excuse for the privileges and domination of the female sex. In fact, if ΄chivalry‘ means taking the side of the weaker, it would be shown more often to-day, in championing the cause of the man against the woman, than that of the woman against the man. Hegel said that every typical character appeared twice in history – once as tragedy and once as farce. If

27 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader we apply this to the chivalric type, and take King Arthur or Sir Launcelot (regarded for the nonce as historical personages) as the embodiment of the former we may certainly find the latter in the person of the great cheap-jack of London journalism, and exponent of the sorrows of husband-hunting wenches. The drop is certainly great from the hero of the ΄City of Legions‘ to the ΄Northumbrian boy.‘ It might be thought from the general tenor of these remarks that they were intended as an attack on all idea of equality between the sexes. Such, however, is not the case. All I have meant to do is to attack the spurious social and political equality advocated by the bourgeois ΄woman’s rights‘ faction, male and female, an ΄equality‘ which, to employ the celebrated bull, is ΄all on one side.‘ This to my thinking is to be fought at all costs. As a friend intimately acquainted with current political life recently observed to me, what these people want to get the suffrage for is not to further any broad social views whatever, but simply to get infamous laws passed against men as men. This I believe to be true. What they really want is the erection of a sex domination. I have also endeavoured in the foregoing to show the baselessness of the arguments supposed to tell in favour of the intellectual equality of men and women. Two things seem to me clear. (1) There is and has been a palpable inequality. (2) The arguments hitherto put forward to explain away that inequality won’t hold water. It will be observed that this is a very different thing from dogmatically asserting the inequality to be necessarily permanent. I believe it to be much more radical than many people would wish to imagine, but we can none of us foresee the results which such a revolution as that toward which modern socialists look forward will effect in modifying human life generally and with it calling into play latent and as yet unproven capacities in the female mind. With regard to the practical point of equality of social status between men and women the question entirely rests on an economic basis. As has been often said, so long as a man ΄keeps‘ a woman, whether as wife or mistress, as things go, it is perfectly natural he should expect to control that woman. It is a part of the system. Abolish the economic independence, place woman on an equal economic footing, and you have cut the ground from under any other possible dependence. In this great socialistic step toward real as opposed to sham equality between the sexes, two other points are I think involved. One is the definitive overthrow of our sham monogamic marriage and the formal recognition by society collectively of free relations between the sexes; and the other is the repudiation by women themselves of the anachronistic notion of ΄Chivalry,‘ as being due to them from men. (This reconstruction aspect of the question would require a special article). If we are to have equality and fellowship, let it be equality and fellowship, and not a hollow fraud masquerading under the name. NOTE. The usual instalment of “Capital” and the Book Reviews we unavoidably held over until next month. – [Ed. To-day.]

28 No Misogyny But True Equality (1887)

No Misogyny But True Equality (1887) To-day October 1887, pp.115-121 In a recent article I suggested that women were unable to treat any subject from other than a personal point of view. No better illustration of this statement could have been wished than the opening paragraph of Mrs. Besant’s reply to this same article. Now I should have said that if any living woman would have been capable of rising superior to this inability, it would have been Mrs. Besant. But no, even the brightest and best of the sex, it would seem, bear this fatal sign of sex-weakness upon them. Hence, when I endeavour to unmask what, rightly or wrongly, I deem a superstition on the subject of women, and to denounce the social injustice which results from it, I am accused, forsooth, of being a Romeo or a Robert, or some other “loving soul” out of sorts, writing under the sting of “personal suffering,” etc. Of course with the male readers of To-Day, such suggestions as these will only excite a smile. They remind one of the time-honoured bourgeois assumption that anyone who advocated more equitable economical conditions must be badly in want of a dinner; or of the inability of the Turkish mollah to explain the learned German’s purely scientific interest in Islamiti theology on any other hypothesis than anxiety to find out the way to the prophet’s favour. This incapacity to understand interest or emotion springing from anything but the most conventional personal reasons, with men generally eradicated by culture, seems for the present, at least, to be ineradicable in women, even the most gifted. Of course I can refer Mrs. Besant (in private) to at least two or three respectable householders who will vouch for the fact that the opinions expressed in the said article are old (of many years standing) with me, and that, therefore, the alleged “crisis” must be indeed a prolonged one. However, I am quite willing that Mrs. Besant should continue to be amused with the very commonplace kind of “self-revelation” she thinks she has discovered. With regard to the “merry anecdote” business, printers have persecuted me without a cause (so far as I am aware), in turning “some 300 feet” into “some 800 feet.” I took steps to inform Mrs. Besant that this was the case, but conscious of the strength of my main position, I can well afford to grant my opponent all the points that can be made out of a misprint. For the rest, I might quote the eminent humorist who observed that if the young lady could jump 245 feet with impunity, there was no apparent reason why she should not have jumped 2,450 feet. With regard to the difference between the male and female birth-rates, I contend the figures given by Mrs. Besant fully justify the expression “enormously in excess” when we are dealing with large areas of population. An average of about one-twentieth more in one sex than in the other is a very important “excess” in such a case.

29 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader With a good many of my positions Mrs. Besant appears to agree. Of course I think she understates in favour of her own sex the inequality which she admits to exist between the male and female intellect. But it is not worth while to discuss this matter now. By her willingness to give up chivalry, Mrs. Besant shows herself at least consistent. In what she says also about the economic dependence, I, of course, agree. In fact her remarks on this head are only a commentary on the last paragraph of my article. She seems to forget that I myself stated that my remarks applied less to working women than to the women of the middle classes, though I fear many working men will tell Mrs. Besant that the greatest hindrance to their political and social activity is the apathy of their wives. I certainly don’t deny that men are to be found who are no better than women in their capacity for interest in any impersonal question. I should say that both the sporting and religious “worlds” were largely made up of such. But let Mrs. Besant take the average educated man and the average educated woman, and her sense of fairness will hardly allow her to deny, I think, that my statement was in the main correct, at least in the sense in which I meant it. For I am not quite sure that she exactly hit my full meaning. By “impersonal question” I meant more than merely a. question not referring to self. Personal questions I understand to be questions concerning particular personalities, self presumably first, but when not self, other personalities, as opposed to questions concerning principles. What I say is that women in general are not interested in questions of principle as such, but at most only in so far as they affect particular personalities. They require the dramatic element to evoke their interest. With many men, on the contrary, though this element of course enhances interest, it is not the indispensable condition of interest. The difficulty for even a clever woman to conceive of what I might call an abstract interest is illustrated by Mrs. Besant herself (as already remarked), in her opening paragraph. Mrs. Besant agrees as to the frailty of woman being mostly a sham, but tries to save the feminine reputation by crediting the female with especial fortitude in facing pain and suffering generally, as against the miserable man who makes a fuss when his finger aches. Now I don’t wish to be rude to a lady, but I am bound to state my conviction that Mrs. Besant at this stage of her article was at a loss for a retort, for the one she makes really won’t “wash”; it’s rather too thin. It must be notorious to Mrs. Besant, as it is to everyone else, that where the average man would go about his business, euphemistically answering conventional enquiries as to his health, with the passing reply that he feels “a little seedy to- day,” the average woman would be lying in her bed, or on a sofa like a limp rabbit, gasping out bulletins to the callers of the neighbourhood. No, surely, if there is one thing in which the average middle-class woman at least is deficient, it is in her “temper under suffering,” as the evangelical tract has it. She collapses utterly before the slightest pain, or even inconvenience, so far as not making a fuss is concerned. It has been confessed by ingenuous

30 No Misogyny But True Equality (1887) women that the pains of parturition of which so much is made, are in ordinary cases preferable to an attack of neuralgia. But whether this be so or not, it is an undeniable fact that many middle-class women if they feel a little tired from a walk pose as though their last hour had come. When Mrs. Besant charges this in the main to class-society I agree with her, but I am only chronicling existent facts, and it is no use denying them. And now let us come to the main point in dispute. I have made no “impeachment of women in general.” What I have impeached is the ascendency of women as a privileged caste or class. What I maintained is that whatever may have been the disabilities of women in earlier stages of society, in our modern bourgeois society (Western Europe and its colonies), there is an increasing tendency to erect women into a “sacra-sacred” class, the members of which are to be exempted from all the disagreeable consequences of their own actions, to have the criminal law suspended in their favour, to win in every civil suit, to be treated as martyrs and heroines every time a slight inconvenience befalls them. This is what I term the modern 19th century form of the Yonic cultus. Mrs. Besant will not take me seriously when I state that men have been given six months for protecting themselves against their wives’ violence. Yet this is literally true. The case I had in my mind occurred, if I remember rightly, about March last. The exact date I forget, but I noticed it in the Commonweal at the time. About a year-and-a-half ago there was a case at Highgate (as far as I recollect), in which a woman actually attacked her husband, who was an invalid and I think a cripple, with a knife, inflicting serious injury, and was let off scot free. If in the higher administration of the law there is gross and egregious favouritism shown to women as women, this is none the less so in the mere setting of the law in motion. A little more than a year ago a boy was sentenced, by Mr. Justice Day, to penal servitude for life, for attempting to extort money by threats of an indecent charge. Now women are allowed (vide Mr. Howard Vincent, Pall Mall Gazette, July 13th last) under the very eyes of the police to exercise as a regular trade, a practice which in the male, on a single offence, is deemed worthy of the penultimate penalty of the law8. Now I ask has ever greater privilege accrued to any class than this. The mediaeval “benefit of clergy,” pales down before the modern bourgeois “benefit of Sex.” Again, an alderman ventures upon a little feeble civic banter with some flower-girls who are brought up before him for obstructing the pathway.

8 This is not all. It is now proposed by the Saturday Review and Pall Mall Gazette that this promising branch of female industry should be “protected” by the curtailment of cross-examination. A Mrs. Brereton, the other day, brought what the jury by their verdict pronounced a false, or to put it mildly, “doubtful” charge against a man. It is now actually complained by the journals in question that this verdict was obtained or furthered by the too severe cross-examination of the prosecutrix. Hence it is argued that cross-examination must be in future limited to questions not embarrassing to the prosecution. Could sex privilege go much further! 31 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader The Yonicists are up in arms. These “poor girls,” are insulted. The newspapers gush with indignation. Mdlle. Dronin is arrested on false information; by virtue of her sex the whole delinquent officialdom bows before her from Home Secretary downward, with apologies and costly gifts. A scream goes forth that women are bullied by the police in the streets. Parliament adjourns. The welkin rings with wrath against police tyranny. Over mere male Socialists, that does’nt matter – but over prostitutes – Oh! The Pall Mall Gazette rubs its eyes and snivels “Brethren shall we harry our sisters"? The same Pall Mall Gazette, bien entendu is very anxious to have its brothers “harried” for so much as looking at a woman in the streets; for the crime of accosting two years hard labour would, we suppose, be “grossly inadequate.” Talking about the Pall Mall Gazette, by the way, it is difficult to believe its editor was not intentionally “lying” at home “for the benefit of his country” - women, as he conceived, when he declared the other night that only a woman could be arrested on unsupported testimony. A man deserves to be condemned to travel every day for a twelvemonth with single women on the Metropolitan Railway that can make such an impudently false statement. As regards this matter, however, I, for one, am quite willing that no charge should be taken against a woman for annoyance in the street on the unsupported testimony of a man, provided no charge is taken against a man for indecent assault on the unsupported testimony of a woman. How now, what do you say to this, Mr. Stead? Completely destroy the blackmail industry – wouldn’t it? Now take this case – Barbarous cruelty to a young child, through whipping, is charged against the police – the child is a boy, a question is asked in Parliament, an investigation promised, and the matter shelved. Compare this with the case of a female arrested on an unproved charge by a policeman, and locked up for a couple of hours. She whimpers, and the respectable classes are set in a blaze. I think that the Yonic superstition is in nothing more clearly evinced than in recent criminal legislation. The tender body of a young child may be flayed by a brutal policeman, just because it happens to be of the male sex; if it be of the female, to lay a finger on it is sacrilege, and for precisely the same offence it practically receives no punishment. The British Bourgeois affects horror at Count Schouvaloff’s birching of the court maids of honour at St. Petersburg, whose bodies were presumably better able to bear a castigation than the babes he complacently reads of in his paper as being sentenced to ten strokes of the birch by a police magistrate. Then take the clause in the recent Criminal Law Amendment Act, which provides that in the case of illicit intercourse between a boy and a girl, while the boy may be sent to the penal servitude of a reformatory for five years the girl remains absolutely untouched. Now it is universally admitted that girls develop earlier than boys, so that this is a simple premium for girls with precocious criminal tendencies to entrap youths. If it is prejudicial to the interests of society that intercourse should under any circumstances take place in the case of girls under sixteen, what conceivable rational ground can there be

32 No Misogyny But True Equality (1887) for limiting the penal consequences to one side of the equation. A more abominable infamy it would probably be difficult to find in the whole course of modern legislation. Such are the outward and visible signs of the worship of the female principle in the modern world. Newspaper gush, one-sided legislation, “purity” meetings. As it is holiday season, perhaps the editor of To-Day will allow me to be frivolous, and narrate a dream I had the other night. I had been reading the Pall Mall Gazette, and Mrs. Besant’s article after supper – and on going to sleep me thought I was in an ancient city. Temples, with griffins and other queer stone creatures abounded on all sides. Groups of quaintly robed idlers were standing about an open square (in which I suddenly found myself) talking eagerly together. Presently there issued from one side of the square a procession of white-robed figures that looked ghostly in the twilight as they advanced with measured step to the sound of the lyre and the lute. I asked of one who stood near what it was that I saw. “Knowest thou not, O son of the stranger,” replied he, “that the great goddess (the name I couldn’t quite catch) has vouchsafed to appear to men in mortal form, that she commands new rites, and will unfold to her worshippers the holy mysteries of the militant virgin.” This was interesting, and I eagerly watched the approaching votaries. While I had been waiting it had been growing rapidly dusk. But now the moon shone forth. By its light, I thought I detected, in spite of their strange garb, foremost among the advancing throng, not as I expected, Orientals of the third century B.C., but the homely figures of Mr. Stead and Mrs. Ormiston Chant, hand in hand, singing as they danced, and dancing as they sang, a joyous hymn of ecstacy. I looked again, and behind them detected, as I fancied, the features of Mrs. Josephine Butler and Mr Waugh, in similar raptures. My historical sense suffered a shock and I essayed to withdraw a little, but ere I had done so my neighbour laid his hand on me, “See,” said he, “the goddess herself approaches.” As I turned, the sharp cut features of a man, evidently a priest, caught my eye. He was clad like the rest in a plain white robe, but on his breast a large triangular silver breastplate glistened in the moonlight, and on his head was a conical crown. Could it be, but no – yet it was very like – the good Mr. Marson! In his hand he bore a standard whence gleamed in massy silver the model of a fish. Behind the high-priest followed a car drawn by eight milk white mares, and in a kind of palanquin a veiled figure I knew to be the goddess. “Bow, vile stranger,” said my neighbour, “adore that virginity which was, and is, and is to come, before which even the legislators veil their faces.” But I kneeled not, neither adored, but standing looked on. The procession halted before a temple, four priests came out and raised the palanquin. A thrill ran through the assembled multitude as the time arrived, when just for one moment the sacred veil should be raised. At the further end of the square a body of richly-attired old men emerged, with bowed heads, from a massive and imposing building. These, I understood, were the legislators, the fathers of the city. Now, thought I, for a chance to see one of the great types

33 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader of ancient female beauty, if not the Trojan Helen, at least a Semiramid, a “Mrs.” Caudaules, or a Cleopatra! The veil was raised, there stood forward in the pale moonshine – “Miss” Cass ! I turned and felt a little sick. I suppose I must have swooned at the sight of the shopocratic vestal, for the next thing I recollect is being aroused by a crowd rushing forth from the temple, headed by him and her, whom I had taken for Mr. Stead and Mrs. Ormiston Chant, shrieking death and destruction to the male principle. “Hail to the eternal virgin-militant womanhood!” They all raised diamond-shaped daggers on high and conjured the moon-goddess that ere her virgin rays paled that night the city should be purged for ever of maleness, and dedicated a holy priestess to her service. I didn’t know exactly what it all meant, but thought I might as well go and look at something else, and so moved away, clutching a steel J pen and a fragment of the Pall Mall Gazette, which, in the event of the hero of Northumberland street beginning to show “venom,” I intended to use as a charm, crying In hoc signa vinces, (The allusion to the power of the new journalism; I thought would be sure to “fetch” him and make him forget his dreadful vows). However, at that instant I awoke – to reflections on the mutability of human affairs and the difference between the militant Yonicism of two thousand years ago – the group of smooth-faced white-robed fanatics, fish-sign on forehead, triangle on breast and diamond-shaped dagger in hand – and the militant Yonicism of to-day with its black frock coats, Exeter Halls, newspaper articles, London police-courts, lobby wire pulling, and vigilance societies, and I thought that on the whole in spite of certain elements of unpleasantness I preferred the former. Let me assure Mrs. Besant I am no hater of “women in general.” What I hate is – women in the “particular” position of a privileged class as they are at present. I decline to bow down before a sexual principle, or to admit the justice of granting privileges on the basis of a sex- sentiment. What I contended and still contend is that the bulk of the advocates of woman’s rights are simply working, not for equality, but for female ascendency. It is all very well to say they repudiate chivalry. They are ready enough to invoke it politically when they want to get a law passed in their favour – while socially, to my certain knowledge, many of them claim it as a right every whit as much as ordinary women. Says Mrs. Besant, “Why use the existence of bad women as an impeachment of women in general?” Now I want to know who has done so. I certainly have not. All I say is, don’t allow the worst characteristics of bad women to come into play by giving them free leave to use the tribunals for purposes of spite, revenge or blackmail! Don’t pull out your biggest pocket handkerchief at every tale of wife-beating, before you have heard the other side! Don’t allow women to ruin men by legal process, as a punishment for not marrying them, when they want them to! Don’t allow wives to “sell up” their husbands, or to compel their husbands to maintain them in idleness, while they are allowed to keep all their own property or earnings singly to themselves.

34 No Misogyny But True Equality (1887) In stating this view of the question plainly, I may say I am only giving articulation to opinions constantly expressed in private by men amongst themselves. A noisy band fills the papers with lying rhodomontades, & c., & c., on the “downtrodden woman,” and their representations are allowed to pass by default. I am styled a misogynist forsooth, because I detest the sex-class ascendency, striven for by a considerable section at least of the bourgeois Women’s Rights advocates, and desire instead a true and human equality between the sexes.

35 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

A Word for the Men (1890) Justice, 29 March 1890, p.3 (letter). To the Editor of Justice Dear Comrade, – Kindly allow me, if rather late in the day, a word of protest against the form of the Russian resolution of Sunday week. Surely it was somewhat inept that a resolution on behalf of a movement that has been specially characterised by the mutual and equal cooperation of the sexes should have been gratuitously twisted into a piece of advocacy of modern sex-privilege. Were the framers and supporters of the resolution, who so carefully and guardedly confined their protest to the case of women, really indifferent to the barbarities inflicted on other prisoners who happened to have committed the crime of being born men It certainly looked very much like it. There must surely have been some “advanced” women present, and that not one should have had the decency to propose an amendment substituting the simple word “prisoners” for “women” speaks volumes as to the self-respect of such women, and especially for the sincerity of their advocacy of “equality” between the sexes. Yours fraternally, E. Belfort Bax

36 Courage – The Logic, Phenomenology, and History of a Concept (1890)

Courage – The Logic, Phenomenology, and History of a Concept (1890) E. Belfort Bax, Courage: the Logic, Phenomenology and History of a Concept, Time, May 1890, pp.461-473. Republished in E. Belfort Bax, Outlooks from a New Standpoint, 1891, pp.163-178. How shall we define Courage? What do we mean by Courage? Let us seek the broadest expression possible of courage – the bare notion of courage in itself. So considered, may we not define it as the subordination of pain or fear to resolution or purpose? I can think of no more catholic definition in words of the notion than this one, or one that more completely excludes all debatable matter as to the extent of the operation of will, or the degree of consciousness of the purpose, involved in “true” courage, still less ulterior considerations of the content of the purpose. No one would call the indifference to danger of an infant or an idiot, or the mere endurance of the man powerless to resist, courage, but some might affirm that certain animals could be said to have courage, or that the mere physical absence of fear would constitute a claim to the possession of courage, and many other such things. Again, no one would say that to jump over a precipice without an object was a brave action. Let us take this, then, as the primary abstract definition of courage per se – the subordination of pain or fear to resolution or purpose. The corresponding formula for cowardice will, of course, be the opposite of this – the subordination of resolution or purpose to pain or fear. But though there is a formal opposition here, there is no real opposition. Courage and cowardice are absolutely indistinguishable from this point of view. Thus, a man, shall we say, fights to the death rather than runs away. But why does he fight rather than run away? Is the doing so courage, or is it cowardice? Does he fight because he is a brave man, and does not fear death? Or does he fight the rather because he is a coward, and fears the derision of public opinion which would follow on his running away? It is conceivable that, a man of little imagination, he fears Mrs. Grundy, whom he knows personally, more than the “king of terrors,” whom he does not. Or, take the case of the suicide. He does not fear death, a great terror to many, but yet he is called a coward by the man of correct morals because he fears to encounter the troubles of life. Of course, the man of correct morals is here only making believe; he does not really think the suicide a coward, but it is the proper thing to say in the interests of conventional morality, and a rather nice doctrine for himself, too, inasmuch as he probably fears the troubles of life less than death, and therefore he, Q.E.D., is a brave man. But even though he may be shamming, the logic of the man of correct morals is unimpeachable. He has a perfect right, from a theoretical point of view, to take up the position he does. Considered in their most abstract expressions, courage and cowardice

37 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader are indistinguishable. There is no outward mark by which we can affirm, on the strength of the mere abstract definition of courage or cowardice, that a particular action is courageous or the reverse. In the case of the man who fights and runs away, it is impossible to say that he is not actually showing courage – i.e., subordinating fear to resolution in running away. He may run away from an overwhelming sense of the duty of preserving himself to fight another day. It may have cost him a stupendous moral effort to resolve to run away and face the ridicule and the contumely of his fellows rather than yield to his inclination as a fighting man to hold on and die with harness on his back. It may cost a man no effort to fight and much to run away, or it may cost no effort to run away and much to fight. There is possible fear on either side; there is possible resolution on either side. So that the bare abstract conceptions of courage and cowardice are, when applied to the concrete world, perfectly interchangeable. We must first have a concrete and particular case before us before we can determine motive, and hence before we can predicate courage or cowardice of any action. To fight is usually regarded as a brave action, to run away as a cowardly action; but, as we have shown, the reverse may just as easily be the case. All actions to which the pair of concepts – courage and cowardice – are applicable at all, may, in short, fall under one or the other indifferently; there being no action absolutely brave as such, and no action absolutely cowardly as such. The distinction between the concepts – courage and cowardice – is as yet formal and not real. All this is no mere logomachy, but very important, inasmuch as there are few ethical concepts with which the general public are so fond of playing fast and loose as with this one, and their ability to do so rests on the arbitrary application of the concept in its purely formal aspect as though it were a real one. We now come to the distinction between moral and physical courage. Here we are concerned with the degrees of consciousness of purpose involved in the act of resolution – i.e., in how far it is an act of individual initiation, properly so-called, and in how far merely the spontaneous effervescence of animal spirits. Reflecting on courage, we find that this distinction is involved therein. The question is no longer merely the subordinating of pain or fear to resolution or purpose, which always presents itself in a double aspect, the possible fear and the possible resolution being assumable on either side, but the definiteness of the resolution, the steadfastness, clearness, and rationality with which the purpose is conceived. This latter is not double-sided. Physical courage is always implicitly or explicitly distinguishable from moral courage in all actions into which the category of courage enters. Assume the courage, and the action itself tells you whether it is physical or moral. To take an obvious, if somewhat homely illustration. When the peasant or Donnybrook Irishman goes forth to punch a head in general, regardless of the result upon his own, he shows physical courage; but when the Irish member, in the full swing of the London season,

38 Courage – The Logic, Phenomenology, and History of a Concept (1890) deliberately, after weeks of reflection, bears the obloquy of the police court and punches the head of a particularly obnoxious member of a Tory Government, he may be doing a foolish and even an improper thing, but he shows moral courage. The Donnybrook Irishman has made the resolution to exercise his muscles in a particular manner, and to this resolution he subordinates the fear of personal injury to himself. But the resolution here is more instinctive than conscious, and not the result of deliberate resolution. The mere sense of physical power is sufficient to effect it. In the other case, on the contrary, it is not the result of an animal instinct but of an intellectual act. The resolution here does not come of itself, but is created and sustained by a conscious and definite act of will of the individual as such. We see in this second stage of the analysis that an opposition has arisen within the concept. It has sucked up the contradiction into itself. In the first place we had only to deal with the external opposition of courage and cowardice. Now we have to do with an internal opposition, that between physical, animal, or instinctive courage, in which the resolution and the purpose arise without any effort on the part of the individual as the mere result of his inherited animal, system, and moral courage, in which the purpose and the resolution are created and framed by the intellect and will of the individual himself. Animal courage, though it may evoke a kind of aesthetic admiration can never evoke moral praise properly so-called. For animal courage is outside the sphere of individual initiation, which consists in definite choice and not in natural impulse. Animal courage involves no effort, because the fear is not felt or the danger realised. The natural impulse and all those elements in his character which form part of the Logic of Nature are necessary and imposed upon the individual; it is the particular or individual element par excellence as opposed to this universal element, that which constitutes his particularity or his thisness, which is the decisive factor. But the thisness, the hereness and nowness, is the illogical and irrational element in all Reality, and always opposes itself to the universal or logical element. It is the Hyle which is as yet not Ousia. The much-vaunted freewill is nothing but the illogical or irrational element in the essence of the individual, his undetermined particularity, as opposed to the logical element, or that in him which is universal and necessary. The former corresponds to chance in external nature; it is the element which is transient and irreducible to law. But it is, nevertheless, this element alone, the alogical spontaneity or thisness of the individual in the act of rationalising himself, which with doubtful accuracy we term freewill, with which moral praise or blame is concerned. You can only praise or blame this particular man for that in him which concerns his thisness or his particularity. The other spontaneity which is not identified with effort on the part of the individual is reducible to so-called natural law. Moral courage must then involve an effort of individual initiation which may or may not be accompanied by physical or animal courage. The subordination of fear to resolution must take place through an individual nisus here and now and not through an irresponsible impulse. The opposition

39 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader between physical and moral courage is sometimes realised in a striking manner, as in the case of that Russian bureaucrat spoken of by Stepniak who sheltered the Nihilist, though the doing so plunged him into an abyss of terror himself. The extreme form of moral courage brings us to the question of how far individual interest in the object of the resolution to which present fear or pain is subordinated is compatible with courage. That it is not involved in the primary definition of courage is obvious, but on reflection the general conscience of mankind proclaims that the fullest expression of moral courage is reached when pain or fear is subordinated, not to the purpose of individual advantage, but to a purely disinterested end. For the subordination of the individual to the purpose then becomes complete. It is not merely immediate fear or pain which is subordinated in the resolution, but the whole content of the individuality is staked upon something, the interest of which is outside itself. The Oriental who braves death or torture rather than divulge to a rapacious tax-gatherer his hidden store of wealth, or the prize-fighter who exposes his life for a stake of money may show a kind of courage which we instinctively accept as such; but the man who plunges into a burning building, and falling rafters, and suffocating smoke, to save a stranger’s life, our reason accepts as showing a higher, more perfect and complete kind of courage. That the fullest manifestations of moral courage presuppose the disposition to physical courage is a proposition hardly admitting of a doubt. A fine kind of courage may be shown, like that of the Russian Bureaucrat above referred to, in passivity, but it is one-sided; the completest manifestations of courage involve an activity, and to “deeds of heroism” the mere physical disposition is requisite. Stepniak’s Russian, though exhibiting the highest moral courage in sheltering his friend, while so keenly feeling the sense of his own danger, might, nevertheless, owing to his lack of mere animal courage, have fallen a victim to panic had he been set to lead a forlorn hope. The completest form of courage, then, may be defined as the subordination of pain or fear to a resolution involving a disinterested object, and realising itself indifferently whether in action or passion. The last definition, introducing, as it does, the question of content, brings us to the threshold of the concrete world. We have now traced three distinct phases in the concept courage. The first was the mere definition, vague as regards all content, “The subordination of fear to purpose.” The second, the well-known distinction between physical and moral courage, was in apparent contradiction with the primary definition, inasmuch as in physical courage which is, per se, purely active in its manifestations, the action seems the result of blind instinct (as in the case of the Donnybrook Irishman), and it is only on reflection that we discover the implicit motive (to wit, in this case, the need for muscular exertion); while in moral courage, which is, per se, purely passive in its manifestations, the fear does not always, at first sight, seem subordinated (as in the case of Stepniak’s Russian), and it is only reflection which shows us that the man, though he trembled for his own safety, was no coward, but brave, since the fear itself was in essence fully subordinated by a conscious

40 Courage – The Logic, Phenomenology, and History of a Concept (1890) effort to the end in view. Reflection further impels us to introduce into our definition of courage the nature of the object (as to whether disinterested or not), in addition to bringing to light the one-sided nature alike of physical and moral courage considered per se, and thus introduces the concluding definition of courage in which the vagueness of the primary form of the concept and the one-sidedness of the secondary form are alike abolished, while the essential determinations of both these forms are maintained. The phenomenology of courage exhibits some curious combinations and a good many spurious modes. There is the apparent courage of the man who is insensible to danger, not because he subordinates fear to purpose, but because he lacks imagination, or because his imagination is blunted in particular directions through custom, or because, maybe, he is ignorant of the danger threatening him. There is no real subordination of fear to purpose in any of these cases. Thus (to take an example referred to by Aristotle) the seaman does not fear a storm as the landsman does, because he may have confidence in the steersman or the goodness of his ship, or what not; or because, having passed through many storms unscathed, his imagination has got blunted as to storms in general. The landsman may think him brave, when in reality he is not so. Let us suppose the landsman is a physician, and he takes the sea-captain through a cholera hospital or through a leper-house; while the physician walks unmoved, taking a purely scientific interest in all he sees around him, the mariner may in his turn quake with fear and turn pale. On the other hand, the seaman may fear a certain course while the landsman sees the vessel taking that course unmoved, not because the seaman is more timid than the landsman, but simply because he foresees a special danger attending it unknown to the latter. The landsman’s unmoved bearing while the ship is being driven straight upon shoals, looks like that form of moral courage which consists in the subordination of fear to personal dignity, or the evoking for one’s person of the admiration of others – and which is shown in the suppression of the outward manifestations of the unpleasant – while in reality it is nothing of the kind, but the mere insensibility of ignorance. Then, again, the boor or the idiot, whose imaginative powers are sluggish, will never have the idea of future danger present to him, because be never has ideas at all, and is incapable of receiving any vivid or lasting impression on his imagination. Such an insensible person will seem brave, but not be so. His imaginative power is so feeble that only a very present pain or a most immediate danger can affect him. It requires intellect to be intelligently afraid. The secret of a good deal of apparent courage lies in this: Most persons are afraid of something, but they, at times, show up brave on the background of persons who are afraid of something else. For some reason or other, inherited or acquired, a particular thing affects the imagination of some persons more powerfully, they realise it more graphically, than others. I knew a man in Berlin, who had been through the Franco-German War, had fought at Gravelotte, seen thousands fall around him at Sedan, had stormed the trenches of Metz, and

41 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader been made a sergeant on account of his services in the field, who yet quailed before the sting of a gnat. His hand became slightly inflamed, and he was thrown into a paroxysm of fear of blood-poisoning. I saw him deadly white and trembling and scarcely able to walk from fright. What mitrailleuses, Gatlings, and chassepots were unable to effect, that did a little summer fly. A friend of mine who fears neither infection, nor mad dogs, nor infuriated bulls, in fly-time is prostrated with terror at the presence of a wasp round about his person. All men may seem brave in disposition until their Achilles-heel is disclosed. The seeming coward is often merely a man of exceptionally vivid imagination, the seeming brave man often merely one of dull imagination. A more specious form of spurious courage than those already mentioned is the performance of an act apparently, but not really, involving danger. For example, a woman in the present day who throws herself in front of a squadron of dragoons to stem their passage, or tries to force her way through a cordon of police, performs an act which in a man would be courageous, and she wins an additional kudos from the popular opinion as to the weakness of her sex. But in reality, this very opinion is her protection, and deprives the action of all special claim to heroism. She knows the dragoons will not disembowel her with their bayonets; she knows the policemen will not brain her with their truncheons. Her “womanhood” is a sufficient protection for her. Certain women in the past, as Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Saragossa, &c., in a time when women did not enjoy the privileged immunities exacted by modern sentiment, have really shown heroism in braving dangers which were as real for them as for men. The same may be said of certain women during the final struggle of the Commune, in 1871, when for the nonce class-ferocity overrode class-gallantry. It is strange, by the way, that in modern warfare the exploitation of the above sentiment has never been tried by the losing side. A reserve corps of Amazons suddenly intercepted between an attacking and a defending force, might easily save the latter from a disastrous rout. Flaubert describes how the “mercenary” Matho protected himself from the missiles of the enraged Carthaginians by covering himself with the stolen veil of the moon-goddess as with a shield, none daring to violate the sacred vestment. So here, a regiment having fought a good fight, and being hard pressed, might effect a secure and orderly retreat, having drawn around itself the protecting veil of its reserve womanhood. The attacking body must instantly fall back, unable to follow up their antagonists. Military men possibly consider, however, that the difficulties of training the Amazonian “cover” would be insuperable. There is another form of spurious or, at least, of cheap bravery which is connected with the foregoing subject. In a domestic squabble, such as may from time to time be seen in some of the bye-ways of London, in which a man and his wife are engaged, the passer-by, greedy of renown for street prowess, will ostentatiously stalk up to the disputants, and without informing himself further in the matter, will take the part of the woman and commence

42 Courage – The Logic, Phenomenology, and History of a Concept (1890) objurgating and possibly threatening the man. He thinks to obtain credit for pluck and determination for championing what is conventionally supposed to be the weaker side. He knows all the time that he will probably have the bystanding profanum vulgus on his side, and that the unlucky husband will be quite unable to retaliate upon him for the insults received. Were he to take the side of the man he might have to face half-a-dozen other individuals equally desirous with himself of acquiring the local and temporary renown of the street. But this might be unpleasant, and more than that renown was worth, and would require pluck indeed. Similarly, the murderer of a seducer, though he often poses as a hero, really knows that he may rely on the support of a clamorous and often hypocritical section of public opinion. By taking the mere phenomenal aspect of courage in abstraction from the concept, which it presupposes, it is easy to degrade the terminology of courage to silly and meaningless epithets of abuse, and this is commonly done. Courage in its manifestations involves the encountering of pain or danger. But courage does not mean the mere encountering pain or danger. Every sane person would regard the man who, without any object, even that of suicide, tried to cross and recross a railway line before an express train only two or three hundred yards distant in the off-chance of accomplishing the feat safely, as a lunatic or a fool. There must be some conceivably adequate motive to stamp the encountering of danger as the manifestation of courage. Now it is a common trick to postulate some sentiment or whim of A as an adequate motive for B to encounter pain or danger, and the refusal to do so is stigmatised by B as cowardice. A good instance of this is to be found in the dog-muzzling controversy. A well-known authoress, famed for her erotic novels, zealously contends for the freedom of every mangy cur to bite how, when, and where it pleases. Being unable to support this contention by any valid argument, she falls back on the rather stale device of stigmatising those persons who are sane enough to object to unlimited freedom of biting as cowards. The contention is, of course, that the trifling inconvenience which the muzzle causes the cur, in preventing him from exercising his natural proclivity to bite, should supply an adequate motive for the man to run the risk of being bitten. Those who would take steps to restrain the mordant liberty of the cur, since they do not hold the doctrine of the divine right of dogs to bite just because it is their nature to, think that sentimental scruples as to muzzling them are evidence, not so much of natural courage as of native imbecility. Or to take another instance. A neighbour practises sparrow-shooting in his back garden while I am sitting at my window writing. About every sixth time he fires, the shot whizzes around my head; the remainder of the shot is distributed between the upper air and other neighbour’s windows. I, in common with those others, object to the practice. It is true that only at about every sixth discharge of the gun the shot comes in at my window at all, and

43 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader even then it may not touch me, since the space occupied by the window is many times that occupied by my head. But, nevertheless, I join in the general protest. We don’t say that we think anything of the danger, but we insist on the practice being stopped on the ground that there is a lady in delicate health who is prejudicially affected by the noise, just as people never mind going into a house where there is scarlet fever or small-pox on their own account, but only through fear of carrying the infection to their families. Our garden sportsman, however, thinks he sees through us. After some excited discussion, indignant at having his sport abolished, he looks us full in the face, and says: “The fact is, you’re a pack of d—d cowards; you’re afraid of being shot, that’s what it is!” Now it is not nice to be called a coward, and after this who could refuse to show his pluck by allowing the sparrow- shooter to continue as before? Just as “Ouida” considers that the pleasure the canine race in general takes in being free to bite, or perhaps the trouble it gives her to keep her dogs muzzled (as the case may be), a sufficient reason for men repressing their natural dislike to being bitten by mad dogs, so the sparrow-shooter thinks the pleasure he takes in his sport an adequate ground for his neighbours repressing their natural disinclination to their persons becoming the possible objective of small shot. The term “coward” is thus degraded to a mere abusive epithet based on individual caprice. In the history of the concept courage, we have the logical determinations of courage realised or manifested in concreto. The mere logical determinations per se are abstract, the mere phenomenal manifestations per se are also abstract. The concept, though imbedded in them, is only discernible on analysis. In History, on the other hand, which, while no abstraction, is in its true sense an ideal reproduction of a reality in which the unessential is left out, and therefore no mere summary of particular facts or phenomena, the concept is realised – clothed in flesh and blood. The first period in the development of human society exhibits courage in its pure and immediate form, unconscious of itself as such. The clansman or tribesman fights for his kinship-group because he cannot conceive of doing otherwise. He lives only in it and through it. Fear is with him, unconsciously but uninterruptedly subordinated to a purpose of which he is perhaps also only vaguely conscious, and the consciousness of the fear and the purpose first become apparent on the decay of tribal society, when it is approaching the transition to civilisation. It is to this period that the great epics of the world belong. In the Iliad, in Beowulf, in the Scandinavian sagas, we see courage first recognising and admiring itself as such and holding, as it were, a mirror up to itself. Human society had existed, thousands of men had fought and died for tribe and kindred, but none had been found to sing their acts. Human society was unconscious of itself. It had not as yet become object to itself. Just as in logic, every real concept is but the reproduction of the abstract elements it presupposes; as in psychology every time-moment of our life contains the presentment not of itself, but of the moment passing away or just past; so in history it is a society in the act of passing away, which first knows itself as it is in

44 Courage – The Logic, Phenomenology, and History of a Concept (1890) itself. The nameless epic singer is the expression of this self-consciousness as regards primitive society. Courage and valorous deeds are the object of his lay, as they it is which strike the awakening consciousness of society most. It is now that the distinction between courage and cowardice manifests itself. The first mention of cowardice in literature is in the 6th book of the Iliad, i.e., the Dolon incident. It is as yet a sporadic abnormity scarcely conceivable to the average man. The appearance of cowardice is one of the symptoms of the dawn of civilisation, and the first faint glimmerings of introspection. Tribal Society becomes conscious of itself, and embodies that consciousness in the epic long before the individual becomes conscious of himself as having interests apart from the society. This latter consciousness – that of the opposition of the individual and society – brings to light the further distinction between physical courage and moral courage. The old courage, however, the courage which knows no cowardice – much less the opposition between physical and moral – lingers on in a bastard form in the mercenary soldier of antiquity and other historical periods. The opposition of physical or active and moral or passive courage is the cardinal form of the concept courage throughout the period of civilisation. Most manifestations of courage, most dispositions to courage, fall under one of these heads to the exclusion of the other, or at least the unequal balancing of the two is observable. The classical instance of moral courage is that of the endurance of the early Christians. Determination such as that described in the Acts of the Martyrs of Lyons, even if we allow a margin for exaggeration, implies a moral courage quantitatively unsurpassed. But we cannot reckon the endurance of the early Christian Martyrs to the highest forms of moral courage qualitatively, for the simple reason that its purpose was not disinterested. A firm belief in death being the portal of eternal bliss and glory, in golden cities, in great white thrones sustained these martyrs. The purpose, therefore, to which pain or fear was subordinated was that of direct personal advantage or reward, the same in kind as that of the Oriental who endures tortures rather than divulge his hidden store of wealth to the tax- gatherer. Moral courage has probably both quantitatively and qualitatively reached its highest point in the Russian revolutionary movement of our own day. Here the greatest conceivable suffering is endured for ends which are absolutely impersonal. We see, then, courage opposing itself first to cowardice as in the grey dawn of History society first becomes conscious of itself through the individuals composing it. Afterwards as the individual and his interests become separated from, and gain the upper hand over, the society and its interests, and with that introspective habit of mind which follows more or less closely thereupon, courage falls asunder into physical (generally coincident with active) and moral (generally coincident with passive) courage. This opposition is characteristic of civilisation, and in an advanced civilisation it is the exception to find a man in whom moral and physical courage are indissolubly blended.

45 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader But what as to the future of courage? In a society in which present economical conditions are changed, and in which an equal possibility of development is ensured for each and all alike – what form will courage take? We cannot, indeed, expect a recrudescence of that undefined, perhaps, but all-pervading enthusiasm which sent forth the man of the early world to fight for race and kindred, not knowing himself as personality distinct from them, a courage differing from physical courage as such, inasmuch as it was no mere effervescence of animal spirits, and yet differing from moral courage as such, inasmuch as no conscious effort was involved in it. But yet with men living a healthy life, physically and mentally, who can doubt that our present opposition between physical and moral courage will give place to a different and an intrinsically higher courage than any that have hitherto obtained, a courage according with the changed conditions, a courage no longer displaying itself, indeed, as in the onrush of the barbaric foeman, or the endurance of the martyr, the necessity for such having passed away, but in other ways – a courage less outwardly brilliant perhaps, but even more real, because more constant in its disinterestedness of purpose, and more sustained in the definiteness with which that purpose is conceived? E. Belfort Bax [The Editor takes this opportunity of reminding the readers of Time that all signed articles are on the same footing, and that the writer alone is responsible for any opinions expressed in them. The Editor in taking a place among the signed contributors in so doing divests himself pro hac vice of his official character and becomes as one of them. – Editor of Time]

46 Marriage (1891)

Marriage9 (1891) From Outlooks from the New Standpoint, December 1891, pp.151-160. There are few points on which the advanced Radical and the Socialist are more completely in accord than in their theoretical hostility to the modern legal monogamic marriage. The majority of them hold it, even at the present time, and in the existing state of society, to be an evil. Yet strange to say, they, most of them, contract these legalised monogamic unions, the excuse being the stigma on offspring and other inconveniences which are attendant upon the adoption of any other course. That there is considerable inconvenience in any other course cannot be denied. It cannot be denied that this is largely because persons who profess to be otherwise emancipated, and who ought to know better, pander to the current view by adopting an ostracising attitude toward at least the female side of the illicit equation. They defend their action in rather lame fashion, urging the convenience of current society and the general desirability on grounds of expediency of legal forms. It is to these persons that I chiefly address myself. Let us see, first, to what historical period the strict monogamic marriage primarily belongs. Needless to say, it begins with civilisation; but in the early stages of civilisation the tie is loose; polygamy is indeed the rule here and monogamy the exception. Throughout ancient civilisation the right of concubinage and of hetarism even in the Graeco-Roman civilisation, often also the duty of showing sexual hospitality (the offering of the wife or daughter) to guests. Christianity tried to impose strict monogamy on the world, but signally failed. Whether monogamy was originally any more than a counsel of perfection in the Christian scheme may be doubted, especially in view of the Pauline injunction that a bishop was to be “the husband of one wife,” which looks very much its if the “humble” Christian was at that time very often the husband of more than one wife, like the ordinary free subject of the empire, who, as a rule, had connexion with his female slaves. At all events, the early Middle Ages presents a state of things in which marriage was ecclesiastical rather than legal. It fell under the canon law, and not the common or statute law of the country. All formal marriage was ultimately abolished about the eleventh century in the case of the clergy, but this did not prevent them from having unwedded wives, or concubines, who, in some cases (e.g., in the kingdom of Naples) enjoyed, by express enactment, the same rights of immunity from secular jurisdiction, i.e., from the criminal law, as their partners. Even to this day in Spain

9 By the word “monogamy,” as used below, is to be understood not merely the union either temporary or permanent of one man with one woman, but such union plus some form of legal compulsion or interference other than that which obtains in ordinary cases of contract. 47 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader and Italy, it is stated to be often made a condition of a priest occupying a certain curé that he should keep a concubine, with a view to the protection of the parishional wife and daughter. The open and avowed freedom of the Middle Ages (a relic of the old group-marriage surviving possibly in the ius primae noctis) in the relations of the sexes, is a universally acknowledged fact. Ecclesiastical anathemas against fleshly lusts had little effect on the practice of men. Unfortunately, the freedom was often connected, as it always must be, where formal monogamy is maintained, with the breach of a plighted troth, that is to say, with deliberate deception. And this necessarily complicates the question from an ethical point of view, though the recognition of the fact by both parties may have tended to mitigate its evils. Neither in ancient nor in mediaeval times then has monogamy probably ever been any but a counsel of perfection, in ancient times only existing in the loosest and most conventional manner; and in mediaeval times, though exalted to the rank of a religious sacrament, never permanently maintained by public opinion in this exalted position, whatever may have been the case in sporadic outbursts. In the ancient world even the prostitute had often a high social position; in the Middle Ages incontinence was a sin to be purged by a slight penance; social ostracism, where it existed, confined apparently by a singular irony to the case of unmarried females.10 But in this as in other matters the original Christian counsel of perfection present throughout the Middle Ages in the background, and ever and anon making itself felt in customs, institutions, and decrees gradually solidified as the barbaric element in mediaeval civilisation died down, and, in proportion as the middle classes rose to power, became permanently embodied in law and public opinion. Puritan sentiment was, of course, severely monogamic; and in the severity of the Protestant judgment of the “sin” of unchastity, we have the converging of two or three lines of thought. The original Christian counsel of perfection was based on the notion that the relation between the sexes was symbolical of the mystical relation between the soul and the divinity, or in the form which it afterwards took between Christ and the Church. The sensual object thus fell into the background; marriage was only a toleration of the weakness of the natural man, as saith the Anglican marriage service. The notion of “purity” or abstinence from sexual intercourse as a sign of supreme virtue may be traced to three different co-operating factors – the totemist or fetishistic worship of the sexual organs themselves – one of the earliest forms of the religious instinct, which took a variety of shapes being connected, sometimes it is true, with voluptuous rites, but also (e.g., the Syrian goddess) sometimes with ascetic rites;

10 This is the case still in many parts of the Continent of Europe, where the cachet of being a legal wife or widow covers a multitude of irregularities. 48 Marriage (1891) the dualistic notion of the inherent evil of matter as opposed to the divine nature of spirit which was the speculative basis of this introspective morality of later times; and the notion which grew up on this basis, that “holiness” consisted in the mortification of the individual, i.e., the natural man, his necessities and desires; in proportion as he overcame these being his approach to the divinity. There exists to this day a sect of Hindoo Yogis who, in order that they may not enjoy the pleasures of eating and drinking, and at the same time may not lower the dignity of the divine nature within them by performing the lower animal functions, subsist on a little milk, which they leave in their stomachs for a while, until the system has absorbed sufficient nourishment to sustain life, and then throw up again by swallowing a ball with a string attached to it, thereby averting the necessity of its passing through their bodies. This is aptly characterised by the late Mr. King, in his work on The Gnostics, as “the finest possible reductio ad absurdum, of the notion of meritorious continence.” These highly logical ascetics we commend to the serious attention of the Social Purity League, who are, we fear, as yet very far from the kingdom of heaven of true continence. Out of these three elements then is compounded the theoretical aspect of Protestant or. Puritan sexual morality. The last mentioned is deducible from the “Introspective” or individualistic , which was the main element in Christian ethics. But behind this speculative aspect of modern monogamic morality, is a very practical economic consideration, a consideration which has come to the fore in proportion as the belief in the speculative side of things has faded. The reverence of the bourgeois for the monogamic principle now rests almost entirely on the fact, that he objects to being exposed to the danger of having to put his hand in his pocket for the maintenance of his neighbours’ children. This is the real core of “La morale bourgeoise.” Now, in an individualistic society like ours, this sentiment is not, perhaps unnatural or particularly reprehensible, and it doubtless represents a very real difficulty in the solution of the problem, certainly under present and perhaps under imperfectly socialistic conditions. Clearly no one has a right to recklessly procreate children under circumstances like those of our present society without ensuring, as far as possible, their adequate support. Legalised monogamic marriage, it may be said, is some sort of check on this, and a fortiori, on possible demands on the ratepayer’s pocket. Granted, so much, but let us have no cant in this matter. In the present day there are but two alternatives – the mystical sanction of monogamy, and what we may term the vestryman sanction. The only rational position of those who take up the strict lines of legalised monogamic chastity and sniff disapprovingly at the fact, or the notion, of sexual intercourse outside this relation, is the mystical-christian sanction. Such a one must regard marriage and the sexual relation generally, as the sacred symbol of a

49 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader solemn, mystical truth, otherwise he is a blatant fraud. For though he may “most powerfully and potently” believe in the economic or vestryman sanction, yet this alone, while it might lead to reasoned remonstrance, could not possibly evoke any genuine unction of the kind one is accustomed to associate with conventional laudations of chastity, and condemnations of its breach, or with finger-pointings at the non-respectable woman. For this sanction has a quite, peculiar flavour, which could in reality only be caused by an outrage on our deepest feelings, such as would rend our hearts, and not merely by one that might possibly rend our trousers-pockets. The unctuous saint, if we are persuaded of his sincerity, one may respect and even love, but the unctuous vestryman no man can love. Besides, the “vestryman” sanction – that is the one consisting of mere economical expediency – loses its direct force in at least two cases within the limits of our present society. It loses it where the question of offspring is eliminated by “practical malthusianism,” or other causes; it loses it where the offspring are as well provided for as they would be in marriage. It loses it, as a matter of course, when the economic basis of society, from being individualistic, has become socialistic. The vestryman or trousers-pocket sanction of marriage is, therefore, obviously not of a nature to give the institution a fundamental ethical basis, and hence, we are justified in saying that monogamy as an ethical principle collapses with the collapse of theological mysticism. For this reason, the various Christian sects are trying to constitute themselves the custodians of monogamy and the conventional sexual morality, as the only remunerative occupation left them, except philanthropy after the loss of public interest in God and Christ. In addition to the Christians there are the Positivists and miscellaneous rhetoricians who seek to prop up monogamy by phrases. They are, however, a very feeble folk, so far as this question is concerned. We have already pointed out the only two solid arguments for the monogamic principle and the sexual abstinence it involves. Now, these good people can’t exactly accept either the “mystical” or the “vestryman” position. Hence, they take refuge in deliciously vague declamation on the nobility, on the loftiness, of the ideal which handcuffs one man and one woman together for life, We are never allowed to see precisely where the nobility and the loftiness come in, but we are assured that they are there. The mere commonplace man, if left to himself, would probably think that it rested entirely upon circumstances, upon character, temperament, and whether the perpetual union of two persons was desirable. There are excellent men and women (possibly the majority) born with dispositions for whom a single permanent union is doubtless just the right thing; there are other excellent men and women who are born with lively imaginations and bohemian temperaments for whom it is not always precisely the right thing. Now, the plain man of ordinary reflection would imagine that all there phases of human nature have their justification and their corresponding ideals. No, says the Positivist, or other rhetorical upholder of strict monogamy, there is only one absolute ideal, and on to the procrustean bed of this ideal all men and women must be stretched. An admirable specimen of this school of

50 Marriage (1891) windy rhetoric is to be found in an article on marriage by Miss A. Chapman in the Westminster Review for April, 1889. This interesting young lady would apparently modify the institution of matrimony in the sense of making it absolutely indissoluble on the one hand and on the other by making the woman supreme dictator! Then she thinks we should have ideal marriage! Of course, there is the usual rant about the individual who would be prejudiced by this beautiful arrangement (a rather large number we are afraid), sacrificing himself for the good of the whole, which we are exhorted to believe, on the strength of much tall writing, is inextricably bound up with it. The good of the whole, forsooth! as if it were possible for an institution which admittedly, in the natural course of things, must breed suffering for individuals can, by any possibility, be for the good of the whole! It may be the duty of the individual an special occasions to sacrifice himself for the happiness of the “whole,” but that is a very different thing from his sacrificing himself on behalf of an institution which involves, in its essential nature, a perpetual sacrifice for those that succeed him. For how could a society in which such an institution existed be either a healthy or a happy one, either as a whole or for the individual? If this be not so, it is clearly the duty of every individual to protest against it openly by word and deed, rather than for the sake of gaining the applause of mawkish sentimentalists to sanction it either by speech or action. Herein we have an instance of the distinction between bourgeois morality and socialist morality. To the first it is “immoral” to live in a marital relation without having previously subscribed to certain legal formalities, but it is perfectly “moral” to stifle conviction, or to act against conviction, for the sake of worldly advantage, to enter the Church without believing in its dogmas, to enter the army and serve in wars which your conscience disapproves, to embark in journalism mid advocate political or other views you really despise, because it answers your purpose. To the second these are the things that defile a man, but to live in a state of unlegalised marriage defileth not a man, “nor woman neither.” There are some persons even, who need enjoining to deny themselves the pleasures of asceticism and the smug self-satisfaction they derive from it. There is a good deal of talk about marriage as the union of two souls, etc., and many men, on the strength of this, endeavour to persuade themselves that they really find their wives’ society and converse interesting and elevating. By this and similar subterfuges they try to embellish and cover up the gross physical fact which it expresses. That in a few cases, social intercourse is the most prominent motive in marriage we would not for a moment deny, but in nine cases out of ten the assumption of its existence is a pious fraud which the modern man of culture practices upon himself. Who has not suffered from the wives of friends? In the present day, with notions in the air of the equality of the sexes, a man’s friend is apt to require him to enjoy his wife’s society as much as his own, which is rather hard. For one may be quite prepared to love one’s neighbour, but yet may strongly resent having to love

51 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader one’s neighbour’s wife as well. With the husband the sexual interest covers up the intellectual vacuity; but, unluckily, his friend sees everything in its true colour. As a matter of fact, no man who can get men’s society straightaway desires women’s, for he says men’s is better. Hence the institution of the “club” in this country and the “cafe” on the continent. The efforts of noble-minded men who try to find something intellectually interesting in the subject of their monogamy when there is nothing, though perhaps a praiseworthy discipline, are exceedingly painful to the onlooker. Enforced monogamy and its correlate, prostitution, is the great historical antithesis of civilisation in the sexual sphere, just as mastership and service is in the economic sphere, or as God and nature in the speculative sphere, or as sin and holiness in the sphere of ethics generally. The group-marriage promiscuity of primitive barbaric society is as far removed from prostitution as from compulsory monogamy. With the rise of private-property holding and of cities, monogamy and prostitution tended to supervene over group marriage. This antithesis is the negation of group-marriage; in proportion as group-marriage disappears it obtains pre-eminence. Socialism will strike at the root at once of compulsory monogamy and of prostitution by inaugurating an era of marriage based on free choice and intention, and characterised by the absence of external coercion. For where the wish for the maintenance of the marriage-relation remains, there external compulsion is unnecessary; where it is necessary, because the wish has disappeared, there it is undesirable. The above is all we can foresee in the matter. In this, as in other departments, the modern man, immersed in the categories of the bourgeois world, sees everything through them. For him, therefore, there exists only legalised monogamic marriage and prostitution, both of which are based essentially on commercial considerations. The one is purchase, the other hire. He cannot see the higher and only really moral form of the marriage-relation which transcends both, and which is based neither on sale nor hire. Prostitution is immoral as implying the taking advantage by the woman of a monopoly which costs her no labour for the sake of extorting money from the man. But the condition of legal marriage – maintenance – does the same. If it be asked, is marriage a failure? the answer of any impartial person must be – monogamic marriage is a failure – the rest is silence. We know not what new form of the family the society of the future, in which men and woman will be alike economically, free, may evolve, and which may be generally adopted therein. Meanwhile, we ought to combat by every means within our power the metaphysical dogma of the inherent sanctity of the monogamic principle. Economic development on the one side, and the free initiative of individuals on the other, will do the rest.

52 Equality, Not Privilege (1893)

Equality, Not Privilege (1893) Equality not Privilege, Justice, 26th August 1893, p.5 (letter). To the Editor of Justice DEAR COMRADE, I must protest against “Delegate’s” cool statement that the resolution advocating certain special legislation of a privilege-granting character for women was, voted unanimously. The president (Volders) expressed a wish that it should be so voted, but as a matter of fact seven or eight of the British delegation, several of the Austrian delegation, and a few others throughout the hall (together probably between twenty and thirty) voted against it. The resolution of Shaw protesting against any legislation for women which does not include men, and for which I was down to speak, was intentionally or unintentionally burked by the bureau and president (Volders), and this notwithstanding that the resolution and the speakers’ names had been sent in the previous afternoon. The fact is the Commission’s resolution was rushed through without any opportunity being allowed for adverse criticism. Without discussing it in detail, I may point out the absurdity of passing a general eight hours’ resolution and then on the top of it passing one advocating the measure for women, thereby implicitly excluding men. It looks very mach as it the first were intended only as a pious opinion, regarded as incapable of realisation, since obviously the second would be otherwise unnecessary. That it would be comparatively easy to obtain the passing of an eight hours’ law or any other form of privilege for women is not to be denied. The whole drift of public opinion is in this direction. Every class hails with jubilation the concession of this sort of sex-privilege. But the granting of it would undoubtedly head back the general eight hours’ movement, just as the abolition of brutally criminal punishments for women has practically extinguished the agitation for their general abolition. The same in all cases. The granting of special and one-sided privileges on sentimental grounds invariably retards the progress of a movement based on grounds of principle. – Yours fraternally,

53 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

The Woman Question (1895) The Woman Question, Justice, 27th July, 1895, p.6. Taking a hint from the suggestion of “TATTLER” a few weeks ago in Justice that it is time above question was fairly thrashed out among Socialists the editor of Justice has invited me to briefly state my views. Up till quite recently Socialists like Radicals other advanced persons, were supposed, as a matter of course, to swallow that conventional lie of modern civilisation – the theory of “woman the victim of man’s oppression.” This dogma, which, like the doctrine of Manchester school, that the ideal of human liberty is attained under the capitalistic regime of free industrial and commercial competition, has dominated the thought of the Anglo- Saxon race for two generations and has been the chief instrument in effecting a revolution which has placed the whole judicial and administrative machinery of the country at the disposal of one sex oppress the other (in all causes, i.e. into which the sex question prominently enters.) Let us look at the present condition of this so-called “victim.” While under our present marriage laws the wife is under no obligation to maintain the husband, not even though she have money and he be destitute (saving the ratepayer’s right to be recouped for his maintenance in the workhouse) the husband is bound at criminal law to maintain his wife in comfort under all circumstances. Hitherto exception has been made in the case of adultery on the part of wife. Now, in a Bill before Parliament this last reservation is proposed to be virtually abrogated by a “caoutchouc” paragraph which enforces “alimony” where the husband can be shown by his defect or “misconduct to have contributed to the adultery. “ Thus, if a man has ever had a dispute with his wife or even come home late, as in a recent case, he will presumably have, “by defect or misconduct, contributed to the adultery;” just as now if a man ever had words with his wife and raised his voice above its normal pitch or come home late he may deemed to have committed technical cruelty entitling the said wife to separation or divorce with “alimony.” 2. A wife is perfectly free to leave her husband at will, and he has no remedy (Jackson case). If a husband leaves his wife she can compel him to surrender to her a third of his income or earnings, and for desertion, i.e., for leaving her without money, he can be punished with hard labour. 3. A husband is further liable for her debts and her civil delinquencies (torts).

54 The Woman Question (1895) 4. A husband cannot obtain relief against a wife for any act, negligence, or language of hers, while for any one of these considerations she can get judicial separation, exclusive rights over the children, if any, and a third of his income or earrings for herself, with so much per head in addition for each child. Thus if a man gives his wife an unfriendly pat on the cheek with his open hand she can get established comfortably for life on the fruits of his labour; if, on the contrary, she smashes his head in with a poker she may be fined five shillings which the injured husband has to pay; and should he succeed in obtaining a separation it is only on, condition of his keeping the virago in comfortable idleness. A little illustration will bring home to the reader this complete serfdom of the husband to the wife under our marriage laws. A man, not long ago, obtain the offer of employment in America. His wife did wish him to go. Not having any money or work home he insisted. The wife who had money of own, and to whom he moreover gave £25 with promise of more on his arrival at his destination, went straight to the Guardians, had him arrested on board ship at Southampton, dragged before the magistrate, and sentenced to three months hard labour. The sentence was subseqently quashed after the man had been in gaol and was ruined. Most feudal barons would surely have been satisfied with such powers as this over their “villeins.” At criminal law it is a well-known fact which anyone may verify by the records of the courts that women enjoy an almost complete immunity for all offences committed against men, as such. For assault, perjury, and blackmailing practised on men, women are virtually never even prosecuted, let alone convicted. On the other hard, savage and vindictive laws, savagely and vindictively enforced by judges are dealt out to men for the most trifling assaults or other offences committed against women. In fact it seems that the express aim of the modern political woman and her “Women’s” Associations is to deprive men of the last shred of protection against criminal women with a view of giving the latter every facility for exercising their calling. If one looks at the matter fairly, one surely cannot be surprised at occasional violence committed on women – wife assaults, wife murders, &c. Legalised tyranny and inequality has always throughout history led to sporadic outbursts of brutality on the side of its victims. It is always so, and always will be so. Such is the present position of advantage enjoyed by women by virtue of their sex. Such are the facts as opposed to the popular “legend” on the subject. Space forbids my further analysing the present subjection at law of men to women in this article, which is the more unnecessary as I have elaborated the subject in further detail elsewhere. Of course, under Socialism, the side of the question based on property falls away. Our existing infamous marriage laws must disappear when both sexes are alike economically

55 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader free. When once this is so, a perfectly free marriage, without let or hindrance, would necessarily result. Should, as Herbert Burrows seems to have suggested, a bastard “public opinion” try any games on of attempting by ostracism to supply the place of the defunct coercive legal bond in enforcing any special form of marriage, such as monogamy, we shall have to do our best to strangle that “public opinion” as quickly as possible. If driven to it, even opponents might combine in an association whose members pledged themselves (like the Oneida Creekers), to marital relations strictly limited to a fixed period, say six months. To thus raise anti-monogamy to the level of a principle would surely be a pity as a result of the “cussedness” of trying to compel outward conformity to monogamy among people whose temperaments were unsuited to it. In using the ugly word “lust” for any form of marriage he does not like, Herbert Burrows resembles the respectable bourgeois of my boyhood’s days who used to stigmatise every form of liberty he did not like (e.g., the right of workmen to combine) as “licence.” No, friend Herbert, I trust a society even half-way into Socialism will be past being caught with that sort of chaff. At the same time I regard it as highly probable that for a long while to come voluntary monogamy (voluntary, in fact, and not in name merely) will be the dominant form of the sexual relation. The attempt to enforce it, however, whether by law or “public opinion,” will I am equally convinced be contrary to the whole spirit of a reasonable society. To make out that there is an absolute and immutable moral superiority in monogamy irrespective of temperament or circumstances over every other form of sexual relation is surely absurd. Only by society encouraging perfect freedom can the most perfect form of the sexual relation, that best adapted to human needs, be wrought out. Monogamy, like every other institution, will have to make good its case by showing its superiority to other forms, and not by the aid of external tyranny, whether juridical or social. Before concluding this article I would point out what is liable to be overlooked, viz., that the coercive effect of “public opinion” could only be operative in a Socialist society when the whole community was practically unanimous in condemning a course of conduct and not in defence of any arbitrary dogma, however strongly held by a section of the community. The case is different under capitalist conditions when a man can be forced to wear a “pot” hat against his will, owing to the “public opinion” of the class on whom he is dependent for his livelihood insisting on it. E. Belfort Bax

56 Bebel’s Woman and Socialism (1895)

Bebel’s Woman and Socialism11 (1895) Bebel’s Women and Socialism, Justice, 17th August, 1895, p.2 (Review). The twenty-fifth or “Jubilee” (why “Jubilee”?) edition of Bebel’s Die Frau und der Socialismus has just been published. We have not read the intervening editions that have appeared since the first, but the present is certainly an improvement on the book in its original form. For one thing, there seems less “Frau” and more “Sozialismus” in it. At the same time, the conventional jeremiad over the vileness of man, and the hymn of praise to woman’s perfections, strike us as being sung in a rather more subdued tone. At all events, owing perhaps to the proportionate increase of other matter, this element is less obtrusive. Without being able to lay claim to any special originality, the book, in its present shape, contains a quantity of industriously-collected material, of use to Socialists, on a variety of economical and social topics, and, as a compilation, is in many respects good. The parts marshalling the arguments for Socialism as against its opponents should especially be useful to some of our speakers and lecturers in the matter of points and references. For the rest, the main argument is a piece of special pleading based on a theory of the identity of object of the Proletarian movement and the so-called Woman’s movement. (The classing together of the Proletariat and women, by the way, was, we believe, originated by Auguste Comte.) As I and, doubtless, others have pointed out, there is absolutely no single feature of analogy between the position of the working class and that of the female sex. In the first place, the distinction between the working class and the capitalist class is an economic and social distinction, whereas the distinction between man and woman is organic and structural, which of itself suffices to place the proletarian and woman questions in different categories. In the second place, even if labouring under certain formal political disabilities, woman is, at least in all Anglo-Saxon countries, entrenched, in a citadel of material privilege and social domination, to increase which, under cover of removing the aforesaid disabilities, is the real object of the (so-called) Woman’s Rights movement. On the other hand the workman is nowhere privileged, and the object of the Proletarian movement is an emancipation from material subjection, which, in the end, means the abolition of all privileges. These two contentions which knock the bottom out of his main assumption our friend Bebel has always taken precious good care not to deal with. How purely sentimental is the Bebelian view is amusingly demonstrated on p.272, where the author, referring to the duty of women in matters of military defence (so long as such continues necessary) observes:

11 Dietz, Stuttgart. 57 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader “We also believe that it is a useful division of labour, if the defence of the country is left to men and the care of the hearth and home to women,” Of course! The tender creatures must be preserved from the dangers and discomforts of warfare! And this, although in another part of the book when it suits his purpose, Bebel adduces an array of arguments with the object of showing that the difference of muscular strength between the sexes is by no means essential, and that, under certain conditions, women may even be stronger than men. I am not disposed to dispute its being a “useful division of labour” that women should be relieved from the task of defence. I would, however, ask our friend Bebel why the foregoing opinion is admissable while it is blank reaction and male prejudice to say, “We believe it is a useful division of labour if the regulation of public affairs is left to men, and the care of the hearth and home to women”? Bebel – in answering criticisms, be it observed – for the most part carefully confines himself to the easy task o£ refuting capitalist criticisms of his Socialist position. The statement (foot of p.268 and top of p.269) as to the recognition of the equal criminal responsibility of women with men is one which everyone who has ever read an English newspaper (at least) must know to be a direct misstatement on a matter of fact. E. Belfort Bax

58 “Free Love” and Socialism – A Criticism (1895)

“Free Love” and Socialism – A Criticism (1895) “Free Love,” Justice, 23 November 1895, p.5; COMRADE, – The pronouncement anent the Lanchester case in this week’s Justice assumes somewhat of the character of a manifesto of the Social-Democratic Federation on the question of “marriage.” Viewed in this light, in which it would appear to represent the opinions of organised English Socialism, I think it becomes incumbent upon the section which sees reason to disagree with any portion of it to state their reasons for so doing. It is undoubtedly the fact that some of our friends cannot accept, as they stand, either the arguments or the conclusion of the two last paragraphs. Why, they ask, are they to tread so gingerly on the feelings of their “family connections” and other respectable persons in the matter in question rather than in others? Is not the mere fact of joining the Socialist movement, still more engaging in active work therein, likely to pain “family connections,” and is that a reason for refusing to enter upon it? I can remember the time when going for a walk in the country on Sunday or expressing doubts as to the scientific accuracy of the Book of Genesis caused considerable pain to “family connections,” Charles Darwin caused considerable pain, not only to his family connections, but also to his “comrades” in science of the Royal Society, according to all accounts, when he first propounded the thesis developed in the “Origin of Species.” A more deadly reactionary proposition it would be impossible to set forth than that in the latter part of the article on “Socialism and Free Love.” I contend that the first principle of progress is that no action in itself right should be omitted owing to the pain it causes the tender reactionary sentiments of “family connections” or others. In the long run the pain caused is wholesome for the “family connections.” It purifies them of cant. To take the case of religious prejudice. Would the writer of the article under discussion consider it wrong for an emancipated Jew to eat bacon, lamb stewed in butter or “Blutwarst,” or for an emancipated Catholic to eat roast beef on Friday; or again, for an emancipated Methodist to play cricket on Sunday? The general intellectual progress – that progress which Socialism presupposes, although it may not be distinctively Socialistic – has been sadly handicapped by the maudlin dread of giving offence by the protest. The protest against what one believes to be injurious is, to my thinking, a duty. By all means spare feelings which appeal to that common humanity which makes all the world kin, but one may do this while treading out mere reactionary prejudice with a merciless heel. Jewish “law” is not human, it is Jewish; Catholic fasting is not human, it is Christian; Methodist Sabbatarianism is not human, it is middle-class English. Now, I contend that for those who do not intend to have children, a non-official union is simply a protest against a superstition of the same character as the foregoing. Where the question of children comes in, proper provision for them must, of course, be secured. That 59 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader goes without saying. But, it is urged, granting the proper provision; there still remains the terrible stigma of bastardy on the children. My answer is, that the guilt of this lies not on the parents, but on public opinion, and public opinion will not be changed until a sufficient number of persons have set it at defiance. Then, as the analogy of other cases suggests, it will soon be modified. For the rest, as regards this point, I think its importance in cases when no next-of-kin windfalls are expected is much exaggerated. It is not the custom to decorate one’s hat with one’s birth certificate, or to wear it in the form of a cravat. The fact need not become known to the Philistines save under special circumstances. The prejudice, moreover, would only operate seriously with certain vulgar minds of the baser sort, and a man must be very thin-skinned who would suffer so very intensely from the manifestly unjust and senseless frowns of such. A gentleman of my acquaintance, although without much doubt born in the most unimpeachable bonds of wedlock, has been known in occasions to protest his bastardy with a view, it is supposed, of adding a spice of piquancy to his abilities. The analogy between “individual action” in the marriage question and that of the Anarchists in attempting by isolated acts to overthrow the Capitalist system is certainly not happy. Our great argument against the Anarchists is (1) that their deeds are usually crimes in themselves, and (2) that by their foolish individualist acts, though they may, and probably will, do much harm, they cannot possibly further their proposed object. The case is far otherwise with the refusal to enter upon the lifelong binding contract of marriage. Here you have an act in itself admittedly justifiable, and which, if only often enough carried out, must before long effect a modification of public opinion. Though a few or even a good many bombs will certainly not break down Capitalism, no one can assert that a comparatively small number of “free” unions openly entered into will not go a long way towards altering public opinion, and hence in the long run towards helping to break down the marriage laws as they exist in this country to-day. In conclusion, while feeling quite unable, for the foregoing reasons, to subscribe to the absolute canon that “it is better, in present conditions, that the marriage law should be complied with,” I would equally object to the converse canon that every Socialist is morally bound not to do so. It seems to me that the problem “to be or not to be” legally married must be decided by each individual for himself or herself in accordance with the circumstances of his or her particular case. E. Belfort Bax.

60 The Everlasting Female Again! (1895)

The Everlasting Female Again! (1895) The Everlasting Female Again!, Justice, 30th November 1895, p.6. DEAR COMRADES, That I have effectually put a spoke in the wheels of an imposture kept alive by “bluff” and the falsification of fact, is evidenced by the letters you have published and received. Like the man who was converted to freethought by hearing the parson discourse on the Evidences of Christianity, I have good reason to believe that many readers of Justice who were waverers on the question have had their views decided as much by the replies to me as by anything I have myself written. The partisans of the (so-called) woman’s movement have hitherto successfully adopted the motto, “Il faut de ‘bluff’, encore de ‘bluff’ et toujours de ‘bluff’” Now it is just the “toujours de ‘bluff’ ” which has been threatened (at least so far as English Socialists are concerned) by my very simple statement of facts. Hence these tears, hysterical shrieks, and inconsequent ravings! Polite aspersions on sanity by ex- lights of the Theosophical Society and accusations of “monomania” on the part of atrabilious females, for daring to criticise their conventional shibboleth are very amusing and recall the tone of certain parsons of my youth and other gentlemen of that ilk when disputing over the body of Moses With Biblical scholars and geologists; or more recently of the hidebound “Manchester” economists when discussing socialism. Seven or eight years ago on the occasion of a criticism of Die Frau by me in the Social Democrat, August Bebel, who similarly found himself unable to answer my arguments, sought a way out of the difficulty by loftily waving them off and expressing pain for the welfare of my Social- Democratic soul. This, if more dignified, was not more effective than poor comrade Burrows’ scurrility. Needless to say, my arguments have remained unanswered by Bebel to this day. My only object in drawing attention to this matter has been to enter a protest against the Socialist movement being “bluffed” by a noisy, band of shriekers into allowing itself to be dragged at the heels of a bogus agitation. A species of terrorism has been established amongst “advanced” persons generally to ostracise a serious discussion of the “Woman Question” in a sense adverse to the platform claptrap of the (so-called) “Woman’s Rights” movement. Among Socialists this has been aided by a false analogy (that fruitful source of fallacy) consisting in setting up of a parallel derived apparently, from Auguste Comte, between the position of women as a sex, and that of the proletariat as a class. That there is no such parallel at all I have pointed out again and again. In the one case you have to deal with an organic difference – one of bodily structure – irrespective of class, while in the latter we are concerned with a social and economic difference, irrespective of organic differences, sexual or other. There are exploiting women and exploited women, just as there are men. Socialism, proclaims that accident of birth so far as economic condition is concerned is responsible for 61 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader the main differences which exist among the population of a class society. It postulates a condition of things as its aim in which the “accident of birth”, in an economic sense, shall no longer tell. But to insist that the “accident of birth” should be quite inoperative even where it involves not social or economic, but radical structural or constitutional differences, is a preposterous absurdity. If you only carry this principle far enough, you arrive at the position of the emperor Caligula when he raised his favourite horse to the consular dignity, being doubtless under the belief that it was hard “the accident of birth” should be a disqualification for his four-footed friend and favourite attaining the higher honours of the state. The “accident of birth” in so far as it involves points not reducible to social and economic cause, points belonging to the “nature of the animal itself” – no society can afford to ignore in the apportionment of its functions. The difference of sex most authorities believe to involve such points. A prima facie case is at all events made out for the affirmative and has never been successfully refuted as yet. If this be so, all I say is that our conception of equality as regards sex requires revision. Our notion of equality in the matter of class is based on a conviction of the ultimate abolition of classes as our goal. Is our notion of equality in the matter of sex to be based on the belief in the ultimate extinction of sex as our goal? If so there is a certain parallel, “If not, not.” One young lady waxes pathetic over the iniquity of punishing people for what they can’t help. Now here is a point in which I certainly agree with her. And if she will allow me I will suggest one case among many in which this iniquity obtains to-day and against which her tongue or pen might be usefully employed in protesting. In our prisons, as in most of our industrial schools, men and boys are subjected to brutal and degrading punishment from which women and girls, for the same or equally grave offences, are exempt, solely by virtue of their sex. If this is not a case of punishing the male criminal or delinquent for what he can’t help, namely, his sex, I don’t know what is? On the other hand no one that I am aware of has ever proposed to punish women for their sex. I come now to Mendelson. “Bax has had to choose between equality and protection, and he refuses them both.” Just exactly what he does not. He points out, on the contrary, that in the mouths of “Woman’s Righters,” Socialist, no less than bourgeois (for in this respect the former are much the same as the latter), “equality” means sex domination, and “protection” means tyranny and injustice exercised on behalf of a sex. It is these things I reject. You can always put a glow upon tyranny so as to plausibly explain it away is “protection.” The trick of the tyrant, whether man or class, has always been throughout history to start by whining for “protection.” Alessandro de Medici wanted protection, and collected a body of retainers for that ostensible purpose, with which he subsequently seized the Florentine state. The white planters of the slave states explained away “chattel slavery” as a mere device for protecting the poor weak white against the muscularly and numerically stronger negro. As a

62 The Everlasting Female Again! (1895) matter of fact, the bestial barbarities perpetrated on the black race in the Southern States are even now so excused. The Czar and official bureaucracy of Russia doubtless have always believed that the knout and Siberian mines meant nothing more than “protection” for their precious carcasses. Robespierre’s “great terror,” he would have argued, was merely a necessary measure of “protection” for “patriots”, viz., for his Jacobins. There is, in short, no form of despotism and cruelty that cannot be twisted by perverse ingenuity into being a measure of “protection”. “Only this, and nothing more!” Among the interesting items of information Mendelson affords me as to what views I hold, most of which were quite unknown to me before, is one that nervous citizens should be protected on their way home at night. Now I suppose, owing to not being a Peisistratus, a Medici, a Robespierre, or otherwise a specially nervous citizen in this particular respect, I am bound to give friend Stanislas the entire credit for this brilliant idea. I can certainly lay no sort of claim to it. An escort of police, I should say, would be an uncomfortable sort of arrangement, but in view of some recent cases an escort of special constables as a protection against the police might be worth considering. Allow me to point out, however, that the moment the “nervous citizen” abused his “protection,” whether of police or anti-police, as a menace to the peace of other citizens it would, even if accorded, in all probability be promptly suppressed. And this is precisely what I urge in relation to the laws now existing for the “protection of women.” As to Proudhon, though I have read some of his economic treatises, I have never read anything touching the woman question from his pen. And to dub me a disciple of Proudhon is, I submit, simply silly. I think the “impartial reader” of Justice will scarcely be caught by certain demagogic references to “brutal Manchesterism” and sneers anent “neo-Malthusians.” A disapproval of the system of legalised blackmail called “breach of promise” actions by which a certain low type of woman is enabled to prey upon a man who has been foolish enough to get entangled in the harpy’s clutches is styled “brutal Manchesterism.” If so, for the first time in my life, I am proud of the title of “brutal Manchester man.” One would think it decent women had one atom of respect for their sex about them they would themselves horsewhip filthy females out of their society. For the rest I may point out that there is an element of truth in Manchesterism as in every other epoch-making idea. It is its false economic application that Socialists justly protest against. To merely sling out the epithet “Manchester man,” “Neo- Malhusianism” or “Anarchist” as forms of abuse is to fire an unshotted broadside. Where the middle-class Radical has failed to complete his work the Socialist must take it up. Some Radical ideals may partake of the nature of the “cult of abstractions,” but others are an integral part of the growth of society. Neo-Malthusianism is objected to by Socialists in so far as it is put forward as a red-herring in the guise of a social panacea, but not necessarily otherwise. I join issue completely with Mendelson in his statement that because an act

63 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader (though purely self-regarding in itself) is what he pleases to term “abnormal” – by which I can only understand him to mean contrary to some eighteenth-century, deistic, abstract metaphysical entity he calls “Nature” – that therefore society would have any right to “consider whether it would tolerate it or not.” Eating with a knife and fork or shaving are equally “abnormal” in a sense but I should say it would be bad for any society that took to “considering whether it should tolerate” liberty in such purely private concerns of citizens. But our friend probably advocates sumptuary laws against flannel shirts and red ties. Would Mendelson propose a punishment on men and women living singly, who are also “abnormal” and have no children? Mendelson will perhaps stigmatise my suggestions of a limit to the power of the community over the individual, even in private matters as middle- class-Radical, or Anarchistic. He is welcome to this very stale gibe of the crude State Socialist. I do not propose to discuss the question of “bastardy” raised by Mendelson. Those who have read my letter on Free Love and Socialism will see I think that his objections do not touch me. But now, what does the sum-total of Mendelson’s gyneocratic contentions amount to? Why does he not say what he obviously means? All objections to the most arbitrary despotism exercised on men in the supposed interests of women are ruled out as the “Freedom-ideas of the middle-class Radical”; the control in the interests of public health of women who pursue a certain calling, is, on the contrary, stigmatised as “odious police supervision.” Now why not say straight out men are to be bullied and blackmailed because they are men, while women are to enjoy complete immunity from all responsibility and to be aided and abetted by the law in all their attacks on men, because they are women. Similarly, when I criticise the pretensions sometimes made on behalf of the female sex I am sneered at as having a “hobby.” Those who persistently make these pretensions have no “hobby” – oh dear no! Truly a case of “my doxy and thy doxy”! If have dolt with Mendelson’a letter at some length, since it is the only definite attack on me which has so much as attempted to argue the matter, and in Sahara one is thankful for a drop of water even though its lucidity may leave something to be desired. In conclusion I will give, once for all, in a few words my position on this question, cleared of the prejudice imported into it by railing accusations of woman-hating and other objectionable qualities. 1. I utterly dispute the validity of the attempt analogy between women as a sex and the proletariat as a class, on which analogy the plausibility of the “woman movement” for Socialists so largely rests. 2. While fully recognising the oppression of the capitalist system on women as on men, I deny that, on the whole, it presses more on women than on men, as such.

64 The Everlasting Female Again! (1895) 3. Coming to the question of direct sex-tyranny, if we are to talk of this I am prepared to prove that, at least in all countries where the Anglo-Saxon is dominant, viz., in Britain and its colonies, in the United States, &c., it is invariably men who, both by law and public opinion, are oppressed in the supposed interests of women and not vice versa. 4. That the few (mainly formal) disabilities of women in politics or elsewhere which are perpetually being trotted out, are more than compensated for, by special privileges in other directions. 5. That the woman’s rights agitation as hitherto conducted, in which the “brute man” plays the role of villain, was born of hysterics and “sour grapes,” and is kept alive by a bare-faced system of “bluff,” and both the suppression and perversion of fact, intended to work on the sentimental male with a view of placing women in a safe citadel of privilege and sex- domination – the talk of equality being a mere blind. I am prepared to maintain any or all of these proposition in writing with anyone. E. Belfort Bax

65 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Some Current Fallacies on the Woman Question (1897) E. Belfort Bax, Some Current Fallacies on the Woman Question, Social Democrat, July 1897, pp.201-205. Reprinted in E. Belfort Bax, Essays In Socialism, New & Old, 1907, pp.119-123. In the following remarks on the above subject, I should premise that my intention is only to appeal to those persons whose minds are warped in favour of Feminism12 by certain plausible-sounding arguments, which they have been in all sincerity accepting because their fallacy has never been pointed out to them. The rack of hysterical molluscs, who are imposed upon by hollow sentimental whines anent their “mothers and their sisters” (why not their grandmothers, their aunts, their female cousins, or their mothers-in-law?), may be fairly left to stew in their own rather thin juice. As for myself, when I hear of injustice, say, of prison brutalities practised on men (brutalities from which women are exempt), my indignation, I say, is intensified, when I think it is the sex to which my father and my brother belong (or did belong) who are their victims. But I should never think of trotting out this purely personal sentiment as an argument for the special favouring of men in this connection, in any discussion on the relative treatment of men and women. I therefore propose confining myself to certain popular statements which one commonly hears and which are supposed to make for the views promulgated by women’s rights advocates – statements which, if they were true, or if the implication conveyed in them were true, world undoubtedly afford some grounds for a serious consideration of the conventional view of this question put forward by the aforesaid advocates. They are, in fact, the only semblance of argument which the latter seem able to produce. These argumentative statements consist very largely of variations on two main contentions – both of them, as I maintain, in the nature of false analogies. The first is the assumption that the relative position of the sexes bears some analogy (it is commonly represented as a very close analogy) with the relation between employer and workman – the employer representing the man and the workman the woman. The talk about “the proletarian in the household” is founded on this assumption. Now, as I have often pointed out before, the very basis of an analogy is wanting in this case. The difference between man and woman is not all economical or social one: it is an organic or biological distinction from which, as contended by non-Feminists, is deducible the difference in capacity between men and woman, both as to quantity and quality. The distinction between capitalist and proletarian is,

12 It seems to be decided now by the usage of the majority that the above, and not “Femininism,” is the correct form of this word. 66 Some Current Fallacies on the Woman Question (1897) on the other hand, not biological, but purely social, being simply one of class, based on economical circumstance. But what is further amusing is the way in which this preposterous analogy is worked, so that the woman is represented as the oppressed side of the equation in the case. Now, it is quite clear that if we are to fake up an analogy at all between sexes and classes, it is the man whose labour is exploited and not the women. It is the duty of the husband to maintain his wife, not the wife her husband. The husband is compelled, by custom and by law, to do corvée, or to yield up such portion of his earnings as may enable his wife to live in comfort – just as the villein was compelled to do corvée, or to pay his lord a proportion of the produce of the fields worked by his labour. The lord had the practical monopoly of the villein’s means of existence – the land. Under the most favourable circumstances, he exacted from him a toll, in the shape of rent in kind or money, and other dues, for the privilege of working the land. The woman possesses the monopoly of what is, if not a primary, at least a secondary necessary of life to the great majority of men – the means of sexual satisfaction, her body; and for allowing him access to which the law entitles her to demand a rent and dues in the shape of food, clothes, shelter – in short, provision in accordance with the station of life occupied by her “villein,” the husband, without any exertion on her part. But, it may be said, she has her duties to perform in the household, which may sometimes involve not inconsiderable labour. But so had the feudal lord his duties to perform. He had to go out to battle to protect his tenants against foes from without – an operation which might easily cost him his life – and to see that justice was administered on his estate. It is true there was often no adequate power to prevent the lord from neglecting the welfare of his tenants, but there is no power at all in modern English law to prevent the wife from neglecting her duties to her husband and family. The husband remains even more hopelessly the slave of a worthless wife than the mediaeval serf was of a tyrannical and rapacious baron. I do not press the foregoing parallel myself, as I consider the whole attempt to establish an analogy between class and sex-opposition to be fallacious, ab initio. But I think I have sufficiently shown that if we are to have the analogy forced upon us at all, it will work out in quite a different sense to the “proletarian-in-the-home” theory. Yet it is in the class of argumentation of which this theory is a specimen that it is considered incumbent upon all democrats to champion the pitch-forking of women into every sphere of activity which, from its lucrative or honour-bearing character, happens to excite their envy, quite irrespective of their suitability therefor. As against this, all that is contended by myself, and other democrats and Socialists who think with me, is that the cumulative experience of the human race through at least three thousand years establishes a case for what is termed, in legal phraseology, a “presumption” that the woman is less capable than the man in those spheres of activity in which she has hitherto not shone. It is true that this presumption is rebuttable, and has in individual cases been rebutted. But the onus of rebuttal, it is contended, rests with the individual woman who aspires to the post or occupation in

67 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader question. If she has given clear and unmistakable proof of her capacity, it would be absurd to exclude her on the ground of her sex alone. But, on the other hand, one swallow does not make a summer, and the fact that an occasional woman is to be found to which the presumption will not apply is not by any means sufficient to rebut it as a general principle. Therefore, it is insisted, such isolated cases ought not to be regarded as establishing a precedent for reversing a practice resting on such a widely established induction as that of the inferiority of women to men in so many departments of executive and directive activity. The induction referred to is strengthened rather than weakened by the theory, so dear to woman’s rights advocates, that gyneocracy (the supremacy of the female) was universal in the earliest stages of human society. There is, of course, another theory, that the so-called gyneocracy was peculiar to certain races, and hence cannot be regarded like other institutions belonging to the same period as forming an essential stage in social evolution generally. But, assuming the former theory to be right, it is obvious that women in primitive times enjoyed a governmental and executive authority which they were unable to maintain, presumably owing to inherent incapacity, since the fall of gyneocracy wherever it has existed, is too widespread a phenomenon to be accounted for by local or special causes and the hypothesis that the victory of private over tribal or communal property-fielding had anything to do with it is manifestly absurd when we consider that personal property holding and inheritance is just as possible through females as through males, a state of things which actually obtained concurrently with other gyneocratic institutions, in some cases long after the ancient primitive communism had broken down (e.g., in Lykia, as also to a large extent in Egypt), and yet that, in spite of all, either the gyneocratic institutions perished, or the races subjected to them went under before non-gyneocratic civilisations. If the above be in any way admitted, it follows that the appeal to democratic sentiment and democratic analogies in support of the so called “claims” of women is entirely beside the mark. It yet remains to be proved that women have any “claim” at all to the exercise, say, of the suffrage, or of any other responsible function. It may be an open question if you like, but it cannot be decided off hand on the basis of “natural rights,” “social equality,” or any of those grounds which are urged in the case of classes, or of nations on approximately the same level of development. Would people but abstain from quite going off their heads, in considering this question, they would be compelled to admit that women have never been oppressed as subject classes have been by dominant classes, or even as subject races have been by dominant races. The superficial disabilities to which women have been subject have always been more than compensated by other privileges. The woman has always been queen in her own sphere. She has always had very substantial rights, and exercised authority in a very substantial manner. The distinction of rights between the sexes has always been more as between spheres of

68 Some Current Fallacies on the Woman Question (1897) influence rather than as between domination and subjection. Nevertheless, that an organically inferior being should not be in certain matters subject to the relatively superior, is a proposition which I for one am not prepared to endorse off-hand. But the inferiority of women has not been proved, it will be said! True, but as already pointed out, the course of history, from primitive times upward, makes out a strong case of presumption in favour of the inferiority. And that presumption has certainly never been, as such, rebutted. Those who doubt this may be referred to the painfully-laboured special-pleadings of Bebel in a certain chapter of Die Frau. The forlorn defence of an able advocate is always the best indictment of all untenable position. As things are, women, by considering themselves in the light of a class, and agitating, not for equality, but for supremacy (the “equality” is a mere pretence) in class-fashion, are really creating a sex-antagonism which ultimately means the sacrifice of their strongest weapons. They are flinging away that moral power by which they have hitherto, for good or for evil, swayed men, wholly unchallenged, for the sake of a brute force wielded by men in their favour, which they may lose at any time. They are resigning the psychological magic by which they have bent men to their will for the privilege of being allowed to invoke the brute force of the policeman, the prison warder, the judge, and the bailiff. The fact would seem to indicate a female degeneracy, if that were possible, since the exchange, one would think, could only benefit women who united in their persons the attributes of badness, ugliness, and stupidity. The absence of any one of these qualities has generally sufficed, hitherto, to enable them to work the oracle themselves. They have now invoked the phantom of the brute force of the state to settle their quarrels with men, thereby calling into existence a sex-hostility which will one day recoil on them as sure as men are men and women are women. Meanwhile, middle-class public opinion still continues in favour of the oppression of men, and the immunity of women from all control. It is a “revolting injustice” to subject public women to sanitary measures. It is perfectly in order to mutilate men who have contracted disease from these unexamined women. It is a monstrous iniquity that a man should exercise any power over his wife’s property or earnings. The latest “right” claimed by the “advanced” political women of New Zealand is the confiscation for the wife’s exclusive use of half the husband’s property on marriage! Sir John Bridge, doubtless, aptly expresses public sentiment when, in discharging a young man against whom a bogus charge had been brought by a prostitute, after she had first of all assaulted him, admonishes the young man – that he give the sweet creature ten shillings compensation! Truly a nice way of fulfilling a police magistrate’s duty of protecting harmless citizens on their way home at night! Another police magistrate, Mr. Francis, is severely hauled over the coals by certain hysterical Feminist organs for not passing a vindictive sentence on a husband charged with

69 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader administering to his wife what, for aught they knew, may have been a thoroughly well- deserved thrashing. As the same magistrate said, when dealing with another similar case, if all husbands were sent to gaol for trivial assaults on their wives, there would not be enough prisons to contain then. Yet this is exactly what our Feminists are aiming at. The chief function of the magistrate, according to them, ought to be to act as assistant-bully to brow- beating wives. We have already got some way in this direction. A friend of mine heard a manifestly bogus charge – of indecently assaulting a daughter – tried (the prisoner apparently being only convicted owing to a misunderstanding of the jury), where the judge put it to the wife whether it would not inconvenience her to be deprived of the labour of her husband-slave, and, on the creature answering in the negative, sentenced him to a month’s “hard.” The second main-root of a number of fallacies as to the possible capacities of women, both as regards quantity and quality, in various departments where they have not hitherto distinguished themselves, is expressed in the view that modern woman is the product of “centuries of oppression,” and hence cannot be expected, at present, to show forth the latent glories of her intellectual and moral character. Now, for my own part, I should certainly demur to the fact of the centuries of oppression, but the granting of them does not help the Feminist case. In the first false analogy we had the confusion between sex and class; here we have the confusion between sex and race. For the advocates of the theory forgot that, were it true that women have suffered under a special oppression as women, the effects of such oppression would necessarily, on the average, be divided equally between both sexes of their descendants, and could not possibly be inherited after the manner of what someone has called a “hent-ail,” in the female line only, and hence could not affect women more than men. Women no more constitute a race or species by themselves than they do a class by themselves. Nevertheless, this preposterous argument has been repeated over and over again, until to many people it is an unassailable truth upon which it is perfectly safe to base speculation as to an infinite vista of untold feminine achievements. Really Feminists would do well to drop argument, and confine themselves to blithering about “mothers and sisters”! It is so touching! In addition to the foregoing sources of fallacy, there is a fooling among Socialists, in itself perfectly natural and legitimate, to the effect that the change from Capitalism to Socialism must involve considerable alteration in the condition of women. So it certainly will, but it by no means follows that the changes involved will he along the lines of the modern Feminist movement, as so many take for granted. That the position of women must change is obvious; but to assume that it must take the form of the female prerogative prevailing in. the more advanced capitalist states of to dry, or even of a mechanical equality which takes no account of organic differences, is a mere assumption which the wave of Feminist sentiment has

70 Some Current Fallacies on the Woman Question (1897) hitherto allowed to pass unchallenged within the ranks of our party on the Continent as well as here. It is this assumption which will have, in the future, to be subjected to a rigorous criticism, a criticism very different from the one-sided plaidoyer for the Feminist position contained in the, in other respects, excellent book of August Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus. Men will perhaps learn in time to approach this woman question with an open mind, unbiassed by that blind hatred of their own, and blind worship of the other sex, which at present characterises Rebel as well as so many other writers on the subject. E. Belfort Bax

71 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Legal Encouragements to Blackmail (1897) E. Belfort Bax, Legal Encouragements to Blackmail, Humanitarian, August 1897, pp.104- 110. MR. STEWART HEADLAM in his recent article in this magazine on “blackmail,” dealt with the subject more particularly from the standpoint of that form of blackmail in which the blackmailer threatens to tell his victim’s wife, to expose him before his constituents, to send letters, anonymous or otherwise, to his best or most influential customers, patients, or clients, as the case may be, and thereby ruin or seriously damage him socially or financially, but without actually dragging him before the judgment-seat, either criminal or civil. This sort of thing, as Mr. Headlam well points out, can only be got rid of by the formation of a healthy public opinion, which refuses to see a “hanging matter” in every breach of the conventional sexual ethics (for it is undeniable that the enormous majority of cases of blackmail refer to acts of this nature). There is one effective way in which every healthy-minded person who holds reasonable views on these subjects may set an example of discountenancing the blackmailer, and that is by (if I may so say) ostentatiously disregarding him. For example, I as a Social Democrat would as a general rule, abstain from voting at an election in any constituency where there was only a Liberal and Conservative candidate standing. But were I in such a constituency, and the attempt had been made to destroy the chances of one of these candidates by raking up some scandal of this description against him, I might very likely feel it my duty to give him my “vote and influence” explicitly on this ground alone, as a protest against a vile and infamous hypocrisy, a hypocrisy directly encouraged and pandered to by that section of the Press representing the shop-keeper’s morality, known as the “non-conformist conscience.” Similarly in a business, professional, or social connection. Even if a man had committed some delinquency of this kind under circumstances which no one could altogether morally justify, I maintain still it is our duty to make no concealment of our continued patronage of, or friendship with the man as such, as a demonstration against an odious system. For it is certain that the offence in question, even if itself deserving reprobation, is not so harmful to public morality as the countenancing of a state of things which inevitably, at one and the same time, breeds moral cowardice, lying and hypocrisy, and acts as a direct incentive to the most despicable form of crime. Like the Spartan practice as regards theft, a man may do what he likes and suffer what he may, without any troubling themselves about it, provided only he is not found out. If he be but found out he is hunted down with a savage vindictiveness by the Chadbands and Stigginses of the nonconformist conscience on the one hand, and sneered at by “men of the world” on the other for being such a fool as to let himself be “found out.” Says the one – “Serve the scoundrel right!” Says the other, “If he is 72 Legal Encouragements to Blackmail (1897) such a God-forsaken idiot as not to be able to avoid such a mess he deserves all he’s got!” The evil is a living one, and requires to be combated with drastic remedies. But the fact remains that few have the courage to face “public opinion,” one section of which is the quintessence of lying and humbug, and the other a sodden mass of cynical indifference. The modern knights who are prepared to slay this modern dragon of Wantley, are few and far between, though Mr. Headlam must certainly be reckoned amongst the number. It is only to be regretted that no single voice or pen is sufficient to effectually destroy the monster. The article in the last number, however, as above said, is almost exclusively confined to the social side of blackmailing, to where it preys upon the sense of shame or fear of social ruin on the part of the blackmailed. The side of the question with which the law is concerned, which law-made crimes and the administration of the law renders possible and even directly encourages – this aspect of the question is very slightly touched upon. Hence a few words on it may not be out of place, as also the favour shown by the law to the prosecutor, but more especially to the prosecutrix [1]13, in all cases of a sexual nature. A false charge need not necessarily involve an attempt to extort so and so much in hard cash, but it may take the form of an attempt to obtain marriage or to exercise an oppressive influence over a person, nay a prosecution may actually be entered upon and carried through primarily from spite, but also from a desire to display power and cow the victim into subsequent submission. Many prosecutions of husbands by wives are undoubtedly due to the last-named causes, and these we may reckon, I take it, as partaking of the nature of blackmail in the wider sense. For what constitutes the essence of blackmail? Surely the attempt to extort something from an unwilling giver by threats expressed or implied. Now whether that something be an actual sum of money or merely general subserviency of conduct, may be, I admit, a material element from some points of view, but does not affect, I contend, the essential nature of the offence. Again, in the case of actual money-blackmail a prosecution may be entered upon and persevered in, apart from any direct pressure put upon the particular person accused, in the form of money-extortion, but solely or mainly from the point of view of general trade- policy, for the purpose, that is, of showing the power wielded by the blackmailer in destroying the victim selected, in connivance with the law, backed as it is by a hysterical public opinion. A powerful aid of the blackmailer is the inability of certain non-luminous magistrates and justices to distinguish between a serious offence and a serious charge. A charge may be serious because backed up by the strongest evidence, of furious driving or smashing street lamps. On the contrary, a charge of murder may be preferred on farcical evidence. The addle-headed magistrate treats, let us say, any charge of indecent assault, even if in the face

13 The ultimate prosecution in the cases named devolves of course now upon the Treasury, but for the sake of convenience I use the old terms for the charge-maker. 73 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader of it dictated by malice and unsupported by a shred of reliable evidence, as a “serious charge.” The only equitable principle is obviously that the degree of importance attached to a charge should be based solely on the relative strength of the evidence as measured by the heinousness of the alleged offence. If the evidence is prima facie inadequate, no charge ought to be so much as entertained. In order to be considered at all, a charge of a serious offence ought to be backed by proportionately greater evidence than a charge of a slight offence. To conduct the business of courts of first instance (police courts, etc.) otherwise is simply to play into the hands of the blackmailer and malicious prosecutor, and commit a cruel wrong on the innocent for fear of allowing the guilty to escape. The only alternative is a severity of dealing with the charge-maker (imprisonment till the charge is substantially made out), which would certainly not be tolerated in this country, although it obtains, I believe, in China, and if I am not mistaken, under certain circumstances in some of the Western American States. The notion that the preferrer of a charge is a person to be coddled and encouraged, or, in fact, to be regarded otherwise than with the gravest suspicion, is a monstrous inversion of the only fair and just attitude towards an accused person not taken in flagrante delicto, or at least not charged on prima facie overwhelming evidence. That the whole force of the State is placed at the disposal of the accuser, whilst the accused is left defenceless, is itself an iniquity showing the bête humaine coming out in the law – the desire to crush rather than protect a fellow creature. It is this tendency which, of course, does the blackmailer yeoman’s service, and on which he steadily reckons. Public opinion could certainly help to stem this as regards certain offences which, in the nature of the case, afford the greatest field for the blackmailer by systematically ostracising to a greater or less extent all prosecutors in such cases. In such charges the presumption should always be against the prosecutor, and this presumption should not necessarily be regarded as completely rebutted by the fact that the prosecution has succeeded, i.e., that the accuser has, backed by the Treasury and probably by the judge, been able to convince a dozen shop keepers (possibly fools) of the truth of his charge. Proved to the hilt, such a charge can seldom be, and it is assuredly much more important to shield innocent men from an accusation easily made and usually impossible to disprove than it is to risk sacrificing the innocent and encouraging blackmail in order that a few disreputable persons should not escape punishment. The greatest reluctance ought, I contend, to be shown to recognise or associate with any person, male or female, who has instituted or instigated a prosecution for indecency, especially when it is connected with their own persons. But, unfortunately, the bulk of these individuals, including all those who systematically carry on blackmail, could not be reached by any amount of social ostracism, since they belong purely and simply to the criminal classes. The latter can be dealt with solely by a change in the law and its administration, which again can only come about through a change in the attitude of public opinion from a grovelling surrender to superstition and the

74 Legal Encouragements to Blackmail (1897) hypocrisy that keeps it alive, to a reasonable way of looking at the class of offence with which, as already observed, blackmail is mainly concerned. First, the category of law-made crimes called “unnatural offences,” considered as crimes per se – and apart from surrounding circumstances such as corruption of minors, etc. – ought to be swept from every self-respecting statute-book, as they are to a great extent from those continental codes which are founded on the “Code Napoleon.” Nobody in the present day who has given any thought to the subject at all, probably really believes that the acts named, unpleasant and repulsive as they are to the vast majority of us, constitute crimes in themselves. Call them vices if you like, though there is little doubt they are in reality due as departure from normal functioning in the human organism. They are undoubtedly occasioned by Physico-psychic states which have not yet been sufficiently investigated. Repulsive personally, they necessarily must be to every approximately normal human being. But the man who professes to be cast into throes of horror by them (in the spirit of the blatant balderdash affected by our criminal law, of the “not-even-to-be-mentioned-among- Christians” style) we may be sure, if he speak truth, is well-nigh as morbidly constituted as the habitual indulgers in them, and if, as is most probable, he is shamming, is the most contemptible kind of humbug. The well-balanced mind sees in them a problem, and is neither affected by a morbid physical fascination nor an equally morbid moral loathing, when he hears of them. As an instance of the cruel superstition dominating, we may mention the monstrous legal infamy that a poor ignorant country lad may be, and is constantly sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude for a fantastic “crime,” while a wretch who three parts murders another man with the most cold-blooded premeditation, gets from three to five years. Secondly, we have to get rid of the exaggerated sentiment which places all offences of this nature on a pinnacle of heinousness far exceeding crimes of brutality or those occasioned by greed for gain (other than actual theft, fraud, etc.). The man who, for the sake of making a few shillings extra profit, will sell meat “ unfit for human consumption,” that is, will sell poison instead of food, a proceeding whereby whole families may have their healths or even lives endangered, is visited in the majority of cases with a pecuniary penalty; in one or two instances only can I recall that the person convicted has got a term of imprisonment, and that no more than one month! Compare this with the light and airy way in which a sentence of six months for some paltry “indecent assault” will be passed. The disparity of sentence is rendered the more striking when we reflect on the difference between the character of the evidence in these two cases. In the first mentioned the evidence is generally so obvious that not so much as an attempt is made on the part of the defence to upset it. In the other, in most cases, it amounts to no more than the opinion of twelve men (all or the majority of whom may be possibly paragons of human wisdom, but more probably numbskulls of the thickest

75 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader order) that a particular man or woman is speaking the truth. Now when we consider that a careful examination of several hundred cases of this class of charge in Birmingham by Mr. Lawson Tait elicited the fact that scarcely five per cent. of them had any foundation in fact, the extent to which the present system of police and criminal-court administration and the attitude of public opinion which supports it, plays into hands of the blackmailer, may be imagined. The only cure for the present abominable state of things is the acquirement by magistrates, judges and juries, and in the last resort of course by public opinion generally, of something like a true sense of proportion in the assessment of the heinousness of offences. Until the average man will drop superstition and take to a reasonable common sense in dealing with these matters, it is useless, I repeat, to hope for any serious or permanent improvement in the matter of blackmail in this country. The greatest safeguard of the female blackmailer against conviction in the present day is the plea of hysteria. The defence is almost invariably set up in the extremely rare cases in which the female blackmailer is prosecuted at all, that she really believed the lying statements she has made. This defence is almost as invariably accepted by the jury. Hence, possibly, there may be some excuse for the reluctance of the authorities to prosecute in these cases, knowing as they do that the result will almost certainly he abortive, and public money uselessly expended. This consideration, however, should surely give them pause in the alacrity with which they take up cases on the other side. Its things now are, it is not too much to say that blackmail by women is one of the safest and most lucrative branches of female employment. Those who practise it know the extreme improbability of their being prosecuted at all, and the practical certainty that if they manage their case with exceptional clumsiness, and do by an off-chance get prosecuted, they will be acquitted as poor hysterical women not responsible for their actions. Now it is plain that so long as this plea of irresponsibility on the ground of hysterical delusions is allowed to result in an acquittal and enlargement of the prisoner, and so long as the authorities remain indifferent to the prosecution for perjury of this class of female charge-bringer, the Metropolitan Railway, for example, will remain as unsafe for men to travel on alone as it is at present. Nevertheless, it is true that hysteria does occasionally produce a state of dementia, the symptom of which is this bringing of false charges in a manner so specious as to deceive the very judicial “elect.” I would suggest, therefore, that in all cases where the defence took the form of a plea of hysterical delusion, and when this plea was accepted by the jury, that the acquitted prisoner should be immediately consigned on the judge’s order to a criminal lunatic asylum. Such a woman is evidently, in her way, quite as dangerous left at large as the mere male homicidal lunatic who, acquitted on the ground of insanity, is promptly sent to Broadmoor. This coupled with an energetic action against the

76 Legal Encouragements to Blackmail (1897) prosecution in all bogus charges of this nature, on the part of the Treasury, would soon render the female blackmailing profession less safe and less profitable. If the law is partial to the female charge-maker, it is scarcely less so to the police-prosecutor. The object of the policeman in bringing false charges against the lonely wayfarer at night, is not only the obvious one of extorting money from his victims, but also of currying favour with his superiors and possibly receiving promotion, by a show of zeal and energy. The chief points to be noted here, are (1) the credulity with which police-evidence is received by magistrates as against civilian evidence, and (2) the favour accorded to a charge-bringing policeman by the police authorities. This whole question of police-blackmail was, however, so thoroughly thrashed out at the time of the false charge brought against Mr. Alexander some months back that it is sufficient here to call attention to the fact that the system is still going on which renders it possible, and that cases of it are doubtless happening well-nigh every night of which we hear nothing.

77 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Sexual Ethical Twaddle (1899) E. Belfort Bax, Sexual Ethical Twaddle, Social Democrat, June 1899, pp.165-68. We are every day reminded of the vitality of survivals in habits of thought no less than in ways of life. With the insidiousness of black-beetles in an old house they return again and again to the charge after you think you have finally routed them out. What I have elsewhere termed the “ethics of introspection” as opposed to the ethics of social utility seems to have a most astonishing vitality. Now the ethics of introspection finds its sanction in some traditional sentiment, or mayhap in some catch phrase, or abstract formula, which has probably had a meaning once, but which has degenerated into a “canting motto.” The ethics of social utility, on the other hand, finds its sanction solely in the definite and obvious demands of the welfare of the social body, and recognises the greatest possible free play of the individual in all matters not directly conflicting with social interests as a whole. The object of the introspective ethics is to erect asceticism into a standard of conduct. Though it will equally attack any of the wants of the flesh, its special and favourite hunting ground has always been the sexual impulse. Here it takes the most specious forms calculated to deceive the very elect. We must not, however, be taken in by the sweet reasonableness it may assume. Let us remember that we have to do with a Melusina – that the fair-looking exterior is but a metamorphosed serpent – the old serpent, asceticism, the subtle enemy of human rights, father of hypocrisy, and of every violation of nature – the accursed thing which to recognise should be to strike down. The latest illustration of the vitality of introspectivism and of the virulent character of the ascetic virus which usually accompanies it is to be found in the article of our friend Rothstein in last month’s Social-Democrat on the Ethics of Sex Relationship. Rothstein, I believe, is of Russian nationality, so possibly the Bacillus Tolstoianus may have played its part in bringing him to the ethical condition in which we find him. Now the touchstone of the ethics of Socialism is that the “ought,” though necessarily concerned with motive, as opposed to mere outward act, is none the less only concerned with it in so far as its object is definitely social and not where its subject-matter merely concerns individual taste. The latter belongs not to ethics, but to aesthetics. These two standpoints Rothstein seems to us to confound. This, however, for the present, by the way. Believers in the old theological sanctions have no difficulty in finding justification for asceticism. Those, however, who, having abandoned the old ethics of supernaturalism, still possess a hankering after an ascetic ideal, are driven to forage about for a new justification which has a semblance of being based on rational considerations. I say a semblance, since at bottom these considerations are not one whit more rational. Thus, about a year ago a

78 Sexual Ethical Twaddle (1899) pseudonymous writer in the Neue Zeit put forward the thesis that the sexual act was “wrong,” “degrading,” “a prostitution of woman,” and I don’t know what all else, when not followed – or at least not engaged in with the object of being followed – by offspring! Now, if he had been in a position to inform us that God Almighty, Jesus Christ, the Holy Virgin, the angel Gabriel, or other personages we in divers times and places have been taught to love and reverence, had miraculously revealed this ethical dogma to him his position would at least have been intelligible. He made no pretensions of this sort, however, so what remained was this pseudonymous gentleman’s assurance – his ipse dixit – that it was so, “even as he had said.” (After having been considerably “sat upon” by repliers, I am bound to say that in his rejoinder he considerably hauled down his flag.) Similarly with our friend Rothstein. After giving a sufficiently good general sketch of the development of the sexual instinct, he concludes with the thesis that in its highest developments in man it is bound up with a complexity of psychological states “which is covered by the term love.” This is all right. But now comes the extraordinary non-sequitur of the article. Obviously no one objects to the high idyllic sentiment which from the context is clearly what the writer understands by the “complexity of states” termed love. This may always remain the highest ideal of sex- relationship. And I have yet to learn of any “fin de siècle morality” which “ bids us divest ourselves of a [this] most important element of our spiritual nature.” If there be such, it must be so rare and sporadic a development of “degeneracy” as not to be worth serious consideration. But here, as just said, comes in the extraordinary logical gymnastic of friend Rothstein. From the above unimpeachable propositions, to which we can all subscribe, he draws the astounding conclusion that love (in his sense) “alone can supply the necessary ethical sanction,” etc., for sexual connection. Now, how by any ordinary rational method he has succeeded in reaching this result I submit is enough to puzzle the celebrated lawyer of Philadelphia, I for one am fain driven to the hypothesis that he has been interviewing the angel Gabriel or some other distinguished character from above as to the sexually right and wrong. The sexual act viewed on mundane principles, like any other animal function, per se belongs to the domain of aesthetics not of ethics at all. In order to be brought within the sphere of ethics it must be connected in some way with a distinct social relation outside the persons immediately concerned. Otherwise it is what Mill would have called “a self- regarding action.” We all admit that the idyllic love sexual relation is the most beautiful. But according to Rothstein’s own showing there are a number of persons who, from temperament or circumstances, are condemned, to remain outside it. All these poor creatures whose “complexity of states of the psychological order ... covered by the term love” do not reach the Rothsteinian sixth-form standard with respect to each other are to be sent away howling into the wilderness. This is clear, since, in spite of his talk, about “Love in its manifold manifestations,” Rothstein rules out mutual consent, which to most of us would

79 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader cover one of the most common “manifestations” of love. No, what he wants is love à la Senta and the Flying Dutchman – the ich bin die dich durch ihre Heil erlöse sort of thing. Now, I should much like to know the percentage of married couples in England, who, supposing “the great white throne” were set, the books were opened, and Rothstein acting as heavenly attorney-general, would not quail before his searching eye as he rose to indict their morality on the principles of his “ethics of sexual relationship.” No one is more alive to the fact than myself that the idyllic love of the poets exists. But it is a rare exception, and will, so far as we can see, remain so for a very long time to come. To require of a man, to whom circumstances have not granted this idyllic love, sexual abstention, is about as reasonable as to require him to stop breathing in the courts and alleys of Whitechapel, where he cannot obtain good air, or to tell him that since he cannot get the highest class of French cookery his “clear line of conduct” ethically is to abstain from eating altogether. For even in the affairs of the stomach there is a higher and a lower, just as in those of other organs. And more by token this higher and lower has its influence on character. Feeding on “cagmag,” London “fried fish,” or such-like abominations, under the filthy conditions that prevail, future ages will probably recognise to have defiled the men of to-day as much as what is deemed the most degraded form of sexual indulgence has ever done. The influence of food and drink (apart, of course, from the well-worn subject of excess in alcohol) has been far too much neglected as a factor in the making or marring of character. There is a sentiment in cookery as well as in love. Let our friend Rothstein beware. He wants to be an angel, and with the angels sing. That is all right. But then he should not wish to force his neighbours to be angels also, and to make them sing too whether they want to or not. The illogical attempt to take back under the name duty what he has conceded under the name right will not help Rothstein, since no clear ethical thinker will admit that it can be a duty to forego any right, as a matter of principle (although, of course, there may be special occasions on which, for exceptional and clearly- defined reasons, it may be a duty to do so). No, no, comrade Rothstein, the attempt to force the angelic wings on unwilling recipients has been tried too long and too often throughout history, and has uniformly resulted in failure, asceticism (i.e., a false introspective view of duty), has invariably proved the parent of hypocrisy and corruption. Socialistic morality must once for all break with it. Our watch-word must be, “Let us be natural!” If we are destined to become angels the wings will grow in their own good time. Surely ever so small a growth of true and genuine angels’ wing is of more worth than any amount of the great flapping stage-property wing with which Asceticism would adorn us. Applying what is here said to sexual ethics, what results do we obtain? Clearly these: – (1) Every human being has a complete ethical right to the physical exercise of his or her sexual instincts apart from anything else whatever. This moral right is per se “full round and orbicular” (as Hyndman

80 Sexual Ethical Twaddle (1899) would say). (2) It is also the duty of every human being to exercise this faculty in proportion to the needs of his or her physical constitution in order to ensure a healthiness of mind and body. (3) The ideal of sexual exercise may be that it take place under the conditions of the “love” of the idyllic poet. But the most usual condition, and for most men and women a highly satisfactory one, is what Rothstein terms “mutual consent” (be the marriage “free” or “legal”), which may also develop into the idyllic love in time or leastways into a very good imitation of it. The third condition mentioned by Rothstein – prostitution – must be regarded as a pis aller of capitalistic society, a deplorable necessity sometimes within the limits of that society, but in all cases the most undesirable form of sexual relation – though, perhaps, intrinsically not worse than the marriage for money. It is necessary to come back from heaven to earth in sexual matters, to recognise that the “physical basis” has its own concrete rights apart from aught else. By all means seek the highest form of sexual relationship, but let us recognise the ethical right of every man – that he is not immoral – when, if he cannot have what he likes in this connection he makes himself content with what he has. As to the “pure-minded man and woman” (a cold-blooded human entity unfortunately oftentimes apt to degenerate into the insufferable prig), he or she has a good deal to learn and will have to be educated. First of all, he or she will have to be taught to clear his or her mind of cant, sexual as well as other, to recognise differences of constitution as each having its own ethical justification. He or she will have to be further taught that it is wrong to hate those who differ from us sexually (as in other matters). Let me adjure comrade Rothstein to take in hand the pure-minded men and women of his acquaintance in this sense, lest a worse thing happen. For if the “pure-minded man and woman” be allowed to rampage too much in their wild state, the average sexually-minded man and woman may eventually rise in riotous revolt, calling for “three cheers for the ‘burning stain’” – and think what a shocking thing that would be! E. Belfort Bax

81 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

A Bundle of Fallacies (1901) The Social Democrat, Vol. V No. 1, January 15, 1901, pp. 5-10; In one of Aesop’s fables it is related how in a congress of mice it was decided that the best way of averting the danger of capture by the cat was to hang a bell round the cat’s neck as a warning of its approach. The question then was to decide who should be the plucky mouse to bell the cat. Now this fable will bear more than one application. There are some who plume themselves on hunting up some personal squabble to be made or some personal nastiness to be said, and doing it or saying it, and consider this a heroic form of cat-belling. But it may be pointed out that every old washerwoman (i.e., the typical old washerwoman – no disrespect to the calling or to woman-in-general) is fertile in this particular quality of heroism, and in fact that anybody who likes making himself a fussy and cantankerous nuisance can practice belling the cat after this fashion; in other words, can always persuade himself that something nasty has to be said or done, and say or do it, The English Socialist movement has already suffered too, much from this form of cat-belling at the hands of irrepressible busybodies. But there is another and more useful way of belling the cat, although it makes no claim to heroine. This is to expose the fallacies and misuse of language which often serve as argument with those who discuss Socialism and the public questions arising out of it, both from a friendly and hostile point of view. In this way the jingle of the fallacy may be distinguished as it is coming along, and the forewarned become forearmed against it. (1) First of all let us consider the ‘’question-begging appellative” or phrase with which it is sought to damage a principle with which you disagree by calling it a “fad.” Now the word “fad” means, according to Webster, “a hobby, freak, or whim,” and is connected with the old word to “faddle” meaning to “fondle,” or to “play with.” A fad, therefore, really connotes a small or comparatively unimportant matter which engrosses a large, or at least unusual, share of attention. From this it has readily come to mean something to which an exaggerated estimate of importance is attached. But the word has now got to be divested of all meaning whatever by being applied as a term of abuse to any doctrine or principle the user of it dislikes or finds inconvenient. For instance, to take an extreme case, we have heard Socialism itself, and and Catholicism respectively termed “fads.” Now it is perfectly admissible to maintain that these things are all or severally either wrong or right, but in no case, can they be “fads.” Whether they be right or wrong, true or false, they are too comprehensive, and involve too vast issues for either them or their opposites ever to be legitimately designated as “fads.” An opinion zealously held may be utterly and preposterously absurd without being a ‘’fad.” On the other hand another opinion may be perfectly sound yet a fad. Where a man devotes his whole energies to (say) anti-vaccination, 82 A Bundle of Fallacies (1901) and by his words or acts gives it to be understood that the entire future of the world’s history depends on whether the laws as to compulsory vaccination are repealed or not, he may justly be styled a “faddist,” and anti-vaccination a “fad,” and this quite irrespectively of whether we regard his views on the subject as in themselves well or ill founded.[1]14’ (2) Let us take another fallacy, this time traceable to a confusion of ideas, viz, the outcry against compelling a man to sever his connection with a party or organisation after he has (conscientiously, if you will) ceased to hold the principles for which it exists, or even after he has actively opposed those principles. Herr Eduard Bernstein was allowed to remain in the German Social-Democratic Party after he had denounced every Social-Democratic doctrine in turn and championed every move of capitalism in extremis, simply because the German Social-Democrats feared the cry of “heresy-hunter,” with allusions to the Inquisition, being raised against them by the bourgeois press. The doctrine of toleration was thus stretched to the insane point that a man must be tolerated in an organisation the principles of which he is opposing lest those who turned him out should be accused of following the practice of the Christian Church. But, as a matter of fact, the odious attached to the heresy-hunting of the Church has its reason of being, not in the mere fact that men pronounced to be out of accord with the dogmas of the Christian Church were expelled or excommunicated from it, which was a perfectly logical and just proceeding, but in that this expulsion was made to involve pains and penalties at the band of the “secular arm,” It is on the latter fact alone that the eternal infamy of the Christian Church, in its dealings with heretics, lies. I would ask those who take the conventional view, by what conceivable right a man can consider himself as hardly done by when he is formally required to leave a body with whose principles he has proclaimed himself in disagreement? If he likes to pose as a martyr on account of being subject to this very logical and obvious proceeding, let him! And surely he is welcome to the “heartfelt sympathy” of all the congenital idiots he can persuade to take his pretended view of the case. (3) We have all probably heard hard-put-to British champions argue, in the course of the present war, that because the Beers (as they express it) “stole the Transvaal from the natives” that, therefore, the British have a right to steal it from the Boers, not, bien entendu, to give it back to the natives, but to keep it for themselves. Now, without challenging the initial statement itself, utterly and absolutely false as it is, a moment’s reflection, shows the utter absurdity of the logic involved in the conclusion. I do not take refuge in the threadbare fallacy that “two blacks don’t make a white,” since, as I have before shown, they very often do, yet it is undeniable that for two blacks to make a white, i.e. for the second black to

14 Of course, there are cases in which it may be open to discussion whether a: particular cause as advocated by a particular person may be justly termed a “fad” or not, but the general principle of what constitutes a fad is clear enough. 83 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader cancel the first, the two blacks must stand in a certain definite relation to one another, which is not the case here. But to make the absurdity at once obvious it is only necessary to state an example. A, a garroter, violently robs B, a peaceable wayfarer, of his watch. The counsel for the defence urges as a plea for acquittal that the victim B (or to make the parallel more complete the victim’s grandfather) had at some remote date acquired the watch by sharp practice, not from the garotter or anyone connected with the garotter, but from someone with whom the garotter has no concern whatever. I would ask the reader whether he thinks this beautiful and original defence would stand the prisoner in stead before an average British jury, or whether it would strike anyone as an extenuating circumstance for the judge to take into consideration in passing sentence? The best right to stolen property so long as the institution of private property exists, clearly rests with the original owner, but the theft from the actual possessor, by a third party, having no claim to it is quite as much a crime as was the original theft (if we assume the actual possessor to have obtained it by theft). Forcible or covert deprivation of an actual possessor of property held by him, however obtained, by a person who (ex, hypothese) has no claim to that property, furnishes a complete case of the crime of theft. All else is purely irrelevant. Yet it is this class of windy fallacy which, incredible as it may seem, actually imposes upon some bull-headed Britons. (4) “He was only doing his duty is a common form of fallacy when urged as an excuse for what would otherwise he admittedly crime and cruelty. Just as if the label “duty” can make a crime not a crime! “Duty” is only a relative expression, and the judge who gives effect to a bad or unjust law, the executioner who gives effect to the judge’s sentence, the general who “carries through” military operations of an oppressive character with the object of crushing another people or stealing their territory, are one and all criminals as much deserving of punishment (if only the opportunity occurs of inflicting it on them) as the member of the “long firm” who, in accordance with the decisions of this organisation as to “ringing the changes” or “shoplifting,” feels it his “duty” to obey; or the “partner” who feels it his “duty” to save the business with which he is connected from financial ruin, by committing a forgery. There may certainly be considerations which change the normal character of an act under special circumstances, making a “black” “white”; but merely tacking on the epithet “duty” to a deed of blood committed by the judge, executive officer, or military commander is no more than a specious and impudent device designed to shield the iniquities of a governing class and its tools. The one justifiable act done by the reactionary Thermidorean party after the fall of Robespierre was the execution of Fouquier Tinville for “doing his duty” by obeying his superiors of the “Committee of Public Safety” in perpetrating the atrocious judicial murders of the “great terror.” It suited the purpose of the reactionists to punish this particular bureaucratic criminal, but they did not see what a (for them) dangerous, though eminently just, precedent they were creating.

84 A Bundle of Fallacies (1901) The fact is, of course, that the logic of conscience cannot sanction the thesis that social or official position makes an unethical act ethical or robs a crime of its criminality, On the contrary, it may well even aggravate its moral heinousness by importing into it an element of hypocrisy and cowardice – hypocrisy as implied in the plea of “duty”; cowardice because individual usually acts in conscious immunity from the natural or legal dangers to himself otherwise attending the act. The British officer in Africa can pillage and murder without fear of the police. (5) We come now to the favourite distinction between (justifiable) sentiment and sentimentalism. Wherein lies this distinction? Most people assume that it is to be found in quantity; to wit, that sentimentalism is simply an excess of sentiment in other people over themselves. But it requires very little reflection to show that this is too personal and subjective to furnish a valid test of the distinction. If even it be extended so as to mean the average sentiment of one’s day and generation, this also will not hold water for the reason that it entirely ignores the evolutionary or dynamic element in the notion, assuming it to have a fixed value, rather than, like everything else mental and physical, to be in a state of continual progress and change. Mediaeval or even seventeenth century sentiment would undoubtedly have voted opposition to rack and thumbscrew as gross sentimentalism, just as an influential section of public opinion to-day votes opposition to gallows and lash to be pernicious sentimentalism, and cannot conceive that a time will come when public opinion will view these institutions with as great abhorrence as modern public opinion does rack or thumbscrew. I assume ail along validity of the distinction. i.e. that the distinction is real. But if the distinction between sentiment and sentimentality or sentimentalism be real and cannot consistently be reduced to a question of mere quantity wherein does it lie? The answer, I take it, is that it lies in the distribution of the sentiment. The tendency of progress is toward a raising of the standard of sentiment, an increase in its quantity, in its tending to spread over areas hitherto unoccupied by it, and it is impossible to place an effective limit and say to sentiment – ie., to sympathy and revulsion at the idea of suffering – “Thus far shalt thou go and no farther,” since such a limit would be purely arbitrary. But where the sentiment gets concentrated at one point in excess of another, other things being equal, there you have sentimentalism, not because of the absolute amount of the sentiment present, but of its distribution, of its relative amount as regards its objects. Let us take two illustrations. There are some people whose abhorrence of cruelty to animals coincides with a comparative indifference to cruel punishment of children, and still more to the torturing of convicts by treadmill and lash. Or again, they will shudder with indignant horror at the beating of a dog or the overworking of a horse, and yet will hear without wincing of the horrors of an insanitary factory, or of unwholesome manufactures. I once knew a lady who, while

85 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader violently opposing vivisection of animals was prepared to allow its practice, if necessary in the interests of science, on criminals of a certain order. Now here, I conceive, we have clearly the right to describe such sensitiveness towards animal suffering as sentimentalism, not because it is necessarily excessive in itself, but because it is altogether out of proportion to the feeling for suffering in humans. Again, the feminist sentiment is almost pure sentimentalism, inasmuch as it is sentiment which, instead of being distributed over the whole of (at least) humankind, is congested on the female sex. If a man, driven mad by jealousy, or at his wit’s end for fear of blackmail, exposure and ruin, murders his wife or mistress, scarce a voice will be raised against his being hanged, nay, the general verdict will be “Serve the brute right"! But on the occasion of Mary Ansell deliberately murdering her sister, by means of poison transmitted through the post, for the sake of her sister’s insurance money; or (if possible, still worse) on that of Louisa Masset butchering with the greatest brutality, in cold blood, her little five-year-old son, in order to disembarrass herself of the expense of his maintenance, we have superhuman efforts to obtain a reprieve backed by much pathetic talk about “the poor girl!” This is true sentimentalism, By all means oppose capital punishment as much as you will, but spare a. little of the sentiment you so lavishly expend over the “poor girl” for the other, the “poor fellow,” who, we may imagine, just as little enjoys being hanged. (6) There is a familiar form of fallacy which consists in attempting to smuggle in a doctrine or policy under cover of a recognised principle on the basis of a superficial appearance of such a doctrine or policy being involved in the principle in question, when it is in reality in no way connected with it. An instance of this occurs to me in connection with the woman- suffrage agitation. The possession of the franchise by women may be for aught I care a postulate of eternal justice descending- straight from heaven upon men, or it may be a subtle scheme to confound progress emanating direct from the bottomless pit. All I am here concerned to show is, that one argument ad hominem often used by women’s rights advocates is a delusive fallacy, It is commonly represented that the political democratic or the Social-Democrat must necessarily, if he be consistent, be an advocate of woman’s suffrage. Now I submit that whether right or wrong in itself, woman suffrage is in no way whatever necessarily involved in a democratic or Social-Democratic programme. Democracy, whether political or whether Socialistic, is only necessarily concerned with the abolition of class-restrictions and distinctions, in the one case political, in the other economic and social as well. This has always been the meaning of democracy up till quite recently. But now, a new question, that of sex, is sought to be introduced. It is pretended that the principle of equality involved in the democratic idea necessarily includes the acceptance of a particular version of sex-equality. Now, sex-equality may be a be a very good thing, but I insist that it has absolutely no connection with democracy, which has always referred to class-distinction and in no way to sex-distinction. And hence a man may be a perfectly

86 A Bundle of Fallacies (1901) sound political democrat or Socialist and yet a vehement opponent of the extension of the franchise to women as well as certain other claims advanced by woman’s rights advocates, Class distinctions are exclusively based on political, social and economic conditions, whereas sex distinctions, as such, are based on organic or biological differences. The workman has essentially the same bodily and mental organism as his employer, but there is an essential difference between his bodily and mental organism and that of his wife. The problems raised by the sex-question may be correctly answered by the demands of woman’s rights advocates or they may not; but, in any case, the question of sex equality differs in kind from that of class-equality, and cannot be logically deduced from the latter. The two things stand on a different footing, whatever the view we may take of them. (7) We come finally to an important, because so very common, fallacy but as it is one which I have more than once dealt with elsewhere it, need not detain us long. I refer to the saying that “two blacks don’t make a white.” It is, of course, true that two actions each divorced from its surroundings and both from each other do not affect each other – an obvious and harmless proposition enough. But in the concrete moral world furnished us by this vale of tears, things are presented in mutual connection and not in isolated abstraction as “metaphysical entities.” Viewed then, as a part of the real world of human conduct, we find that two “blacks” very often do make a white, ie., that in a world where actions possess in practice no absolute value, but are conditioned by one or another, one of two actions, either of which when taken per se would be reprehensible, becomes just and right. Viewed as part of a connected whole, the second action, conditioned as it is by the first, loses its abstract character of wrongness or “blackness,” and by the very fact of its conditioning or connection becomes “white,” that is, justified. Of course, this obvious truth is recognised and acted on every day by persons who dispute it, when it suits their purpose, in controversy. As I have before pointed out, the whole theory of criminal law is based on its recognition. Yet there is no argument supposed to be so crushing to an opponent as flinging this utterly threadbare fallacy at his head. We have now considered seven well-marked and popular fallacies. They do not by any means exhaust the number of fallacious tags of which the controversialist. in straits stoops to avail himself, but they may serve sufficiently well as specimens.

87 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Blacks, Whites and “Fads” (1901) Blacks, Whites and “Fads”, Justice, 16th February 1901, p.6 (letter). DEAR COMRADE, In reply to the letter of Mr. Billy Johnson, in your issue of February 2, permit me to say that my recollection of the communication of his of a year ago, which he refers to, is that after reading it, I remained as wise as before as to the drift of his argument. I hope I duly recognised the brilliant corruscations of wit it contained, but they were, I suppose, too dazzling for my poor vision to pierce through to the wisdom behind. Under these circumstances I felt hardly in a position to answer his letter. I thought I had exposed the fallacy of the silly controversial “tag” in question clearly and conclusively both in Justice and in my article in the last number of the Social-Democrat, bit if Mr. Billy Johnson thinks otherwise and is really yearning for any little light I might be able to afford him on the subject; as he implies, perhaps he will kindly give me his objections to my argument in plain language unadorned by feathers, bladders, negroes, white-skinned babies and such-like recondite tropes so hard to be comprehended by a person of mere plain understanding, like myself. If he will do this I will, in my poor way, attempt to satisfy him. As regards “Ignoramus’s” rejoinder in your current issue, I must emphatically disclaim any intention of being discourteous to him. I merely referred to his signature as having been selected either “in truth or modesty.” More I could scarcely say, being absolutely ignorant of the personality concealed by it. Certainly, to describe an opinion as “tommy-rot” is not argument, but it is just as little argument to designate it a “fad”; while the latter epithet, I was contending, is not merely rude or untrue in intention, but etymologically incorrect in any case where the subject in question is of far-reaching importance. At the same time, It is difficult to characterise in parliamentary language such a statement as that “female slavery” (on a sex basis) exists! Feminists should really have a care how far they try the patient credulity even of their dupes, let alone of average men of the world. By the way, a good sample of the quality of feminist “wit” is afforded in another column of Justice, where a meeting is reported in which the chairman, having given expression to a commonplace truism, but which was supposed to be derogatory to “woman,” was met on the part of another speaker (capable of better things), by way of repartee, with a perfectly irrelevant personal reference to the baldness of his (the chairman’s) head! This brilliant and tasteful sally was received apparently with rapturous applause by the feminist audience. Amiable creatures, who can be amused so easily. – Yours,

88 Blacks, Whites and “Fads” (1901) E. Belfort Bax

89 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Outraged Feminism (1901) E. Belfort Bax, Outraged Feminism, Social Democrat, April 1901, pp.100-104. In an article in the January issue of the Social-Democrat I pointed out what I deemed a fallacious argument commonly employed by woman suffrage advocates. No attack was made on the principle of woman suffrage as such, which so far as concerned my contention, might, in itself, have been absolutely unimpeachable. I merely criticised a particular demagogic form of appeal sometimes used by its supporters. Nevertheless, the mere fact of having laid a critical hand on any argument that had ever been employed in the sacred cause of Feminism, seems to have been enough to raise a hornet’s nest about my ears. What I stigmatised as a fallacy, and that it is a fallacy I am still prepared to maintain, was the assertion of a necessary logical connection between woman suffrage and “democracy,” either political or Socialistic. “Democracy” has always meant the abolition of class- distinctions – political or economic or both – but until within the last few years has never been twisted into meaning the confusion of the social spheres of the sexes or the admission of the female sex to political functions. Modern democracy, which took its rise as one of the phases of the bourgeois revolt against feudalism and the absolutist bureaucracy that followed on feudalism, which again was one of the conditions of the rise of modern nationalities, was naturally at first patriotic and national. During the French Revolution the instinct of Internationalism sporadically asserted itself in democracy, and grew in the subsequent decades till Marx demonstrated the bankruptcy of and the essentiality, logically, economically, and ethically, of Internationalism as a basis for the realisation of modern Social-Democracy, which he expressed in the well-known formula. Thenceforward Social-Democracy, at least, became definitely internationalist, since the fall of class-barriers was seen to be inextricably bound up with the fall of race-barriers equally – at least so far as the progressive races are concerned. One can easily show that Social- Democracy involves many other points of belief and political practice, but the logical necessity for democracy of the general admission of women, as such, to political power has never been attempted to be shown. Destruction of class and of race-barriers does not necessarily carry with it the destruction of sex-distinctions as such, since, as I have pointed out, in sex you have to do with an organic difference, not with an economic difference, as with classes, or with a mere difference of political, linguistic, and other tradition, as with more or less allied races. This organic difference goes to the root of the physiological structure of each. Such a physiological difference takes the question out of the sphere of class and race, and places it in quite a different category, requiring to be dealt with by

90 Outraged Feminism (1901) different arguments. Up till recently the presumption of the general unsuitability of women for the exercise of political power has been tacitly or avowedly admitted.15 Now, it is clearly admissible to attempt to rebut this presumption, to show it to be unfounded and to prove the complete capacity of “Woman” (blessed be her name!) to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm of human affairs, and the advantage to progress of her doing so; in other words, to show that woman’s suffrage and democracy are inextricably bound up together. But as yet I have seen no serious attempt to do this, although I have known of many endeavours to “rush” the position by sentimental appeals, fallacious statements, flimsy rhetorical apologies for argument, followed by sorry struggles to retreat from objectors under cover of feeble jokes. The fact is the majority of democrats and Socialists are consciously or unconsciously not quite sincere on this question. They do not take it altogether seriously. Indeed, I sometimes wonder whether, when two male woman’s suffrage democrats meet each other in private they keep their countenances, or whether their interview doesn’t resemble that of Cicero’s two augurs. I am persuaded there are a vast number of male Socialists who, like our friend in Paris whose remark to Vandervelde is quoted by Mrs. Montefiore, simply do lip-homage to the feminist movement, and who regard anyone who takes them seriously as an amusingly naive fool. I know this to be the ease with some. However, for my part, I cannot help regarding their playing with fire to be as dangerous politically as it is unworthy otherwise. The man who regards feminism as wholly or in part injurious to progress ought, in my opinion, not only in common honesty, but as a duty to his party, to say so undeterred by the abuse or sneers of the shrieking brotherhood and sisterhood. Be it remembered in the case of the suffrage the question is not of social or economical justice, but of the effect of the exercise of political power by a biologically new element. This may be all right; it may be, as I heard a very superior idolatress of her sex say some years ago, that the mere political enfranchisement of women will solve the whole social problem. I am unable to believe so myself, but still “one never can tell.” All I say is, no serious attempt as yet has been made to rebut the presumption against the desirability of women being indiscriminately endowed with political power as things stand at present. Let us take Mrs. Montefiore’s article in the February Social-Democrat. Instead of setting herself to the task of pointing out the fallacy of the assumption by which women are regarded as (in the bulk) unfitted to exercise political power, she thinks it necessary to quibble about a

15 If we assume a period in early society, of female domination, of the Mutterrecht, as having been general, my contention is only strengthened, since the presumption is obvious that female dominance fell and was superseded by male through the inability of the former to adequately fulfil its functions – by the survival of the fittest in social evolution, in short. This, however, is too big a subject to enter upon in detail here and now, and hence I only allude to it in passing. 91 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader phrase of mine in which I alluded to the fact that the difference between two men, one in the position of employer and the other of workman, was of a totally distinct nature to that between the workman and his wife, and hence the demand for political equality in the latter case could not be placed on the same footing as in the former. Were not a lady in question, I should be inclined to quote in full Hamlet’s observation anent the grave-diggers. However, in dealing with this question, I promise Mrs. Montefiore “to speak by the card” in future, even at the risk of making my article resemble in prolix pedantry an auctioneer’s catalogue or a house-lease of a generation ago. Mrs. Montefiore thinks sex has nothing to do with the exercise of the suffrage. She may be right, but as it stands her assertion is a mere begging of the question. The suffrage means the exercise of political power, and there are a good many benighted individuals, some of them not quite so incapable of studying questions historically, either, who think otherwise. I am accused of “sapiently” remarking that the question of “sex-equality differs in mind from that of class-equality.” (What I wrote was, of course, in kind, but I assume “mind” to be a misprint). Thereupon Mrs. Montefiore thinks “it might be useful” if I would “explain” how I propose “giving class-equality to the male sex without extending it to the female sex,” and waxes funny over “duchesses and countesses flourishing in the land.” Now, I submit that it would not be at all useful for me to waste words over a piece of nonsense, the product of Mr Montefiore’s imagination, which she foists upon me but which I venture to assert no possible twisting of my words could have suggested to an unbiassed reader. Perhaps Mrs, Montefiore will not take it amiss if I suggest that such controversial tricks, such cheap pieces of Effect-hascherei, as that of the paragraph in question are unworthy of a woman capable of writing some of the articles I have seen over her name. The whole of the genuine argument (as opposed to jokes and quibbles) to be found in the article under discussion is contained in the two last paragraphs. Mrs. Montefiore finds that the suffrage ought to be given irrespective of sex just as “education is given irrespective of sex, as taxation is applied irrespective of sex, and as the civil and criminal law is enforced irrespective of sex.” As regards this I would point out that, as a rule, the question of sex enters very largely into education. I am not discussing whether it ought to or not, but as a matter of fact it does. The number of girls or women who follow the same course of education (other than elementary) as men is a mere handful. That taxation is applied irrespective of sex is nothing to the point, since taxation is based on property rather than on the person. This argument, therefore, is only good for those who would base the franchise on a property rather than a personal qualification, which I presume not to be the case with Mrs. Montefiore. The civil and criminal law is enforced irrespective of sex! Is it? If my fair disputant will procure the pamphlet, The Legal Subjection of Men, published some five years ago by the Twentieth Century Press, the statements of law as well as the facts contained in which have never been refuted, or even if she will endeavour to put away

92 Outraged Feminism (1901) prejudice and study impartially for herself any considerable file of “cases” in which women are concerned, she will hardly venture to repeat such a statement. Women, thinks Mrs. Montefiore, with Vandervelde, “must awake to political life” through Socialism. With all my heart! But I would point out that there are many indirect means by which women who have the grit in them, can even now influence political life, without the concession of the franchise to women in general. As to its having been “abundantly proved” that every extension of the franchise has been followed by “a sense of responsibility” in those to whom it has been extended, that is only true if Mrs. Montefiore takes the bourgeois view that “a sense of responsibility” is shown by the reactionary character of the vote given. If so, she might certainly cite the British workman-elector as a convincing instance in point. I am aware that this has been triumphantly put forward by the Liberal-capitalist press, but to hear a Socialist quote it with admiration is new. Mrs. Montefiore thinks Vandervelde “pertinently” asks “How it comes to pass that all reactionaries combat woman suffrage?” Now, I should have said the question had precisely the “pertinency” of the celebrated query addressed by Charles II, to the Royal Society, “Why a dead fish weighed more than a living one?” the fact being, of course, that if there is one question on which reactionaries are not unanimous it is just this one. Again, you find such revolutionary persons as Mr. Balfour, Mr. Haldane, Lord Grey, and Mr. Woodall on the suffrage side, and such hard-baked reactionaries as Mr. Labouchere in the opposition. That all Socialists agree, even in principle, in demanding the suffrage for women is not even now true, although many have allowed themselves to be “rushed” by sentiment and clamour into nominally giving in their adhesion to the proposal. There are, of course, some stupid reactionaries who will oppose any change merely because it is a change; but there are plenty of shrewder and cleverer men in the reactionary camp who are quite alive to the fact that reaction has, in all probability, a good deal more to gain than to lose by this particular change. In fact, as I have elsewhere pointed out, the peculiarity of the whole feminist movement which shows its absolutely unique character is that it entirely crosses all the lines which otherwise mark party divisions, and which are all based directly or indirectly on economical or class distinctions. You will find the most brutal advocate of strike-breaking and coercive legislation oftentimes weep tears of blood over the cruel oppression his imagination sees women groaning under at the hand of the wicked ogre – man. Lastly, if it be true, as Bebel has it, that no great movement, has ever been accomplished without women playing a part in it, it must be remembered that women have hitherto not had the political franchise, as a rule. What more conclusive argument, therefore, can you wish for in proof of the fact already referred to, that the franchise is not necessary to enable really capable and devoted women to exercise an influence on the course of public life? Q.E.D.

93 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader I have dealt at length with Mrs. Montefiore’s article because it is a good specimen (i.e., a favourable specimen) – since it contains at least two paragraphs of something like argument – of feminist if not of feminine logic. The contention in my article on “fallacies” remains unshaken by anything she has said. The advocacy of woman suffrage, as of feminism generally, is not logically involved in the democratic or Socialist position – at least, that it is so is, up to date, a mere assumption unsupported by any argument that will hold water for a single instant. The burden of proof, at least, lies with those who make the affirmative proposition. Up to the present time the whole feminist position has been smuggled through democracy and Socialism by dint of shrieky assumptions and fatuous jokes. That woman suffrage may be an admirable thing I have not denied. All I have contended and do contend is, that it has never yet been shown that it is necessarily involved in political democracy or Social-Democracy at the present time. E. Belfort Bax. P.S. – A reference has been made by our comrade Askew in Justice to myself, or others who may disapprove of woman suffrage, in connection with his specially retained brief (as it seems) to whitewash the German Party for its cowardly conduct in not expelling Bernstein. This is surely very weak. Every member of a party must logically be bound by the fundamental principles on which the party is based, but every member is not bound personally to accept every “plank” in the party programme for the year, which has been passed probably by a majority vote, and hence which he and others of the minority may he expected only to acquiesce in as a matter of form and “under protest.”

94 Ferri and the Woman Question (1902)

Ferri and the Woman Question (1902) Ferri and the Woman Question, Justice, 1st March 1902, p.6 (letter). Dear Comrade, I think anyone who compares the tone of Mr. Robertson’s fiery letter with my own which called it forth will be reminded of nothing so much as Sir Anthony Absolute’s exhortations to his son the Captain to “Keep cool, sir.” If anyone has done Mr. Robertson an injustice it is his friend “D.B.M.” My criticism was avowedly based upon her article, my “inferences” from which I contend were perfectly obvious and natural and certainly not “angry.” If Mr. Robertson had himself been a little cooler he would have seen that even the allusion to the term “mediaevalism” as a “nasty name” was made more in jest than in anger, although I admit I cannot consider Mr. Robertson’s attempt to fix a word of this sort upon thinkers who, whether right or wrong, are every whit as up to date as himself, as a particularly strong or courteous line of argument; and the threat as to reprisals in the matter of “characterisations” contained at the close of the second paragraph of Mr. R.’s letter I confess sent a cold shiver through me, and I only recovered my equanimity on reading the para next following in which the writer fires off at my head four samples of this wrath to come. I then felt reassured and can invite Mr. Robertson to “shoot away” in this kind to his heart’s content if it amuses him. I am sending for Mr. Robertson’s article and promise him to carefully peruse it, after which I will either repent and be converted or may possibly do my humble best, while avoiding “characterisations,” to argumentatively dispose of him in an English and perhaps Continental Socialist organ as well. He may find me “unscientific,” for I notice that to the feminist mind the recognition of any fact, or inference from fact which can possibly be construed as insufficiently complimentary to the ladies is “unscientific.” This, of course, I can’t help. I should say in conclusion that I have always had the greatest respect for Mr. Robertson in his literary and public career, and am only sorry he should have taken my remarks, directed as they were against the “Woman’s Rights” cultus in general, as involving any personal slight on himself. As regards Mr. Roe’s letter, I have to point out a misquotation. I wrote “noisy feminist section of the party,” not “noisy feminine” section. Many feminists are men, and for aught I know some of them may be among those men of whom Mr. Roe tells us he knows them to be fools. Mr. Roe should not presume that I consider women as out of place in the party, for I do not. Yours fraternally, E. Belfort Bax

95 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Shaw and Fabianism (1902) E.B. Bax, Shaw and Fabianism, Wilshires Magazine, August 1902, pp.39-40. NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB London, Eng. MY DEAR WILSHIRE: I don’t know whether our beloved brother Shaw is regarded on the other side of the Atlantic as he is here, to wit: as a refined human joke. Whether or not, I feel impelled by his article in the May number of the Magazine, to take up the pen in order briefly to warn our transatlantic comrades and friends against any temptation they may feel to take anything our Irish Heine says too seriously. I have, I may premise, already demolished the fallacies contained in the Shawesque perversion of the Socialist point of view, some year and a half ago in the columns of the Saturday Review. But our only Shaw, bowled over on one occasion, comes up again smiling the next with the same old weapons. Shaw is, of course, welcome to think “professed Socialism in a bad way,” if he chooses; but, when he alleges that the Social Democratic Federation at least has abandoned any of its principles, be they “catastrophic revolution” or what he terms “pious platitudes” (read the fundamental demands of Socialism), anent the “Socialization of the means of production and of exchange,” one feels it is necessary to protest, if only for the sake of those American readers who know not Shaw and his humor. As regards the first point the S.D.F. has never, neither does it now, deny the possibility of crises in which physical force may be a factor in the social revolution ahead of us. On the contrary, we regard it as next to certain that there will be such crises in England as elsewhere. While as to the second point, when the S.D.F. “abandons” the “Socialization of the means of production, etc.,” it will decree its own dissolution. Shaw appears to suffer chronically from a disease that I may term Radicophobia – a plank in the Radical platform is to G.B.S. like the proverbial red rag to the bull. Socialism must, for him, be something clean cut off from the past. G.B.S. persistently refuses to recognize that Radicalism has had its own work to do, and that in so far as Radicalism has failed to complete its historical task, the uncompleted portions of that task devolve upon the Socialism – that is its successor. Shaw rails at Socialist bodies for including in their programmes items accepted also by Radicals. The “Enfranchisement of Woman” (I suppose he means female suffrage), which is one of those mentioned, may be a piece of idiocy, as I think it is, but if so it belongs by no means exclusively to feeble, foolish Radicals and

96 Shaw and Fabianism (1902) Socialists, but would, if I mistake not, be subscribed to by the majority of the all-wise Fabian Society. There are, moreover, probably in proportion at least, as many Socialists, and even Radicals, who object to it as Fabians. And now what is the heaven-sent kind of Socialism Shaw advocates in place of the historical? What is Fabianism? For those who know the history of the Fabian Society, its literature and its ways, the answer is clear as daylight. Fabianism is nothing more than a movement for the aggrandisement and ascendency of the civil servant, in other words of the Bureaucrat. Your civil servant, your bureaucrat, must have his Fabian movement just as your army man has his militarist movement, or your parson his clerical movement. Fabianism is no less a class movement than the others, only owing to the circumstances of the case the bureaucratic movement, termed Fabianism, can more easily masquerade as Socialism by means of an equivoque, to wit by the modern class-state being confounded, by a verbal quibble, with the Social-democratic Society of the future. In fact, the whole of the Shaw case rests upon sleight-of-hand tricks with words. Take Shaw’s gibe at Social-Democrats for their “pro-Krugerism,” as he calls it. As everybody else knows our Internationalism compels us to be pro-Boers. Shaw appears to suggest that Internationalism consists in a great capitalist power aggrandizing itself at the expense of smaller and weaker peoples. Here again two contradictory principles are confounded by a juggle. Of this new interpretation of Internationalism, as meaning Imperialism let us hope “not a breath” does “stir” among us. Why does not Shaw carry his argument a step farther? A harmless and industrious workman on his way home is set upon by Hooligans and robbed of his tools. The Social-Democrat is naturally indignant at the aggression, at which Shaw observes that Social-Democrats today appear to have “not a breath” of the old collectivism stirring among them. They used to believe in the Communization of the means of production; now they talk as though individual property in the means of production were an institution of sacramental sanctity! Here we have an exact parallel to Shaw’s attempt to identify Imperialist robbery with the free federation of nationalities demanded by Socialist Internationalism. The forcible subjugation of weaker nations by stronger is no more Internationalism than the annexation of the workman’s tools by the common thief is collectivism in the means of production. No, my dear Wilshire, we of the S.D.F. are not likely to be caught by the Fabian bait. “Efficiency” may be all right, but you can pay too high a price even for it. Mr. Seddon and New Zealand, are they not there to warn us of the rottenness of bogus Socialism (save the mark!) With best wishes for the success of Wilshire, man and magazine, I remain, ever yours,

97 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader E. Belfort Bax

98 Feminism in extremis (1902)

Feminism in extremis (1902) Social Democrat, Vol. 6. No. 12, December 1902, pp. 361-367; It is an undeniable fact that many Socialists hold their social creed to involve the doctrine of what is called sex-equality, by which is commonly meant, not merely the freeing of the female sex from certain arbitrary, economic and social disabilities, equal reward for equal work, the right to follow, in general, any pursuit for which qualification can be shown, & c., but the same rights as man in all things, political, economic, domestic or what-not, supplemented by certain sex privileges and immunities, airily defended on the vague ground of physical weakness. Now in order to maintain this position it is necessary to assume the complete intellectual and moral equality of women with men, while judiciously conceding their physical inferiority. A desire, conscious or unconscious, on the part of these Socialists, as of other advocates of Feminism, is to make out a claim for women to all that is honourable and agreeable in the functions of human life, while safeguarding them from any obligation to accept rough or dangerous duties. Thus Bebel, in his “Frau und der Sozialismus,” while maintaining that no social function filled by men ought to be inaccessible to women, since any seeming unfitness in the latter is only the result of certain cruel oppression at the hands of vile man, yet is careful to guard his fair clients from the danger of being called upon for military purposes, even of defence. Now if we are to assume the physiological possibility of the results of oppression being inherited through one sex only, it would seem somewhat singular that only the physical inferiority should be inherited, and not the mental, since there is no obvious reason for assuming that while one is the result of oppression, the other is of original constitution. The consequence, however, shows itself in that while it is deemed only reasonable to regard women as unfitted for soldiering, it is in the eyes of the Feminists crass and blind male prejudice to deem them unfitted for responsible political office. The best-known Socialistic exponent of Feminism is, of course, August Bebel, but in his book, i.e., in those portions of it treating of the woman question, the violent prejudice is so obvious and the apparatus of argument so plainly coloured by parti pris that some Feminists are prepared partially to surrender Bebel in conceding his argumentation to be “doubtless open to criticism.” In the present article, therefore, I prefer to take as an exponent of the Feminist position an undoubtedly able and eminently sober-minded English publicist, and to constitute as my text an article of Mr. J.M. Robertson in No. 362 of the Reformer, consisting of a criticism of Enrico Ferri’s position on the subject of the equality of woman and man, a position shared by the present writer.

99 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader As already said, this question of moral and intellectual equality between the sexes is the key of the situation as regards Feminism, and hence it is to this point I shall address myself chiefly in the following paragraphs. Mr. Robinson accuses Enrico Ferri of being “unscientific.” This means, as we shall see, merely that Mr. Robertson disagrees with Enrico Ferri. In a long footnote (pp.20-22 of the English translation of “Socialismo e scienza positiva”) Ferri points out that the tendency of some Socialists to make the equality of man and woman an article of faith is due to a mental habit surviving from utopian Socialism. He might have said that it is also, and perhaps chiefly, due, as I have repeatedly pointed out, to the confusion between sex and class – i.e., a primarily biological category with a social and economic category. However, Enrico Ferri goes on to show how recent investigations have tended to confirm the fact of the physiological and psychological inferiority of woman to man. Now Mr. Robertson falls foul of Ferri on the ground of his using the general terms “woman” and “man,” his plea being that these terms are abstract, and, therefore, “medieval” (as he calls it) since no two concrete men and no two concrete women are exactly alike. I confess, on reading this, I fairly gasped at the straits to which Feminist advocates can be reduced for an argument, and the recklessness with which a usually telling and logical thinker will throw his reputation into the breach on behalf of the cause he has espoused – when it is that of the fair sex. To read Mr. Robertson one would think he were in a state resembling Mr. Jourdain’s, before he had discovered that he had been talking prose all his life without knowing it. For Mr. Robertson writes as if he were altogether unaware that the form of the Concept, at the basis of what is known in Logic as the “class-name,” is not only the primary essential of all human thought and language, but is a crucial factor even in our perceptive consciousness. In all his walk and conversation, Mr. Robertson, like the rest of us, has been employing this “abstraction,” the logical class-name, ever since he arrived at self-consciousness at all, and has, accordingly, to adopt his own phrase, been “medievalising” all his life. Our critic now suddenly makes the astonishing discovery (which, by the way, every mediaeval schoolboy could have revealed to him) that the class-name is an abstraction in that it never covers the entirety of the qualities of the particulars or individuals falling under it, which hence may differ inter se. But the still more astounding deduction he draws from his discovery would seem to be that we should abandon the use of the “general term” or “ class-name altogether, and so we suppose become Jogis, doing our level best to divest ourselves of all logical thought and human language. Yet no! This would be a too hasty view of Mr. Robertson’s position. He knows mercy and will still allow us to talk, even in scientific conversation, of dogs and horses, Hottentots and Russians and the like, and to predicate things concerning them, without branding us with the terrible stigma of being unscientific mediaeval survivals – and this, notwithstanding that no two dogs (not even of the same breed) are exactly alike any more than any two horses, or two Russians, or even two Hottentots. No,

100 Feminism in extremis (1902) where he draws the line is at human sex. if you speak of “man” or “woman” in general terms, if you employ the class-name in this case, then his anathema descends on you; then you are, indeed, a mediaeval survival discussing an abstract “man” and “woman” having no counterpart in “reality,” but being merely the coinage of a medieval brain. Mind you, I repeat, if you are a zoologist or a veterinary surgeon, you are not unscientific in differentiating between a greyhound and a spaniel, notwithstanding that no two greyhounds or spaniels are “concretely” alike. Similarly, if you are an ethnologist, you may talk of the race-characteristics of Hottentots and Slavs without even a stain on your scientific character! In this case the abstraction is all right; but, if you are a sociologist, and venture to distinguish sex, i.e., human sex, or to discuss the general characteristics of “woman” as distinguished from “man,” then woebetide you! Is the suspicion unnatural, that the sudden desire to confound the harmless and necessary class-name or logical “universal” is due to the fear lest its normal use should in this case lead to conclusions derogatory to the claims of emancipated womanhood. When Mr. Robertson talks about his million female college graduates (he would have a difficulty in getting a million together, I fancy) as against a million grooms or sailors, with a view of upsetting comrade Ferri, he is simply trying on the old dodge of placing exceptions against exceptions to subvert a rule. The female graduate is an exceptionally gifted woman, the groom in most cases an exceptionally non-intellectual man. Granted that a clever and well-trained dog might show more intelligence than a neglected human idiot, it would not bring us any nearer to a proof of the intellectual equality of man and dog. Place the groom from childhood under the same educational circumstances as the Girton girl, or vice versa, and you might have the basis for a comparison, but as the argument is stated by Mr. Robertson it is, I submit, simply an evasion of the issue. Brought up under special conditions, I believe, cats have been trained to eat grass, and sheep mutton chops, but this fact is not usually regarded as rendering the man unscientific or medieval who describes the former as carnivorous and the latter as herbivorous animals, and who proceeds to argue on this basis. In violation alike of physiology and ordinary observation, Mr. Robertson, in order to save the situation for feminism, would apparently maintain the thesis that the sexual system plays as important a part in the general intellectual and emotional life of the average man as it does in that of the average woman. Says Ferri, “all the physiological characteristics of woman are the consequences of her great physiological function, maternity.” “This is as good as saying,” observes our critic, that “man’s characteristics are not thus consequent on sex,” to which I reply, certainly they are not, at least to anything approaching the same extent. The whole mental life of the average woman is completely dominated by her sexual organisation. It determines her attitude in every question and in every department of life. Her sexual relation to man is the fulcrum moving her whole life until she becomes a mother, when this is, of course, modified by the maternal relation. With

101 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader man, on the contrary, sex is only an element, generally even, by no means the strongest, in determining his general mental life. It exists more as something per se; it may be strong or it may be weak, but in only exceptional pathological cases does it infiltrate that mental life in the same way that it normally does in woman. As I have elsewhere put it, we are justified in referring to normal woman as being a sex (in common language, woman is spoken of as “the sex”), and to normal man as having a sex. The actual sexual instinct or passion may (if you will) be stronger in man than in woman, but, even if so, it does not in the same way interpenetrate his entire life. It is not the fulcrum on which his whole mental constitution turns. To deny, as is apparently done by Mr. Robertson, that a woman’s mental processes are consequent on her sex-function to an extent and in a sense in which men’s most assuredly are not is, I repeat, a procedure so flagrantly in contradiction with physiology and ordinary observation that Mr. Robertson can hardly expect us to accept it without more ado, even on his authority. Mr. Robertson, like other Feminist advocates, would, as we have seen, deny that there are causal elements in the female constitution, physical and psychical, that are sui generis. To do so, he says, is “reducing psychology to chaos.” What he means by this I do not profess to know. All I can say is, if the recognition of a self-evident fact is to reduce psychology to chaos, the sooner this happens the better, since so much the sooner will poor psychology have a chance of being reconstructed on a more reasonable basis – a basis which will include all facts, however distasteful they may be to the individual psychologist. Pursuing his extraordinary line of argument, the first condition of which, like that of most Feminists, seems to be the denial or ignoring of patent truths, Mr. Robertson goes on to emphasise his point, alleging that Ferri’s contention as to the influence of the sexual system on women could not be true except on the hypothesis that every woman were in a continual state “of pregnancy, parturition or lactation"! And this is a critic who veritably runs amuck with the word “unscientific” among all whose science leads them to results uncongenial to the Feminist mind. We note by the way that Mr, Robertson writes as though he had never heard of menses as the most constant and hence in the long run most severe manifestation of the female sex-organism. Mr. Robertson actually goes so far as to allege that the sex- function apart from maternity is more of a drain on men’s than on women’s strength! To what length of absurdity will parti pris not carry us! But the really startling fallacy of our author lies in the assumption that the peculiar sexual-organisation of women can only affect their general bodily and mental structure and functions during the period of its special activity. That the mere fact of this sexual organisation being present, the whole system otherwise having to contribute to its maintenance, he apparently regards as quite immaterial. Yet it is precisely on the existence of this sexual system as such and on the demands it

102 Feminism in extremis (1902) makes that Ferri’s argument is primarily based, and not merely, or even chiefly, on its special periods of activity. Ferri’s critic is fond of using the expression “bluff” respecting controversial statements he does not like. But if there ever was an instance of “bluff” in argument, I submit the article under discussion about “takes the cake.” Mr. Robertson, as we have seen, begins with a piece of logical “bluff,” endeavouring to bamboozle those unversed in the “Tree of Porphyry” anent the proper use of the “class-name” or logical “universal.” He next tries on a physiological piece of bluff – the assumption that the action of the sexual system in man and woman respectively on the general life is comparable in kind and amount. He emphasises this by a further piece of bluff – viz., the assumption that Ferri’s argument, as based on the peculiar characteristics of the female sex-system, could only be applicable during the periods of the latter’s special activity. He goes on making the astoundingly “bluffing” assertion, unbacked by any proof, an assertion refuted by common experience, that the sexual function, apart from maternity, is more of a drain on men’s than on women’s strength – and so on. Mr. Robertson is naturally prepared to grant the inherent muscular weakness of women as compared with men. But he is careful to point out that physical or muscular strength and intellectual capacity are seldom united in the same individual. This is very true, only, unfortunately, it does not help the Feminist position. The problem for Feminism is to maintain the mental equality of woman with man, while speciously conceding the physical inferiority. Hence this observation as to the respective proportion of physical and mental capacity present between individuals of the same sex is made to do duty as an argument when the question is of one sex with another. The (logical) class or category called man contains a general potential capacity that may actualise itself either in physical or mental capacity. But this is, says Mr. Robertson, often distributed in inverse proportions between individual men, the mentally strong man being often the physically weak, and vice versa. Hence, he argues that the physical inferiority of women does not presumptively imply their intellectual inferiority. The fallacy here is obvious. A fact which applies between the individuals of one category he would make apply as between two distinct categories. The sex-category man, say for the sake of argument, possesses a certain general potential energy, capacity or power. This may actualise itself in any given individual man as mental power (at the expense of physical) or as physical (at the expense of mental). But over the whole range of men both are present. If, however, you admit in the case of woman that there is a persistent inferiority throughout the whole sex, of one form of actualised capacity, the physical, the presumption is surely strong that the total capacity, mental as well as physical, in the sex-category woman is less than that in man, and it is, I submit, a presumption which will require a good deal of rebutting.

103 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader No mere reference to the distribution between individual men, as regards the physical and psychical sides of the total potential capacity of man as a whole (i.e., as a sex), will suffice to effect this since the basis of an analogy is wanting. For a gentleman, however, who has such a sovereign contempt for logical forms as Mr. Robertson we suppose it would be too much to expect that he should recognise this. But, says the Feminist, the intelligence of woman may be different from that of man but not necessarily inferior. The whole of the evidence available, I answer, points to woman’s inferiority as an organism. In addition to the facts brought forward by Ferri we have a mass of cumulative proof which is overwhelming. Let us enumerate some of the main points in connection with this. 1. The smaller average size of the organism, otherwise, in the main, the same in essentials as that of man. 2. The proportionately inferior mass and quality of the brain matter (as shown by anatomists). 3. The special character of the female sexual-system and its functions, especially menstruation, which necessarily tends to draw off strength from the brain, the nervous and muscular systems. 4. The earlier ripeness of the female organism as compared to that of the man (it is well known that, other things equal, an organism inferior in the order of evolution reaches perfection sooner than a superior organism). 5. The lesser susceptibility to pain proved of women by the experiments of Lombroso and others, and the greater constitutional toughness of vitality in women than in men, characteristics at least strongly suggesting a lower form of evolutionary type. 6. The liability of women to hysteria in one or other of its forms, one woman in four or five, or according to some estimates even a higher percentage, being affected by it to a greater or less extent, varying as it does from slight and unimportant nervous symptoms to positive insanity (a remarkable illustration of how this tendency handicaps women in all occupations demanding close attention is afforded by the recent report concerning the employment of women in Post Offices and other Government departments in Germany.) 7. The fact that, even in those directions (e.g., art and literature) where no special prejudice or barrier has stood in the way, women have, with one, or two exceptions, never achieved anything noteworthy. 8. The fact admitted by every observant person who has not taken a brief in the Feminist cause, of the usual comparative absence in women of the foundation of all morality, the

104 Feminism in extremis (1902) sense for abstract justice, of a regard for truth, and of the capacity for forming an objective and disinterested judgment. In conclusion, I would once more call attention to the singular circumstance that, whether really so or not, while, on the face of things, women are inferior to men mentally as well as physically, yet the Feminist, while readily accepting the second kind of inferiority as essential to women, storms and raves at the bare suggestion that the first kind of inferiority may also be necessarily part of the equipment of the female sex. To deny essentiality for either would be at least consistent, but then what would become of woman’s privileges based on her supposed weakness? Mr. Robertson’s desperate attempt to confound the distinction between Men as such, and Women as such, in endeavouring to maintain that the difference between the average man and the average woman is no more than that between one man and another, or one woman and another, is too thin to pass muster outside the brotherhood and sisterhood of sworn Feminists. I think I have shown that Mr. Robertson’s science, whatever it may be at other times, when infected with Feminist parti pris, does not amount to much. On the other hand, what has Mr. Robertson done to show anything unscientific in Enrico Ferri’s “note” in Socialismo e scienza positiva? He sets up sundry assertions contrary to received physiology and certainly contrary to the results of ordinary observation, in opposition to certain of Ferri’s statements. The only score he makes is over a slip or misprint of the word no where the word few was quite obviously intended. In Sahara one is thankful for anything in the shape of moisture, and, considering the hopelessness of our critic’s case otherwise, I do not grudge him the capital he seeks to make out of a typographical error. This error is, in the opinion of Mr. Robertson, sufficient to entitle the “Feminist” to deny him (Ferri) any further hearing! When we have to deal with woman’s rights champions, it is clear we must look sharp after our proof-sheets after this. For the rest, I venture to say that to any impartial person the “note” criticised will be found to be as rigorously scientific as the nature of a brief statement admits. The characterisation, moreover, of women “as ranking between the child and the adult male” seems as happily to hit off the case as presented to common observation as it is possible to do in a short sentence. And now our last word on the relation of Feminism to Social-Democracy. As Dr. Möbius, in his remarkable pamphlet, truly says, “if Social-Democrats allow themselves to be caught by the Feminist fallacy, they are only injuring their own cause.” The same author also justly points out that the proletarian woman-movement has no necessary connection with the so- called “woman’s rights” or Feminist movement, which is rather individualist or anarchist. The aim of the latter is, in a word, to obtain for the female sex men’s rights combined with women’s privileges, and this goal, I am afraid, also seems at the back of certain Socialist pronouncements on the woman question.

105 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader E. BELFORT BAX.

106 Female Suffrage and Its Implications – An Address to the Central Branch of the SDF (1904)

Female Suffrage and Its Implications – An Address to the Central Branch of the SDF (1904) Social Democrat, Vol.8, no.9, 15 September 1904. pp.533-545. Reprinted in E. Belfort Bax, Essays In Socialism, New & Old, 1907, pp.533-545. It is impossible to separate the question of the suffrage from the woman question in general, which is as much as to say, the suffrage opens up the whole question as to whether women as a whole are to perform the same functions in society as men and hence to have the same rights. The question, it may be observed, mainly concerns political rights (in the widest sense), i.e., rights of sharing in the direction and administration of society – equal economical rights are, of course, conceded in general, equal advantages from equal labour in some form or other being a fundamental demand of Socialism. While as regards social and legal rights, as we shall point out presently, women are already in a position of privilege as regards men. It is, then, with legal and administrative rights that we are primarily concerned. Now, it seems to me, that the question we are dealing with resolves itself into three: (1) Are we justified in barring any section of human beings as a whole, which, through general intellectual inferiority or otherwise, is recognised as relatively incompetent to fulfil certain functions, from those functions? (2) Have we the right to conclude that women are, in general, intellectually inferior to men, or otherwise incompetent to have a voice in legislation and administration? (3) Admitting them to be sufficiently competent, are there other grounds, justifying their exclusion at present from public life in this sense? As regards the first point, first let us examine what the conception “justice” means. It may be quite true that concrete justice always implies a definite content, but nevertheless, all concrete and particular justice presupposes an abstract and general justice by which the former can be measured. Now, the abstract principle of justice is covered, I take it, by the notion of equality, as Aristotle found out long ago. But when closer viewed this “equality,” it is seen, must be a relative equality. It must be an equality determined by the total circumstances of a particular case and not merely by one or two of its most obvious and superficial aspects. It is this last consideration which decides its character or determines its content in any particular instance. Judged by this standard, then, I take it there exists a right to debar in general the unfit from the exercise of certain functions within a given society – provided that the unfitness results from organic causes and is not merely the temporary and direct outcome of defective economic and social conditions within the society itself. This is generally recognised even as regards the franchise. For example, children, i.e., young persons up to a certain age, are

107 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader by common consent excluded from the right to exercise the suffrage as being unfit by reason of immaturity. Even the most suffrage-thirsting democrat limits his demands to adult suffrage. Then, again, where you have within a society an alien population of an intrinsically lower race the right to exclude such a population from interfering in the regulation and administration of such a society by its votes or otherwise, would be admitted at least by many thoroughgoing democrats. And the more so now that the experience of this particular application of the man-and-the-brother doctrine in the United States has proved its unworkability. The reason is obvious – lower races stand in the same relation to higher races that children do to adults. Their minds are so far different from the former, that there is no basis of organic equality between the two. In this case, of course, of lower and higher races, while the attempt to amalgamate them in one commonwealth can only be productive of mischief, the true solution is that the organically lower race should be left to itself to work out its own social destiny. For instance, my solution of the negro question in America would be, while excluding the negro from the franchise in the white States, in those of the Southern States where he was in an overwhelming majority to hand over the government of the State entirely to the negro, to the exclusion, for that matter, of such white population as there might happen to be. The white American might not like this, but it would be the only just way out of the difficulty which his ancestor has created by forcibly importing the negro out of Africa. This, however, by the way. I have only wanted to show that the exclusion from political influence in the society, whether by vote or otherwise, of elements organically inferior, or, if you will, organically different, from that which has hitherto constituted the society, is not necessarily inconsistent with a democratic attitude which would level, in politics, all distinctions [apart] from economic differences; in other words, on class in the ordinary sense of the word. Between fundamentally disparate things there can be at least no direct relation of equality. Now Socialism is a doctrine proclaiming the fundamental identity for a common socio- political life of the men of the progressive races, the apparent diversities being non- fundamental to such a common life. These diversities it traces mainly to economic and political causes – in the case of classes to economical causes solely; in the case of races within the circle of modern civilisation (with which, as above said, Socialism is alone directly concerned), largely to political causes, as well as to economical causes, the organic differences between these races, if we assume such to exist, being so slight as to be non- fundamental from the point of view concerned. But Socialism does not affirm that the negroid branch of the human family (say) is in the same case. For here we clearly have to do with an organic difference of a deep-lying, if not fundamental, character. The mind of the savage, of the Bushman, or even of the Kaffir, is to that of the progressive races as the mind of a civilised child to that of a civilised adult. There is plainly, therefore, here not even the basis of a common politico-social life. This fact alone (we observe, by the way) ought to

108 Female Suffrage and Its Implications – An Address to the Central Branch of the SDF (1904) bring home to us the cruelty and criminality of the imperialistic enslaving of such races, thereby destroying their own social forms-forms which are alone suited to them. It is, I say, a false conception of justice which demands for such races the franchise in an alien social organisation. True justice insists upon the duty of “hands off,” i.e., of freedom and development for them from within, along their own lines. For where deep-seated organic disunction obtains, justice must have a different content to where no such distinction obtains. Again, as already said, within every community you have an order of human beings who by common consent are unfitted for the functions of regulating and administering the community, viz., children or young persons under age. Here also there is no basis of direct equality, the immaturity constitutes an organic distinction which in this case also gives justice with regard to them a different content to what it would have if this distinction were not present. There is a justice, of course, in their case, because there is a form of equality to be arrived at, but it is an indirect justice because the equality is indirect. There is justice, for that matter, for all living beings, for animals as well as human beings, but it does not consist in giving them all the franchise. I think it is clear, therefore, that we are justified in debarring any order of persons from the franchise if they, as a class, indicate an inferiority based on an organic difference which is likely to render their co-operation in political or administrative life a danger or disadvantage to the community as a whole. For let us make no mistake, the active franchise (so-called) means the first step towards the passive; and this again is the step to all other political functions; just as the Bar is the first step towards the Bench, and this again towards the highest administrative functions in the existing State. You cannot practically limit any order of persons to the first step alone, with a “thus far shalt thou go and no farther.” from the right of election to a legislative body, to the right of membership of that body, for instance, there is no logical halting-place. Now the question arises, are we to regard women as possessing a deep-lying organic difference, involving inferiority, to men? If so, we shall be eo ipso justified in opposing woman-suffrage on the ground that the well-being of the community as a whole would be endangered thereby. “Equality in a reasonable sense,” as Möbius says, “can only mean that injustice is done to no one, that there is equal reward for equal achievements.” It does not mean necessarily, as above pointed out, that every one, irrespective of vital differences, should have the same rights. Have we, then, the indications of mental inferiority in woman? I must here enter a protest against the trick of certain Feminists in attempting to belittle the difference between men as a sex-class and women as a sex-class. The immense difference (I do not say, mind, inferiority) between the mind of woman and the mind of man is patent and obvious to all who have no interest in denying it. An attempt to ignore this self-evident fact – a fact open to the observation of everyone – seems to me waste of time to discuss. Deny the inferiority if you will, but do not deny the difference. Talk about there being no

109 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader greater difference between the sexes than between one man and another and one woman and another, we can hardly regard as seriously meant. References to the comparatively slight distinction between the sexes in animals does not affect the question. It would seem that the sex-distinction in man approaches the relative magnitude of the specific or variational distinction in the lower animals. Möbius explains this greater differentiation of the sexes in the human species than in animals by the long period of helplessness in the human offspring. Whether this is so or not I am not prepared to say. The point really at issue is, I take it: Does this distinction involve either general inferiority or inferiority in certain directions? Both those points I think must be answered in the affirmative. Of course, I cannot here argue the case in detail. The main line of proof for the general inferiority of women is given at length in the introduction to the well known work of Lombroso and Ferrero on the Female Criminal. To take the physical indications of inferiority first. I will not dwell upon the inferiority as regards size and development of physique generally, though this might also have its significance, but would point out that according to the researches of Bischoff and Rüdinger not merely is the female brain absolutely smaller than that of the man, but relatively smaller allowing for the difference of size in the organism. Rüdinger has dealt with the matter, and gives a series of plates and tables showing from a large number of instances that the important parts of the brain are themselves relatively smaller; and not only so, but what perhaps is more important, that the convolutions even in the new-born child are much simpler and cruder in the female than in the male. The differences are vastly accentuated in the adult, the formation of important parts of the brain presenting quite a different appearance in this respect between the sexes, approaching, as regards proportions, in the female to the pre-human type. The inferior sensibility to pain discovered by Lombroso in women is a well-known fact. The special character of the female sexual system and its functions by the amount of vital energy they absorb would, apart from anything else, naturally lead us to expect an inferior development. The same conclusion is pointed to by the earlier ripeness of the human female organism. Now, let us look at another group of facts not referring directly to the structure of the female sex, but to its intellectual functioning. Where and when throughout history can we discern in any branch of original thought or imagination or emotional activity, women that have achieved anything noteworthy – in science, in philosophy, in political practice, in invention, in the fine arts (painting, poetry, music)? The few exceptions in one or two of these departments in which women have approached the achievements of third-rate men, only suffice to prove the rule. Now, how do you explain this? Oh, it is said, women have been repressed, and have had no opportunity of showing their latent capacities! But it is forgotten that they have by no means been discouraged in all departments; on the contrary, rather the reverse in the fine arts and certain lines of literature. Furthermore, male genius has shown

110 Female Suffrage and Its Implications – An Address to the Central Branch of the SDF (1904) itself, where it existed, in the teeth of the most adverse circumstances. “Ah, but,” it will be replied, “how many among men are not geniuses, and yet you don’t deny them the franchise on the ground of inferiority on that account!” This is to mistake the argument, which is only designed as a test. From the heights of the summits one may gauge that of the table-land beneath them. If one order of human beings produces a continuous crop of geniuses in every – the most divergent – departments, and another order does not, we may fairly conclude that the average of the order that produces few or no geniuses is also, as an average, inferior to the order that produces many. Again, as regards the undoubtedly considerable memory capacity of women when specially cultivated, a capacity which enables them to compete with men in cram-examinations, Möbius (Die Physiologische Schwachsinn des Weibes) points out that even this form of intellectual power is rapidly lost in women, especially after a few years of married life. He observes the same in every other form of mental activity in the case of women. However brilliant in the girl, it has no durability. These things, however, I admit, though undoubtedly indicating inferiority, might not be taken as sufficient to exclude women from public functions. We will, therefore, pass on to a more serious form of inferiority. I refer to the special tendency of women to hysteria. In common language, the word hysteria (hysterical, &c.) is often used to designate any form of mental excitement or strong emotion. This, of course, is a misuse of words. I have heard it said that men “get hysterical” over political issues, over Parliamentary candidatures in this country, Presidential elections in the United States, &c. Such talk, however, is merely synonymous with saying that they get excited, but mere excitement of the passions or emotions does not necessarily imply hysteria.16 The symptoms of true hysteria, in women, the exaggeration of trifles into issues of absorbing importance, the flushing, the stertorous breathing, &c., are familiar to common observation, and may be found detailed in any medical treatise on the subject. Now this form of nervous and mental

16 The mere shedding of tears per se, an ebullition of temper, a display of enthusiasm, however unusual in intensity, a wave of emotional sentiment (started, as so often happens, by collective suggestion), a one-sided or even “cranky” insistence upon a particular aim; all these things have usually no connection what ever with the special pathological condition termed hysteria. Excitement is only one symptom of hysteria. As well say that every person with a flushed face is suffering from scarlet fever as that every person who gets excited is therefore hysterical. Of course, as we all know, all the above symptoms are commonly stigmatised as “hysterical,” which in such cases is merely a term of abuse by those who are annoyed by them. Where there is any approximatively or even conceivably adequate external cause for the display of an emotion, recourse to a pathological explanation is unwarranted and gratuitous. Besides, there are many pathological mental conditions other than hysteria. If I am not mistaken, Hippocrates was the first medical authority to whom a description of true hysteria was attributed, and which is, I believe, surprisingly accurate even when compared with present-day manifestations of the malady. 111 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader disturbance, is, I submit, almost wholly confined to women. It is not to be denied, of course, that men, or rather boys, occasionally exhibit hysterical symptoms of the genuine type. But these cases are always comparatively rare. With women, on the contrary, hysteria is the commonest disorder. It varies, of course, enormously in degree, from being a mere tendency exhibiting itself in slight and unimportant nervous symptoms to cases in which it becomes positive insanity and even acute mania. It has been calculated, I believe, that at the lowest estimate one woman out of every four or five is more or less subject to hysteria in one or other of its forms. The Government report, published in Germany in 1902, on the employment of women in post offices and other public departments, shows how heavily this form of nervous and mental disease handicaps women in the exercise of very simple administrative duties in that country. I am not aware whether a similar report on the subject has been issued in Great Britain. The very word hysteria, from [ύζτερα] (womb), is a proof that the disease has been from time immemorial associated with the female sex; and this is none the less significant, whether or no we accept the opinion that the womb itself has an exclusive connection with it. Hysteria, then, being a form of mental disturbance especially affecting women, and by no means to be confounded with mere emotional excitement, which may exist and proceed from a variety of causes equally in both sexes, surely it would be advisable for those impartial male persons who clamour for the admission of women to all political functions to suspend their enthusiasm at least until they have looked this subject up in recent medical treatises. Scarcely less important is the characteristic in women often remarked upon, namely, the curious absence so frequently seen of a sense of justice, as such.17 This, which so often vitiates their moral character (using the phrase in its true and widest sense), is, I think, itself deducible from their inability to appreciate abstract considerations generally, or, indeed, to interest themselves in any subject which does not centre in an individual. They care, not for principles, but for persons; they hate and love, not causes, but men. That, under certain circumstances, a defective moral sense is very liable to be engendered by this tendency, is obvious – for the simple reason that a moral principle is a universal and abstract rule and no respecter of persons. In concluding this portion of the subject, I will call attention to one singular inconsistency in Feminists. The physical weakness of woman is commonly held a sufficient ground for the possession of certain privileges and exemptions, but the mental weakness of woman, which

17 Of course, on saying this, one is fairly bombarded with irrelevant insistence on the fact that men can act unjustly, a proposition which, of course, no one denies. The point here is that women, as a rule, cannot even understand the principle of justice as such, or irrespective of their liking or disliking for individuals concerned in a particular application of it. Many men are sometimes swayed by personal prejudice, but women seem almost invariably to be so. 112 Female Suffrage and Its Implications – An Address to the Central Branch of the SDF (1904) may or may not exist, but of which there is at least prima facie evidence, is held to be no valid ground for denying her access to functions involving grave responsibilities. Now this is an instance of the strange perversity which feminist sentimentalism engenders. (When I use the word sentimentalism, I must remind you, I intend not as most people do, to denote an excess of sentiment beyond what I like myself, but a one-sided sentiment whatever its amount may be.) The Feminist cannot see that granted that he admits the first he is ethico- logically bound to admit the second. However, I know there are some who are prepared to adopt a logical attitude. A dear friend of mine, one of the most prominent English Socialists, observed to me recently that while he was absolutely convinced of the physical, intellectual, and moral inferiority of woman to man he was nevertheless in favour not only of political but of all other equality between the sexes, which for that reason he thought would do no harm. I am afraid we cannot all be quite so sanguine on this head. However, this is at least a consistent point of view. And now let us deal with our last heading for discussion, which turns mainly upon this last point. I have sketched out very briefly a few of the grounds which might lead us to think that the organic difference between man and woman is of a very deep lying character and does involve the mental inferiority of the female sex, of a kind and degree justifying exclusion from political functions. This, however, is a matter difficult to prove to everybody’s satisfaction. Let us, then, for the sake of argument, concede the point of intrinsic unsuitability, and enquire whether, even though a case were not made out on this ground justifying exclusion from the franchise, there might yet be other grounds which, at the present time at least, would render the concession of political functions to women unjust or undesirable. In the Legal Subjection of Men (Twentieth Century Press, 1896) the privileges of women over men in the matter of law and its administration in this country will be found described in detail. These inequalities exist. But that is not all. Feminists only claim equality with men in so far as it has agreeable consequences for women. And this applies all along the line. Did you ever hear of “advanced” women clamouring for equality in the matter of military service or even for the right to become police constables? One often hears the Feminists’ wail over the economic inequality between men and women. They claim, and justly claim, equal wages for equal work, no preference to men over women. With this we are all agreed. But have you ever heard of a Feminist demanding equal penalty for equal crime? Because I never have. Oh, no! Here comes in the “poor weak woman” whine. The muscular weakness of women (in spite of, as is admitted, a greater constitutional vigour than in man) is held to be sufficient to relieve the woman of the larger part of the responsibility for her actions in so far as criminal law is concerned, and yet no protest against injustice is made by those whose voice is so loud otherwise in denouncing sex-inequality. As Mr. Collinson, of the

113 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Humanitarian League, has pointed out, one great difficulty in getting rid of brutality in punishments is the one-sided sexual nature of such brutality, viz., that it affects the male sex only. The Feminists, in their eagerness to admit muscular inferiority in women, with a view to justifying sex-privilege before the law, forget that they are giving away part of their own case. The inferiority in the matter of muscular strength of the female sex, if it be conceded, must imply a strong presumption of mental inferiority. Oh! exclaims someone, physical and mental strength are seldom united in the same individual. Quite right, I answer. This holds between individuals of the same sex but not between one sex and another, and for the following reason. The sex-class Man, say, possesses a certain measure of inherent vital force (if you like), a certain average of potential; as energy, capacity, or power. This power may realise itself in any given individual as physical at the expense of mental, or as mental at the expense of physical, but, over the whole range of the male sex both balance one another. If, however, you admit in the case of women a consistent average inferiority in power over the whole sex, on one side of its manifestation, viz., the physical, the presumption is obviously strong that this expresses an inferiority in the total sex-capacity, mental as well as physical. The argument from the individual member of a class cannot be applied to the class as such, any more than the single instance can subvert the rule. For the above reasons I would advise woman’s-righters to choose the one side or the other. If they stick to the weakness of woman physically as ground for woman’s privileges and immunities, let them give up prating of equality otherwise. If they contend for equality let it at least be an even equality all round. We come now to a last and very important fact, and that is that if we take our stand on universal adult suffrage, there being a vast majority of women in the population, we are simply handing over the whole administration of affairs to the female sex. At any time if the female sex chooses to vote solid it can upset the entire male vote. Now, I ask, are you prepared for this? And I think I need hardly say more on this point. The conclusion I draw from the above facts alone, and apart from all other considerations, such as those previously indicated, is, that setting aside the question of the intrinsic suitability or unsuitability of the female sex for the exercise of political functions it is at least not just or equitable that women should exercise such functions – even the suffrage – (1) So long as women possess sex privileges as against men, or so long as they are not prepared to accept the whole duties and responsibilities of life in an equal degree with men; (2) That it is undesirable they should be given the franchise at all so long as the acquirement of the vote by women would possibly mean the political subjection of man, owing to the excess of the female population. I contend that so long as women have special privileges at criminal law, special favouritism at civil law, special exemption from military service, the

114 Female Suffrage and Its Implications – An Address to the Central Branch of the SDF (1904) right of maintenance, when married, by the husband, &c., it is neither just nor expedient that they should, in addition, by the concession of the franchise, be placed in a position to dominate men politically by sheer weight of numbers. E. Belfort Bax

115 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Socialism and the Family (1906) Socialism and the Family, Justice, 17th November 1906, p.4. Mr. H.G. Wells, after having entered the outer courts of Socialism in the shape of the Fabian Society about a year ago, seems to consider himself competent to pronounce as something like an authority on matters connected with human relations under Socialism. Accordingly he expands himself in the November numbers of the Fortnightly and the Independent Review. After a certain amount of prelude, including some desperate and somewhat superfluous efforts to clear himself with the bourgeoisie of all suggestion of his favouring the wicked heresy of “free love,” Mr. Wells arrives at the ex cathedra conclusion that the endowment of maternity is the most salient point in the Socialist view of the sexual relations. Of course he must throw a sop to Cerberus in the shape of possibly greater “self-restraint” under Socialism. The Christian ascetic ideal must of course have its incense. This, however, by the way. Now it is quite certain that a large number of Socialists would place a large note of interrogation against Mr. Wells’s endowment of maternity scheme. In the first place they would fail to see how the “payment (sic) to the mother” would be necessary or indeed possible in a communistic society, where wealth was produced for social use and not for individual profit; and as regards the period of incomplete socialisation it is more than doubtful whether a scheme of payment such as Mr. Wells proposes, but which has been as yet not even discussed in Socialist circles, would meet with the approval of any considerable section of Socialists. Hence the implied claim of Mr. Wells to speak for Socialists generally may seem to many a trifle overshooting the mark. For the rest Mr. Wells does not even seek to lay down any general principles governing the relations of the sexes as such. This part of the subject he shirks. And yet this is the point in which he has been specially attacked. Mr. Wells is a good young man, and hence naturally his indignation knows no bounds when he is charged with favouring “free love.” Only think of it! Besides, there are such things as lending libraries and circulation in families in this vale of tears. But let us really look this sex-question boldly in the face and see what implications a Socialistic view of the subject involves. Now it seems to me that all the splutter aroused by the “sex question” is traceable to the confusion between two different sides of it – the personal and the social side. This is noticeable in every discussion of the subject, conversational and otherwise. These two sides are always assumed to be mutually inseparable and the first is always judged in the light of the second. Now the first side of the question is the direct personal relation of the man and woman, the second is the question of

116 Socialism and the Family (1906) offspring. My contention is that these two sides should be kept rigidly separate. The first, I contend, is purely self-regarding, and society has no more locus standi in the matter than it has with the question whether a man spends his hours of relaxation in reading fiction, playing chess, or writing poetry. With the second, on the other hand, society has everything to do, the bringing into the world of new citizens being a social act of the highest importance. The interference of society, whether juridically or morally, between what otherwise ought to be a purely private and personal arrangement between individuals should, in reason and justice, begin and end with the appearance of children. Society, in its corporate capacity, has an undoubted right to regulate, or at least to take strict cognisance of, the procreation of children. But the current theory, even among persons priding themselves upon being superior to prejudice, invariably assumes that cohabitation and the begetting of children are virtually one and the same thing. Hence the children – difficulty is continually being trotted out in all arguments where the modification of existing marriage institutions is in question. The real reason for this is that in foro conscientiae, the people who use this argument so glibly, are imbued with old prejudices which they are ashamed to acknowledge, and, therefore, grasp at the children “difficulty” as a sham argument to conveniently cover the nakedness of their reactionary position. As a matter of logic, I repeat, the question of cohabitation per se, and of the raising of a family, can, and ought, to be kept severely apart. It is well-known that, at least, one-third of the existing marriages are childless, and with the advance of medical knowledge the begetting of children is likely to become more rather than less a voluntary matter. It is so in the Latin countries in the present day already to a great extent. If the above be true, it follows that even though society be justified in hedging round the family, where such exists, with every necessary legal safeguard, and even possibly in exacting certain public guarantees, though this is a difficult point, where the intention of raising a family is declared, yet any relation outside these conditions – i.e., where either no offspring exists or there is no intention expressed or implied of raising a family – is outside the purview of society either legally or morally, either as regards direct coercion, or the legitimate pressure of public opinion. In other words, the question of sexual asceticism, monogamy, or “free-love” is, like religion, according to the party programme, “a private matter.” It is purely self-regarding and has no direct connection with Socialism. Indeed, more so, for as regards religion it may be a moot point whether, under certain forms, it can be considered a purely private matter. But as regards the sex question the issue is, I think, perfectly plain. Socialism is neither for “free-love” nor against “free love,” taken in the sense referred to, is not pro-monogamic nor anti-monogamic; if it is anti-ascetic it is only so on the grounds of health and fitness for useful social work, but not with the view to coercing any comrade

117 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader with a taste for moral gymnastics, if such there be, who finds himself the better for an ascetic life. All that Socialism can legitimately require in the judgment of sexual practice (at least where the question of off-spring does not arise), as in the judgment of speculative belief, is mutual toleration. Socialism cannot for an instant brook intolerance of the conscientious expression of belief, nor of conscientious conduct, where such does not directly and unmistakably affect the welfare of society. The breeding of unhealthy children, the neglect of children physically and mentally, does affect the welfare of society. Of this there can be no doubt. Whether a man (say, without having children) lives with one woman for the term of his natural life, or changes his companion every month, is, other things equal, his own affair and not that of society. I know that many will affirm that monogamy is a much higher form of sexual practice than any other. They may be right. Others again think the theory of the continuance of personal consciousness after bodily death a much more exalted belief than that of its extinction at death. They are welcome to their opinion. But in both cases we have to do with private speculative belief, and not with unmistakable objective facts. In this sense I say that the proper answer to those who allege that Socialism favours free love is to point out that Socialism is expressly neutral in the matter. Free love belongs to the domain of those concerns in which experiment will, as a matter of fact, decide for the majority of men and women what is the better way. Meanwhile, each, subject to the law of mutual toleration, should be free to hold his own opinion, and to follow his own way of life. The only question with which society is concerned is the direct welfare of offspring. E. Belfort Bax

118 The “Monstrous Regiment” of Womanhood (1907)

The “Monstrous Regiment” of Womanhood (1907) Essays in Socialism New & Old (1907), pp.108-119. All parties, all sorts and conditions of politicians, from the fashionable and Conservative west-end philanthropist to the Radical working-men’s clubbite, seem (or seemed until lately) to have come to an unanimous conclusion on one point – to wit, that the female sex is grievously groaning under the weight of male oppression. Editors of newspapers, keen to scent out every drift of public fancy with the object of regaling their “constant readers” with what is tickling to their palates, will greedily print, in prominent positions and in large type letters expressive of the view in question, whilst they will boycott or, at best, publish in obscure corners any communication that ventures to criticise the popular theory or that adduces facts that tell against it. Were I to pen an impassioned diatribe, tending to prove the villainy of man towards woman, and painting in glowing terms the poor, weak victim of his despotism, my description would be received with sympathetic approval. Not so, I fear, my simple statement of the unvarnished truth. Now, I think it will be admitted, as a general principle at least, by all parties in the present day, that equality before the law, as it is termed, is the first condition of liberty, and that where you have respect of persons in this connection, you are destitute of the primal elements of personal freedom. According to the popular theory just indicated, respecting the position of women, we might expect to find every law framed in such a way that women should invariably come off less than second best in any dispute with men: in short, that law would be enacted and administered solely to the advantage of men. Is this so in actual fact? Let us first take our existing marriage laws. We shall find that in England whilst the woman is practically relieved of all responsibility for the maintenance of her husband, he can be compelled by poor law to maintain her under a penalty of three months’ hard labour for leaving her without provision, should she choose to apply to the parish. On anything that by latitude of interpretation can be deemed ill-usage or neglect, she can, if rich, obtain judicial separation with alimony from the divorce court, or, if poor, a magisterial order for separation with weekly maintenance from the police court. Jackson versus Jackson has decided that a wife can leave her husband at will, that he cannot raise a finger to compel her to remain with him or to come back, neither can she be imprisoned for contempt of court for refusing to obey an order for restitution of conjugal rights; in other words, it is decided that the contract of marriage is the single case of a contract which one of the contracting parties is at liberty to break without reason given, and without compensating the other party. But it is well to remember that it is only one of the parties that has this liberty, for Bunhill versus Bunhill gives the wife the right to follow an absconding husband and break into his house, if

119 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader necessary, for the purpose of compelling cohabitation. He, on his part, is precluded by the decision in Weldon versus Weldon from obtaining restitution of conjugal rights even by way of action; he is liable, however, for his wife’s postnuptial torts, so that she has only to slander or libel some person without his knowledge or consent, and whilst she comes off scot free, even though possessed of property, the husband can be cast in damages. Trespass to land, trespass to goods, injuries done through negligence, all these actions coming under the legal definition of “torts,” render the husband liable, no matter what private wealth the wife may possess. Now, let us take the single instance on the opposite side – the perennial grievance of the woman’s-righter which is deemed sufficient, apparently, to swallow up everything else. How often do we hear it said in tones of intense indignation, as conclusively proving the vile tyranny of man, that while the husband can obtain a divorce from his wife on the ground of adultery alone, the wife, in order to obtain such relief, has to prove an additional charge of cruelty. I think that there is no greater evidence of the bogus character of the sentiment talked on this question than the fact that this trumpery argument is the only one its votaries can adduce. Apart from the circumstance, well known to students of the Divorce Court, that it is the uniform practice of judges to twist every act of impoliteness or trivial ill- temper on the part of the husband into “legal cruelty,” the reason of the distinction must be obvious to any one not blinded by his or her prepossessions on the subject. I am certainly the last to advocate any binding on either side, and would gladly see divorce obtainable by the properly formulated demand of either party, but it is quite clear that under our present conditions of society with its bases of individual property-holding, whilst it would be grossly unfair to continue to enforce marital responsibility on a man for a woman whose offspring was of doubtful paternity, the grievance on the side of the woman against the man in case of adultery has no more than a sentimental significance: Even then, when the case becomes gross, as where a strange woman is introduced under the common roof, the wife can obtain relief on the elastic plea of technical or legal “cruelty.” One would think that if the bewailers of the pretended oppression of woman do not want to make themselves ridiculous, they would drop this preposterously “manufactured” grievance, since it is obvious that the distinction made in this case is entirely owing to the economical liabilities of the husband from which the wife has the good luck to be exempt. Looking at the matter all round, I think, then, no one can deny that the existing marriage laws are simply a “plant” to enable the woman to swindle and oppress the man.18

18 Since the above was written, an act has been passed practically freeing the woman from the obligation of fidelity. She may now commit adultery and still retain her claim on the man if she allege “neglect” or “cruelty.” The courts will probably consider “neglect” proved if she showed that her husband has not taken her out when she wished to go, or has refused her a silk dress, or has 120 The “Monstrous Regiment” of Womanhood (1907) Turning now from the civil law to the criminal law, we find a similar – or even greater – disparity of treatment. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, of course, whilst flogging, the tread-mill, and other brutal forms of punishment have been retained for male offenders, they have been abolished for females, so that though a man may be subjected to torture and degradation for mere breaches of prison discipline, a woman is exempted from them for the most heinous crimes. As happened a few years ago in Ireland, a woman may torture her children to death and there is no outcry for the lash, yet surely if you do not flog the female child-torturer you have no right to flog any other human being. The sex- favouritism of modern penal law is made more conspicuous by the ever-recurring howl of the “base, bloody, and brutal” grand juror for the lash to be applied to new classes of offences (for men of course). But the most atrocious instances of sex-privilege occur in connection with the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. Whilst the abduction of a girl under eighteen, or the seduction of one under sixteen, involves the man concerned in serious penalties, the girl or the woman gets off scot free, and this even though she may have been the inciting party. This is carried to the extent that a young boy of fourteen may be himself induced to commit a sexual offence by a girl just under sixteen – that is to say, nearly two years his senior – and he can be sentenced to imprisonment, followed by several years in a reformatory, whilst the law holds the inciting girl absolutely guiltless. The villainy of such an enactment is unparalleled, more particularly when one considers that a girl approaching sixteen is often practically a woman, whilst a boy of fourteen is seldom more than a child. If we turn from the law itself to the administration of the law, we find, if anything, still more startling enormities. I do not propose to give many instances, or any, at length, inasmuch as my readers may find such galore by consulting any daily paper. I may, however, refer to a case tried a few months back in which a woman killed her husband by throwing a lighted paraffin lamp at him in the course of a quarrel. Will it be believed that this woman was – not convicted of murder and recommended to mercy, not even convicted of manslaughter – but acquitted in flying colours, because, forsooth, she whined and alleged in her defence that the act was done on the spur of the moment when she did not fully realise the inflammable nature of paraffin oil This was the flimsy rubbish that judge and jury complacently accepted from the mouth of a woman. Every one knows that, had the husband in a fit of exasperation suddenly forgotten the properties of paraffin, and had let the lamp fly at the head of some drunken virago of a spouse – every one knows how the judge would have pointed out how, according to the law of England, this was a clear case of wilful murder, how the jury’s

occasionally stayed too late at night from home. As for cruelty, the wife has only to smash her husband over the head with a poker while a witness is in the room. The husband may be tempted to observe that his wife has a bad temper. On a proof of his having thus abused his wife before strangers the court would doubtless hold a charge of “cruelty” to be “fully made out.” 121 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader verdict would have been in accordance with his summing-up, accompanied, perhaps, with a recommendation to mercy, which the Home Secretary would have “carefully considered,” announcing after a few days, that on a thorough review of the facts of the case he regretted “he saw no reason for interfering with the course of the law,” and how the wretched victim of sex-injustice would have been consigned to the tender mercies of the hangman, probably after having, like the witches of old, “admitted the justice of his sentence” – the unjustly condemned always do that! A similar case was heard on the 23rd of May 1894, at the Middlesex sessions. A woman who had stabbed her husband so that he was lying in a dangerous condition in the hospital was released on her own recognisances. Her excuse was that she was drunk at the time. The husband was condemned, however, to pay 5s. a week for her support, at which she grumbled, alleging that he could well afford £1 a week. A short time after she came back and again assaulted the husband. She was this time fined a trifling sum with the alternative of fourteen days’ imprisonment! The case of the constable, Cooke, at Wormwood Scrubbs, may still be remembered by some of my readers. If ever there was a case of provocation reducing the crime of murder to one of excusable homicide, surely this was one, and the jury, who convicted Cooke of murder on the technical point of law, showed that they thought so, by the rider to their verdict. But Cooke, having the misfortune to be born a man, is, in spite of the recommendation, promptly hanged by Mr. Asquith. A still more recent case is that of the young workman, Walter Smith, at Nottingham, whom Mr. Asquith similarly hanged, in this case, even in the teeth of local public opinion, with the moral certainty that the shooting was, if not a pure accident, as some thought, the act of an insane person. Take again, the infamous trial of Mr. Noel of Ramsgate. Here was a man, who, without a tittle of evidence, was kept in gaol with a capital charge hanging over him for weeks. Yet so far was local public opinion from showing any sympathy for the unfortunate victim that this rabble of small shop-keepers and lodging-letters thought it necessary to reward the agent who had worked up the charge against him. with the public presentation of a purse of sixty guineas. Take, again, the case of Hogg of Hampstead. This man, it is well known, after the police had done their best to connect him with the charge in the Piercey murder, was able to prove so conclusive an alibi that his impeachment could not even be entertained. Yet, in spite of this, public opinion of the baser sort was not to be baulked of its prey, and on the date of his late wife’s funeral, Hogg narrowly escaped being lynched at the hands of a mob. For what? For having had the misfortune to be the husband of Mrs. Hogg, who had been murdered by some one else – and that a woman. Given the case of a woman found murdered, the method of policemen on the look-out for promotion is to fix upon some wretched man who has known the woman (anyone will do). This is called a “clue.” The finger is pointed at this man and public opinion thus worked up into the requisite state with regard to him. The manufacture of “circumstantial” evidence is then easy. Say the woman had been murdered with a knife. A

122 The “Monstrous Regiment” of Womanhood (1907) carving knife is found in the back kitchen of the murderer designate! a circumstance scarcely compatible with innocence! Say the woman has been shot. The bullet found in the deceased fits the bore of a revolver known to be in the possession of the murderer as by Treasury fixed upon. (N.B. – The fact that two million of this sized revolver bullet are turned out annually makes no difference.) Conclusive evidence of guilt!!! Is she poisoned? Some supposed lover of hers, or her sister’s, or her cousin’s is proved to have an empty bottle of vermin-killer in the recesses of his scullery cupboard. – Evidence which no jury under the sway of current sentiment could resist. Mr. Noel of Ramsgate was kept in durance and brought up before the bench to make a seaside holiday week by week, on not even as much evidence as this. James Canham Read was condemned and hanged on admittedly perjured evidence (for which, of course, the Treasury never dreamt of prosecuting), and on that of three mutually self-contradictory witnesses. The very attitude of public opinion towards a man accused of the murder of a woman is significant. If he is confident, it is said he is trying to brazen it out. If he is despondent, it is conclusive proof of a sense of guilt. One would like to know what manner a man, charged with the murder of a woman, ought to assume in order to set himself right with public opinion. It only requires any one to read his newspaper carefully to see that if the law is designed with the object of favouring women, the administration of the law is worked ten times more to this end. I need only allude to breach of promise cases. Here the woman is allowed to plunder the man at her will as a punishment for a refusal to wreck his own life, and possibly her: as well, in a marriage which he feels would be unhappy. This is a scandal which has been often enough discussed, but which, nevertheless, chiefly affects the well-to-do classes. But the instances already given show the grossest and most flagrant inequality before the law, not in civil but in criminal accusations. Can any one deny that in all cases where a man has been instrumental in causing the death of a woman, the coroner, the magistrate, the judge, the jury will do their utmost to twist and wrench the act into a murder charge? But when a woman has been instrumental in causing the death of a man, in how many cases will a verdict of “wilful murder” be returned? One requires only to read one’s paper with a critical and unbiased mind in this respect, and one can only come to one conclusion – that there is a steady, unconscious sex-prejudice at work in public opinion against the man because he is man and in favour of the woman because she is woman. Woe betide the luckless husband or paramour of a woman who has come to a violent end. As in the cases quoted of Noel at Ramsgate and Hogg at Hampstead, a perfect blood-lust infects the public mind. A bestial sentimentalism, which flings aside every consideration of common justice, seems to spread over the whole community. Contrast this with the sentiment evoked by the sweet female poisoner – Mrs. Maybrick, for instance, and others

123 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader that I must not name, because, having only poisoned men, they have, of course, been acquitted. For the tender-hearted British small middle-class juryman, above all things, holds “Womanhood” in honour, even where associated with homicidal proclivities. Compare the case of the excitement and adjournment of Parliament over Miss Cass some years ago, who was said to have been wrongfully arrested for solicitation, with the perfect equanimity with which arbitrary police arrests of men in the street nightly take place without attracting notice. The difference in the value put upon the life and liberty of the sexes by public sentiment is sometimes not without a grim humour. About a year ago a paragraph went the round of the papers headed Cannibalism on the Niger. It stated that a recrudescence of cannibalism had shown itself in the Niger territory, narrated how a man had been killed and eaten in spite of the protests of European residents, but that no steps to punish the delinquents were taken. A few days afterwards, it went on to say, a woman was killed and eaten, and this time, we were told, “the authorities felt bound to interfere.” Accordingly the two negroes concerned were seized and promptly hanged. Now I contend that however much the Western European may have become convinced of the superior sanctity of the female over the male sex, it is unfair to allow this dogma to play a part in administering justice to negroes who know nothing whatever about it. The poor ignorant negro, who finds that the killing and eating of a man evokes a simple remonstrance and knows nothing of the deification of womanhood, naturally thinks that what is sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, and kills and eats accordingly. And surely before you hang him, you ought to give him instruction in the new cultus. The way in which public opinion is hocused over the whole question is significant. As already stated, the ear of the average man is open on the one side and deaf on the other, and as a consequence the newspapers are open on the one side only. Hence out of twenty cases, civil or criminal, into which the sex question enters, nineteen of which will probably represent flagrant injustice to men, and flagrant partiality to women, but the twentieth may have the semblance of pressing a little hardly on the woman – out of these twenty cases, while the nineteen will be passed by without remark, the twentieth, the exception, will be seized upon with a hawk-like grip, trumpeted forth in every paper, exaggerated and commented upon in every key of indignation as illustrating the habitual tyranny of vile truculent man towards downtrodden woman and the calculated injustice of the courts to women. That’s the way the “trick” is done, and public opinion artificially and sedulously kept in its present course. It can hardly have failed to be observed by everyone, how vast a difference exists between the energy with which any injustice to men is protested against as compared with a corresponding injustice to women, and a still greater difference in the results of the protest. Injustice towards men is perhaps protested against but in nine cases out of ten the protest is

124 The “Monstrous Regiment” of Womanhood (1907) tame and remains barren, but a protest against any assumed harshness in the case of women, however trifling, is invariably and immediately effective. Again, a wrong which touches both sexes, let us say, is protested against. It is remedied as far as women are concerned and the protest dies out, even though men may suffer more than before from it. As an instance of this, take the outcry anent the flogging of women in Russia, and the protect raised by a meeting in Hyde Park, not against the general ill-treatment of Russian political prisoners, not against flogging, altogether, but a protest embodied in a resolution taking women out of the category of common humanity, and exclusively denouncing cruelties exercised towards female prisoners, thereby implicitly countenancing such cruelties when perpetrated on men. The “advanced” women present on the occasion referred to, to their shame be it said, did not insist on making the resolution apply to both sexes. And these are the persons who are so eloquent on the subject of “equality.” Again, take Mr. Labouchere. Mr. Labouchere made it his business in Truth to hunt up every obscure case of girl-flogging in the country, and to trumpet it forth in his journal as though it were a crime compared to which common murder were a venial affair. But now, had Mr. Labouchere one word for the brutal floggings of boys, not by private individuals, but in national institutions, such as reformatories and training ships? Not one. What he expressly denounced was not flogging, but girl-flogging. Again British public opinion is dissolved with indignation at the notion of the solitary woman being taken liberties with in a railway carriage, and demands the heaviest punishment for the offender. But what has either the law or public opinion to say to the female blackmailer? She for years plied her trade on the Metropolitan Railway unmolested by the police. She is never prosecuted, and the law gives her every facility for bringing false charges whilst public opinion treats the matter as a joke, or as of no importance. The late judge Baron Huddleston stated that in his opinion men stood in much greater need of protection against women than women against men.19 I think on a survey of the facts given, every unbiased person must admit that women, so far from being oppressed, are steeped up to the teeth in sex-prerogative. In short, if their position is called one of oppression, I can only say that this new-fashioned oppression is to me absolutely indistinguishable from old-fashioned privilege! But if this be so we have to ask ourselves the reasons given for some of these privileges, at least. A considerable section of them are undoubtedly based on the traditional “weakness” of women, as compared with

19 In this as in most other cases of this kind, we may observe, the allegation is considered a mere joke, that men are in danger from women, because forsooth, the courts are administered by men. just as if this mattered when, though they are administered by men it is true, yet in all cases where the sex- question enters they are “worked” so exclusively in the interest of the other sex, that no barrister dare suggest that a swindling, blackmailing woman is anything worse than a poor, hysterical creature, on pain of losing his case. 125 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader men. Now as regards this point, I would suggest that though women are unquestionably as a rule, weaker muscularly than men, yet there are circumstances under which, for practical purposes, the strongest man is as helpless as the weakest woman. In an age when disputes were generally determined by individual prowess, this argument may have had some point. But I submit that in the hands of the law, the policeman, the gaoler or the hangman, the relative difference of muscle between the sexes has absolutely no significance whatever. The strong man about to be flogged or hanged, even though a Samson, is in no better case than the weakest girl. Again, the invention of fire-arms has, on another side, obliterated the importance of the difference in muscular strength between the two sexes. A weak woman armed with a revolver can hold a Hercules well in check. This point of the muscular inferiority of women to men is often confounded with another point in reality quite distinct – that of constitutional vigour. Now, although as already stated, women are undoubtedly, as a rule, inferior in muscular strength to men, the opposite is true as regards their vitality and physical endurance, although popular opinion credits them with a greater weakness here also. It is well known to the medical profession that a woman can pass through a physical strain and recover herself in a manner and to an extent that no man can. I do not propose dwelling on this point, as it is generally admitted by all medical authorities and has been often enough conceded by opponents in this very controversy. It is illustrated by the excess of the adult female over the adult male population in this country (about a million) notwithstanding that male births are considerably in excess of female. In addition to this, Lombroso and other competent authorities have recently discovered that the nerve-sensibility of women, and hence their susceptibility to pain, is much less than that of men. This being the state of the case, I maintain that any argument based on the “weakness of women” in favour of a different treatment of women to that accorded to men falls completely to the ground. Women, at the present day, so far as their “weakness” is concerned, have exactly the same claim to considerate treatment at the hands of the law and of public opinion, as men have, neither more nor less. I may as well take the opportunity of dealing with an objection which is almost sure to crop up as regards favouritism to women in the matter of criminal punishment. It is undeniable that imprisonment for women means a very different thing from what it does for men – its sting being for them completely taken out. So true is this that women prisoners have only got to make a firm stand against any regulation to get it altered. A little while ago fifty women refused to carry out an order made by the Governor of Wormwood Scrubbs for bringing coke into the laundry. If men had refused to obey any regulation they would most probably have got the lash till they yielded. But what was the lot of these women. The Governor at once politely cancelled his regulation and “order was restored”!! Such is the farce of penal discipline in the case of women. Now, in any demand that may be made for

126 The “Monstrous Regiment” of Womanhood (1907) equality in this matter, I am met by this argument – “Are you not in favour of abolishing all forms of brutal punishment?” I say yes, in common with most Socialists and Democrats, I am in favour of all forms of corporal and of capital punishment whatsoever being abolished and of reducing imprisonment to simple reclusion. It is then argued: – “But surely the abolition of these things in the case of women is better than nothing”; it is at least a step. My answer is that in the first place it is not a step, but generally a shirking of the whole question. And further I reply by putting another case. Supposing that it were proposed for certain forms of punishment to be abolished for persons possessing incomes over £300 a year, but retained for all whose incomes fell below that figure. Precisely the same argument might be applied. “It is better than nothing!” – “it is a step.” Yet, you know that all with one consent would protest that if (say) capital punishment is to be retained at all, it would be monstrous to let a murderer off because he possessed over £300 a year and hang another who had been working on £50 a year. All would say this and properly so, however strong might be their opposition to capital punishment in itself. The protest would be in the name of equality before the law. Now this is precisely my case. In both instances you are punishing the criminal for what he cannot help and not for his crime. Every increment of penalty you inflict upon a man over and above what you inflict upon a woman for the same or an equal crime, I maintain is a legal infamy. It is a punishment not for the offence but for the crime of haying been born male.

Now let us take the other side of this woman question. Let us consider the alleged disabilities of women. I have already disposed of one of the alleged injustices to women in discussing the marriage laws; it is, therefore, not necessary to allude to it here. First and foremost, then, comes the question of the franchise. The Woman’s Rights advocate is, of course, ever shrieking over the fact that the female sex has not got the suffrage. On the monstrous iniquity of this, she will expatiate in press or on platform by the column or by the hour. (She ignores the fact that a legally privileged body – the Royal Family for example – commonly does not possess the suffrage and yet is not counted “oppressed.”) Now let it be granted as an abstract proposition that women ought to have the suffrage and that the vote is a necessary condition of equality between the sexes. Conceding this, for argument’s sake, I contend that, as far as the rights of women are concerned, (1) the want of the suffrage is altogether unimportant, and (2) the granting of the suffrage immediately and without conditions could not possibly accord with the principle of equality between the sexes. As to the first point, when you find that every law relating to sex-questions and specially touching women is constructed with a view to giving women prerogatives as against men, as has been the case with the recent laws respecting marriage, and other matters, and when you find that the administration is even more partial to women than the laws themselves, I think one may fairly say that the case for women having direct control over legislation and administration

127 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader is, even from the point of view of women’s rights, not a pressing one. I think it will be admitted that supposing per impossibile that parsons and landlords invariably administered the law, not in the interests of their own class but of the agricultural labourer – I say, I think if this were so – the case for appointing working-men justices, though theoretically as strong as before, would at least lose much of the urgency that it has now. Yet so it is with the legislators and administrators of law, as far as women are concerned. In this country, in North America and in the British colonies, at least, men make and administer laws not in favour of their own but of the other sex. Let us turn to the second point, that the immediate and unconditional granting of the suffrage to women would be incompatible with equality between the sexes and give rise to a sex-tyranny exercised by women upon men, not, it is true, directly, but through and by means of men themselves. Such would be the case for the following reasons. Firstly, there is the question of population. I assume, of course, universal suffrage, for both sexes, which is the only principle worth discussing in this, connection. The population of women exceeds that of men in these and most other countries – very considerably indeed in Great Britain. Now, the result of this on the basis of Universal Adult Suffrage, if conceded directly and unconditionally, is obvious. We should simply have the complete domination of the female vote. This would be moreover reinforced by, at the very least, a large minority of the male vote. For it is important to bear in mind, that whilst chivalry, gallantry, etc., forbids men to side against women20, it is a point of honour amongst female upholders of woman’s rights that they shall back up their own sex, right or wrong. Universal female suffrage, therefore, under present conditions, might easily come to mean the despotism of one sex. But it is sometimes alleged that the great bulk of women would not vote solid with their sex, inasmuch as they are not “political women.” In reply to this I have only to point to the case of Wyoming and other places in America, where, as I am informed, every public office is filled by a woman, except, mark you, that of police constable, and where a man can perform no legal act without the consent of his wife, as also more recently in New Zealand. Again it is alleged that just as men on juries judge women leniently, so women on juries would judge men leniently, more especially, it is said, as the quality of mercy is stronger in women than in men. I can only answer that this also is not confirmed by experience. In the case of

20 So much is this the fact, that, as before pointed out, in the worst blackmailing cases, the defendant’s counsel is bound in the interests of his client to pretend that he doesn’t wish to imply anything against the female witness except that she was liable to hysterical delusions. In another connection, it is seen in cases of infant-murder, when the indignation of modern public opinion is turned not against the mother who has committed the murder, but against the putative father who has had nothing to do with it; truly a new and improved conception of justice, though a trifle vicarious, which the new Feminist cultess has the merit of having originated. 128 The “Monstrous Regiment” of Womanhood (1907) Wyoming the verdicts brought by the female juries against male offenders have been often of so vindictive a ferocity as to have amounted to a public scandal. Once more, it is alleged that with the removal of the so-called disabilities under which women at present labour i.e., the lack of the franchise, the closing of one or two of the professions, etc. – the prerogatives, the chivalry now accorded to and claimed for women, would disappear, leaving the sexes really equal before the law. I again answer that experience does not lend colour to this forecast. For it would almost seem that, in exact proportion to the removal of any real grievances that may once have existed, has the number of female privileges increased. At the present day, women have infinitely more advantages as against men than at the beginning of the nineteenth century, let us say, when they were suffering under one or two genuine disabilities (e.g., the laws regarding the earnings of the married woman now long since repealed). Then, before a law-court, a man-party in a suit had at least some chance of fair play against a woman opponent. It is not so now. Then, a female criminal had not, as now, any assurance of practical immunity from the severities of the penal law. The other chief grievance in addition to the want of the suffrage is that some of the professions are closed to women. I ask, “What profession?” In the United States no trade or profession whatever, that I am aware of, is closed to women as such. In this country the medical profession, the one most sought after by women, is open, and, as far as I know, the law and the church are the only important callings, at all likely to be adopted by women, that are closed to them. And why is this so? Simply, because there has been no movement on the part of women for opening them. The moment women begin to agitate for admission to the legal profession. there is not the least doubt whatsoever that they will obtain it within a year or two. At all events this terrible hardship sinks down to the fact that one or two callings are legally closed. Moreover, as a set-off even against this, you have the enormous reputation, literary and otherwise, which a woman can acquire with slender means. The ability and industry utterly insufficient to raise a man out of the level of mediocrity is often adequate to furnish a woman with a name and fame equal to an income for life. I do not wish to mention individuals, but some instances will probably occur to many of my readers. Such is the present state of the woman question – a steady determination on the part of public opinion to believe that women are oppressed – a steady determination on the part of women to pose as victims – in the teeth of facts of every description showing the contrary; a further determination to heap upon them privilege on the top of privilege at the expense of men under the impudent pretence of “equality between the sexes.” The grievances that women labour under as women resolve themselves into three the fact (1) that the wife has to prove technical cruelty in addition to adultery on the part of her husband (a very easy thing to do) in order to obtain a divorce; (2) that women have not as yet the parliamentary

129 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader franchise (although without it they succeed in getting nearly every law framed and administered in their favour), and (3) that one or two callings are closed to them (albeit in most branches of intellectual work it is far easier for them to make a profitable reputation with moderate ability than for men). These are the three main grievances existing in this country at present and usually quoted to show the burdens under which divine Womanhood (with a big W) is groaning. Is it too much to ask my readers for ever to clear their minds of cant on the matter and to honestly say whether these disabilities, such as they are, counterbalance the enormous prerogatives which women otherwise possess on all hands. Defend these prerogatives if you will, but do not deny that they exist and pretend that the possessors of them are oppressed.21 The foregoing, then, I repeat, is the present state of the woman question – as it exists in our latter-day class society, based on capitalistic production. The last point that we have to consider is as to the relation of this sex-question to Socialism. Some years ago, on its first appearance, I took up, my esteemed friend August Bebel’s book Die Frau in the hope of gaining some valuable hints or at least some interesting speculations on the probable future of sex-relations under Socialism. I was considerably disgusted, therefore, that for the “halfpennyworth of bread” in the form of real suggestion I had to wade through a painfully considerable quantity of very old “sack” in the shape of stale declamation on the intrinsic perfection of woman and the utter vileness of man, on the horrible oppression the divine creature suffered at the hands of her tyrant and ogre – in short, I found two-thirds of the book filled up with a second-hand hash-up of Mill’s Subjection of Women and with the usual demagogic rant I had been long accustomed to from the ordinary bourgeois woman’s- rights advocate. It was the reading of the book in question that induced me to take up this problem, and to make some attempt to prick the bladder of humbug to which I was sorry to see that Bebel had lent his name. In doing this I of course acquired the reputation of a misogynist. This is the natural fate of any one who attempts to expose that most shamelessly impudent fraud (the so-called woman’s-rights movement) which was ever supported by rotten arguments, unblushing misrepresentations, and false analogies. I have given some instances of the former in the course of this chapter. I will give one instance of a transparently false analogy which is

21 Before leaving this side of the question, I may allude to a quasi-argument, supposed to be crushing, which is sometimes brought forward when it is suggested that in view of the fact that all women are not angels, they should not be allowed to work their undisputed will with the men they come in contact with. “Women,” it is pleaded, “are what men have made them.” My answer to this is, that women are just as much what men have made them as men are what women have made them – nay, if there is a difference it is against women, since in the nursery, during the impressionable period of childhood, boys are entirely under their control. 130 The “Monstrous Regiment” of Womanhood (1907) common among Socialists and Radicals. It is a favourite device to treat the relation between man and woman as on all fours with the relation between capitalist and workman. But a moment’s consideration will show that there is no parallel at all between the two cases. The reason on which we as Socialists base our persistent attack on the class-privileged man or woman – on the capitalist – is because we maintain that as an economical, political, and social entity he or she has no right to exist. We say that the capitalist is a mere parasite, who ought to and who eventually will disappear. If it were not so, if the capitalist were a necessary and permanent factor in society, the attitude often adopted by Socialists (say, over trade disputes) would be as unfair and one-sided as the bourgeois represents it to be. Now, I wish to point out that the first thing for the woman’s-rights advocates to do, if they want to make good the analogy, is to declare openly for the abolition of the male sex. For until they do this, there is not one tittle of resemblance between the two cases. It is further forgotten that the distinction between men and women as to intellectual and moral capacity is radically different from that between classes. The one is a difference based on organic structure; the other on economic circumstance, educational advantage and social convention. That such a flimsy analogy as the above should ever have passed muster shows that the blind infatuation of public opinion on this question extends even to some Socialists. It will be observed that I have not discussed the question of the intellectual and moral superiority, equality, or inferiority of women to men. I am content to concede this point for the sake of argument and take the plainer issue. What does Socialism, at least, profess to demand and to involve? Relative economic and social equality between the sexes. What does the woman’s-rights movement demand? Female privilege, and when possible, female domination. It asks that women shall have all the rights of men with privileges thrown in (but no disagreeable duties, oh dear no!), and apparently be subject to no discipline but that of their own arbitrary wills. To exclude women on the ground of incapacity from any honourable, lucrative, or agreeable social function whatever, is a hideous injustice to be fulminated against from platform and in press – to treat them on the same footing as men in the matter of subordination to organised control or discipline is not to be thought of – is ungentlemanly ungallant, unchivalrous! We had an illustration of this recently. At a meeting held not long since, the chairman declared that all interrupters of speakers should be promptly put out. A man at the back of the hall did interrupt a speaker and was summarily ejected, Subsequently a woman not only interrupted, but grossly insulted another speaker, but the chairman declared that he could not turn a woman out. So it is. A woman is to be allowed, of course, full liberty of being present and of speaking at a public meeting, but is not to be subject to any of the regulation to which men are subject for the maintenance of order. And this is what woman’s-rights advocates and apparently some Socialists term equality between the sexes!! Advanced women and their male supporters in demanding all that is lucrative, honourable, and agreeable in the position of men take their stand on the

131 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader dogma of sex-equality. No sooner, however, is the question one of disagreeable duties than “equality” goes by the board and they slink behind the old sex-immunity. This sentiment also plays a part in the franchise controversy. Let women have the franchise by all means, provided two things, first of all: provided you can get rid of their present practical immunity from the operation of the criminal law for all offences committed against men and of the gallantry and shoddy chivalry that now hedges a woman in all relations of life22; and secondly, provided you can obviate the unfairness arising from the excess of women over men in the population – an excess attributable not only to the superior constitutional strength of women, but still more, perhaps, to the fact that men are exposed to dangers in their daily work from which women benefit, but from which women are exempt, inasmuch as they are, and claim to be, jealously protected from all perilous and unhealthy occupations. Now, surely it is rather rough to punish men for their services to society by placing them under the thumb of a female majority which exists largely because of these services. Of course all the economic side of the question which for this very reason I have touched upon more or less lightly falls away under Socialism. Many Socialists, indeed, believe that the sex-question altogether is so entirely bound up with the economic question that it will immediately solve itself on the establishment of a collectivist order of society. I can only say that I do not myself share this belief. It would seem there is something in the sex-question, notably, the love of power and control involved, which is more than merely economic. I hold rather, on the contrary, that the class-struggle to-day over-shadows or dwarfs the importance of this sex-question, and that though in some aspects it will undoubtedly disappear, in others it may very possibly become more burning after the class-struggle has passed away than it is now. Speaking personally, I am firmly convinced that it will be the first question that a Socialist society will have to solve, once it has acquired a firm economic basis and the danger of reaction has sensibly diminished or disappeared. Nowadays any one who protests against injustice to men in the interests of women is either abused as an unfeeling brute or sneered at as a crank. Perhaps in that day of a future society, my protest may be unearthed by some enterprising archaeological inquirer, and used as evidence that the question was already burning at the end of the nineteenth century. Now,

22 A friend of mine is fond of arguing that the privileges of women are simply the obverse side of laws for the protection of the weaker. On this principle I would observe that any system of tyrannical privilege can be condoned. For example, it might be urged that the power of the Southern state planter over his slaves was necessary to the protection of the physically and numerically weaker white race against the ferocious negro. A similar argument is, in fact, used to-day to justify the action of negro-lynching mobs. Any system of oppression may be explained away, if one chooses, as being designed for the “necessary protection” of the oppressor against the oppressed. 132 The “Monstrous Regiment” of Womanhood (1907) this would certainly not be quite true, since I am well aware that most are either hostile or indifferent to the views set forth here on this question. In conclusion, I may say that I do not flatter myself that I am going to convert many of my readers from their darling belief in “woman the victim.” I know their will is in question here, that they have made up their minds to hold one view and one only, through thick and thin, and hence that in the teeth of all the canons of evidence they would employ in other matters, most of them will continue canting on upon the orthodox lines, ferreting out the twentieth case that presents an apparent harshness to woman, and ignoring the nineteen of real injustice to man; misrepresenting the marriage laws as an engine of male, rather than of female, tyranny; and the non-possession of the suffrage by women as an infamy without a parallel, studiously saying nothing as to the more than compensating privileges of women in other directions. Working-women suffer to-day equally with working-men the oppression of the capitalist system, while middle-class women enjoy together with middle-class men the material benefits derived from a position of class-advantage. But in either case, as I have shown, as women, they enjoy a privileged position as against men as men. Only the will not to recognise the truth on this question can be proof against the evidence adduced.

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Socialism and the Family (1907) Socialism and the Family, Justice, 26th January 1907, p.10. (letter) DEAR COMRADE, – In a letter addressed to Justice a week or two ago our comrade Kerr suggests that I was wrong in maintaining that Socialism is, in principle, neutral in the matter of “free love.” The attraction of variety, he says, is natural in sexual as in other matters, and hence he thinks that, given the removal of the arbitrary and artificial restrictions in our existing social system – restrictions inherent in its economic, juridic, and moral structure – which must ensue under Socialism, everyone would at once adopt the practice of what is known as “free love.” To this proposition I must demur. There is, I believe, a not inconsiderable section of persons (though possibly a minority) who are undoubtedly monogamic by temperament, and for whom the sexual variety spoken of by Kerr has no special attraction, and in some cases even the contrary. Now, I cannot see it is any business of Socialists to counsel free love as doctrine any more than to preach strict monogamy as doctrine. It is, I take it, essential to Socialism to defend the right, materially and morally, of each to live his or her life in this matter according to temperament (subject, of course, to the necessary regulation of the question of offspring). Hence, any self-righteous “see-what-a- brave-boy-am-I” attitude on the part of the monogamist as against the free-lover would undoubtedly be discountenanced in a Social-Democratic society. But, beyond ensuring this freedom of the individual sexually, I fail to see that Socialism as a theory of life has anything to say in the matter. It is one of those private questions which must be left for individual taste and inclination. As for Mr. Wells, your criticism of his latest lucubrations offers little to add. The epithet, “palaeo-Socialist,” as applied to myself, leaves my withers utterly unwrung. I suppose it is the Wellsian idea of a brilliant tu quoque for my having pointed out the crude fatuity of the view by which he thinks to whitewash himself of the terrible charge of favouring “free love.” For the rest, we all know this sort of bombast from the would-be smart bureaucrats and litterateurs of the Fabian Society for the last three-and-twenty years. They have been at it, gibing at us as the “old guard,” etc., and sneering at the superannuated Marx, ever since 1884. Mr. Wells is a new hand at it, that is all. For my part I should certainly have given Mr. Wells credit for more sense of humour than to care to make a fool of himself by trumpeting forth his own personal opinions with comic bumptiousness, as he has done, as the divine oracle of Socialism for the acceptance of a credulous world. If he thinks to emulate Shaw he should remember the one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. For, even though it may be an open question whether Shaw’s jocular arrogance is precisely sublime, there can hardly be two opinions as to Mr. Wells’s smug conceit being ridiculous in comparison.

134 Socialism and the Family (1907) But what, then, is this “neo”-Socialism, that is, we are assured, going to take the world by storm? When closely examined it has a way of looking not so very “neo” after all. For example it generally bears a striking family resemblance to our old friend Bismarckian State-Socialism, one of its real objects being apparently’ the curtailment of liberty. The more coercion the purer the Socialism with “Socialists” of this type. Latterly, this kind of superior person seems to have taken up with some form of the human stud-farm theory, called variously Stirpiculture, Eugenics, or what-not, a theory in its original form dating from the late estimable Dr. Noyes, of Oneida Creek celebrity, who promulgated it in the forties of the last century. No, no, Mr. Wells, it is the tide of our Palaeo-Socialism that is sweeping all before it, not the soap-bubbles of your Neo-Socialism! The more you confine yourself to writing good stories rather than bad essays the greater the service you will render your day and generation. – Yours fraternally, E. Belfort Bax

135 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Anti-Feminism. (1908) New Age, 21 March 1908, p. 418-419; The “Note” on the Female Suffrage question in your issue of the 7th inst. I venture to regard as a striking illustration of how the most cultured minds may be warped by feminist prejudice. I am not a habitual reader, still less an admirer, of the “leading” English journal, but if the Times suggests that – all law resting ultimately on a basis of physical force – laws passed by means of female suffrage which are disapproved of by the majority of men might stand the chance of remaining a dead letter, it is surely doing nothing worse than propounding an obvious proposition. Your reference to the “physical efficiency of legislators” or to Mr. Balfour’s height are surely beside the point, and are based on one of the common fallacies of feminist argument, to wit, the failure to distinguish between (1) the individual of a class as against the class itself as class, and (2) one class as against another class, as such. Now women form a sex- class over against men as a sex-class, and the sex-class men admittedly have the physical strength necessary to give effect to law, on their side. The question of strength is, it may here be remarked, obviously concerned with the mass of the electorate behind the legislator, and in no way, as you would seem to imply, with the legislator personally considered. You further pour scorn on the idea that women are ever likely to promote anti-man legislation, or to endeavour to extend the overwhelming privileges of their sex at present obtaining, alike in the civil and criminal law, and still more in the administration of the law. The probability of this happening is, however, by no means very remote. As a prominent member of the present Ministry said to me some years ago, “all that these women want in clamouring for the suffrage is to pass rascally laws against men"! The fact that this gentleman recently voted for the second reading of the Suffrage Bill does not alter the truth of his one-time remark. You appear to entirely ignore the sense of sex-solidarity’ present in women and absent in men. Who is it that clamours loudest for the exemption from punishment of the murderers of lovers and husbands but the female crew, whose motto is (“Our sisters, right or wrong"? Reckoning on the absence of sex-solidarity in men you may be right in thinking that as long as this continues men may consent to be made the lackey-administrators of anti-man women-made laws. But will the present state of things necessarily last? Is it quite impossible that on the female vote swamping the register for a sufficient length of time the existing wave of feminist sentiment may die down, and men may acquire a sense of sex- solidarity even sufficiently strong to lead them (for example) to refuse to be the instruments

136 Anti-Feminism. (1908) in punishing their “brothers” for offences committed against women? How about the question of physical strength then? “A la guerre, comme à la guerre.” E. BELFORT BAX. [In his terror Mr. Bax has missed one point, which was that it is inconceivable that “if women had the vote they would all belong to one great anti-man party and would seek to form a government composed of their own sex alone.” The sense of sex-solidarity may be more present in women than in men, but does Mr. Bax seriously suggest that it is great enough to set every wife in political opposition to her husband? And yet unless this happens almost universally, his fears amount to nothing more than a nightmare. But, even if Mr. Bax were right in his forecast, his would hardly be a very worthy reason for refusing women the vote. What sort of a democracy is it in which half the people are disfranchised because the other half are afraid of them? – The WRITER Of THE NOTES.]

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Mr. Belfort Bax Replies to his Feminist Critics. (1908) New Age, 8 August 1908, p. 287-288; Amid the various writers who have favoured THE NEW AGE with their views on the question of Female Suffrage, none have really traversed my original contention, as contained in my first article. That contention was, that occupying as they do a privileged position before the law – not only in itself, but still more in its administration – as against men, women have no just claim to the franchise. That the votaries of Female Suffrage feel this, is proved by the fact that their most serious efforts at arguments turn upon the iniquity of subjecting women to “man-made laws,” their staple policy throughout their agitation being, by dint of lying assertions and insinuations, ceaselessly repeated, to create the impression on the public mind that the existing state of the law and its administration not only does not favour women, but is actually unfair to “the sex.” Now, as I have pointed out, to anyone in the least acquainted with the theory and practice of the English law, there can be no doubt whatever that the latter, in theory and still more in practice, is entirely and without any exception whatever, one-sided and partial to women and against men. The only correspondent of THE NEW AGE who has really touched the point at issue at all, while admitting the substantial truth of my remarks, confines himself to suggesting exaggeration on my part and observing that our infamous anti-man marriage laws were unjust “not on one side only.” But I must deny the charge of exaggeration, a denial that can be substantiated by illustrative cases galore. As regards the marriage laws, I insist that the unfairness is wholly and solely on one side. But I must here make an explanation. There does exist on paper one slight concession of fairness towards the husband. The divorce law, namely, ordains that an adulterous wife, owing to the fact that by her adultery she can introduce into the family, and compel her husband to support, a bastard child, can be divorced by the husband on proof of adultery alone, whereas for a wife to obtain divorce from her husband (in which case, of course, the above reason does not obtain), it is necessary to prove cruelty in addition to adultery. Now, believer as I am that marriage ought to be an absolutely free union, it is certainly not my case to defend the existing marriage laws as a system. But I do say that, given that system and our present property and family relations generally, nothing can be more reasonable or more equitable as between the man and the woman than this provision of the English law respecting divorce. Yet when brought to book and challenged to give a concrete instance of the unfairness of “man-made laws “ to woman anent which the woman’s righter is perennially blathering at large, it is invariably this very innocent and natural provision of the divorce law that is trotted out, it being the solitary instance in which the law does not overtly favour the woman

138 Mr. Belfort Bax Replies to his Feminist Critics. (1908) at the expense of the man. But I have said that this provision exists on paper merely, and so it does, since in practice it remains a dead letter. For the discrimination in question is now practically abolished, anything which the wife objects to – coming home late at night, going out to a party without taking her with him, holding her hands when she attempts to scratch or bite him – being adjudged technical cruelty by the husband within the meaning of the law. Per contra, the Act of 1895 condones expressly the adultery of the wife, providing she can successfully plead “neglect” (an elastic term) on the part of the husband. So much for this solitary case in which the Feminist, to his horror and indignation, finds that the law does not for once avowedly favour women at the expense of men. But apart from this isolated example, the whole marriage law is one tissue of favouritism to the woman and injustice to the man, as I have already shown. And yet we find in “advanced” journals tirades like the following: “Any fool, any blackguard, any coward, is wise enough and worthy enough to be allowed a legal and a holy licence to torture and insult a woman. Anything with the title of husband in his pocket may goad and stab and lash and sear the soul of the slave we call a wife” (Clarion, July 17) Unfortunately, the champion liar who can gush forth the mendacious, sentimental slush, of which the foregoing is a sample, does not stand alone. His performance is but part of an anti-man crusade of misrepresentation and falsehood carefully organised and skilfully engineered, the object of which is, and has been, to inflame public opinion against men in the interests of female privilege and of female domination. Feminists well know that the most grotesquely far-fetched cry anent the injustice of man to woman will meet with a ready ear. They well know that they get here fond and foolish man on his soft side. Looking at the matter impartially, it is quite evident that man’s treatment of woman is the least vulnerable point in his moral record. Woman, as such, he has always treated with comparative generosity. But it is, of course, to the interests of the abettors of female domination to pretend the contrary. Accordingly everything has been done to excite prejudice in favour of woman as the innocent and guileless victim of man’s tyranny, and the maudlin Feminist sentiment of the “brute” man has been carefully exploited to this end. The result of two generations’ agitation in the above sense is seen in the existing state of the law, civil and criminal, in which the “Woman’s Movement” has succeeded in effecting the violation of every principle of rectitude towards the male side of the sex-equation. The existing laws connected with marriage which place the husband practically in the position of legal slavery as regards the wife is typical of the whole. That the present “Votes for Women” movement is only a phase of the anti-man crusade which Feminism has been carrying on for nigh two generations past with the aid of the Press, is shown, not only by the persistent efforts to represent “ man-made laws “ as unjust to women, but by the incidental remarks of Suffragette leaders in which the sex animus is

139 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader shown, no concealment being made of the intention to use the suffrage for rivetting on man the chains of legalised female oppression. For example, Mrs. Pankhurst recently represented one of the functions of emancipated “Womanhood” to be the handing over of the luckless male to the Female blackmailer by raising the “age of consent” above sixteen!! The allusion made at the same time to the “daughters of the working class “ is a piece of demagogy too thin to deceive anyone as to the venomous sex-spite animating this outrageous proposal. Again, in the Daily News for July 30 a suffragette objects to a woman being punished for murdering her child, protesting that the father, who had had nothing to do with the crime, ought to have been in the dock in her place! In the present agitation we see merely the culmination of a Feminist campaign organised with scarcely any attempt at concealment, as I have said, on the basis of a sex-war. But this sex-war is at present one-sided, the man’s case goes by default. There is no sex-conscious man’s party to be appealed to and to engineer public opinion in favour of the claims of the most elementary justice for him, as here is a sex-conscious woman’s party to further any and every iniquitous claim of the female sex. So long as the present state of things lasts, organised determination on the one side and indefinite gullibility on the other, are likely to maintain the ascendancy of the Feminist cult and increase the sphere of female privilege. It has often been remarked that even if the suffrage were granted, the enforcement of the laws decreed by a female majority would be dependent on the goodwill of men. This observation we are accustomed to find greeted by Feminist jeers. The jeers may be justified for the moment, but the intrinsic truth of the observation remains none the less. So long, namely, as the Woman’s Party can continue to bulldose men as they have done up to the present, so long will they be able to make men obey and enforce their behests, whether formulated directly through the suffrage or indirectly by hoodwinking public opinion as they do now. But when once men get tired of this, when once the reaction sets in and a sex- conscious Man’s Party forms itself, then Heaven help the women!! The anti-man ranting sisterhood do not seem to realise what the position of their sex would be if men took to refusing to act against their “brothers.” They think it the most natural thing in the world for women to talk and act in this strain as regards their “sisters.” The explanation, to my mind, is simple. They instinctively feel that man is more than sex, that he stands for humanity in the concrete, whereas woman stands, par excellence, for sex and sex alone. As I have often pointed out before, common phraseology recognises that while man has a sex woman is a sex. The hollowness of the sham of the modern dogma of equality between the sexes is shown by the fact that the assumption of inferiority is called into requisition without any hesitation when there is anything to be gained by it for the cause of female privilege. The dogma of equality is reserved for pleading for the franchise, for the opening up of the professions, and similar occasions. According to the current theory, while women are fully

140 Mr. Belfort Bax Replies to his Feminist Critics. (1908) equal to men in capacity for government, administration, etc., and hence, while justice demands that these spheres should be accessible to them, they are so inferior to men in the capacity to control their actions and to distinguish right from wrong, that it is not to be thought of that they, poor weak women, should be treated with the same impartiality or severity by the law as is dealt out to men. Women nowadays “want it,” not “both ways” merely, but all ways. At least as good arguments may be produced to prove that the apparent muscular inferiority of women to men is not fundamental, as are adduced to prove that the apparent intellectual inferiority is not fundamental. There are plenty of instances of extraordinary bodily strength in women. And yet we never hear these arguments. Why? Because Feminists have no interest, but quite the contrary, in perverting the truth on this side, whereas on the other, their demands require that they shall prove equality – the aim being to ensure for women all honourable, agreeable, and lucrative occupations in life, while guarding them carefully from all rough and disagreeable work and from all unpleasant responsibilities. Hence it suits their book to admit the physical, while denying the mental, inferiority. My constitutional objection to privileged classes extends also to a privileged sex. Hence my (as some deem it, intemperate) zeal in exposing the hollow humbug on which the practical demands of the “Woman’s Movement” rest. Turning again to the present agitation, it is noteworthy how the evidence as to the numerical strength of the Suffrage movement adduced by its advocates is about on a level with the arguments advanced in support of the general principle of Feminism. A stage army, the vanguard of which probably amounts to some five hundred, which can on occasion, from all England, be raised to ten thousand (among these, girlish youth and innocence being particularly prominent), such is all that has yet been achieved, and such it is that we are asked to regard as representing the public opinion of England. However, one may suppose that the Feminists are so accustomed to their statements otherwise being allowed to pass by default, that they have come to regard the supineness and gullibility of public opinion in these matters as a safe speculation. Hence, at the beginning of the twentieth century the figure of British Womanhood rises up before us, reeking with privilege, and, in alternate strophes, tearfully whimpering and threateningly shrieking that she has not enough, that she wants more! Such, at least is the Womanhood of the Feminist agitation. In concluding this controversy, I can only reaffirm my original position unshaken, and that is, that whatever other arguments there may be for or against “Votes for Women,” certain it is, under any ordinarily recognised standard of fairness and equality, that so long as women enjoy those privileges before the law at the expense of men which they now do, it is unjust that they should be given facilities for increasing, them by the concession of the franchise.

141 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) The Legal Subjection of Men (A Reply to the Suffragettes), New Edition, New Age Press, London 1908. First edition Twentieth Century Press.

Contents 1 Preface To New Edition. 2 Preface 3 The Legend. 4 The Facts. 5 Matrimonial Privileges Of Women. 6 Non-matrimonial Privileges Of Women 7 The Criminal Law. 8 The Civil Law. 9 The Actual Exercise of Women's Sex Privileges. 10 Muscular Inferiority And Sex-privilege. 11 A Sex Noblesse. 12 Socialists And Feminists 13 “The Oppressed Woman.”

Preface To New Edition. I HAVE been usually credited with being the chief author of the following brochure. Such, however, is not the case. "The Legal Subjection of Men" is in great part the work of an Irish barrister and LL.D. of Dublin, who died a few years ago. That portions here and there are from my pen is true, but for the bulk of the pamphlet I am not directly responsible, as any expert in literary style will probably detect. I mention the circumstance in writing the few words of preface for the new edition asked of me by the publishers, not with a view to any disclaimer, but simply in the interests of literary truth and accuracy. For though, as stated, only myself directly responsible for short sections, I none the less, in the main, heartily endorse the whole. The present edition has been carefully corrected and the Law brought up to date, though the illustrative cases necessarily remain as in the original edition. There have

142 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) been few agitations in history which have been characterised by such hard lying and shameless [V] perversion of fact as the so-called "Woman's Movement." Unfortunately, continually-reiterated assertions in direct contravention with the real state of the case have only too well succeeded. The public mind has been bull-dozed into assuming the reverse of what actually obtains to represent the truth, and has sym- pathised and given effect to its sympathies on the basis of these false representations. I need scarcely say that the advocates of "Woman's Rights" and female suffrage, whose whole credit is based upon the tissue of falsehood it is the mission of this little work to expose, have done their best to boycott and ignore the exposure. All honour then to the Twentieth Century Press for originally publishing, and to the New Age Press for having the courage to risk offending certain sections of "advanced" opinion by reprinting, the following unvarnished statement of Law and fact. E. Belfort Bax.

Preface IT seemed to the authors of the following pamphlet that the time had fairly come for confronting the false assumptions underlying the conventional whining cant of the Feminist advocate with a plain and unvarnished statement of Law and fact. The "Woman's rights" (?) agitator has succeeded by a system of sheer impudent, brazen, "bluff," alternately of the whimpering and the shrieking order, in inducing a credulous public to believe that in some mysterious way the female sex is groaning under the weight of the tyranny of him whom they are pleased to term "man the brute." The facts show these individuals to be right in one point and only one, namely, that sex-injustice and sex-inequality exist; for it so happens that the facts further show the said injustice and inequality to exist wholly and solely in favour of women as against men. In short, they disclose a state of things in which, down to the minutest detail of law and administration, civil and criminal, women are iniquitously privileged at the the expense of men. As it is, many an unhappy male victim of modern sex- prerogative would doubtless be only delighted to be allowed to partake of a little of the oppression under which he is told unfortunate Woman is groaning, but from any share in which he sees himself to his detriment excluded. Mr. Hardcastle23 found his guest's new- fashioned shyness bore a strong resemblance to old-fashioned impudence, and our male victim of pro-feminist laws and tribunals may well he excused for failing to distinguish between this new-fashioned oppression and old-fashioned domination. In conclusion, we would advise the Feminist guild ignore our pamphlet with its tale of infamy. It is their only chance of gulling their sentimental dupes any longer. Let the latter once know of our sketch,

23 A character in "She Stoops To Conquer" by Oliver Goldsmith, 1773. 143 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader and their game is up. For those who have read it, and a retain the vestiges of open mind on the subject, the maundering [grumbling] farce of "down-trodden woman and the brute man" will be played out.

I The Legend. JOHN STUART MILL is dead! but his eloquent wail of the subjection of women is never let die—it rings in our ears every day. It is solemn, it is pathetic; it overflows with the chivalric sentiment which Mill professes to repudiate as out of date, like the clanship and hospitality of the wandering Arab, but which nevertheless, is so strongly developed in the average male. It has become the gospel of women's pretended wrongs, and has caused the ingenuous youth of Oxford and Cambridge to blush for their fellow males. The only objection that the lawyers of the present year of grace can raise to it is that it is really the reverse of legal truth. But even apart from the late John Stuart Mill, for considerably more than a generation past—indeed, one may say, more or less from the beginning of the present century— mankind, in this and some other countries, has had sedulously instilled into its mind the notion that the female sex is labouring under a grievous oppression at the hands of the tyrant male. In the present day this opinion has acquired the character of an axiom which few people think of disputing. Every occurrence bearing upon the social or economical relation of the sexes is judged in the light of this fixed idea. The press in general voices the view of public opinion with the result that the assumption in question is continually being reiterated. The moral of the injustice exercised by man upon woman is insisted upon with all the devices of rhetoric, and every chance occurrence is eagerly seized upon and pressed into the service to point the moral and adorn the tale of the favourite theory. No one, as far as we are aware, has seriously set him or herself to proving the theory to have any foundation at all. Starting with the assumption, the state of things it implies has been deplored, people have tried to explain it, to suggest remedies for it, but tested it has never been. We all know the story of King Charles II. and the Royal Society; how the Merry Monarch, shortly after the institution of that learned body, propounded a problem for its solution, to wit, why a dead fish weighed more than a live one? Many were the explanations suggested, till at length one bold man proposed that they should come back to first principles, and have a dead fish and a live fish respectively placed in the scales before them. The proposition was received with horror, one member alleging that to doubt the fact amounted to nothing less than high treason. After much difficulty, however, the bold man got his way; the matter was put to the test, when, to the utter discomfiture of the loyal members, the alleged fact which they were seeking to explain evinced itself as but a figment of the Royal fancy.

144 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) We propose in the following paragraphs to consider whether the matter does not stand similarly only very much "more so" as regards the conventional notion of the legal and social disabilities of women. In the present paper we shall merely confine ourselves to the legal aspects of the question. It will not, we think, take us long to convince ourselves that the allegations on this subject which the present generation, at least, has had dinned into its ears from all sides since its infancy, are even on a less favourable footing as regards accuracy. Charles II. thought the dead fish weighed heavier than the live one. The event only proved that they weighed the same—not that 2 the live one weighed heavier than the dead one. Our modern women's righters bewail the alleged legal oppression of women by men. The facts show not that neither sex is oppressed as such, but, on the contrary, they disclose a legalised oppression of men by women.

II The Facts. We will in the first place give a short statement of the law of husband and wife, with a view to discovering on which side of the equation does the weight of privilege lie, regarding the marriage contract as it at present exists in this country. Let us clearly understand what are the exact limitations, and what the extraordinary extent of these sex privileges conferred by law. Rich men are, on account of their wealth, in a more enviable position towards any litigant in the Law Courts than are poor men. The privilege here is of wealth. But rich women are enormously better off in the matter of legal privilege than are rich men, and poor women are similarly privileged by law as against men of their own class.

The Letter of the Law. This privilege conferred on women arises in an extraordinary number of cases, for the express letter of the law discriminates in the sharpest possible manner between men and women in the matter of legal right and duty, of civil law advantage and criminal law exemption. But the letter of the law is supplemented by the bias of tribunals and by the bias of the press, and of public opinion, of which opinion, after all, the action of the tribunals is but the reflection. Who interprets, enacts. The unfair incidence of the law, bad enough by itself, is rendered crushing by the made-up minds of judge and jury. 3

145 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Bias of Tribunals. The settled bias of the tribunals in favour of the woman complainant, actuating magistrates, judge and jury, operates in two ways. In the first place a woman has only to complain against a man, and the tribunal is already convinced of the justice of her claim. The tribunal is only impartial if the complaint is by one woman against another. In the next place, no adequate repression of crime or other injury by a woman against a man is even attempted.

Bias of Press and Public Opinion. This tendency of the tribunals is confirmed and rendered irresistiBle by the action of the press and public opinion. All injuries to a woman are chronicled with flaring headlines. Injuries by women to men are laughed at, or worse still, passed over in silence. The origin of this bias is a subject of deep interest, but not one capable of being discussed within brief limits. It is, of course, to be found in the history of England for some centuries past—practically since the Reformation—in so far as difference in the intensity of the sentiment differentiates England from other European peoples. It is to be found in the history of Europe and the race for many centuries before the period of the great European upheaval of the 16th century. It is enough for the present to note that the pro-feminist prejudice exists and is transmuted into positive rules of law, and legal administration by the action of public opinion and the press, Parliament, judges and juries, and crystallised into statutory enactment by an active pro-feminist propaganda of sex-conscious women's righters. If anyone thinks the latter factor unimportant, it may be sufficient to remind him of the statutory innovation 4 involving the most flagrant injustice, inasmuch as flagrant inequality, viz.:— 1. Summary Court for Separation. Open to women alone, except in the case of drunkenness (cf. Licensing Act, 1902). 2. Action for Slander. Open to women alone. 3. Duty of Husband to maintain his wife—notwithstanding her adultery.—This last a triumph of feminine privileges enacted in 1895! It is impossible in any distribution of the main outlines of sex-privilege to avoid occasionally overlapping. One arrangement of the topics will be convenient. Let us consider women's privileges under the head of Matrimonial Law, and the Civil Law generally, and, further, of the Criminal Law. These privileges arise indirectly from the action of the legislature, but mainly from that of the Courts, and consist of: first, the deliberate introduction of new rules of law and

146 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) procedure, and, secondly, the retention of some old-world privileges of women, logical enough when women were dependent, but under modern conditions engines of tyranny against men.

3 Matrimonial Privileges of Women.

1. Breach of Promise of Marriage. The law of George III., punishing by damages— usually vindictive damages—violation of breach of promise of marriage. The women's privilege to commit perjury plays a great part in this process. A woman swears a man promised to marry her. Judge and jury hold this statement false, and mark the result. No one suggests that she should be indicted for perjury. On the contrary, the grateful male litigant, happy to escape, settles £3,000 on her (Gore v . Lord Sudley, 10 June, 1896). Furthermore, by custom of the tribunals creating the Common Law, this action is confined in its benefits to woman. A man suing in a like case is laughed out of Court. This may or may not be a just privilege conferred on women—that of breaking their promise free of legal penalty, but it is obviously a privilege conferred by the practice of the Courts on women as such. The rules of law invalidating contracts obtained by fraud, duress, or undue influence, have no effect as against a woman inducing a man, by subtle device or threats of scandal, to marry her. An experienced woman of 30 can entrap a boy of 22 into such a promise; the Court takes no notice of the invalidity from point of view of fair play. But a man suing a woman of any age would be laughed out of Court.

2. Privilege to Defraud Under Cover of Promise of Marriage. This is, of course, a minor privilege compared with that of exacting damages for breach of promise. But it is a real privilege, nevertheless. A man gives valuable property—jewellery, furniture, or money—to a woman under an agreement to marry, fraudulently entered into on her part, inasmuch as she has no power to carry out her promise, being already married or preferring someone else. The man, in practice (whatever theory may be) is not assisted to recover the property, and the magistrate rebukes him for "unmanly" behaviour! Contrast the other side. A woman makes a loan to a man whom she knows to he married. He receives a sentence of five years penal servitude.

3. Maintenance. As against her husband, the law confers on a woman who has married him the unilateral privilege of maintenance. The earlier law made this privilege dependent on her obedience, cohabitation with her husband, and 6 her observance of outwardly decent behaviour. The

147 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader present law has set her free from all these restraints. Since 1857 the Secular Court, which then assumed jurisdiction in matrimonial matters, has given up all attempt to enforce obedience, but the most violent methods, including imprisonment and sequestration of the property of the husband are employed to enforce her claim to maintenance. By a recent Statute (the Act of 1884) the process of imprisonment to make a wife obey an order to return to her husband was abolished. By the famous decision in the Jackson Case the husband was prohibited from himself using force to compel her to return. But the deserted wife by magisterial order can get her deserting husband sent to gaol [jail]. And neither legislature nor the Courts, which took away her duties of obedience and cohabitation, ever dreamt of depriving her of her privilege of being maintained by the man whom she can flout and insult with impunity. As a successful lady litigant (May, 1896) remarked to her husband, "There is no law which compels me to obey or honour you, but there is a law that you must keep me." This woman tersely sums up the position. In the case of a man of property the Courts will expropriate him for the benefit of his wife. In the case of a wage-earner the Courts from police magistrates to Supreme Court will decree him to be her earning slave, bound to work for her or go to prison. A wife, no matter if rolling in wealth, is not obliged to contribute a penny to her husband's support, even if he be incapacitated from work through disease or accident. The sole exception which the law makes in derision is that if he be actually in such destitution as to go to the workhouse, then the wealthy wife is obliged to pay, not to her husband, but the local authorities, the cost of his maintenance at the exiguous scale usual in such cases. Even a wife who, against her husband's wish, leaves his house after assaulting and insulting him can obtain against him an order for restitution of conjugal rights. This is a mere preliminary to form a basis for a claim for sequestration of his property for her maintenance. The Act of 1884 forbids the Court to order imprisonment for refusal to obey an order of restitution of conjugal rights, but enables such a refusal to be made a ground for confiscation of the husband's property in favour of the wife. No reciprocity here. Imprisonment before 1884 affected both husband and wife. Sequestration of property, the husband alone. Now imprisonment is abolished for the wife, and so the wife goes scot free, while the husband is as much bound as ever in person and in property. This iniquitous statutory rule is made use of by women who have no wish whatever to return to their husbands. After overbearing ill-usage and desertion of the husband for years, the wife applies to the Court for an order for restitution, well knowing that her unfortunate victim will not obey the order. Then the robbery of his property is completed by a second order in Court.

148 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) But no disobedience to a like order on her part enables her property to be confiscated, or herself to be sent to prison.

4. Disposition of Property Free From Control of Husband. By the Married Women's Property Acts a woman has complete control over all property acquired or inherited by her in any way, free from any claim on the part of her husband. With cynical injustice she is left in possession of all her old claims on her husband's property, and the latest charter of female privilege, the Statute of 1895, gives her claims regardless even of her adultery. 8 This matter deserves more attention than it usually receives. Let us consider the topics in order:—

(a) Source of Women's Property. The piteous tales of artistic working women, of wives robbed by their worthless husbands, from the Mrs. Morton of fact to the Miss Trotwood24 of fiction, formed the foundation of the claim for a revision of the law. Liberty for women to retain their own earnings. Obvious equity here! But the bulk of women's property, in 99 out of every 100 cases, is not earned by them at all. It arises from gift or inheritance from parents, relatives, or even the despised husband. Whenever there is any earning in the matter it is notoriously earning by some mere man or other. Nevertheless, under the operation of the law, property is steadily being concentrated into women's hands. “Once Stridhan25 always Stridhan.”

(b) Control through Life. The wife has absolute and unfettered control over her own property, man-earned though it be, and her person. This is the new style. But the gaoler and the broad arrow [government mark of ownership] make the husband, her earning slave, to be insulted and jeered with impunity. This is the old style with a difference. "All yours is mine, and all mine's my own." Mere man is not worth considering when the material aggrandizement of women is concerned !

24 Mrs. Morton figures to be Hannah Morton, a successful shopkeeper in Hastings, England. Miss Trotwood is a character in "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens. 25 Woman's property 149 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader (c) Control at Death. By the Married Women's Property Acts, a woman has complete power of leaving her property away from her husband, by will, even though in his prosperity he gave it to her. The husband can be prevented from doing so, by the wife's suing him for maintenance, when his property, or as much of it as judges think fit, is settled on her, and can no longer he disposed of by his will. Conveyancers aver that the steady tendency for a woman to leave property acquired sfromome man always to a woman. A silent revolution in succession is being accomplished. But the man is left under his old burdens of supporting his wife.

(d) Bankrupting Husband for Money Lent. A wife is privileged to recover judgment against, and bankrupt her husband for any money she may have lent him, and this privilege is no dead letter. A husband does not lend, but gives money to his wife. If he were to attempt by legal documents to turn it into a loan, he would discover once again that what is sauce for the goose, is by no means sauce for the gander. There is no case on record of a husband daring to sue his wife for a loan.

5. Disposition of Property Free From Control of Creditors. Not merely as against the husband, but against her creditors, the married woman is in a position of enviable privilege. A married woman, even when separated from her husband, and released from all duties towards him or her children, retains her privilege of having her property exempt from seizure for debt. Technicalities would be tedious, but the following is the practical working of the law. In legal phraseology, if a married woman enters into a contract, and if (an important if) there is no restraint against anticipation in her settlement, then her property, or some of it, may be attached. As to the restraint against anticipating income, this clause, introduced by Lord Chancellor Thurlow to protect an interesting relative of his against her husband, is practically to be found in every settlement, being now useful against the creditor, although no longer needed against the husband.

6. Vicarious Responsibility Of Husband Towards

Third Persons for his Wife's Misconduct. The husband is liable, and his wife is not, for all the civil wrongs (torts) she may commit. He has no control over her, but serves as her whipping-boy. This, though she publicly defames and insults him in every way, and has deserted him.

150 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) As Sir Frank Lockwood put it, one has the deep consolation of knowing that if Mrs. Jackson utters slanders Mr. Jackson can be sued. Under the older English law, when the wife was "sous la verge de son marrye" (the canon law sub virga viri [under the rod of the man/husband ] ), the rule was reasonable enough. Now, however, it is only an illustration of the pro-feminist bias of the Courts. Every moth- eaten scrap of privilege, which is in favour of the woman, they retain. All privileges of the husband, no matter how firmly established, they deny as having ever existed. Look at the astounding declaration of Lord Halsbury in the Jackson case, that the husband never had the right in English law to restrain his wife ! ! !

7. Impunity For Crimes Committed In Husband's Presence.

The “Doctrine of Coercion “ Again, a pious archæology animates the judges when the woman is to be benefited. Notwithstanding the revolutionary changes in the law, another old-world privilege of the "woman under the rod" is reserved for the dominating female of to-day. If her husband is present when she is committing a crime, a married woman is presumed by an intelligent administration of justice to have acted under his coercion. This is sometimes amusing, when, as often happens, the woman is the instigator of the crime. This precious privilege is nominally confined to cases of minor importance, and in special is supposed not to affect murder. In practice it affects all crimes, and is no dead letter, as illustrative cases can show.

8. Facilities for Divorce. No man can obtain a divorce except by a terribly expensive process in the High Court at a minimum charge of forty pounds. This means a denial of justice to the vast bulk of the male population. Any woman, by the asking for it, can get a summary separation and confiscation of her husband's property, and an order for her maintenance out af his earnings from the nearest police court. Recent Statutes confer this privilege. This process, which costs only a few shillings, the husband has to pay for. But divorce or no divorce, the wife's property, whereever acquired, cannot he touched. There is no question here of interfering with her "earnings" though she be an opera singer with £40,000 a year. Similarly with her capitalised property, which, though man-acquired, as usual, cannot be touched. If her property, as well as her husband's, has been handed over to the trustees of her marriage settlement the Court has some power to make orders as to the income of that property, but in practice uses it only for the benefit of the children.

151 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader No matter how flagrant her conduct the wildest dream never suggested that the wife's “earnings” (as artist, opera singer, or what not) no matter how exorbitant, should ever be touched for the benefit even of her children. That a portion should be sequestrated for the maintenance of the husband—even though a husband is incapacitated by disease or accident—of course would be a barbarous suggestion, hardly to be discussed outside Bedlam26. But precisely analogous orders as to the hard-earned and miserably stinted wages of the male earner are made with scandalous levity in the Police Court every day. A working man, earning eighteen or twenty shillings a week, is calmly ordered to provide twelve shillings a week for life for the keep of a clamorous and malignant shrew. The denial to the working man of the same facilities for summary separation, through the police court, granted to every brawling wife who chooses to ask for it, simply means that the man is in a state of legal subjection to his wife. The wife has but to scream and appeal to the nearest policeman, and prison, separation, custody of children, and maintenance, are decreed as matters of course. A woman can habitually repudiate her duties, neglect her children, pawn her husband's and children's clothes, waylay her husband at his work, and disgrace him before his friends, procure his dismissal, assault him, and there is no remedy open to the working man. To tell him that he can appeal to the Divorce Court at a cost of forty pounds, is a piece of savage and scornful irony. He might as well be told that he can, if he has the money, promote a private Act of Parliament, at the cost of some thousand pounds. If goaded by intolerable misery, he so far forgets himself as to strike his torturer, he is sent to gaol, with his condemnation headed A cowardly brute. The special facilities for women to obtain divorce, separation confiscation of the husband's property, do not end with the provision of a cheap and expeditious Court for women alone. If the woman elects to go to the Divorce Division of the High Court, the path is made similarly smooth for her. Her unfortunate husband, who may afterwards be held to be quite guiltless of the lying charges brought against him, is ordered to find money for her solicitors, and has to pay in advance!! He must also pay her alimony pendente lite27. Then when he is dragged to Court by a heartless and vindictive woman, he finds the scales still more heavily weighted against him. The rules might be formulated somewhat in this way:— 1. Every woman's statement complaining of her husband is assumed to he true until he conclusively proves it to be false. The onus probandi [burden of proof] is on him and the difficulty he has to face is that of proving a negative.

26 famous insane asylum 27 during the litigation 152 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) 2. The slightest harshness or even carelessness of speech or behaviour, no matter under what provocation (the records of years being searched to find one) is absolutely final proof of "cruelty" if committed by the husband. No amount of insolence and brutality—short of actual attempt to maim—is cruelty in a wife. Anything she does is a pardonable exhibition of feminine temper. 3. The husband and his witnesses are prosecuted for perjury on the slightest inaccuracy being discerned in their narration of facts. Deliberate perjury is passed over if committed by the wife, her paramour, or her witnesses. 4. No charge, no matter of what infamous crime, falsely made by a wife against a husband, is a ground for his refusing to take her back. If he should refuse the Court confiscates for her benefit as such of his property or earnings as they think fit. One result of these instructive rules of practice is to be found in the number of undefended divorce suits. It is a common saying of the legal profession that multitudes of husbands allow judgments to go against them by default, as they are quite conscious that no man not of absolutely angelic character—unless he be himself a lawyer—has any chances before a prejudiced profeminist judge and jury. 14

9. Endowment of Adulteress out of Damages. Here we come upon a marvellous specimen of judicial legislation, wherein Parliament has not been troubled. In case of a husband succeeding under the Act of 1895 he will have difficulty in future in getting a divorce from his wife by reason of adultery. He is entitled to damages from the co-respondent for the injury to him, done in breaking up his home, and exposing him to mental suffering and material loss. The damages are supposed to he paid to the husband on this basis—that they were in compensation for his loss. They are still assessed on this basis, but at the end of the nineteenth century we find the judges creating a legal fiction. Influenced by the wave of feminist sentimentality, the judges have actually seized on these damages as a fund for endowing the adulteress. The way this insidious device was introduced was as follows:—It not unfrequently happened that a husband assented of his own free will to the damages, which in law were his own property, being settled on the children of the marriage. Sometimes he included his late wife in that dedication of the fund. This was generous of him, as the woman had obviously forfeited her claims on him. Now, however, the judge, without consulting parliament, has deprived the injured husband of the merit of generosity. Without the husband's consent, in fact, notwithstanding his opposition, the judge will hand over the damages, which in strict law are the husband's, to such trustees as they think fit, and transform the fund into an endowment for the adulteress who has prudently selected a rich man as co-respondent.

153 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader To understand the iniquity of this proceeding, let us take the opposite case. In some American States the wife's trade union has procured the passing of a law that enables a wife to sue for damages for her husband's seduction. What would be thought of the American Courts if they seized on the damages so secured and settled them as a provision on the delinquent husband? or (to add a grotesque completeness to the parallel) settle them on the husband and his children by his fair seducer? Yet a similar piece of monstrous injustice—to men, though not to women—is the law of England to-day. Our pro-feminist judges are presumably indifferent to the fact that the subsidy of the adulteress in this way can have but one result, namely, to “encourager les autres.”28

10. Custody of Children. It has always in England been laid down as a fundamental law based on public policy, that the custody of children and their education is a duty incumbent on the father. It is said to be so fundamental that he is not permitted to waive his exercise of the right by prenuptial contract. (See the Agar v. Ellis Case.) This rule of the Common Law of England is of course in harmony with the policy of all Europe and Christendom, as well as with the historic conditions of the European social organisation, if not with the primal instincts of the race. Nevertheless, fundamental and necessary as the rule may be, the pro-feminist magistrates and judges of England are bent apparently on ignoring it with a light heart. They have not merely retained the old rule that the custody of infants of tender years remains with the mother until the child attains the age of seven. But they go much further than that. As a matter of course, and without considering in the least the interests of the child, or of society at large, they hand over the custody and education of all the children to the litigant wife, whenever she establishes—an easy thing to do—a flimsy and often farcical case of technical “cruelty.” The victim husband has the privilege of maintaining the children as well as herself out of his property or earnings, and has the added consolation of knowing that they will brought up to detest him. Even in the extreme case where a deserting wife takes with her the children of the marriage, there is practically no redress for the husband if in narrow circumstances. The police courts will not interfere. The divorce court, as already stated, is expensive to the point of

28 to encourage the others 154 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) prohibition. In any case the husband has to face a tribunal already prejudiced in favour of the female, and the attendant scandal of a process will probably have no other result than to injure his children and their future prospects in life. 11. Impunity for Offences against Husband. The wife in England enjoys either absolute immunity or liability to merely nominal punishment for all offences against her husband committed during marriage. Contrast with this the rule as regards offences by the husband towards the wife. Gaol and public obloquy are his portion. This matter will be referred to again in considering the criminal law privileges of women in general (married or unmarried) as regards trial, sentence, remission of punishment, and gaol-treatment. It may here he noted that feminine exemption, as specially regards Matrimonial Law, is established in one of the following ways:—Either by 1. The text of the law expressly, which discriminates between wife's offences and husband's, punishing the latter and leaving unpunished the wife. For instance, in cases of desertion; or by 2. The administrators of the law who have established a rule of practice discriminating in favour of the woman, although nominally the law is the same for both. For instance, in cases of cruelty, perjury, and bigamy ;or by the fact that 3. Whenever a pecuniary fine is imposed, nominally on the wife, the husband is the vicarious sufferer. He has to pay. With this preface let us consider the law and practice as regards a wife's offences against the husband, in the order of their frequency.

(a) Impunity for Insolence and Insult. The most elaborate cruelty in the way of insolence and insult is unpunishable by the law when committed by the wife. The husband remains bound to support his torturer, who may publicly waylay and insult him, harass him at his work, procure his dismissal, libel him by postcards sent to his workshop, or to his club. If he he a rich man, he can get some tardy redress in the way of palliation; but he remains liable to divorce and expropriation at his wife's behest. The rod, the cucking school,29 the indictment as a scold at the assizes were the methods adopted by the Law of England and sanctioned by the Canon Law, until the present

29 Cucking stool: “An instrument of punishment no longer in use, consisting of a chair in which the offender was tied and exposed to public derision or ducked in water.” American Heritage Dictionary. 155 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader century, to repress such outrages. Now the feminine noblesse can torture their slaves with impunity. If the husband retaliates, the magistrate's order promptly consigns him to gaol and the prisoners' lash.

(b) Impunity for Neglect. The wife may repudiate every one of her duties, may utterly neglect her household, her children, and her husband. No remedy either in the police court or the divorce court for the husband. If the husband neglect the wife in this connection— "neglect" is a very elastic word—consequences ensue of which the chief are- (1) The prompt police court separation order, and confiscation of property and wages of husband (enforced by imprisonment). (2) This so-called neglect of the husband enables the wife to commit adultery with impunity, yet still she has her claim to maintenance. (Act of 1895.) Neglect on the part of the wife is no legal offence at all. Neglect on the part of the husband has been construed to mean anything of which the wife likes to complain. For example, an actor who is obliged to remain late at the theatre comes home late. This is held to be "neglect," with the usual penal consequences. What between the upper millstone of "cruelty" and the nether millstone of "neglect" the unfortunate husband can now be condemned alike, if he does something, or if he does nothing—anything the wife chooses to call so being construed as either "cruelty" or "neglect."

(c) Impunity for Libel and Slander of Husband. No lying charge, no matter how gross, by word or writing is punishable if committed by the wife against the husband. She is free to slander and libel him before servants and strangers, solicitors and pressmen; accuse him of every crime known to the Old Bailey [Central Criminal Court] calendar, and write postcards to his club or to his employer and [no] penal consequences ensue as long as she lives in his house. Her husband cannot leave her without incurring punishment. If the husband, not to say slanders, but speaks disrespectfully to his wife before servants or strangers, she is quite entitled to leave his house at once, and claim the usual separation and confiscation order, and deprive him of the custody of the children whom he is bound to support.

156 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) (d) Impunity for Waylaying and Procuring Dismissal. A vindictive wife who courts publicity and scandal has the average respectable man—unless he be an angel or a lawyer—at her absolute mercy. If he be a man of the middle-classes, she can waylay him at his office and destroy his business connection. She can call at his club and secure his expulsion. If he be a working man she can interview his employer and secure his prompt dismissal. She can render him a laughing-stock to all his acquaintances, and at the same time achieve his financial ruin. The law and its administrators stand idly by. No remedy for the helpless male. The "poor woman" (they are always that) must have been illused; there is no such thing as savage vindictiveness and recklessness in the female.

(e) Impunity for Violence and Assault. If a man under any provocation, no matter how galling—insolence or violence—strikes a woman, he is sent to hard labour, divorced, and his property confiscated, or his earnings hypothecated—and all this through the prompt instrumentality of the police-court. A woman may assault, stab, set fire to her husband, and he has no remedy, except to summon her to the policecourt, where, if she be fined, he is compelled to pay the fine, and as likely as not is laughed at. If her crime be revoltingly atrocious, she is perhaps sent to prison—for one- twentieth part of the time awarded to a male offender for a like offence. On her being released, her husband, unless he be a rich man, is bound to take her back, and, rich or poor, support her. The prompt and inexpensive police-court divorce is not for him. A humane police magistrate actually had to stoop to make terms with a cruel and murderous criminal. A wife strikes a felon blow at her husband, renders him insensible, and he has to be removed to the hospital. His face is badly scarred, six stitches having to be put into the wounds. The magistrate, wishing to prevent murder, binds her over to come up for judgment, if called upon, on condition that she kindly consents to sign a separation deed, permitting her unfortunate hus20 hand slave to live apart from her. The slave of course has to support her all the same. ( Morning Advertiser, 2nd June, 1896. Thames Police Court.)

(f) Impunity for Adultery. The latest charter of women's privileges—the Act of 1895—enables a woman to commit adultery with Impunity—provided she can allege her husband neglected her. As "neglect" usually means that she drove him to the public-house or to his club by overbearing violence and insolence, the present law means that if a woman has a fancy for adultery, all she need do is to pick a quarrel with her husband about anything she likes, then she can indulge in desertion and adultery with impunity, and claim the usual divorce and confiscation from a sympathising tribunal.

157 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader It is singular that the law on this very offence should be perpetually cited by women's righters as her chief grievance, next to the absence of the Parliamentary franchise—and as the standing illustration of the "cruel inequality and injustice as between the woman and the man" of the English law of divorce. If a woman, we are told, commits adultery, a man can obtain absolute divorce, but if a woman sues she must prove cruelty as well. Now as to the earlier law, this was the rule, and something could be said to defend it. It is obvious that if a woman commits adultery she may introduce a bastard child to her husband's family, and saddle him with a pecuniary burden and them with an onerous relationship which it is unjust should be borne by them [which would be unjust if borne by them]. If a husband has illicit relations, he does not bring home his bastard offspring. But since 1857 the secular court has practically abolished the discriminations. Let the wife prove illicit relations by the husband, and she has always had her divorce for the asking. The reason is simple. The Courts will hold, to oblige a wife, that anything is cruelty if committed by a husband. It is cruelty to come home late from his club; it is cruelty to spend an evening with friends without her company. It is cruelty to hold her hands if she tries to strike or to bite him. However, these refinements are no longer necessary to the pro-feminist tribunals of England. The last charter of feminine privilege (the Act of 1895) has set the balance of express law the other way. Now a wife can commit adultery with impunity—if induced by the "neglect" of her husband. No such excuse for the husband.

(g) Impunity for Desertion. A woman can have her husband arrested and sent to gaol if he leaves her, even though her own violence and cruelty led to his flight. The husband gets no assistance from the law if his wife deserts him. The method in which this privilege has been worked out was simple enough. It consisted in abolishing all the husband's control over the wife's actions and property, and, on the other hand, retaining all the wife's power of legal compulsion on the husband, with added powers. These changes have practically come in during the period since 1857, when a secular court for divorce was established. Under the earlier law, prior to, and long after the Reformation, ecclesiastical censure restrained the deserting wife. But the secular common law also lent its aid to the husband. He could prevent her by force from leaving his house, and could bring her back if she had escaped. More, he had an action for “harbouring” against any of her relations or strangers who assisted her in straying away—as late as George III. a husband's action for damages on this ground was successful.

158 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) An exception to the general rule, and even this was of doubtful validity, was introduced under Henry VIII. A wife could be assisted to leave her husband's house if she were journeying to the Bishop's Court to seek a separation. But the latest feminist rulings of the judges have quite swept away such fine distinctions as those of 1857. (1) By their fiction of "cruelty"—anything a husband does being "cruelty"—they have enabled any woman who likes to leave on a pretended excuse. (2) By procuring the passing of an Act (Lord Chancellor Cairns' Act, 1884) the Courts got rid of their theoretical duty of ordering a wife to be imprisoned for refusing to obey an order of restitution of conjugal rights. Nothing in the way of compulsion by restraint of person or property is to be applied to the wife. But by a cynical stroke this Act provides that if a husband refuses to obey, his property is to be confiscated. And, more outrageous than all, the wife's power to procure the arrest and imprisonment of the husband by the magistrate's Court is left untouched. A case in which the wife of a clergyman caused her husband to be arrested on board a ship going to America, and sentenced to hard labour by alleging his desertion, deserves special notice. True that the clergyman, having means, could appeal to a higher Court and have the iniquitous sentence quashed. But the working man would have had to serve his allotted term in the prison cell. And no one has ever suggested that this wife should be punished. (See the case of the Rev. Peter MacDonald Neilson, June, 1894.) The notorious Jackson case furnished another picture. Here a woman is upheld by the Court of Appeal in deserting her husband and condemning him to life-long celibacy. He has absolutely no remedy against her. If she commits any civil injury against any one, he can be sued. If he should live with any other woman, Mrs. Jackson can get a portion of the property confiscated and settled on herself. She is not obliged to ask for a divorce, she can still keep him bound by limiting her demand to a judicial separation. The criticisms which some lawyers have made on this decision are wide of the mark. It was quite in harmony with the later current of authority, though in violent conflict with the settled Common Law of last century. Tie the man and let the woman free, is the prevalent judicial theory of to-day. Though the judges could obtain the passing of Lord Chancellor Cairns' Act, 1884, freeing the wife from imprisonment for desertion, there has been no suggestion of promoting an Act to enable a man in Mr. Jackson's position to obtain a divorce.

159 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader So enamoured have they become with the new doctrine of feminine predominance in the relation of marriage, that the judges of the House of Lords have actually extended to Scotland their theory of tying the man and letting the woman free. For over three centuries the law of Scotland has provided that desertion for four years on the part of either spouse is ground for absolute divorce, with right of second marriage. For all that long period the Act has been found most salutary in effect. Now the judges in the House of Lords, in the year 1894, have practically repealed it. They have refused to grant a Scotch litigant divorce, although his wife has deserted him for over four years, and at the same time abducted his child. They allege, as the ground for this astonishing "new readings" of the law, that the husband did not really want her to return. As this can be alleged in every case in which a husband does not slavishly implore a shrew to come back, the result is that when a vindictive woman wants to prevent 24 the man remarrying, she can successfully resist his claim for divorce. This salutary Act of Scots Parliament has been offered up as a whole burnt offering on the altar of the dominant female.

(h) Impunity to Commit Bigamy. We now come to a flagrant instance where the law professes to apply impartially to masculine and feminine offenders. But the feminist administrators of the law have created an undisputed feminine privilege. Long terms of penal servitude await the male bigamist. The female is privileged to indulge in this form of deceit and theft with impunity. For, be it noted, it is almost invariably a desire to obtain economic advantage that impels the woman to this particular crime, the essence of which, of course, is the deceit practised on the innocent party. In the cases where there is no economic motive and where no deceit is practised on the second spouse (to use the convenient terms of the Scottish Law) no punishment is ever inflicted on the woman, and perhaps none is specially required. The possession of the "marriage lines" is sought for as a social advantage, though based on the deception of a public official. But in striking contrast to this practice, the man who contracts a second, i.e., illegal, alliance, even though he goes through the marriage ceremony solely to please his second partner, and although she is in no way deceived as to his status, may, even though in addition he has been deserted by his first wife, he arrested and sent to prison at the bidding of the woman who deserts him. This, however, is not the full extent of the privilege. Men who, from passion, or for whatever motive, deceive the second partner, are severely punished. That is to say, a woman already deserting her husband, may entangle a man into an alliance with her which he 25 believes to be honourable and legal: may make him the father of her children, and hamper

160 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) him with the life-long obligation to support these unhappy offspring: may thus brand her own children with the stamp of illegitimacy, may squander his earnings for years, may finish the tale of her favours by involving him in a suit in the divorce court as a co- respondent, and in a prosecution in the criminal courts as an unwilling witness against his children's mother, and may do all this with absolute freedom from legal penalty. Let a man attempt to improve his financial position, nay, let him, even at a pecuniary loss to himself, exercise the least similar deceit on any woman, and the Criminal Courts descend on him with swift retribution. The following article in a leading London daily newspaper is instructive:— “The sentence of seven years penal servitude passed by the Common Sergeant yesterday upon Charles Baker, who has for many years successfully practised bigamy as a profession, is not one day too long. Mr. Baker is evidently a person of irresistible fascination to ladies, and but for the rare courage of one of his victims, who had him tracked through both hemispheres, he might in time have bigamously married the residue of our unmarried women possessing suitable dowers. Quite another sort of bigamist was the cause of an application to Mr. Lane at the South Western Police Court. This was a young woman, who having married yesterday's applicant, while her first husband was still living, was strangely purged of her offence by Mr. Justice Hawkins after a day's imprisonment, on condition that she returned—not to her legitimate spouse, but to the young man who irregularly succeeded him. This she did, but not for long, as the same young man had to complain yesterday, that she had, in turn, deserted him, for an old gentleman she used to go after before. The applicant, like a sensible young man, seemed able to 26 support this with philosophy, but what did raise his ire was her threat to prosecute him if he did not maintain her, against which he sought—and naturally obtained— protection. The fickle young woman is evidently still unconversant with the rules of the game. Perhaps when she has tried as many husbands as Mr. Baker has married wives, she will know better. Really it is getting time to mete out equal treatment to masculine and feminine offenders.” — Daily Chronicle, May 21, 1896.

(i) Impunity for False Charges on Oath. No crime is too abominable to be imputed by a wife, with absolute impunity, against a husband. More precise details need not be given, as recent instances will occur to the public mind of notorious and infamous illusage of a husband in this way by a heartless and vindictive woman. But the Public Prosecutor is silent when the false accusation is brought by one of the privileged sex. Prosecutions of women for perjury in a divorce suit are unknown.

161 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader And, be it observed, this privilege extends to all female friends or hirelings of the wife. These persons are allowed to accuse, with elaborately-prepared details of corroboration, the husband of the woman litigant of committing adultery with themselves. They are never punished. An obliging maiden sister—to help her married sister to procure divorce and confiscation of property against a troublesome husband—swears that the husband committed adultery with herself, the wife's sister! The judge and jury find this story a concocted lie. The infamous perjurer is not punished—is not even prosecuted. Obliging maid servants every day come forward to allege their own or some other woman's "immoral relations" with the victim husband. No one ever dreams of prosecuting them. It would be waste of time and money—as no jury would convict. 27

(k) Impunity for Perjured Denials of Guilt. Women, it is notorious, every day perjure themselves in divorce suits, by denying that they committed adultery when their guilt is manifest. They are never prosecuted. The administrators of the law show by their practice—though not in articulate words—that they hold such perjury a venial fault, if not, indeed, a justifiable means of self-defence in the case of holy, inviolate woman. This privilege, like the analogous one of bringing lying charges against a husband, extends to the wife's friends and hirelings. Let a husband untruly deny his illicit connection with a woman if his wife is the accuser. The Public Prosecutor intervenes, as a case decided in June, 1896, shows clearly enough, when the male went to penal servitude. Yet, be it observed, it is only the man's denying with the object of protecting himself against his wife that is punished. If the man he not a husband, but a corespondent: if he deny the truth with the laudable object of protecting a wife (who happens to be an adulteress—but that does not strip her of her privilege) then his perjury is pardonable and chivalrous. The co-respondent is safe under the shadow of the wife. In fact he must lie. And this brings us to the next head of privilege.

(l) Impunity for Treacherous Confession of Guilt. Here we have a most striking rule—No woman is supposed to be a cowardly traitor if she turns "wife's evidence" against a man, and truly alleges that he had illicit relations with herself. She is assisting justice, promoting morality, showing true repentance by open confession, and aiding in the women's trade union object of keeping down man, the slave! Her treachery to her accomplice is condoned. 28 But a man who would dare to turn "husband's evidence" against a wife, cannot be found within the four seas. The reason stares one in the face. Such a witness would not he

162 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) welcomed as a servant of justice, and a repentant sinner. No! he would be esteemed by judge, jury, press and public to be a loathsome reptile, unfit for human society. A howl of execration would drive him from the land. Such a depth of morbid sentiment has been reached that even if a man charged with immoral relations with a wife, refuses or omits— presumably through religious or conscientious motives— to come forward and perjure himself on her behalf, an indignant press comments on his conduct, and tells him he has not acted as a gentleman.

(m) Impunity to Procure Adultery. A wife seeking divorce and confiscation of her husband's property can exercise all her privileges of violence, insolence, and, under her recent charter, of adultery, without inconvenience, but she can in addition make him guilty as well as herself, with the trivial difference that he will be punished. A wife can get female detectives to send female seducers in her husband's path, and can then produce her hirelings in the box with conclusive proofs of the husband's and their own guilt. If the attempt be made on the husband's side there is swift retribution. In the first place as the adultery was committed with his own connivance she is quite absolved from legal responsibility. But more follows. At this moment, such witnesses on a husband's side can be sent to prison for successful conspiracy to procure the adultery of a wire. The wife herself wins her suit.

12. Impunity to Murder Husband. Exactly as in the case of bigamy, the law on murder and homicide are nominally the same for men as for women. But if a wife by poisoning or violence, kills her husband, the administrators of the law show in practice what can be done by twisting a text. The matter will again be referred to under the Criminal Law, but provisionally the rules may be reduced to form somewhat as follows:— (1) The least excuse is sufficient to reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter. (2) All the wife's statements against her husband are assumed to be true until they are proved to be false. (3) The proof of the actual deed of crime must be much more conclusive than in the case of a man. (4) If the verdict be [by] a mere chance one of murder, a sympathetic judge announces he will forward to the proper quarter the sympathetic jury's recommendation to mercy.

163 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader This recommendation is acted on by the Home Secretary as a matter of course in the case of a woman. (5) If the verdict is, as it usually is, one of manslaughter, a shamefully inadequate or possibly a merely nominal sentence is imposed.

(a) Poisoning. This peculiarly treacherous crime is a legitimate mode of self-defence if practised by a wife on her husband.

(b) Violence. A wife is still “weak woman” when armed with a poker, a metal pot, a vitriol bottle, a petroleum can, or a revolver. If these lethal substances killed her husband it must have been by accident. In any case he had taken her "for better or worse,” and had to put up with the consequences. Why did he cross her temper? Besides, even if she were ill-tempered, why did he not make a better selection when marrying? The elimination of thoughtless males is rather useful on the whole to the progress of the race. The decisions to which this line of argument, conscious or sub-conscious, leads judges and juries, shamefully neglectful of their public trust, may be seen from the appended cases, selected haphazard from a newspaper file.

(c) Poisoning a Husband. Mrs. Maybrick was tried at Liverpool Assizes for poisoning her husband. She read a written statement by herself (Mr. Justice Stephens ordered that she be not permitted to communicate with her lawyers before writing it) to the effect that she administered the poison to her husband at his own request. The judge and jury accepted her statement that she administered the poison, but disbelieved her statement that it was at his own request, and, wonderful to relate, she was convicted of murder, but the Home Secretary commuted her sentence; and after undergoing a few years' imprisonment she is now at large.

(d) Setting a Husband on Fire. Mary O'Reardon, August 1st, 1894, poured oil over her husband, and deliberately set him on fire with a lighted paper. Sentenced at the Central Criminal Court to six years' penal servitude. The offence was plainly wilful murder. The man had shortly before attempted to commit suicide—being driven to the attempt by her ill-usage.

164 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) (e) Setting a Husband on Fire. Catherine Chilton (Durham Assizes, Nov. 24th, 1894) threw a lighted lamp at her husband. Sentenced to twelve months' hard labour for manslaughter. The judge described it as a wanton and wicked act, and said it was a mercy for the prisoner that the jury had reduced the original charge to one of manslaughter.

(f) Stabbing a Husband. Annie Hibberd, August, 1894, stabbed her husband twice, remarking, "Revenge is sweet. Found guilty of manslaughter at the Central Criminal Court, and sentenced to six years' penal servitude.

(g) Driving a Waggon over a Husband. Jane Payne, August 18th, 1894, thrust her husband off a waggon, and then deliberately backed the horses, driving the wheels over him twice. Both legs fractured. He died a few hours afterwards. Found guilty of manslaughter.

(h) Setting a Husband and Child on Fire. Jane Ann Trelawney Baker ([age] 32) pleaded guilty to manslaughter of her husband and child by throwing a lighted lamp at the former. She was sentenced to three days' imprisonment, which meant her immediate release, and on leaving the dock remarked, amid the sympathy of the Court, that she was a childless widow, alone in the world ! ! !—Central Criminal Court, December 14th, 1893.

(i) Killing a Husband by Throwing a Knife at Him. At the Central Criminal Court, October 24th, 1894, a married woman surrendered to answer an indictment charging her with the manslaughter of her husband. The defence was that the prisoner did not fling the knife with the intention of killing her husband. She threw the knife in a moment of great mental irritation, and it unfortunately struck the deceased. The jury could not agree to a verdict and were discharged. The case was put back until the following week for counsel in the meantime to consider if it were necessary to proceed further with the case. Mr. Justice Wright, in allowing the prisoner out on a recognizance, told her that she need not attend unless she received notice to do so. The judge, it should be added, who throughout the trial appeared favourable to the prisoner, disallowed various questions of the prosecution as to the previous relations with the husband, and cut short the medical evidence, saying that he did not like to see the time of the Court wasted with cases such as these, or words to that effect. Of course not! Mere husband killing, alter all—what is that? In the

165 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader opposite case, that of killing a wife by the husband, how often have judges been careful to point out to the jury that any unlawful assault, if death happened to result from it, was, in the eyes of the law, wilful murder!

Non-matrimonial Privileges of Women As already been stated, the division of our subject into the Matrimonial, Civil, and Criminal and NonMatrimonial Privileges of Women, although obviously convenient, necessitates some over-lapping. This, however, is unavoidable, as, for many reasons, it is well to keep the promised or actual wife's privileges against her husband and others clear from those of other women. But women in general have many and serious privileges besides those affecting the matrimonial or quasimatrimonial relations.

The Criminal Law. The express wording of the law—and, much more, the tacit warping of the Criminal Law in favour of women by the bias of judge, jury, and the press—has created a regular system of conferring privileges on women as against men, or against the community in general :— 1. As regards Trial. 2. As regards Sentence. 3. As regards Prison Treatment. 4. As regards Pardon. The only exceptions to these privileges are:— (a) If the offence has been committed by one woman against another. (b) If the offence is by a baby farmer [caretaker], committed against other women's babies. The reasons for these exceptions are, of course, obvious, and need not be dwelt upon here.

1. Trial and Sentence. The rules are substantially the same as those affecting wives in particular, already enumerated. (a) The least excuse is sufficient to exonerate any woman from penal consequences.

166 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) (b) All the women's statements against a man are assumed to be true until they are proved to be false. (c) The proof of the actual deed of crime must be much more conclusive than in the case of a man. (d) The jury almost invariably recommends to mercy on the rare occasions when they convict. (e) A shamefully inadequate or even a nominal sentence Is imposed.

2. List of Crimes. The list of the wife's exemptions from punishment for crimes against her husband may nearly all be repeated as enjoyed, though possibly in a somewhat less degree, by all women (other men's wives or not) against a man, or against the community at large. (1) In cases of drunkenness this offence against the safety of the community is visited on the woman with a trifling fine. The matter is looked on rather as a joke than an offence. (2) In cases of libel and slander, a criminal prosecution against a woman is practically unknown. A nominal penalty, such as a promise not to repeat the offence, is the usual ending to such a prosecution. (3) Crimes of assault and violence generally are almost as privileged in the case of an ordinary woman as of a wife against a husband. (4) Murder is similarly reduced to manslaughter, no matter who the woman may be, provided the victim is a man. (5) Waylaying, injuring business, or procuring dismissal, is similarly a pastime to be indulged in by any vindictive woman with absolute impunity. (6) Perjury is similarly a perquisite of the female litigant—whether perjury of the defensive or offensive type. (7) Turning wife's evidence after seduction of husband is, of course, open to all women without punishment. (8) Conspiracy to procure the husband's seduction, as has already been stated, goes unpunished if committed on the wife's side. The class of offences more peculiarly effected by women ill general, apart from wives, are due either to revenge or a desire to extort money. Violence, culminating in murder, has been sufficiently dealt with in considering the wife's privilege. Economic motive is displayed in crimes of Fraud, Libel and Slander, Waylaying, Seduction and Perjury, to levy blackmail— though sometimes libel and slander, waylaying, and perjury are due to motives of revenge. Sometimes the law expressly discriminates between men and women; for instance, in the case of seduction: sometimes the administrators, for instance, in the case of fraud and perjury.

167 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader (a) Fraud. Generally speaking, fraud by a woman against a man, by which he is deprived of all or a portion of his property, is not punishable—if the woman has been in intimate relations with him; it is her payment. If she be his wife fraud on her part is unnecessary, since the law expropriates him at her least request. Other women have an impunity to commit fraud. In case the man has not been in intimate relations, then the woman's offence is, if punished at all, visited by a tenth part of the sentence which would be inflicted if a man were the offender.

(b) Libel and Slander. Cases are innumerable of men being sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for libel. No case is ever heard of a woman being similarly sentenced. The following are typical cases:— At the Essex Assizes, February 2nd, 1895, before Mr. Justice Mathew, Agnes Ellen Royce, a boardinghouse keeper, pleaded guilty to demanding L 300 Dr. Edwin Worts, of Colchester, by menaces and threats. Mr. Avory, on behalf of the prisoner, stated that the letters and telegram in which she threatened the doctor were written while she was in a hysterical condition, and he suggested that she should be bound over under the First Offenders Act. Mr. C. F. Gill, who prosecuted, said that the prisoner accused the doctor of having ruined her, and made many serious allegations against him. No doubt she was labouring under very great excitement when she made these charges. She was discharged under the First Offenders Act. “Catharine Matilda Gordon, forty-six, described as having no occupation, and living at Mardon's Croft, Moseley, near Birmingham, was charged on remand, before Mr. Newton, at Malhorough Street Police Court, on Saturday, with unlawfully and maliciously publishing a defamatory libel concerning Mr Thomas James Hooper, on March 27th last, at the Badminton Club, Piccadilly. The accused was not legally represented. The prosecutor is a solicitor, and acts as Clerk to the Justices of the Peace at Biggleswade. Mr. William Vyse, an independent gentleman and member of the Badminton Club, living at Wickham Road, Brockley, deposed that on or about the 27th of March last he received from prisoner the postcard produced. Mrs. Gordon: 'I wish very much to apologise publicly, and 36 to withdraw everything I have said about Mr. Hooper.' Mr. Hooper, in reply to the magistrate, said he regretted to say that he could not believe Mrs. Gordon, as he had received similar promises in writing which had been broken; in fact, since the summons, which was issued before the warrant was taken out. She had written to him enclosing a letter from her

168 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) solicitors recommending her to withdraw. Mr. Newton said that a woman who sent postcards of the nature referred to did the cruellest act imaginable. The prisoner had done a most wicked act, and had endeavoured to blacken the character of the prosecutor, apparently without any reason whatever. Probably there was not a single word of truth in her statements. To the prosecutor: 'Do you think, Mr. Hooper, alter this caution, you may give her another chance?' Mr. Hooper: ' I think so, sir.' Mrs. Gordon having assured the magistrate that she would not repeat her conduct, Mr. Newton bound her over in her recognisances in the sum of £20 to be of good behaviour in the future.” — Daily Chronicle, May 4th, 1896.

(c) Waylaying, Injuring Business, and Procuring Dismissal . This method of extortion is practically open to all women, wives or not. Medical men are peculiarly subject to this infliction, and even solicitors do not escape. But persons in humbler station are not exempt. The case of a police constable hanged for the murder of a woman some years ago brought the practice vividly, although temporarily, before the public mind. The woman had for years waylaid him, called at the police commissioner's office, obtained the suspension of the constable, and boasted of her intention of procuring his dismissal. The man had no remedy. In a fit of passion he killed the woman, when waylaying him at midnight on his beat, and was hanged for the crime. (Case of Constable Cook, June, 1894)

(d) Murder. The rule of the Common Law which prescribes hanging as the punishment for murder is practically abolished for females who murder men. The best illustration of the extent of the women's privilege to murder men will be found in the consideration of the number of cases in which women have been hanged during the last quarter of a century for the offence when, by a mere chance, they were convicted. As has been stated, a woman who kills a man is usually acquitted. If she be convicted, it is almost invariably of manslaughter, not murder. If she be by some offchance convicted of murder, an agitation for her release is usually started. So the murderess escapes the gallows, except once or twice in a quarter of a century.

(e) Seduction. The woman's privilege of seduction is twofold—in the Criminal Courts and in the Civil Courts. In the Criminal Courts there is no punishment of an abandoned woman in society, or out of it, who corrupts the morals of a minor. Even when disease is the result, there is no case on record of a prosecution, not to speak of punishment. A contrary rule prevails in France. So far has this revolting sex privilege been pushed that a boy of 14 can he convicted 169 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader for committing an act to which he was incited by a girl just under 16, although, as is well known, a girl of that age is often a woman, while a boy of 14 is usually a child. This, however, does not exhaust the women's privilege of seduction. Not merely a female minor, but female adults are protected by exceptional law. Any person who, by false representations, procures immoral relations with a woman not of known immoral character —though the woman be 35 and the male culprit 14—is liable to imprisonment with hard labour for two years. 38 All lying representations on the part of a woman are permissible, though her sole motive for procuring the connection is to obtain a hold over the man by which to blackmail him. When this statute was passed in 1887 it was said to be directed merely against criminal conspiracies of persons who, for purposes of gain, induced daughters of the people to have illicit relations with immoral rich men. A judge has thoughtfully extended the statute to the undreamt-of case of a man inducing a woman of mature age to have connection with himself—not with a third party. The whip of the blackmailer has thus been humanely turned into a whip of scorpions. (R. v. King, Monmouth Summer Assizes, 1890.) As an instance of the utter absence of the most elementary sense of impartial justice in the men and women who "run" this pro-feminist agitation, the following may be taken:—One of.the latest suggestions of this worthy crew is an enactment by which men who shall infect their wives with any venereal disease (which they may, of course, have contracted before marriage) should be made liable to severe penal consequences. Now, we make no remark on the justice or injustice per se of this proposed extension of the criminal code. But it is not proposed to make it an offence in the wife; and it comes from the very people who are loudest in bawling at the wicked violation of the rights of holy womanhood involved in the Contagious Diseases Acts, by which it is sought (not to punish women for infecting men, oh, dear, no!) but simply to prevent the spread of infection by women who make a trade of the sale of their bodies by compelling them to submit to examination, and, if necessary, medical treatment. No cases can, of course, he cited from the records of the Criminal Courts of the adult woman's privilege of seduction, for the sufficient reason that the law does not regard it as an offence. But the minor woman's privilege is abundantly illustrated because it is an offence for a male to allow himself to be seduced by her. One wretch was produced as witness against several boys younger than herself whom she had induced to commit the offence. The Court of Appeal held that she could not be punished, but her victims were consigned to prison. (Central Criminal Court and Court for Crown Cases Reserved, June, 1894.)

170 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) False Charges on Oath (Extortion or Revenge). It is not merely wives who are privileged to make false charges on oath, and to commit and to suborn [incite] perjury. An extensive trade in such charges is pursued by an increasing number of women, encouraged by the absolute impunity which attends their profitable crimes. Revenge for slighted claims plays a real though a very minor part in the manufacture of these accusations. Potiphar's wife has no monopoly of her methods of vengeance. These cowardly criminals know that the worst they have to fear is the charitable conclusion that they are “poor hysterical women.” Within the last few years there has been a large growth of enactments rendering legally punishable various offences against women and girls, and the zeal of the legislature for their protection has found an echo in the energy of the courts in the conviction of the accused. It is in such cases as these that injustice is readily wrought by sex-bias. There are no charges so easy to bring and so difficult to refute as accusations of sexual crime. So well is this recognised that the most innocent man would gladly pay any sum rather than face such a charge. The only defence is the proof of a negative, always difficult and sometimes impossible, even to 40 sexual crime. the most innocent. A moral and well-spent life, a high character, the esteem of friends alike wither before this blasting charge; they even add fuel to it. This is shown by the extraordinary remark of one of our judges: “A good character only means that a man has not yet been found out.” To the intrinsic difficulty of defence presented by the very nature of the alleged offence, the poverty of the man accused often adds a terrible aggravation. The rich man can protect himself by all the resources of legal defence; the poor man is left to the mercy of the wolves by his poverty; which, although it may protect him from blackmail, yet gives him no security against malignant spite—perhaps the most fruitful source of false accusations. England, unlike continental countries, provides no legal defence for accused persons. This is serious enough in ordinary cases, but, in any trial in which a woman is concerned, it amounts to a refusal to a man of the commonest conditions of fairplay. The public prosecution of alleged offences against women devolves on the Treasury—in other words, on the skilled advocates of the Crown, with the resources of the English taxpayer at their disposal in the preparation of cases and the procuring of witnesses. The accused is left undefended, to contend alone against the prejudice of juries. Public opinion and the press, which so ably voices it, are arrayed against him. It is not, therefore, a matter for surprise that to be accused by a woman means, practically, in the vast majority of cases, to be condemned. The necessity for careful inquiries into the character and antecedents of witnesses is nowhere so great as in cases of offences against women and girls. Charges so easy to make, so difficult to refute, ought to be regarded with the greatest suspicion, and not be accepted

171 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader with ready credulity. The bona fides of all witnesses, the character of the accuser ought to he carefully scrutinised. To the undefended prisoner this is impossible. And even if the prisoner is defended, sentimental juries are deaf. Even where the character of the accuser is good, she may very well happen to be a woman of highly hysterical temperament. The eminent French scientist, M. Brouardel, says of this type of woman: "She is essentially a liar, that is the true criterion of the hysterical woman. Such a one has been known to keep at bay for several years law courts, doctors, her own family, with a rampart built of lies upon lies." Accusations of sexual offences are readily forced by such women, and unless the juries can be convinced of the irresponsible character of their statements, the liberty and honour of the most innocent man may be destroyed. That distinguished judge, the late Baron Huddleston, in his charge to the jury on one occasion, referring to the Criminal Law Amendment Acts, stated that in his opinion, after an extensive experience of the Acts, men stood far more in need of protection against women than women against men. The total oppression inflicted by charges of sexual crime must not be measured by the cases which come into Court. It is a commonplace of the legal profession that for one such case ten are settled out of Court. In other words, a system of blackmail of the worst type finds its direct incentive and opportunity in the present state of legal administration. The following selection of a few of the cases arising in the years 1894 and 1895 gives some idea of the widespread evils of the present system. It must not be thought for a moment that because these cases have resulted in acquittals no reform is necessary. In view of the law of libel only cases where the accusations have failed can be cited, but every criminal lawyer knows that failure occurs in only a small minority of cases. It must also be borne in mind that such charges entail social infamy unless triumphantly rebutted; a mere will not suffice. 1.—Dr. Patrick Lyons Blewith (West Ham) was charged with a serious assault on Bessie Page (age 16). On cross-examination she said she "did not consent, but never murmured," "too frightened." Did not even tell the other people in the outer waiting-room. Acquittal. July 8th, 1894 2.—Alfred Lee, a vestryman, was charged on remand at Bow Street, with indecent behaviour in a public thoroughfare and in the presence of three females. From the report of the officer who made enquiries it appeared that the witnesses bore very indifferent characters [were impartial]. Three gentlemen deposed to the high moral reputation of the accused, who was discharged. April 24th, 1895.

172 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) 3.—Sarah Adams (West London) at night met R. B. Pearson in the street, and picked his pocket. When he attempted to retake the money she screamed and made "accusations against him. She got one month. August 19th, 1894. 4.—Joseph Barker (52)," coster [produce seller], was charged by his daughter Eliza (age 14) with indecently assaulting her. Medical evidence revealed no trace of assault. The prisoner denied the accusation, but was nevertheless committed for trial (Islington). April 29th, 1894. The Grand Jury threw out the bill [charge]. 5.—William Hughes and his son, colliers [coal workers] at Pontypridd, were accused of having violated Maggie, aged 12, daughter of the elder prisoner. The child swore she had been put up to make the charge by Ellen Haines, the prisoner's housekeeper, and the doctors found no medical evidence. The case was dismissed. April 8th, 1894. 6.—Dr. Thos. D. Griffiths, of Swansea, was accused by Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan of committing adultery with her, also of performing upon her an illegal operation and inducing abortion. All charges proved false. April 8th and 15th, 1894 7.—Thos. Moore (44), manager to a tea merchant, was charged with disgraceful conduct to a young girl. He alleged that she began first by kissing him and poking him in the ribs. He was acquitted. May 27th, 1894. 8.—Walter Hill was charged at the Old Bailey with indecent assault by Louisa Smart, and Ellen Windram was charged with aiding and abetting him. Hill and Windram were also charged with conspiring to incite Maria Wakefield, a married woman, to commit adultery. The jury stopped the case and acquitted the prisoners. It is to be noted that Mrs. Smart was prosecutrix about the same time in another indecent assault case, and that Ada Wakefield was prosecutrix in a similar case against her uncle which was dismissed. September, 1894. In a paper read before the Birmingham and Midland Counties Branch of the British Medical Association, on November 9th, 1893, the eminent surgeon, Dr. Lawson Tait, F.R.C.S., thus sums up a large number of cases brought under his notice by the police authorities:—

Analysis Of Cases. “In this way I have now reported in all upon nearly a hundred cases, and I have advised prosecution in only six, and in all of these have convictions been obtained. It has, of course, been left to the police to prosecute as they chose on my report in twenty-two cases, and they have refrained from the prosecution in all but seven cases, and of these the bills were ignored in two cases by grand juries, in four light sentences were passed summarily or at sessions for common assaults, and in one case punishment, probably well deserved, was obtained on a charge of wounding another person. In the remainder, about sixty-six, I have

173 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader advised that no effort at prosecution should be entertained for a moment, and the police have aquiesced in my advice. I say, concerning the number of the last class, 'about sixty-six,' because a number of the cases involved charges concerning two children, so that reckoning from the number of plaintiffs there would be a larger number of cases than if the statistics were taken from a list of defendants, and one case in particular will show how curiously important this may be.” In a further analysis he says:— “Excluding the special groups I have already alluded to, and a few others, to be excepted for various but not important reasons, I find I am left with a list of nearly fifty, in which there was not the slightest surgical evidence of an assault of any kind having been committed; and from the fact that only in some five or six was the 44 question of a charge on the reduced count even entertained, it must be clear that the amount of manufactured charges of this kind is most alarmingly large. In twenty-six cases there was evidence quite satisfactory that the charges were trumped up from evil motive and in twenty-one the evidence was all in favour of accidental inducements, the children having been seen to be fondled by men of suspicious appearance The first fact that strikes one about these cases is that the average age of the first group of children was within a small fraction of twelve years, whilst the average age of the second group is only seven years. A second material fact is that whilst the second group contains a considerable proportion of children of respectable and even well-to-do people, the former group is entirely composed of children of the lowest class of the population.”

Blackmail. He further states:— "There are at least twenty cases on my list where no assault was committed, nor could have any been, consistently with the story and the appearances found, in which blackmailing was deliberately attempted; and I regret to say in many it was successful. One of the most outrageous was a charge of completely successful assault on a girl of fifteen, alleged to have been accomplished at 11 a.m. on one of the iron spiral staircases in the Municipal Art Gallery. The complainant described the place and gave the date and hour with a precision which was remarkable, as also was her description of what took place. She described accurately the attendant, whom she charged by name. Only two things were against her— she was uninjured, and the attendance books of the institution showed conclusively that the defendant had not been at the gallery that day."

174 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) "Wandering Servants" and Female Vigilance Committees. The following passage from his paper throws some light on the origin of many of these charges:— “The charges in a very large proportion of cases were distinctly based on motives sometimes of the most extraordinary kind, and in the great bulk these motives were malevolent. The 'wandering servant' motive is one of the least harmful, and accounts for a small number. To those who do not understand the phrase I may explain that it simply means that a girl who may have been quite innocently dawdling about till past the hour of return rigidly enforced by a strict mistress, does not go home, but wanders about all night or sleeps in an outhouse. She is either found by the police or goes back home in the morning and concocts on the way a story of rape, particularised by the most minute details, not one of which is corroborated on examination, nor can the police find a scrap of evidence in support of her story. Yet she becomes the interesting prey of some Vigilance Committee, and it is more by good luck than by good guiding, as the Scotch say, that she does not pick out and name some unfortunate man for the gratification of the prurient curiosity of the fussy women who have taken up her case. In one of these cases brought to me the interesting wanderer by misfortune, selected as her victim the husband of the chairwoman of her committee, and thus trouble came upon her and the committee was dissolved.”

Forcing A Man To Marry. In the following cases the facts are instructive as showing the use to which such charges may be put:— "In one of the cases I regret having advised a prosecution, though technically I was quite right in doing so and bound to do it; but now I have no doubt whatever that the assault was arranged and encouraged, and but for an untimely interruption something more would have followed. The charge preferred was laid solely for the purpose of bringing an unwilling bridegroom to the altar. This effect it had, for on the prosecutrix declaring in the witness- box that if he would keep his engagement and marry her she would withdraw the charge, a sympathetic judge advised him to take the offer, which he unwillingly did under pressure of receiving a nominal sentence. The subsequent history of this couple has convinced me the whole thing was a plant on the unfortunate man."

Speculative Attorneys And Milliners30. In some of the cases he examined the question of age was important:—

30 Triflers 175 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader “In a very few of these cases prosecution was not advised and not undertaken by the police on the question of either real or apparent age. The wording of the Criminal Law Amendment Act is made to supply a few of the omissions of the old law concerning rape, and in raising the age under which the consent of the female participator is not recognised, the Act puts the dangerous weapon into the hands of that person of showing that she des not appear to be sixteen. This is a fertile source of blackmailing, because a girl of fifteen and a half has only to get a man to have connection with her, or to attempt it, and he is at her mercy. If he will pay up his defence is easily arranged by the speculative attorney who is always at the back door of such cases. He has only to plead that he had a discussion with the girl about her age, that he reasonably believed she was over sixteen, and a little skilful millinery displayed in the witness-box settles the release of the defendant. But if he won't pay up then the milliner can make the prosecutrix look much under sixteen, and a heavy sentence is the result. To give an opinion on the part of a skilled expert that a girl is or is not under fourteen, the usual molimenal31 age, is a matter of infinite ease compared to giving an opinion that the girl is or is not under sixteen. Maturity has been reached, and the changes at fifteen and sixteen are far less than at thirteen and fourteen, a very important fact which has been forgotten.”

The Motive of Malice. The following passages show that spite is often as potent a motive in these charges as blackmail:— “There is another and still more dangerous element in these cases, and that is the malice of persons, always women, who practically get up the cases or provoke them, and with this may be placed a few subsidiary influences which may well be classed with this. A few examples of some of them will be given in detail. “Two children were brought to me (case 56), aged fourteen and eleven and a-half respectively, living in the same set of back houses in a well-known and fairly respectable street, the elder girl looking much older than her ascertained age. The person against whom the charge was made was the father of the older girl, and she made the charge that she found her father indecently assaulting the 47 younger girl. She told the neighbours and the neighbours brought in the police. The younger girl proved to be quite uninjured, but it speedily came out that the elder girl was her own father's regular mistress for more than two years. The girl who was the cause of this action was one of the most virulent little minxes I ever saw, and she made no secret of her reason for splitting [ratting] on her father being the fact that she found him taking up with another girl. I have included this little wretch as one of the habitual prostitutes, but I do not believe she comes under the definition. She does

31 puberty 176 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) afford, however, a perfect example of how the great bulk of these charges are brought about."

Female Revenge on Father Or Husband. The following shows that a similar horrible charge may be brought against an innocent man:— “Two little wretches, of ten and twelve, who had been thrashed by their father for stealing, promptly turned round on him with a charge of having 'seduced' them both, giving here an interesting example of female revenge of the direst kind, attempted at an unusually early age. The charge had not the slightest foundation, and they admitted as much when they found they were not believed. Stepmothers give frequent examples of the same abominable attempts to punish their husbands by trumping up such charges, and in three instances mothers used even their own children as the instruments of their diabolical designs.”

Prejudice Against Accused. As to the prejudice accusations of sexual crime incite, Dr. Lawson Tait says:— “Matters are such under this unrighteous combination that however men may laugh at it and make jokes, they do not willingly travel with single unknown female companions in railway carriages. They know very well that for a man to have the finger of a woman pointed at him with a charge of a sexual offence is to secure that man's extinction, no matter what the verdict of a jury may be. In 1881 (Lond. Med. Gazette ) a case was tried in which a girl, to shield 48 herself against her equal share of guilt, charged her partner in it with the crime of rape. The jury could hardly be got to acquit the innocent man even though the prosecutrix had to admit that she never called out, her mother sleeping in the next room, because she was afraid her cries would waken the old lady.” The following indicates strongly one of the disadvantages the undefended prisoner labours under:—

Danger of Rule Allowing Undefended Prisoner to give Evidence. “This new arrangement by which a defendantis allowed to go into the box and give evidence on his own behalf is most mischievous when a poor prisoner is undefended. His poverty involves ignorance, of necessity, and in the hands of a prosecuting barrister his slightest slip in cross-examination will be made to tell against him mercilessly. That is the case if he elects to be sworn. If, on the contrary, he declines, either from ignorance or fear, the jury invariably reckons the fact against him.

177 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader “I sat through a case quite lately and saw a poor ignorant wretch who, being undefended, did not understand the purport of the invitation, neglected this opportunity. The judge charged clearly in his favour—indeed, there was hardly any evidence against him. But the jury brought him in guilty, and in talking the matter over with one of them after I learned that they were much impressed by the fact that he did not give evidence.” In considering the results arrived at by Dr. Lawson Tait we must bear in mind that the series of charges he analysed had all been brought under the notice of the police. The vast number of charges compromised for money, without any appeal to the police, must be added to form any fair estimate of the situation. The foregoing catalogue as regards specific crimes is striking enough, but it does not quite exhaust the criminal law privileges of women. As regards punishment, prison treatment and pardon, there are come additional immunities.

1. Privilege as to Punishment.

(a) Flogging. The sacro-sanct hide of female fiends must not he touched with the lash. Consequently, a wretch who tortures for years innocent children—like the Montague wild beast—must not be flogged. The female garrotter must not be flogged. By express enactment no one hut a male call he sentenced to corporal punishment.

(b) Hanging. As has already been shown the punishment of hanging has been practically abolished for women who murder mere men. If they murder some other woman or babies of some other woman it is quite a different thing. They are, however, exempt from hangings if they murder their own babies.

(c) Duration of Imprisonment. In every case the duration of the term of imprisonment passed on a female offender is, as everyone knows, enormously less than the punishment imposed on a man for a similar or a lesser offence.

178 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) 2. Privilege as to Prison Treatment.

(a) Flogging. Under no circumstances can a female prisoner he flogged for breaches of prison discipline. Men and boys can be, and are, flogged like dogs for the most trivial disrespect to the governor and other officials.

(b) Less Rigid Discipline. In one of the convict prisons a strike of female prisoners was announced against some disciplinary regulation to which they objected. The obnoxious regulation was rescinded. If they had been men they would have been flogged into submission. (Riot at Wormwood Scrubbs, 1894.) 50

(c) Lighter Labour. This is quite apart from the fact that they are assigned much less toilsome forms of labour.

3. Privilege as Regards Pardon. The comparative facility with which remission or commutation of sentence on female criminals can be procured is known to every solicitor conversant with Criminal Law Procedure—not merely in cases of infanticide—but in all cases of crimes of violence, the chances of pardon are immeasurably greater than in the case of a male.

The Civil Law. As every litigant who has to contend with a woman knows to his cost, feminine privilege is not confined to matrimonial matters, nor to the Criminal Courts. The purse of the male is hit in the Civil Courts quite as heavily as his person in the exercise of the criminal privileges of the female sex. Anyone who has any relations, even of the most innocent character, with a woman, from a tenant or a trader who contracts with her to a casual guest at a friend's house who makes her acquaintance in a social way, may have occasion to discover that absence of intimacy does not necessarily shield him from unpleasant consequences. The chief privileges of women in the Civil Courts are as follows (they cannot be paralleled by those of a peer or a member of the House of Commons):— 1. Freedom from Arrest for Debt if Married. 2. Property Of Married Woman Exempt from Seizure.

179 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader 3. Privilege to Commit Breaches of Contract. 4. Privilege to Defraud. 5. Privilege to Seduce. 6. Privilege to Commit Adultery. 7. Privilege to Insult. 8. Privilege to Assault. 9. Privilege to Waylay. 10. Privilege to Libel and Slander.

1. Freedom from Arrest for Debt. The process of imprisonment for debt (nominally for contempt of Court in not paying an instalment of a debt) is retained in England under the Debtors Acts, 1869 and 1882. But not in the case of the married female. No married woman is to be punished for non-payment of debt, and the Court is incapable of being contemned by a married woman. This superiority to Common Law standard, for the mere male, yet again marks out the woman as a member of an inviolable noblesse. A woman can obtain goods and not be compelled to pay for them, may use all her arts of persuading the chivalrous trader—but no compulsory power of imprisonment need disturb her. This may or may not be a good rule, if applied as in certain American States, to both men and women. But when reserved to women, it is an obvious sex privilege.

2. Property Exempt from Seizure. A married woman, as already pointed out, although rolling in wealth and owning tens of thousands a year, even when separated and released from all duty to her husband and children, retains her privilege of having her property exempt from seizure for debt. Some very amusing cases—amusing that is to all except the male litigant—of rich women refusing to pay traders and solicitors will be present to the public mind. When a rich woman develops a taste for litigation, the wisdom of the legislature has found no way of protecting the defendant from ruinous costs. Even if she quarrels with her solicitor, he is powerless to protect himself against being mulcted in costs—perhaps a happy stroke of poetic justice, as lawyers have largely created these oppressive sex-privileges of women. (See the many ramifications of the Cathcart Case.)

180 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) 3. Breach of Contract. The absence of any compulsory power over a woman's person or a married woman's property and the bias of the courts amounts practically to a licence for her to break any contract at pleasure. This is quite apart from the peculiar privilege of women to waste a man's time and money in a pretended engagement, possibly to lure on a more wealthy lover—and to he exempt from penalty. Their privilege to commit perjury and slander with impunity plays a great part in the decision of any case in which a woman's contract is concerned. All stock brokers, insurance agents, solicitors, and bankers, and business men generally, know how hopeless, as a rule, is any prospect of getting a contract enforced against a woman. As a rule it is best to compromise or submit to injustice rather than try it out with an adversary privileged to use loaded dice.

4. Privilege to Defraud. Precisely as in the Criminal Law, there is no real remedy against any fraud not of extraordinary magnitude and clearness of proof, perpetrated by a woman on a man. A notorious female blackmailer brings lying accusations, suing on breach of promise of marriage, against a prominent Conservative member of Parliament. She loses her suit as she has to admit on cross-examination that she a few months previously, had extorted £5,000 from another victim of a similar suit, which was hushed up. But her victim could not get back his £5,000— and no one suggested civil or criminal process against her.

5. Privilege to Seduce. The feminine privilege of seduction extends also to the civil Courts. No civil action lies against any woman of full age or the seduction of a minor, not even if her doings be a device to entrap him by threats of scandal into marriage, and the attainment of title and fortune by her inducements to lead him astray. The male minor in France has some protection. The consent of cooler heads is required to his marriage. In England he has no protection from the terrible consequences of succumbing to the wiles of a female seducer. Contrast the law of England on the seduction of the female, minor or adult. Vindictive damages are to be had for the asking from the indignant jury. Legal fictions of “loss of service” by parents, are laid under requisition to prevent the operation of the maxim volenti non fit injuria32.

32 No injury is done to a consenting party. 181 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader 6. Privilege to Commit Adultery. No action, civil or criminal, lies against a woman who induces a married man to have illicit relations with her. She may succeed in stripping the man of all his fortune, blackmail him for years, break up his home, cause him to be deprived of the custody of his children, and cap the climax of her crimes by appearing as a willing witness for his wife in the Courts. No penalty awaits her. A man who seduces or is seduced by a wife has the satisfaction of being held up to public odium as a traitorous scoundrel, and at the same time of paying enormous costs and damages—the latter being settled on the delinquent wife.

7. Privilege to Insult. For some mysterious reason a woman is supposed to be incapable of insulting a man. She may use most insolent language in a public assembly, waylay him at his office, or place of business, and adopt any other method of annoyance that malignity can devise, and the law refuses to protect him, and sends him to hard labour if he is goaded into retort. Jeremy Bentham proposed a century ago that women insulting other citizens should be punished by being exposed to public ridicule in a pillory. But we are now a long way off from the adoption of such a remedy as that. The sturdier Englishmen of former times restrained feminine provocation to violence by the summary methods of the cucking school and the indictment at the assizes of the “common scold33,” not to mention the domestic discipline of the husband.

8. Privilege to Assault. In a similar mysterious way a woman is supposed incapable of assaulting a man—at least in such a way as to deserve, not to say criminal punishment but even the exaction of pecuniary recompense. It is true that a woman with a weapon can cause grievous bodily harm. But the mere man has to put up with the consequences of such displays of feminine independence, inasmuch as the privilege holds good in civil as well as in criminal law.

9. Privilege to Waylay. In civil as well as criminal Courts this offence in women is unpunished. Let a man protect himself is the general rule on the subject. But as he is punished if he attempts to protect himself, he has simply to submit to the outrage.

33 shrew 182 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) 10. Privilege to Libel and Slander. To bring unfounded charges against any man—not against a fellow women—is now a well- established legal privilege of the fair sex. However, originally it was restrained in earlier days by legal process and domestic discipline. Exactly as in breaches of contract, it is usually wise to submit to the injustice. But the rising wave of pro-feminist sentiment has reached a curious height of late years. A woman can accuse a man of sexual irregularities with absolute impunity. But it is not to be supposed that he is to have a like privilege. A special statute (Slander of Women Act) passed a few years ago, makes such slander of a woman actionable. But she retains her privilege of slandering a man. If this be not a statutory sex-privilege words must have lost their meaning. The grim irony of making a man responsible for his wife's slanders, and other misdeeds— although the law has deprived him of all control over her person or property, has been already referred to.

The Actual Exercise Of Women's Sex Privileges. The most curious of all concomitants of the legal subjection of men in England arise, first, that many men are not conscious of the real state of the law, and secondly, that a very loud- voiced minority of women, reinforced by sycophantic males, represent the law as being the apotheosis of unjust sex-privileges on the part of men. The last phenomonen is, no doubt, in great part one cause of the first, but other causes for men's unconsciousness contribute. A survival of the days when the physical force of the man was allowed by the State to play a part in his quarrels with women, survive in the public delusion that it is impossible for man to be oppressed by women. How can men be legally oppressed by women? Are not men, if worthy of the name, able to defend themselves? This objection, once categorically stated, is seen to be ridiculous. A legal defence is not a matter of strength or courage, but of skill. Even a skilled defence is a poor protection before a biased tribunal. But lastly, the whole question of muscular strength is absurdly and outrageously irrelevant. The bravest and strongest man is as weak as a child before the overwhelming force of the State. Any woman can at will summon to her aid a power no man can resist. And behind this force of law rests the equally irresistible force of public opinion. All this, under the present dispensation, is arrayed against the man accused by a woman. The woman accuser wields the whole power of the Courts and the community, backed up by the press and public opinion. Her physical strength is an irrelevant matter, her real force lies in the state of public opinion before which

183 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader the man becomes helpless. The power of the autocrat lies not in his physical strength, but in his ability to summon at a beck the resources of the State. The Czar of Russia is, and the Emperor Nero was, physically no stronger than the merest beggar. Catherine of Russia was physically weaker than the lowest of her grenadiers. 1. The law is not generally known by the vulgar, and lawyers, unless paid, are not usually accustomed to be expansive to the public at large on the subject of their information. Ignorance by the public of the law promotes litigation, and lawyers individually are not particularly oppressed by or frightened at the legal privileges of women. The technical skill of the lawyer and his powerful trade union usually enables him to get the best of the woman who contends with him in the law courts. Similarly, in former days, the lawyer took care to guard himself from being hurt by the feudal privileges of the noble, which weighed so heavily on the rest of the community. 2. Most women in England are still under the influence of the earlier polity of the Church and of Christendom. They do not dispute the duty of female subordination, and do not in fact as yet think of exercising the more flagrant of these new-fangled legal sexprivileges. The utmost pitch of domination that the majority have reached to is a noticeable increase in the display of overbearing manners towards their husbands, and other male dependents, and the palpable consciousness that the threat of a public scene will bring the scene-hating Englishman to his knees. 3. A large minority of women influenced by kindness and self-respect and all amiable qualities, do not exercise any of these iniquitous sex-privileges at all. If an insignificant minority of women are oppressed by individual men, it is merely because, from any reason, economic or other, the woman does not for a considerable time, choose to go to the Police Courts. When a fact of this kind comes to be published, it is trumpeted forth in the press—the press which carefully excludes stories of male slavery—with the object of producing a false impression as to the side on which the balance of injustice is to he found. 4. The more flagrant of these privileges are in practice resorted to chiefly by the more profligate of the female sex. Happily every man does not fall a victim. But those who do find it convenient to keep concealed the story of their wrongs. Their friends might believe in their innocence, but their enemies or the public at large would not. The man injured by a woman has no sex-conscious "man's party" to appeal to. Every brawling wife and shrieking termagant or cold-blooded blackmailer has a sex-conscious propaganda ready to her hand. It is therefore all the more important to remember that these privileges conferred by the law of England on the woman against the man, are no dead letter. They are actually enforced with rigour that increases every day. Judge, jury, counsel and press vie with each other in

184 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) driving the iron into the soul of the unfortunate man who is forced to contend with a woman in the law courts. Such an extreme of squalid unrighteousness has been reached that it has become a commonplace of the legal profession that no justice is to be had in the Courts against a woman—unless in some case of outrageous atrocity, and not always even then. The origin of this singular phenomenon—a revival of barbaric gynoecracy among the English-speaking people in the British Islands, America and the British Colonies is a subject of the deepest interest, but not one lending itself to cursory treatment. A photograph of the outer surface—a picture of the facts of the law is all that has been attempted here. To confine our attention to the strictly necessary, it will suffice to remind the reader that the ordinary motives which induce the more selfish members of any privileged class to use a privilege, exist in the case of women. Many slave-owners were as indulgent as St. Clair, but many were like Legree34. The chief impelling motives appear to be:— 1. A desire for economic advantage to get money without trouble; to exploit the labour of the male slave, enthralled by the law—this works quite as well to impel a woman as well as a man to use an unjust power. It is the predatory instinct present in pirates, robbers and criminals of all classes. 2. A desire to domineer and oppress. This impulse as distinguished from ordinary revengefulness is, some think, stronger in women than in men. No one will deny its existence in both men and women, whatever be its special cause. 3. Malignity and vindictiveness. Inordinate revenge for real or fancied wrongs, disproportioned vindictiveness for the chance slights of a complex social life may he safely reckoned on to actuate the bitterer section of a female noblesse as well as a male one. If power does not corrupt, at least it gives room for corruption to spread. Modern life among English speaking people, while releasing women from male guidance, has, by individualising women, multiplied the occasions of conflict between members of the two sexes. Different ideals and tests of action (women judge men by one standard and men judge women by another), the result of natural divergencies, as well as of education, absence of sexillusion on the female side and its presence on the male side, add to these occasions. 4. Many women who, of their own accord, being still under the influence of the earlier policy of Christendom, would not think of exercising the force of public opinion, or the privileges of a one-sided law against their husbands or other men, are influenced to do so in

34 Simon Legree “Uncle Tom's Cabin” 185 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader various ways. The incessant clamour of a hysterical press leads them to suppose that in any quarrel with a man, the man must be wrong, the woman never can be wrong. The shrieks of the "new woman" propaganda suggest to women that in making most infamous use of her weapons she is upholding the cause of her "sisters." Furthermore the new mammon-worship which has infected all modern English life has produced among the average middle class woman an unspoken theory—that the sole duty of man is to make money for his wife. The revolutionary theory of equality, dating from 1789—is applied only on one side, and it is assumed as an axiom that a wife is kept and has a right to do precisely as she pleases. At the same time it is taken as quite self-evident that she is emancipated from any duty of obedience or even civility to him. Added to the conclusions of the feminist spirit of domination, the final position is that the man is to submit to all insolences and outrages without redress. This conception of the relative positions of men and women is urged in a thousand different ways on any woman who has a quarrel with her husband, and must inevitably influence the average woman. 5. Many women, themselves ignorant of the modern law, are instigated by lawyers to bring suits, relying on their iniquitous legal privileges. Not merely are men's reputations, lives and fortunes thus endangered, but in this way the present state of.the law has become a powerful solvent of the historic basis of the family relations of Christendom, by encouraging disputes between wives and husbands. Sir Walter Phillimore in a recent speech has pointed out what a part is played by solicitors in the promotion of divorce suits. The essential thing, therefore, to remember is that the the subjection of women in England, if it ever existed, has gone, and long gone. It is succeeded by a state of sordid subjection of the man to a biased public opinion, to a hysterical press, and to sentimental administrators of a corrupted law. There are, however, some signs that the legal subjection of men in England is not destined to live for ever. The law, after all, is the shadow of public opinion.

Muscular Inferiority and Sex-privilege. We must once more refer, on account of its widespreading popularity, to the cheap sneer by which some small but gallant" wits may endeavour to turn the edge of the foregoing observations, namely, the attempt to play of the muscular inferiority of women to men as an answer to any allegation of oppression exercised on behalf of the so-called weaker sex. When looked at fairly in the face, the point in question will he seen so preposterously absurd as to be hardly worth answering. But, nevertheless, absurd as it is, it undoubtedly plays a

186 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) part, half unconsciously, in the apathy of most men on the question of female privilege. Because men are muscularly stronger than women, it is felt by many, and the feeling is supported by the class of cheap witticism above referred to, that therefore it is impossible for men to be seriously oppressed by women. A moment's reflection suffices to show that the question of muscular strength or weakness is absolutely immaterial to the issue. It would be just as reasonable to suppose that because the Czar of Russia and his high officials were less muscularly developed than the average Russian peasant, that the possibility of the Russian peasant being seriously oppressed by the Czar or his government was a proposition to be laughed at. The weakest and most frail woman, backed by the whole power of the State, may easily annihilate by the State forces summoned by her scream, a legion of Sarnsons or Hercules.

A Sex Noblesse. From all we have said, it will now be evident, one would think, to the most prejudiced reader that modern English Law, following obsequiously a deluded or apathetic stage of public opinion, has solved the problem of the division of rights and duties between the sexes, by conceding to woman all rights, and imposing on man all duties. It would not be difficult to show, were it worth while , that even the disabilities of women in past times have been grossly exaggerated by apostles of the feminist cultus who have, of course, taken a brief to prove the wickedness of "horrid man" to the poor downtrodden female. Such disabilities as really obtained were for the most part the necessary outcome of women's position as non-combatants in a rude fighting age, and certainly did not originate, as is generally represented, in any deeplaid scheme of male devising. In return for a certain formal subjection, in some respects, they obtained not only the blessing of protection, then an important matter, but valuable privileges in other directions. An impartial student of history must admit that, however badly men have treated their fellow-men, they have always treated women with comparative generosity. The change from feudal to modern capitalist conditions, as regards the position of women, is characterised, however, not only by, at one and the same time, the abolition of every vestige of subordination or disability, but, in addition to that, by the extension of the old compensating privileges, which were the counterpart of the former, and by the further heaping up on the top of these of new privileges, the result having finally saddled us with the institution of that sex-noblesse the 62 leading features of which we have sketched out in the foregoing pages.

Socialists And Feminists Certain Socialist writers are fond of describing the Social-Democratic State of the future as implying the "emancipation of the proletarian and the woman." As regards the latter point,

187 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader however, if emancipation is taken to include domination, we have not to wait so long. The highest development of modern capitalism, as exemplified in the English-speaking countries, has placed man to all intents and purposes, legally under the heel of woman. So far as the relations of the sexes are concerned, it would be the task of Socialism to emancipate man from this position, if sex-equality be the goal aimed at. The first step on the road towards such equality would necessarily consist in the abolition of modern female privilege.

The Suffrage. It is absurd for feminist advocates to trot out their threadbare grievance of the want of the suffrage as a serious disability in the face of all the privileges we have been discussing.. It may be right, or it may he wrong, for women to have the suffrage. Respecting this we say nothing here. But, whether right or wrong, we deny that the lack of it, by an otherwise privileged class, constitutes a grievance. Electoral disqualifications are often attendant on special privilege. The Royal Family of this realm, with all their branches, are debarred from the exercise of both the passive and the active franchise. And yet no one pleads that, say, the prince of Wales, is, in consequence, a cruelly oppressed personage. Similarly the clergy of the Established Church are debarred at least from the passive franchise (i.e., they may not sit in Parliament), and yet we have never heard it contended that on this account they are a solely hard-done-by section of the community. Where women have parliament, law courts, police magistrates, 63 judges as their obsequious humble servants, what more could they expect to obtain, even if they had the suffrage?

“The Oppressed Woman.” As regards the occasional cases of the ill-treatment of women by men, especially wife assaults and such like, these may by traced largely to the infamous state of the law we have described. Where the law practically refuses justice to one section of the community against another, it is only “human nature” (if we may employ that much-abused phrase) that occasionally members of the section to which justice is refused should be found to take the matter into their own hands, and attempt to redress the balance, by acts, amounting sometimes to brutality. It were surely more reasonable, rather than to expend indignation and ferocity on the individual offender, to seek out and remedy the underlying cause of the offence. Give men reasonable justice as against women, cease to trample underfoot every principle of equity and fair play at the behest of feminine shrieks, and the excuse, or at least, palliation which now undoubtedly for any sporadic brutality on the part of men, and especially husbands, of which women may be the victims, would be done away with. Whilst the law remains as it is women deserve scant pity if they do on rare occasions get the worst of it in their dealings with men.

188 The Legal Subjection of Men (1908) In the foregoing pages we have set forth the respective legal position of the sexes as it now stands. Our aim in doing so has been, by spreading knowledge of the facts of the case, to prevent uninformed though otherwise fair-minded persons from falling a prey to the maudlin rant of demagogic charlatans (male and female), ignorant of law and as destitute of the capacity of independent judgment on any subject as they are of any impartial sense of justice, who so frequently deliver themselves in press and on platform on the subject the “wrongs of woman.”

189 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

A Study in Socialist Heresy-Hunting – Why I Am Opposed to Female Suffrage (1909) E. Belfort Bax, A Study in Socialist Heresy Hunting, Social Democrat, Vol.13, no.3, March, 1909, pp.114-120. The Feminist dogma, including the women’s suffrage plank, first made its appearance in the modern Socialist movement, I believe, at the end of the sixties in the old International, at the instance of Bakounin and his friends, and was one of the few proposals emanating from that quarter which was accepted by the Marxian Party, at least as regards Adult Suffrage. But for a long time the question remained in the background, and as far as my memory serves it was not included in the earlier programme of the German Party. In fact, in the German Party what is known as the “Woman Question” (as apart from the general social question) first received serious attention on the publication of Bebel’s book in 1883, on Woman and Socialism, the first edition of which, more betoken, under the title of Woman in the Past, Present and Future, contained a precious lot of Woman and precious little Socialism. (In the later editions it is only fair to say the proportion has been altered.) In this work Bebel, who virtually admits in his preface that the bulk of the then party was against him, maintained the dogma of the equal capacity of woman with man, with its corollary the right of women to occupy all positions and exercise all functions hitherto held by men. In France, Lafargue and others were active on the feminist side during the early eighties. Since then the feminist dogma has found much favour with Socialists everywhere, and officially the demand for female suffrage has been embodied among the planks in the immediate political platform of the Socialist Party. At the same time a pressure has been exercised among Social-Democrats to prevent dissentients from expressing an adverse opinion. Conservative and Liberal organisations, who have also been coerced by the wave of feminist sentiment into passing woman suffrage resolutions, have left greater freedom of opinion on the subject, it may be observed, to their members. Time was when manhood suffrage was the cry of all democrats, and there are doubtless plenty of comrades to-day who, at the bottom of their hearts, would be glad enough to return to the old suffrage-platform which was good enough for Chartists and earlier Socialists, if they did but dare. The fact is, of course, this sex-question cuts athwart other issues. Hence it is that the conventional bourgeois, unwilling as he is to admit the sins of his class toward the proletariat, is often perfectly ready to smite his manly breast and deplore the assumed harshness of his own to the opposite sex. There is no logical reason for Socialism specially championing the position of modern Feminism. That Socialism must bring about changes in

190 A Study in Socialist Heresy-Hunting – Why I Am Opposed to Female Suffrage (1909) the position of women may be allowed, but the special direction of these changes must be the co-efficient of the permanent physiological structure and functions of the female sex with the new economic conditions and the resultant new social forces. To dogmatise on the future as to the precise nature of these changes at the present stage is eminently unscientific. To come to the practical issue of the suffrage. People commonly talk as if the franchise were an end in itself rather than what it is, simply a means to other ends. Now, I admit that the reasons given for their attitude by some opponents of the suffrage for women do not strike me as altogether conclusive. For example, the argument that the sphere of women is the home is undoubtedly true in the past and retains much of its truth to-day, but there are modifications which cannot in fairness be quite ignored. Then again an esteemed friend of mine and member of the SDP, who opposes woman franchise and has the courage to say so publicly, urges as his ground the desire to keep women undefiled by political life, unspotted from the world of politics, with its intrigue, ambition, sordid rivalries, etc. Here also I don’t think the argument is altogether convincing. The rabid feminist might easily retort that his pet sex would, on the contrary, infuse such an elevating spirit into public life that a whiff of the breath of womanhood would like magic disinfect it of those evils and raise it at once to a level of pure, disinterested virtue. We may personally be quite convinced that such would not be the case but very much the reverse, yet since the, experiment has not been tried (on any large scale) it is difficult to prove this to anyone who chooses to affirm the contrary. Now, the foregoing and some other arguments are put forward, I think, by many men with the unconscious desire to avoid acknowledging the real ground of their objection to female suffrage. They don’t like to state this ground straight out; some, if hard pressed, will try to shuffle out of admitting it perhaps even to themselves; but their secret conviction is that women, as a sex, are organically inferior to men, not only physically but, intellectually and morally as well, and hence not fit to be trusted promiscuously (i.e., barring exceptions) with political power. Now, no man likes to say this, because it sounds rude and arrogant to “the ladies,” but the evidence, physiological, psychological, historical and common- observational, is too crushing for many. In my essay on Female Suffrage and its Implications I have briefly indicated some of the main heads of this evidence, and do not propose to enter into it again here. But I must insist on the fact that for me (barring one other reason which, though decisive for the moment, is not of a fundamental nature, and which I shall refer to directly) there seems no logical ground for opposition to the granting of the franchise to women save the recognition of inferiority, if not an all-round inferiority, at least, an inferiority ad hoc. If one acknowledges complete equality in capacity between men and women, the case for the suffrage seems to me, in itself, unanswerable. I have said in itself, since, as things are at present in this and most other countries, even if the capacity for political and administrative judgment were conceded, there is another

191 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader ground on which, so long as it obtains, it would be just to refuse women the franchise. And this ground is the fact that women at present constitute an almost boundlessly privileged section of the community. A woman may, in the present day, do practically what she likes without fear of anything happening to her beyond a nominal punishment. The English marriage laws, with their right of the wife to maintenance, give her almost unlimited power to oppress her husband. (See a case reported in detail with names, addresses, etc., in John Bull for September 19, 1908.) Only some three months ago a case occurred in the north of England where a workman, out of employment, was about to be committed to prison at his wife’s behest for omitting to pay her the weekly allowance ordered by the court. Exasperated, the poor fellow struck his tyrant a fatal blow – hanged! About the same time a wife, during an admittedly trifling tiff with her husband, stabbed him fatally with a hatpin – released on her recognisances! These two cases are typical. It is this practical immunity of women from all consequences for their actions upon which the crew of Suffragettes trade. Were they liable to one quarter of the penalties men incur they would think a good many times before inciting to raid the House of Commons or to commit other breaches of the law. As it is, they know the worst they have to fear is a short term of pampered imprisonment (with all sorts of privileges thrown in), over which, moreover, they whine like whipped curs. Male Socialists have to go to prison not for trying to raid the House of Commons but for merely breaking some local bye-law while maintaining the right of free speech. No “second division” with hot water to wash in and easy chairs for them! Don’t let us forget that the women who are loudest in bawling for the suffrage do so on the ground that they are not sufficiently privileged already, and that to obtain the supremacy over men, the savagely vindictive laws against men and complete immunity for women they consider their due, they require the leverage the vote will give them. Under the circumstances one would like to examine with a very strong electric light the intellects of those persons who profess to believe in equality between the sexes and who yet, as things are to-day, can advocate female suffrage. Their idea of equality is, I suppose, “All yours is mine and all mine’s my own.” No military service for women and yet they shall dictate war or peace! No corporal punishment for them and yet they shall decide on the maintenance of corporal punishment for men in prisons, &c.! No liability to maintain husband or children; and yet the right to decree laws relating to marriage and many more such anomalies. For let us make no mistake – no feminist has the smallest intention of abandoning any one of the existing privileges of women. On the contrary, the intention of increasing. the power and privileges of the sex is expressly declared without any subterfuge. And be it remembered the “adult suffrage” so much advocated by Socialists means an excess of a million female over male votes so far as Great Britain is concerned. The SDP proclaims “social and economic equality between the sexes” as one of its aims. Now, as a “stepping-stone” toward this end I would suggest to the advocates of sex equality

192 A Study in Socialist Heresy-Hunting – Why I Am Opposed to Female Suffrage (1909) (so far as our present society is concerned), besides equal wages for equal work, which we are all able to agree to, (1) Obligation of wife to maintain herself, also her husband if sick, and to contribute something to the maintenance of the children of the marriage; and further (2) Equal punishment for equal crime as between men and women; and (3) Abolition of all laws (e.g., the law as regards libel and slander) favouring women at the expense of men; and (4) the liability of women to all duties imposed on men; these items to be incorporated in the programme of the SDP. I can imagine the sort of face the feminists of the body would make at the bare suggestion of these equitable demands. Perhaps it would be better for Mrs. Montefiore, or some of her feminist friends, to move that a note be appended to the clause as to “social and economic equality between the sexes,” explaining that terms connoting “equality” in the SDP programme are (to quote the famous phrase of the “rule in Shelley’s case”) to be taken as “words of limitation” – in short, that the word “equality” is to be understood in a non-natural sense, as implying “all the kicks” for the brute man and “all the halfpence” for the angel woman. This is advisable, for as the sentence stands it might be interpreted by unsophisticated comrades as meaning what they otherwise understand by equality, and think of what a shocking misconception that would be! Now, personally, as a plain man, I hold, that it would be unjust under any circumstances for women to possess the suffrage until something like the conditions I have above formulated obtain. If other comrades think that giving an already privileged order of human beings the franchise spells equality I do not. But supposing the present balance of inequality in favour of women were remedied there would then remain solely the question of the average inferiority of women. Now, here I must again point out that the exercise of the vote is mainly a means to an end, the progress and well-being of society. Hence, if women on the average show an inferiority all-round to men, or even an inferiority in the power of practical and equitable judgment in public affairs or in the administration of such affairs, then there is no injustice in refusing them “in the bulk” the right of interfering in these matters, where they are ex hypothesi less competent than men. Here we have to deal with a question of fact and evidence. For those who, like myself, regard the evidence for the inferiority as conclusive, there is no possible alternative to opposition to a disintegrative force such as can only be harmful to Socialism and to progress. To discuss the question as to the nature of the evidence would take us outside the immediate purpose of this article, but I deny that those to whom the evidence for incapacity appears conclusive can be otherwise than opponents of female suffrage in all its forms. For to favour it in the teeth of such a conviction would mean sacrificing the interests of society to a barren abstraction, to wit, the abstract right to exercise a function whether fitted for it or not. And to this no one who really values progress ought, I think, to be prepared to consent. E. Belfort Bax

193 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Why I Am an Anti-Suffragist (1909) E. Belfort Bax, Why I am an Anti Suffragist, Social Democrat, Vol.13, no.5, May 1909, pp.200-206. I am glad Mrs. Montefiore conquered her lofty feminist disdain and stooped to “troubling to read” and even to reply to my humble statement of the reasons why I am an anti-suffragist. That she has replied I am especially glad, since she has thereby confirmed for any unbiased reader the weight of those reasons. As against my contention with regard to the systematic privileging of women by the law and its administration she has nothing to adduce beyond a flaw in the Old Age Pensions Act (there are, it is admitted, many such), an anomaly in the confused law as regards marriage with an alien, and a harshness in the Poor Law, none of which things could be twisted by any possibility into a case of male sex privilege as such, save by a controversialist hard pressed for an argument. What I have maintained, and still maintain, is the deliberate tendency of modern legislation and of modern administration, backed by an influential public opinion to separate women as a privileged class from men. This incontrovertible statement, Mrs. Montefiore has not attempted to gainsay, but, on the contrary, her sense of fairness has got the better of her and compelled her, in her excellent remarks about prison flogging at the end of her article, to point my moral and adorn my tale. It is true she traverses my allegations as regards the treatment of the “suffragettes” in gaol. But on this point I am prepared to prove that at least, as to treatment now and for eighteen months past, she is wrong and I am right. Mrs. Montefiore’s imprisonment dates from the very beginning of the present agitation. If I remember rightly, she was among the very first to indulge in the demonstration of going to Holloway rather than pay a harmless and necessary fine for creating a disturbance before the House of Commons. The treatment of the suffragettes during the first week of these imprisonments was, I believe, that accorded to ordinary female offenders. But Mrs. Montefiore had scarcely been released before the treatment as second-class misdemeanants was decreed for all Suffragettes and has been maintained ever since. Not only so, but I was perfectly right in saying that the additional privileges indicated by me over and above this was given to the two Pankhursts during their last imprisonment and have, I understand, been continued in the more recent cases. Mrs. Despard, in a speech, has, in fact, acknowledged the favoured treatment accorded her and her colleagues. Will Mrs. Montefiore deny the above to be facts? Certainly no male Socialist ever had this exceptional treatment. My opponent pleads for women to be regarded as human beings pure and simple and not as a sex. Unfortunately, this is hardly possible. Apart from the indirect sex-characteristics which, interpenetrate their whole nature and activity, it would seem as though they cannot

194 Why I Am an Anti-Suffragist (1909) forget their sexual organs. Thus the “Suffragettes” deliberately adopt a policy of scrimmages and rough-and-tumbles and then whimper about impossible “indecent assaults” on the part of the wicked men-stewards whose function it is to resist their efforts at disorder, attempted rapes to the accompaniment of organ-obligato in the Albert Hall, etc.! Whether these wild fictions are the result of hysterical hallucination or are lies sans phrase I will not pretend to decide, but, anyway, they tend to show the extreme difficulty of even Suffragettes forgetting their sexual side in the narrow sense of the phrase. It would seem impossible for the unhallowed hand of man to touch their sacrosanct if riotous persons without setting their sexual imaginations at work. I should not have mentioned this but for Mrs. Montefiore’s challenge as to forgetting the sexual character of women and thinking of them merely as human beings. If Mrs. Montefiore seriously calls in question the privileged position of woman as against man in the present day, I am afraid it shows that she reads her newspaper with an eye blind to all she does not wish to find there. The law and its administration reflects an influential section of public opinion. This public opinion regards it as axiomatic that women are capable of everything men are capable of, that they ought to have full responsibility in all honourable and lucrative functions and callings. There is only one thing for which unlimited allowance ought to be made on the ground of their otherwise non-existent womanly inferiority, and that is their own criminal or tortious acts! In a word, they are not to be held responsible, in the sense that men are, for their own actions when these entail unpleasant consequences for themselves. On the contrary, the obloquy and, where possible, the penalty for the wrong-doing is to be shifted on to the nearest wretched man with whom they have consorted. I cannot quote unlimited cases, but, by way of illustration I will mention two that occur to me on the spur of the moment. Some three years ago a woman deliberately shot at and wounded a solicitor (a married man) with whom she had had relations. The act was so premeditated that it came out in evidence she had been practising shooting with the revolver for days before-hand. There was, moreover, no question of a child in the case, and not even one of financial embarrassment, as she was in receipt of a quarterly allowance under a trust. Hence the case presented itself as a cold-blooded one of attempted murder without a single circumstance of attenuation. The woman was sentenced to the very lenient penalty of seven years penal servitude. (Had a man attempted to murder in this way a jilting mistress he would have received, without doubt, twenty years at least, if not a life sentence.). Now, it seems incredible but it was a fact, that a campaign was immediately started throughout the whole of the press, largely by “advanced” women and male feminists in favour of this dastardly female criminal, who only fell short of being a murderess by accident! The second case is that of Daisy Lord last year. To read the gush on that occasion one might have thought that the murder of new-born children represented the highest ideal of motherhood. This Daisy Lord became for the nonce a kind of pinchbeck Madonna in the eyes of the

195 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader feminist public. Such women as the above ought of course to have equal voting rights with men, but equal consequences for their actions – oh, dear no! The extent to which feminist sentiment can fling justice to the winds in these days, is shown by the savage demand, in cases of infant murder, for vicarious vengeance on one who, as regards the offence in question, is wholly innocent, to wit, on that vile and obnoxious person “the man.” This feminist attitude of public opinion has been sedulously cultivated, not only by means of journalism, but in literature and art for over a generation, the aim being to portray the “man” as an ignoble, mean creature, as a foil to the courage, the resource, the gentle virtues of the woman. It is done too in a very subtle way. Who has not seen the well-known picture representing the Thames Embankment at night, and an “unfortunate” possessing an angelic face being taken from the river, with a gentleman and lady in evening dress who have just got out of a cab in the foreground, the gentleman with ostentatious callousness – brute that he is – turning away and lighting a cigarette, and the lady – gentle creature – bending over the dripping form and throwing her hands up in sympathetic horror? It is by clap-trap of this sort that sentimental feminism is evoked and nourished. Only the other day I received a provincial Socialist paper (ILP) containing a feuilleton with the story of a woman who had killed her baby, and who died after a few weeks in prison – the moral being apparently the monstrous wickedness of imprisoning such women at all, rather than rewarding them with a comfortable pension for life. There are well-known writers in leading magazines who systematically take delight in painting their own sex in an abject light, by way of pandering to current feminist prejudices. The privileged position of women is illustrated in a small way by railway compartments for “ladies only,” by reserved seats in the British Museum reading room, etc. The New York elevated railway has, I read, begun to reserve whole carriages for women from which men are rigidly excluded, no matter how full the train may be otherwise. For, be it remembered, although men are forbidden access to female reserves, women in all these cases have the run of the whole available space. There are no male reserves. This game was tried on last year in the LCC tramcar-from Tooting. Fortunately, one fine morning some enterprising young men were found who had the pluck to be “unmanly” and “unchivalrous” enough to fling the female crowd in all its weakness and womanhood remorselessly aside and board the trams themselves The reserve tram, which proved to be illegal, was then dropped. Mrs. Montefiore denies that Feminists who are also Socialists desire anything other than absolute equality. If so, I would suggest to these worthy comrades that they occasionally made their protests heard against the existing favouritism of the law and ifs administration as regards women – not to speak of custom and conventional sentiment – rather than

196 Why I Am an Anti-Suffragist (1909) concoct bogus grievances on the other side.35 Mrs. Montefiore quotes with approval the saying of Mrs. Lida Parce that “woman” needs the ballot to “enable her to remove those special and artificial disabilities which have been placed upon her by male legislation.” Now, I must again insist that Mrs Montefiore should know as well as I do that at the present time in this country no such disabilities exist – any apparent grievance being invariably traceable as necessary corollary to the obligation of the husband to maintain his wife. Should any collateral consequence of this vassalage of the husband involve some slight inconvenience to the wife, the Feminists pounce upon it and begin to shriek for all they are worth! (The cases adduced by Mrs. Montefiore are themselves mainly connected with the husband’s compulsion to keep his wife.) If Mrs. Montefiore is right in asserting that our Socialist votaries of the Feminist cult only claim equality, I can only say that others (including some of those with whom Mrs. Montefiore herself has erstwhile consorted) have distinctly expressed the intention of themselves and their adherents to use the vote to legislate against men. Moreover this tendency has shown itself already, I believe, in some of the puritanical legislation of Australia. With the sex-bias as manifest as it is in the average Woman’s Righter, it could hardly be otherwise. Women form nowadays a powerful sex-trust. Men do not. On the contrary, they use their political power to confer privileges on the opposite sex, which they seem always to prefer before their own. One word in conclusion. Mrs. Montefiore rashly takes for granted that the men I referred to as somewhat unwillingly giving their assent to Female Suffrage and in secret preferring Manhood Suffrage are not Socialists. They are Socialists. If they were not Socialists there would obviously be no reason for reticence or secrecy as to their real inclinations or convictions. The Socialist Party has been rushed into an official acceptance of the Feminist dogma, but this does not necessarily mean that all Socialists accept it precisely with enthusiasm, although from want of courage, or perhaps from (what I should deem) a mistaken view of policy, they may choose in public to keep their own counsel. E. Belfort Bax

35 I have just cast my eye down Lady McLaren’s Woman’s Charter given in to-day’s paper. One of the demands is, I see, that “no married woman should be bound to accept a foreign domicile.” This is delightful! A poor man cannot get work in this country and has to take a position abroad. At her sweet whim his wife may live apart from him as a single woman and compel him to keep her all the same! Here we have a splendid example of “woman’s right” to treat man as a slave! 197 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Burrows as Feminist (1909) Burrows as Feminist, Justice, 15 May 1909, p.13. (letter) Dear Comrade, – Surely it is deplorable that a man like, Herbert Burrows should not only talk, but print the delirious nonsense you quote from his Woman pamphlet in your last number, as to the status of the wife under “the actual law of England,” since it can only suggest doubts in the impartial reader either of his sanity or his bona fides – unless indeed we are to assume a total ignorance of the subject – such as in these days of newspapers even (I say nothing of law books) seems impossible. Those who know them may indeed be “horrified and disgusted” with our present infamous marriage laws, which, while depriving the husband of every vestige of real power over his wife, places him in a position of complete subjection to that wife, legally and economically. Burrows takes precious good care to avoid laying before his audience any details It is prudent to take refuge in generalities when what one says is not indeed a perversion of the truth – that would be very mild – but a flat and irreconcilable contradiction of the truth. I agree with you the pamphlet you criticise does indeed give one “furiously to think” – on the psychology and ethics of feminist controversialists – yours, E. Belfort Bax

198 Contemptible Methods (1909)

Contemptible Methods (1909) Contemptible Methods, Justice, 21st August 1909, p.14. (letter) DEAR COMRADE, – According to the official report of the S.D.P. Conference at Bristol, Mr Herbert Burrows characterised my “methods” of opposing female suffrage as “contemptible.” Coming from the source it did, this remark as originally made might not have been worth noticing: but, having been reproduced in the report in question, I feel called upon to demand of Mr. Burrows either a justification or a withdrawal. What he means I am at a loss to understand, save that my arguments and facts have proved extremely inconvenient to the class of feminist propaganda with which he has identified himself. Or are my “methods” deemed “contemptible” because I have not followed the “methods” of some Feminists that I know, and resorted to unscrupulous lying in order to deceive a public ignorant of the law, and unversed in the way it is administered? If so, I can only plead that I not made that way, and, moreover, that the cause I champion has no need of such heroic methods as these. It only requires a plain statement of the truth. Yours E. Belfort Bax

199 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Women’s Privileges and “Rights” (1909) E. Belfort Bax, Women’s Privileges and “Rights”, Social Democrat, Vol.13 no.9, September 1909, pp.385-391. An anonymous lady writing over the signature “Fair Play” treats the readers of the Social- Democrat to what an admirer describes as a “spirited reply” to my article Why I am an Anti- Suffragist. There is one thing for which I am grateful to my “spirited” opponent and that is that she has the candour to throw overboard at starting the hollow pretence that sex-equality is the aim of the female-suffragists. “Women demand,” she says, “both deference from, and equality with, men.” So there we have it. She goes on to state that they lay claim to this “deference” on the ground of their sex. Socialists who profess to believe in equality and also in Feminism, please note! This “deference” to sex she apparently claims on the ground of chivalry, but here I would remind “Fair Play” that, as she herself points out, chivalry has nothing to do with sex as such. Chivalry may exact a “deference” toward a sick or an aged woman as it may toward a sick or infirm man. But the attempt to make it run on the lines of sex-distinction is untenable on any rational ground. An ordinary healthy strong woman has no more claim to be an object of special chivalry than an ordinary healthy strong man. If men are muscularly stronger than women, women are, as has often been pointed out, constitutionally stronger than men. Women can bear much severer strains than men can, with impunity. The recuperative power of the female organism is well-known to physiologists. But there is a curious zeal on the part of Feminists to insist on this point of the muscular inferiority of women to men while indignantly repudiating inferiority in all other directions. Thus “Fair Play”: “But though nature has handicapped women physically, she has not done so as far as brains are concerned.” Now as far as most persons’ observation and reading of well-known facts are concerned, it is indubitable that they point, prima facie, to an, at least, equally great, if not greater, mental inferiority to men than the physical (muscular) inferiority – so strongly emphasised by Feminists. It is neither less nor more easy to rebut or contest the physical inferiority than it is the mental. The reason of the aforesaid procedure on the part of Feminists is, however, not far to seek. The only semblance of ground for the privileging of women, for their exemption from all the disagreeable duties of citizenship, is this ground of physical weakness. But when it comes to the question of mental weakness that is quite another story. Although we might naturally expect inferiority on the physical side to involve inferiority on the psychical side also, not perhaps in any given individual, but taking the sex as a whole, and although facts point to, at least, equally great mental as physical inferiority between the average woman and the average man, we are nevertheless asked to ignore all these considerations, and in a humble and contrite spirit accept the 200 Women’s Privileges and “Rights” (1909) Feminist dogma that women, while physically weaker, are mentally as good as men – with the practical corollary, of course, that while all honourable or remunerative functions ought to be open to women, they are to be jealously guarded from all arduous occupations as also from the legal consequences of their own criminal or tortious acts. I instanced the Tooting tramway incident as an act of commendable pluck on the part of those concerned in it to boldly challenge the attempt of woman’s righters to “jump the claim” to chivalry as a special right of the sex they champion. But there is another point Feminists conveniently overlook. It is this: That granting the “weakness” argument, this very weakness, to whose claim chivalry may per se be granted, forfeits its claim when it presumes upon that claim and becomes aggressive. Aggressive weakness deserves no quarter – à la guerre, comme à la guerre. “Fair Play” indulges in the usual talk about the injustice of women who pay taxes not having votes. “No taxation without representation” has been, as we all know, the political mot d’ordre of the middle classes in their struggle for independence against noble and monarch. It is the affirmation of the dependence of political power on acquired property; but the modern Socialist is precisely engaged in combating the notion of basing political rights on a property qualification at all, so for him, at least, the argument in question can have no special weight. For the rest, the terrible grievance of taxation without representation seems to me, in any case, somewhat exaggerated. I rent a humble dwelling in a French town, for which I duly pay my “impôt de l’état,” without any right to vote for candidates for the Chamber; but yet, strange to say, I don’t feel myself groaning under a particularly monstrous injustice. Provided the recognised governmental functions of protection, etc., are duly carried out, I fail to see that the payment of a moderate tax for them involves such an outrageous violation of rectitude as many other things in our present social order. Taxes rest on private property, which is guaranteed to the holders by the existing State. Hence it seems not unnatural that all possessed of private property should pay proportionate taxes, quite apart from the question of direct representation. When the State levies a personal or blood tax – e.g., conscription – it is quite a different matter. This does not rest on property, but on the personal life and labour of the individual. Here a claim to direct personal participation in the machinery of government is infinitely stronger. But an obligatory personal service of this nature the State never claims from women. Women bear children, it is said. Good. But there is no governmental compulsion that they should do so. They do so in the performance of a natural function, not as a public duty. All that the State demands of women in this connection is that they shall not kill their babies when they have them, and even this is considered hard on the poor, oppressed creatures (cf., the Daisy Lord agitation). The absurdity of comparing the risks of childbed with those of the

201 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader battlefield and its horrors, only shows the extremities to which Feminists are reduced for weapons to refute a very obvious and straightforward argument. “Fair Play” commends Georges Sand for her disregard of convention in her life. But who is it that most slavishly licks the boots of Mrs. Grundy in questions, say, of free marriage, in which Georges Sand so conspicuously (and rightly as I think) asserted her claim to personal freedom? Just women! It is precisely on the ground of the servile puritanism of women to conventional moral shibboleths that many persons, not otherwise adverse to woman suffrage, dread any increase in the direct influence of women in public affairs. “Fair Play,” like other Feminist advocates, seizes upon questions of minor social “deferences” and carefully omits to notice the main indictment of anti-suffragists, namely, the privileged legal position of women under “man-made law” and administration, a position which the avowed aim of Suffragists is to strengthen and extend. The woman, who is alleged to be mentally equal to man, is excused the legal punishment for her crime because she is a woman. A workman was hanged in Ireland last week for flogging his female child to death; a woman a few years ago, also in Ireland, in a well-known cause célèbre, for a precisely similar offence, viz., torturing a child to death, got twelve months’ imprisonment. Let “Fair Play” defend such iniquities as this (which, in a minor form, are occurring weekly and daily) if she dare! The WSPU would presumably, while maintaining the death sentence on the man, reduce that of the woman to three months’ imprisonment as a first-class misdemeanant! The cant about “brute force” is not impressive. As “Fair Play” must know, “brute force” is the final appeal of every institution and every right. What Feminists want is to have the “brute force” at the disposal of men exercised in favour of women. They want to set men to “bully” other men into submission to the demands of the female sex. This is the true meaning of the agitation for the franchise. It is not a question of sweet reasonableness versus brute force, but of brute force exercised on behalf of one sex rather than another. Suffragists want to place the female sex in a position to legislate, i.e., to command the brute force of the State (wielded by men) in their own interests. Hence the denunciation of “man-made law” which already gives woman a position of legal domination over the man, but not enough apparently to satisfy the rapacious will-to-power possessed by the Feminist members of the sex. The task of Feminism is to paint a privileged sex in the colours of an oppressed one. Naturally this difficult task can only be accomplished by a game of “bluff” of the most impudent kind and by the wholesale “hocussing” of public opinion by falsehoods, and at the same time by the most strenuous attempts to prevent the light of fact being let in. Of the latter there has been evidence only recently within the SDP in the demand of Mr. Herbert Burrows at the Conference that the pamphlet published by the Twentieth Century Press, The Legal Subjection of Men – in which the present state of the law and its administration as

202 Women’s Privileges and “Rights” (1909) between the sexes is given – should be suppressed, and also in the representations made to the Editor from a “Women’s Committee” of the body that I should be muzzled and any statement of mine adverse to Feminism be excluded from the party organs. For the former we have only to consult the current literature of Feminism in the daily and weekly press. The desperate attempt to secure privileges for the Suffragettes is a topical case in point. Those who “gas” most about “political” offences and “first-class” prison treatment know perfectly well (1) that there is not and never has been any distinction in English law or custom drawn between “political” and other offences as regards prison treatment. They know well enough that men galore, among them Socialist speakers imprisoned for the technical offence of obstruction, have had no “first-class” treatment and that no one has suggested they should have. They also know (2) that even if the distinction as to “political” imprisonment existed – breaking windows, assaulting the police, persistent personal molestation, etc., could not possibly be regarded as other than common law offences obnoxious to an ordinary common-law punishment. In fact, the sympathisers with Suffragettism are quite aware that they are playing a comedy in the hope of hoodwinking public opinion. This comedy became screaming farce when Mr. Keir Hardie posed as the innocent and indignant redresser of female wrongs, and suggested to the Home Secretary that the law needed amending to raise prison treatment of women to a level with that of men! Fancy these petted and pampered hussies – who, after deliberately breaking the law, are allowed to assault warders, throw their food and untensils out of window, having previously smashed the same – with practical impunity – having then only to go without their dinners for a day or two in order to have their sentences of two or three months remitted; and think of what would happen to a man did he venture upon but a tithe of the outrages these despicable females on the hunt for cheap martyrdom allow themselves with perfect assurance, relying upon their sex immunity and the limitless forbearance of male authorities! Heroism is a cheap commodity when one knows beforehand there is no danger of any unpleasantness worth speaking of, no matter what one does. For men the lash, the plank-bed and weeks of semi-starvation and solitary confinement! For women, at worst, a few days of arrest in cells, the airiness and comfort of which the Secretary of State personally supervises! And yet there are Socialists who profess to think it unjust that a section of the community, weltering in privilege of every description, should not, at the same time, be accorded the political rights accruing to the section deprived of these advantages. Truly, there is no accounting for the operations of sex-prejudice in certain minds. No, no, my “spirited” female friend, justify the name you have assumed and show us that you have a distant notion, at least, of what constitutes “Fair Play,” as regards this question! E. Belfort Bax

203 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

A Different Interpretation (1909) A Different Interpretation, Justice, 18th September 1909, p.10. (letter) DEAR COMRADE, – With reference to Professor Lester Ward’s book reviewed in last week’s Justice, and the statements made in it which are apparently regarded by the author as arguments in favour of the Feminist theory from the biological side, I would like to point out that even granting the accuracy of Ward’s Biology (which some might possibly be disposed to question), the results he arrives at by no means necessarily point in the direction he wishes to make out they do. Professor Ward identifies the undivided sex of beings low in the organic scale with the female sex, itself perhaps a doubtful proceeding, but which we will let pass. He then points out that when the division takes place the male, the “fertilising” sex, was relatively unimportant, while the female represented the species. In the course of time the male grew in bodily strength and complexity of development, till, finally, in the human race the wicked male Frankenstein overthrew the domination of the female by his strength of brain and muscle, “although that strength,” pathetically remarks our Feminist advocate “had been conferred by her” (?). Now this sounds like a pretty fairy tale with a Feminist moral does it not? But has it never struck the professor that his own biological statements (be they right or wrong) are susceptible of quite another interpretation to the one he would impress upon them? As thus: In all low organisms nutrition and reproduction are the two most important functions of life. The main working part of the processes of reproduction rested with the female sex after the primitive differentiation of sex, and has done so ever since. The male sex, on the contrary, relieved by the course of natural development of the greater part of the labour of mere reproduction, gradually acquired functions, physical and psychical, tending to the higher evolution of the species. In the higher mammalian, but notably, of course, in the human race, this concentration in the male sex of the functions concerned in the higher life of the species has gone on apace. Hence in human society it is man that represents humanity, as such, and not woman, who still retains as her special department those main working processes of reproduction which gave the female sex that paramount position that Lester Ward claims for it in earlier forms of life; processes which are common to the whole animal kingdom, but which in the human world, at least, have ceased to hold that supreme importance per se they possessed in those earlier forms, when higher functions and possibilities had not appeared above the horizon, and when mere reproduction was (after nutrition) the supreme end of every individual of a species, This is at least as plausible a reading of his own biological theories as the Feminist one he champions,

204 A Different Interpretation (1909) E. Belfort Bax P.S. – Since writing the above I have seen D.B.M.’s contribution this week on the same subject. Therein I find the following: “Why the statement of these theories is of such immense importance to Socialists is that the gynaecocentric theory [that of Lester Ward] is a striking corroboration of the correctness of the Marxian interpretation that the economic independence of women will be one at the most important phases of the social revolution.” Now I must most strongly protest against this dragging in of Marx “by the hair of his head” so to say, as a stalking-horse for this latest attempt to set up a biological basis for Feminism. The theory in question, I do not hesitate to affirm, is not a corroboration, whether “striking” or otherwise, of anything Marx ever taught. It has nothing whatever to do with the special doctrines of Marx, and it is only too obvious that the name of the author of Das Kapital is only introduced in the hope of ensuring for the theory in question a more favourable reception than might be accorded to it otherwise in the ranks of the Social-Democracy. The economic independence of women has been preached by many writers in this country before and since Marx became known, not all of them Socialists by any means, and may be accepted or not as a consequence of the Social Revolution, quite independently of the theories of Ward as to gynaecocentricity with which it has no necessary connection at all. E.B.B.

205 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

The Legal Subjection of Men (1909) The Legal Subjection of Men, Justice, 23 October 1909, p.10. (letter) DEAR COMRADE, – In reply to Mr. Herbert Burrows, please allow me to inform him that I do not stand in any need of setting myself right with “honest men,” either in “this” or any other “instance.” I have told no “untruth” about him, but simply interpreted the wording of his protest, as given in the Conference report, in the way, I venture to think, most readers of that report would have done. Mr. Burrows’s correction of my interpretation, I am, of course, perfectly willing to accept. For the rest, I should certainly not feel it incumbent upon me to make any apology – public or private – to Mr. Burrows about anything, until he has had the decency either to withdraw or justify the offensive remark made by him at the Conference during the same debate, thereby answering my challenge to him, published in Justice some two months ago, which he has hitherto chosen to ignore. – Fraternally yours, E. Belfort Bax

206 Woods on Women (1910)

Woods on Women (1910) Woods on Women, Justice, 14th May 1910, p.10. (letter) DEAR COMRADE, Mr. Woods has made a wonderful discovery – to wit, that of the controversial tu quoque: what the Germans call the “retour Kutsche” (return coach). He has, he says, “taken a peculiar pleasure in insinuating that Mr. Bax’s mind is sodden with anti-Feminist sex- prejudice because he says mine is sodden with Feminist sex-prejudice, and I want to show him that two can play at that game.” I am much obliged to Mr. Woods, but I can assure him that since infancy I have been perfectly aware that two can play at that game, if the second one is silly enough to take pleasure in such a childish amusement. However, I suppose I did not credit “the mind” I attributed to Mr. Woods with such empty-headedness as that. I characterised Mr. Woods’ mind in a certain way, I admit, at the same time giving the reasons for my characterisation. He simply throws back the words in my teeth without offering any ground of justification, and then crows out: “See what a brave boy am I!” This method of controversy is not, in my humble judgment, a highly edifying one, although some of his female suffrage friends may possibly regard it as magnificent. In the midst of Mr. Woods’ bluff we have, of course, the attempt, which seems inevitable with Feminists, to ride off on a quibble, and then to divert the issue by whining for an “apology.” There was no “slip” in my statement that Mr. Woods wrote as though he thought there was a valid argumentative quid pro quo in the appeal to the fact that women may (voluntarily) bear children as against the appeal to the fact that men may be compelled to serve in a military capacity. He says now he regards both arguments as “equally silly” – which is, after all, from a practical point of view, only a slightly different way of putting it. My allegation, in effect, that a man who could not see that the latter of the contentions in question was at least an argument, whereas the former was a pure irrelevance, showed a mind hopelessly prejudiced. To this opinion I must beg, with all due deference to Mr. Woods, to continue to adhere. Mr. Woods only confirms the justification for my original remark to his latest pronouncement. Another brilliant discovery of Mr. Woods – or perhaps one should rather say the source of the one already spoken of – is that there is no criterion of truth outside the individual. Now, I rather think there was a gentleman named Protagoras, who taught in Athens in the fifth century B.C., who expressed the same idea under the formula “Man is the measure of all things.” Of course, if a man really holds this view it is impossible to argue with him seriously at all. I have, however, a slight suspicion that Mr. W. only adopts it when his Feminist prejudices demand it. A criterion “outside all standpoints” I don’t profess to have

207 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader discovered, and I don’t propose to enter here on the old question (which would demand a treatise) as to the general nature of truth. It is enough for my present purpose to state that I recognise the common objective standard of fact in human experience as a criterion of truth, just as I recognise social happiness as a criterion in matters political and ethical. As already said, I suspect Mr. Woods does the same when he is not “bluffing” in the interests of his Feminism. Now, judged according to the above criterion, it is certainly possible to prove to all intelligent beings whether human experience shows women to be on the average inferior to men or. not – also possible to prove that certain things are conducive to general human happiness and others not. Now, if our criterion, viz., the facts of human experience – even though “marshalled” by those dreadful creatures called “men,” should actually point to the inferiority of women, then those who refuse to accept the teaching of experience and the obvious logical deductions therefrom, let them be the most angelic representatives of Womanhood Mr. Woods can drum together, simply put themselves out of court with rational beings. In so far as they allow their prejudices to dominate over fact and logic they don’t count, let Mr. Woods “bluff” as he may. This leads us up to the important questions already handled by me in part elsewhere, of the ethics of physical force, of count-of-heads majority rule and its justification, of Democracy as end or as means merely, which all have their bearing in the female suffrage question, but which cannot be dealt with at the end of a letter. If the editor is willing, I shall hope to devote an independent article to their consideration in an early number of the Social- Democrat. Meanwhile, I will put a case showing the consequences of Mr. Woods’ position. One of the light-fingered fraternity succeeds in annexing Mr. Woods’ watch. Mr. Woods, in gripping the light-fingered one by the collar, characterises him as a thief. The latter retorts by the magic formula of the Woodsian logic, “You’re another!” thereby, according to that wonderful instrument of controversy, placing himself on a level with his victim of unimpeachable integrity, by showing him that “two can play at that game” – they having no common criterion of honesty between ... them. No, no, Mr. Woods, the anti-Feminists may be all wrong, but obvious bluff of this sort won’t settle the suffrage question or any other! Meanwhile, I leave the field open (since I do not propose writing another letter of the subject in Justice at present) to Mr. Woods to exercise his scintillating wit and sarcasm (oh, so biting!) on my unfortunate self. So, go it, Mr. Woods! Here’s your opportunity! E. Belfort Bax

208 Uni-Sexual Criminal Law. (1910)

Uni-Sexual Criminal Law. (1910) New Age, 16 May 1910, p. 59; Dr. Oldfield’s piteous whine for exempting women from the extreme penalty of the law while retaining it for men is hardly calculated to attract to his society those in whom the modern Feminist propaganda has left a rudimentary sense of justice. He has simply let the cat out of the bag. It now appears that the so-called “Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment” is no more than a blind; it really amounts to a Feminist “fake” for securing immunity for women from crimes for which the law exacts the extreme penalty for men. “What argument can any reasoning man have for perpetuating upon our statute book the crime of woman-hanging?” Answer: Precisely the same argument (if any) that the aforesaid “reasoning man” has for “perpetuating on our statute-book the crime of” man-hanging – neither more nor less. Dr. Oldfield presumably believes in Female Suffrage. He believes, that is, that women are intellectually capable of full political rights with men, and yet, on the other hand, he denies them to be morally capable with men of distinguishing right from wrong. (“The passions that sway women to murder,” he says, “are such as to make them wholly irresponsible for their actions.” If so it is quite clear that the inferiority of woman to man is of such a stupendous character that any talk of sex-equality is not merely unsound, but is on the face of it absurd. Most unprejudiced persons would probably consider that the statement above quoted, while applying to some female criminals also applied to some male criminals. But Dr. Oldfield wants to make sex the dividing line. If Dr. Oldfield refers to the crime passionel, and wishes to exempt this particular form of crime from the death penalty, why should he limit the exemption to one sex only? For my own part, I can see no reason whatever for special leaning towards the crime passionel in either sex. But be I right or wrong in this, there is no gainsaying that this type of crime is to be met with in both sexes alike. Of course, we have the usual snivelling appeal for chivalry towards the gentle murderess – the baby-farmer, the wholesale poisoner, the “female bluebeard"! My own feeling is that male chivalry ought really, if it is worth anything, to proclaim Divine Woman to be above the law, once for all – this would simplify matters, and be something like an adequate recognition of the “dignity of Womanhood.” Dr. Oldfield does not disdain the demagogic art of working up an effect by harrowing his readers —only unfortunately rather stale drugs have had to be used for the process – a case alleged to have occurred some 150 years ago at Oxford, and something which probably never actually happened at all (at least in this country), viz., the scalding to death of female prisoners. The only instance in which this punishment is recorded as having been inflicted, I

209 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader believe I am right in saying, was on a mere man, named Rose, in the reign of Henry VIII. Dr. Oldfield, however, thinks, I suppose, that mere men (other than himself) don’t mind the procedure so much as women. I have described Dr. Oldfield’s society as a blind for something other than what it professes. I go further, and say that its policy of sex-favouritism constitutes it the worst enemy of its avowed aim. If there is anything likely to retard that complete abolition of capital punishment which so many of us desire, in the present state of public feeling, it is the abolition of the death-penalty for women. As Mr. Collinson, of the Humanitarian League, has more than once pointed out, these uni-sexual penal laws are the greatest foes of progress in humanity. The abominable enactment of 1820, which abolished flogging for women while retaining it for men, has left our prison system saddled with the lash ('for men only,’, of course) ever since. “Should we hang women"? Yes, emphatically, precisely so long as we hang men, and no longer! E. BELFORT BAX. P. S. Dr. Oldfield tries to score a point by maintaining that the non-enfranchisement of women justifies a difference between the penal sauce for goose and gander. But many men also do not possess the franchise. So his argument, stripped of feminist sentiment, resolves itself into the following proposition: “ No non-elector ought to be hanged “

210 Feminism and Female Suffrage (1910)

Feminism and Female Suffrage (1910) New Age, 30 May 1910, p. 88-89; First and foremost amongst the rights claimed by Feminists for women is the political franchise. The reasons for this claim are based, one on abstract justice, the assumption being that women are, on the average, substantially similar and equal to men in intellectual and moral capacity; and the other on the practical consideration that, as things are, women constitute a cruelly-oppressed section of the community, and that, as with any other division of the community similarly situated, the political franchise is the first essential to their obtaining their legitimate social rights. Now, in the present article it is proposed to deal exclusively with the last point while conceding the other for the sake of the argument. In doing so, I propose to show, as briefly as possible, not only, that women at the present time, considered as women and apart from the class to which they belong, suffer no sort of social injustice to which the men of their class are not equally exposed, but, on the contrary, that as women they enjoy privileges, and hence constitute a privileged order of human beings, not only as against the men of their class, but as against men generally, us men. If this be so, I contend not only does the practical urgency of the Suffrage claim, even if it were conceded in the abstract, fall to the ground, but even the abstract right itself would disappear, since the granting of it would amount to the piling up of an additional privilege on an already privileged class. That the object of a large number of these women who are now clamouring for the franchise is not merely to maintain but to extend their legal privileges is evident to anyone. They want the suffrage as a weapon wherewith to carry on a sex-war, with a view to the dominance of the female. That this means countering evolution with a vengeance I will merely remark in passing. In early forms of life the female may perhaps be taken as representing the most important element of the species. As the male element evolved, however, the higher function of the species became more and more absorbed by the male, and the female more and more relegated to the function of reproduction. The subordination of the female element by the male has been a characteristic feature of evolution from the lower to the higher throughout the whole course of biological, as of sociological, development. But to address ourselves to our more immediate purpose, which is to show the privileged status of women before the law, alike in itself and still more in its administration. Let us begin with the civil law, and, first of all, with that relating to the status of the married woman. No woman can be imprisoned for debt (“contempt of court”) no matter what means she may possess, although her husband may be for the non-payment of her debts. Not even can her property be attached for the payment of a debt if settled on her in due form. Neither

211 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader can she be served with a bankruptcy order unless in relation to a business carried on apart from her husband and in her own name. She is free to leave her husband, and he has no legal power to detain her or compel her to return. He has no control over her personal property. She, on the other hand, can obtain an order for restitution of conjugal rights, by which he is ordered to return, or she can obtain alimony or maintenance, according to her “station in life.” The husband is responsible for any slander or libel she may commit although he knew nothing of it or even disapproved it. He is liable, that is, for damages and costs, while she escapes with absolute impunity. From the above it will be seen that the infamous British law sticks at no outrage on the most elementary principles of common rectitude in privileging the married woman at the cost of her husband. Not that this is by any means a complete statement of the case. To have given such, with the necessary detail and references to law reports, would have carried us much beyond the limits admissible in the present article. Among all the women’s rights advocates I am not aware of one who, in her zeal for equality between the sexes, has ever suggested abolishing the right of maintenance of the wife by the husband. On the contrary, they are usually only too eager to increase the husband’s burdens in this connection. By an Act passed in 1895 this liability for maintenance was extended to a wife notwithstanding her adultery. It must be remembered here that it is not alone by actual statute that wives are favoured at the expense of their husbands, but that judge-made or decision law is even still more operative in this direction. As has been remarked of the judges in this matter, “every moth-eaten scrap of privilege which is in favour of the wife they retain. All privileges of the husband, no matter how firmly established, they deny as ever having existed.” An illustration of this is to be found in the statement of Lord Halsbury in the Jackson case that a husband had never the right in English to restrain his wife! The pro-Feminist bias of judges is no less marked in civil than in criminal proceedings. Let us now turn to the criminal law. A wife enjoys, at present in this country, practical immunity for all offences of which her husband is the victim. Gaol and public obloquy are the lot of the husband, as we all know, for similar offences towards the wife. The wife, without forfeiting her right of maintenance, may insult, slander, or libel her husband. The wife is free to neglect every one of her recognised duties, while the husband has no redress. If, on the other hand, the husband neglects her he is at once liable to a police-court separation order with confiscation of property, or wages, for her maintenance. It must be remembered here that everything of which the wife chooses to complain (e.g., coming home late at night) will be held by the Court to constitute neglect, just as everything the wife chooses to call cruelty will be construed as such by a similar chivalrous tribunal. A husband can be arrested and imprisoned for deserting his wife, whereas a wife may desert her husband with impunity.

212 Feminism and Female Suffrage (1910) But it is not so much in the letter of the law that its sex-favouritism is most conspicuously illustrated. It is in the spirit of its administration that this sex-favouritism appears in its strongest light. An assault by a woman on a man, certainly by a wife on her husband, is lightly punished if at all. That this is so can be tested by anyone who likes to read the police reports regularly. Again, a case is hardly known of a woman being sentenced to imprisonment for bigamy. Men commonly receive seven years for this offence. Similarly, a woman is practically allowed full freedom to commit perjury in the Divorce Court with a view to establishing a case of adultery against her husband. Let the husband but try the same game on and he will find quite another pair of shoes awaiting him. Even if the perjury be committed to exculpate himself – a thing regarded as a matter of course in the wife – the husband is by no means secure from the danger of penal servitude. The only case in which perjury is permitted to a man without consequences is where it is committed (say in the Divorce Court) in order to guard or whitewash the character of a woman. The letter of the law in criminal cases is supposed to apply equally to both sexes, but the practical difference in its application is so flagrantly glaring as to hardly need animadversion. We all know the savagely vindictive sentences passed by police magistrates and judges for the most trivial wife assaults and for common assaults generally where a female is the object of them. As regards indecent assaults, the late Baron Huddleston remarked that in his experience men required far more protection against women than women against men. The reason for this is obvious. It is hardly known, even in the most malicious charge of this kind, that the female plaintiff has ever been prosecuted, much less convicted, for perjury. With this absolute immunity, this dastardly form of blackmailing has naturally flourished among a certain section of the female population. It is even encouraged by the law, for by the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 a boy of fourteen can be convicted for committing a sexual offence with a girl of sixteen, to which he was actually incited by the latter, who, by virtue of her sex, is held guiltless by the law. I know of a case in which a female was produced as witness against several boys, younger than herself, whom she had seduced, but the Court held that this precocious creature could not be punished, although her victims were duly sent to gaol. As regards prison treatment, it is well known that flogging is absolutely abolished by the Act of 1820 where women are concerned. Hanging is practically abolished by usage for women who murder men. Women, if they find prison discipline irksome to them, have, as a rule, only to create a sufficient disturbance to get it relaxed. A very flagrant case of this kind occurred some years ago at Wormwood Scrubbs. In any case the duration of sentence is, on the average, about one-third that which a man would receive for a like offence, while the “hard-labour” is generally little more than nominal. I have above given a few of the leading points in the favouritism of the law towards women. Those who wish to pursue the matter in further detail, list of cases etc., may be referred to a

213 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader pamphlet published some twelve years ago by the Twentieth Century Press entitled The Legal Subjection of Men. This pamphlet, I may observe, which gives the state of the law and its administration at the time of writing, and which holds good in all essentials to-day, has been studiously ignored and boycotted by the feminist faction, well knowing, as they did, that a perusal of it would have burst up once for all that exploitation of popular ignorance and prejudice on which their agitation is based. In the face of the statement of law and of facts there given, the game of bluff by which the advocates of “woman’s rights” succeed in drawing tears from guileless simpletons by diatribes on the cruelly unjust status of Women under man-made laws, would have ceased to be possible. We will now turn to an argument which is sure to crop up. What, it may be said, has all this to do with the right of women to the franchise? Women, it may be urged, are not responsible for these iniquitously sex- biassed laws, or for the administration of the law. The answer to this is, that the chief argument for the imperativeness and urgency of votes for women insisted on by Suffragettes is mainly the unfairness of treatment meted out to women. Now, it is clear that when it is shown that much-decried man makes laws wholly and solely in the interests of the opposite sex and to the detriment of his own, any conclusions drawn from the contrary assumption vanish in smoke. If it be alleged, further, that women do not want these privileges, my reply is, why do they not say so in the course of their agitation? Instead, not only do those who are most zealous in clamouring for the franchise do their best to bluff their dupes by posing as the victims of a non-existent male oppression, but they, often enough, expressly proclaim their intention of pressing forward legislation the effect of which would be to enhance the existing privileges of their sex. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that, although it may be true that women in general are not directly responsible for the present state of the law and public sentiment, this is largely due to the persistent action of the feminist agitation during the last two generations, so that sex-conscious women at least, are in a very definite sense responsible for it. Finally, their position, as a specially privileged class, is surely incompatible with the claim to the possession in addition thereto, of the political rights of those not so privileged. In the present article I have only dealt briefly with one aspect of this question. I may point out in conclusion that the existing state of public opinion on the subject registers the fact that sex-conscious women have exploited the muscular weakness of their sex and have succeeded in forging a weapon of tyranny called “chivalry” which enables them to ride rough-shod over every principle of justice and fair play, Men are cowed by it, and fail to distinguish between simple weakness per se which should command every consideration, and that aggressive weakness which trades upon “chivalry” and deserves no quarter.

214 Re Woods (1910)

Re Woods (1910) Re Woods, Justice, 4th June 1910, p.10. (letter) DEAR COMRADES, I have no wish to bandy further words with Mr. Woods. But I must ask you to allow me to formally enter a protest against the complete perversion by that gentleman of the standpoint and arguments of me last letter. Cheap buffoonery of a personal character I don’t mind, but actual misrepresentation I do. Yours, E. Belfort Bax

215 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

A Symposium on Women’s Suffrage. (1911) New Age, 2 February 1911, p. 1; THE following questions have been put by THE NEW AGE to representative persons in science, ethics, art, politics, and economics: – 1. What in your opinion is the most powerful argument – (a) For, or (b) Against woman’s suffrage ? 2. Is there any reasonable prospect of obtaining woman’s suffrage in the present Parliament, and this immediately? 3. Have the militant methods in your opinion failed, or succeeded? 4. What alternative methods would you suggest? MR. E. BELFORT BAX. You state in your letter of invitation that you are impelled to do so – “in order to ascertain whether there are means of preventing the promised repetition of the disgraceful scenes and their sequences, called forth by the belief that the suffrage should be extended to women.” With your permission I will answer this before the questions. I will venture to submit that the means of preventing the “disgraceful scenes” you deplore are perfectly simple and at hand. They consist in the treatment of women who turn hooligans and break the law precisely in the same way men would be treated who acted similarly. Let the punishments dealt out to them be the same in duration and intensity as those meted out to the male hooligan in like circumstances. The incentive to continue in the same course which the cheap martyrdom afforded by farcical sentences provides would then be removed, and the “disgraceful scenes” referred to would speedily come to an end. 1. In my opinion there are two most powerful arguments against woman’s suffrage. Firstly, the liability of women to hysteria in one or other of the various forms of that abnormal mental condition, a condition which notoriously impairs or destroys the power of judgment. It has been shown that on the average, one woman out of every four or five exhibits symptoms of definite hysteria. If we include those whose temperament is affected by hysteria, but where the actual symptoms are latent, the proportion would of course be larger. Secondly, apart from any question of incapacity for political judgment, and even assuming such relative incapacity not to exist, there remains the fact that woman occupies as such a

216 A Symposium on Women’s Suffrage. (1911) privileged and exceptional position, not only socially, but before the law and its administration, based ostensibly upon her assumed weakness of will and intellectual power, a weakness which is urged in favour of leniency and exceptional treatment of women in criminal and even in civil proceedings at law, oftentimes by the very same persons who, when it is a question of according women the political rights of men, most strenuously deny the existence of any such relative weakness or inferiority in the female sex. So long, I contend, as women occupy this exceptionally privileged position, even apart from any other consideration, they have no just claim to equality with men in the matter of political rights. 2. I believe there is little danger, as things at present stand, of female suffrage becoming law in the lifetime of the present Parliament. 3. In my opinion the “militant methods,” as they are termed, of street hooliganism have failed, as casting ridicule on the movement, and furnishing a sorry sample of the quality of female intelligence, commonsense and judgment. How often do we hear the remark: “And these are the creatures it is proposed to entrust with the destinies of the nation"! 4. The alternative methods I would suggest to those who believe in, and are anxious to obtain, the franchise for women, are the methods adopted by men in every other case, in a community organised politically on democratic lines, and possessing in general the right of free speech, and a free Press, viz.: agitation by means of argument and persuasion rather than by knocking off policemen’s helmets, smacking their faces, and breaking post-office windows. * * * Others who participated in the symposium were as follows: – Belloc, Hilaire: Bennett, Arnold: Caird, Mona.: Chapman, Hugh B., Rev., M.A.: Chesterton, Cecil: Chesterton, G.K.: Cockburn, John Hon. Sir: d'Auvergne, Edmund B.: Donisthorpe, Wordsworth: Ellis, Havelock, Dr.: Morgan, William de.: Elmy, Elizabeth C. Wolstenholme: Farr, Florence.: Fordham, Mary Hon.: George, W.L.: Gould, F.J.: Harraden, Beatrice.: Holiday, Henry.: Holland, Canon Scott Rev.: Housman, Laurence.: Hueffer, Ford Madox.: Hutchins, B.L.: Jerrold, Laurence.: Levy, Oscar, Dr.: Ludovici, A.M.: Lytton, Neville Hon.: Maartens, Maarten, Dr.: Mathew, Arnold Harris Right Rev., D.D..: McCabe, Joseph.: McCarthy, Justin.: McLaren, Charles Sir.: Moullin, C. Mansell M.D., F.R.C.S..: Nordau, Max, Dr.: Norman, C.H.: Oldfield, Josiah , Dr.: Phillpotts, Eden: Pugh, Edwin: Randall, Alfred E.: Reason, Will M.A..: Robertson, J.M. M.P. .: Ross, Robert.: Rutter, Frank.: Schloesser, Henry H.: Sharp, Clifford D.: Shaw, S.J.D.: Slater, Gilbert , Dr.: Spender, Harold.: Stanger, H.Y. B.A., K.C..: Stead, W.T.: Stopes, Charlotte C.: Street, G.S.: Suttner,

217 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Baroness Bertha von.: Swiney, Frances.: Upward, Allen: Wells, H.G.: Whiteing, Richard.: Young, Filson.: Zangwill, Israel.

218 A Creature of Privilege (1911)

A Creature of Privilege (1911) A Creature of Privilege. The Fortnightly Review, 110(85) November 1, 1911. p. 919ff (Punctuation and paragraphs slightly revised by the editor who compiled this volume.) The case for Anti feminism or Virilism – understanding by the term the opposition to the assumption of an equality of capacity between the sexes, and of the consequences drawn from that assumption to wit of admitting or even thrusting women into all public functions and into possession of all rights hitherto occupied or possessed by men – rests upon the fact that that initial assumption has never been proved and that the prima facie evidence of its fallacy, which has dominated the views of mankind in general on the subject to within two or three generations ago, has never been rebutted. The practical problem before us to-day as regards the position of the sexes resolves itself into three questions: – (1) Is there an appreciable difference in capacity between the sexes? (2) Granting a difference to exist, is it of such a nature as to render it desirable or undesirable that women should occupy the same place that men do in the community or render it possible that they should fulfill the same functions? (When I say desirable I mean of course from the point of view of efficiency and the common welfare.) (3) Does democratic equity demand a mechanical equality at any price between the sexes such as is professedly contended for by feminists and the great symbol of which is the demand for female suffrage? These three questions are intimately connected. The first question would be answered, willingly or unwillingly, by most responsible persons, even on the feminist side, in the affirmative. To deny a difference, even a fundamental difference, between the sexes in view of the facts is scarcely possible. I believe there are some persons on the feminist side who will go even this length but they are not numerous. It is in the second and third questions that the main diversity of view comes out. The feminist denies that the difference involves inferiority or, if it does, inferiority sufficiently marked for absolute social and political equality to jeopardise the interests of the community. The anti feminist, on the contrary, does regard the admitted difference as involving inferiority, at least in certain directions or, to put it politely, unsuitability for the performance of certain functions. With regard to the third question, perhaps the strongest divergence appears, the feminist maintaining that no matter how great the inferiority, how great the unsuitability, and in consequence, how great the prejudice to the community as a whole, democratic equity demands the concession at all costs of the suffrage and all that the suffrage implies The Anti feminist or, as I prefer to call him, the Virilist, on the contrary, denies that the political equality postulated as a democratic

219 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader principle necessarily applies to sex. It applies, of course, to differences of class and to differences of race, at least where races are approximately on the same level of development. There you have to do with economic distinctions, traceable to the possession or not of wealth, or differences deducible from tradition language and physical environment. In the case of sex it is otherwise. Here a deep lying physiological distinction is involved. Here, therefore, you have a new element imported into the case, which bars your appeal to the general democratic principle of equality, which has never contemplated this element till the present feminist agitation arose, and hence the acceptance of the principle of democratic equality, as hitherto understood, by no means necessarily involves the advocacy of the concession of political power to women. To assume without further discussion that the principles of democracy necessarily as such include the demands of feminism is a begging of the question. However I do not propose on this occasion to discuss at length these fundamental questions affecting our view on the relative positions of the sexes. For the sake of argument, I am prepared to concede the feminist case as it is stated by its advocates. Let us assume complete mechanical equality between the sexes, such as feminists demand to be at once feasible and desirable. The important questions then arising are first of all where the incidence of inequality obtains at the present time and secondly whether the equality, which is professedly aimed at by the feminist party, is not a blind concealing other and even opposite aims to those professed. The advocates of female suffrage base at least the urgency of their claim, if not the claim itself, on the fact that without the franchise women must be unfairly treated by man made law and its administration. They allege that man made law is invariably in the interests of the male sex, and must in the nature of things be so. Now, I have already on various occasions shown up this shameless falsehood in its true light, but inasmuch as there are always enough persons ignorant of law and fact in this connection, and with sentimental proclivities ever ready to accept eagerly any statement tending to show woman in the role of victim and man in that of oppressor, one can hardly restate the truth of the case often enough and I therefore propose to give here a brief review of the facts. First of all let us take the marriage laws of the present day in England. (1) The law of breach of promise, as is well known, enables the woman to obtain oftentimes vindictive damages against the man for refusing to marry her after having once engaged himself to her, notwithstanding that the breaking off of the engagement on his part may be on the best of grounds and really for the advantage of both parties. Should the woman in the course of her action commit perjury she is never under any circumstances prosecuted; on the contrary, even in such case the male victim is glad enough to settle the matter with money payment (e.g., £3,000, Gore v Lord Sudeley, June 10th 1896). It is vain to argue that the law of breach of promise exists also for the man, since it is well known that his legal right in the

220 A Creature of Privilege (1911) matter is hardly more than formal and practically a dead letter, while on the other hand, in the case of the woman, no element of misrepresentation or undue influence on her part will cause her to lose her right to compensation. An experienced intriguing woman of the world of thirty or forty may thus entrap a boy of three and twenty with perfect success. (2) According to the law of England, the right of maintenance accrues solely to the woman. Formerly this privilege was made dependent on her cohabitation with the man and generally decent behaviour to him. Now even these limitations cease to be operative, while the man is liable to imprisonment and confiscation of any property he may have. A wife is now at full liberty to leave her husband, while she retains her right to get her husband sent to gaol, if he refuses to maintain her; to put the matter shortly, the law imposes on the wife no legally enforceable duties whatever towards her husband. The one thing which it will enforce with iron rigidity, is the wife's right of maintenance against her husband/ In the case of a man of the well to do classes, the man's property is confiscated by the law in favour of his wife. In the case of a working man the law compels the husband to do corvee for her as the feudal serf had to do for his lord. The wife on the other hand, however wealthy, is not compelled to give a farthing towards the support of her husband, even though disabled by sickness or by accident; the single exception in the latter case being, should he become chargeable to the parish, in which case the wife would have to pay the authorities a pauper's rate for his maintenance. In a word, a wife has complete possession and control over any property she may possess as well as over her earnings, the husband on the other hand is liable to confiscation of capitalised property or earnings at the behest of the law courts in favour of his wife. A wife may even make husband bankrupt on the ground of money she alleges that she lent him, a husband on the other hand has no claim to his wife for any money advanced, since a husband is supposed give, and not to lend, his wife money or other valuables. (3) A husband is responsible for the torts of his wife against parties at the same time that the present law gives him no control over her in any way whatever. As the late Sir Lockwood expressed it: “If Mrs. Jackson slanders or libels any person, that person can take proceedings, not against Mrs. Jackson but against Mr. Jackson.” And this although Mrs. Jackson, of her own will, has left Mr. Jackson and is living apart from him. Similarly, a wife is held by the law to be guiltless of practically any crime committed in the presence of her husband, murder excepted. (4) No man can obtain a separation or divorce from his wife (save under the Act of 1902, a police court separation for habitual drunkenness alone) without a costly process in the High Court. Every woman can obtain, if not a divorce, at least a legal separation by whining to the nearest police court for a few shillings, which her husband, of course, has to pay. The latter, it is needless say, is mulcted in alimony “at the discretion of the court.” This “discretion” is very often of a queer character for the luckless husband. Thus, a working

221 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader man only earning twenty shillings a week may easily find himself in the position of having to pay from seven to ten shillings a week to a shrew out of his wages. In cases where a wife proceeds to file a petition for divorce the way is once more smoothed for her by the law at the husband's expense. He has to advance her money to enable her to fight him. Should the case come on for hearing the husband finds the scale still more weighted against him: every slander of his wife is assumed to be true until he has proved its falsity; the slightest act or a word during a moment of irritation, even a long time back, is twisted into what is termed “cruelty”, even though such has been provoked by a long course of ill treatment and neglect on the part of the wife. The husband and his witnesses can be indicted for perjury for the slightest exaggeration or inaccuracy in their statements, while the most calculated falsity in the evidence of the wife and her witnesses is passed over. Not even the grossest allegation on the part of the wife against the husband, even though proved in court to be false, is sufficient ground for the husband to refuse to take her back again, or from preventing the court from confiscating his property, if he resists doing so. Knowledge of the unfairness of the court to the husband, as all lawyers are aware, prevents a large number of men from defending divorce actions brought by their wives. A point should here be mentioned as regards the action of a husband for damages against the seducer of his wife. Such damages obviously belong to the husband as compensation for his destroyed home life. Now, even these damages our modern judges in their feminist zeal have converted into a fund for endowing the adulteress, depriving the husband of any compensation whatever for the wrong done him. He may not touch the income derived from the money awarded him by the jury, which is handed over by the court to his divorced wife. It would take us too long to go through all the privileges, direct and indirect, conferred by statute or created by the rulings of judges and the practice of the courts in favour of the wife against the husband. It is the more unnecessary to go into them here, as they may be found in detail as illustrative cases in a pamphlet, in which I collaborated, entitled: The Legal Subjection of Men (Twentieth Century Press). It remains as regards this question of divorce to notice the one point in the divorce law which can possibly be twisted into the semblance of a grievance for the woman. I refer to the rule that, in order to obtain relief, the wife has to prove cruelty in addition to adultery, while the husband is required to prove adultery alone. This is the one straw which the feminist convulsively clutches when confronted with the infamous partiality towards women of the whole body of the English law and its administration. It has done duty now so long that it is getting a little worn, but as the one ewe lamb in the shape of a colourable grievance against divine woman, it is a treasure of inestimable value to the feminist advocate. We will therefore devote a few words to it. Now, I may say at once that so far as I am concerned, this rule might be swept away to-morrow as it probably will be very shortly, without my

222 A Creature of Privilege (1911) taking the trouble to lift a finger in its defence. But any impartial person, who regards the question from the standpoint of present and past conditions, must, I submit, come to the conclusion, that it is prima facie a perfectly reasonable provision. It has its origin mainly in the simple fact that while the woman by her adultery may bring a bastard child into her husband's family, for the maintenance of which he is responsible, the husband, by his adultery, has produced no material injury to the wife. Hence, given the existing conditions of property holding and the conventional views as to the marriage relation, as to the justification of which in themselves I say nothing in this place, given this state of things, I submit, nothing can be more reasonable or fairer than the distinction made by the law in this matter. However, as above hinted, the rule in question is likely soon to be set aside altogether; and meanwhile, its effect notwithstanding feminist objurgations, is more illusory than real, since in our days the judges of the Divorce Court will accept practically anything the wife chooses to complain of as sufficient evidence of legal cruelty, to enable the wife to get her decree. The worst of this is that the farcical legal cruelty of the Divorce Court is often used by feminist judges as an excuse for depriving the husband of the custody of his own children. The neglect of the husband or family on the part of the wife is no ground for the relief of the husband from his obligation for maintenance &c. Neglect of the wife by the husband is, however, a ground for judicial separation with the usual consequences alimony &c. “Thus,” as it has been put, “between the upper and the nether millstone cruelty on the one hand, neglect on the other, the unhappy husband can be legally ground to pieces whether he does anything or whether he does nothing.” Personal violence, while severely punished on the part of the husband, is an amusement that the wife can resort to with impunity. If she is prosecuted by the husband, the result will be at most a fine which he himself has to pay. Should she in very extreme cases be sentenced to imprisonment, the husband, if a poor man, is practically compelled to take her back to live with him on her release. The law in this respect would be better understood if I mention a case, which came under my notice some years ago, in which a humane magistrate had to make a treaty with a married woman who had nearly murdered her husband, by which he consented to let her off scot free, provided she graciously agreed to a separation. Presumably the wretched victim had still to support this female brute. Legally he would have been liable to do so, should she become chargeable to the parish. From a case taken haphazard from Lloyd's News, March 6th 1910, a wife had been allowed under an order of the Court of Chancery to take the whole of her husband's income as well as her own, leaving the husband totally without means to support the children, although presumably the wife being deprived of the custody of the children, had caused the divorce by her “misconduct.” This shows to what incredible length the feminist current has

223 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader influenced the power of the law. From the same journal in another case, the husband had petitioned for divorce, the wife counter-claiming judicial separation, the parties having made it up and being again together. The judge, on the application of the husband's counsel, dismissed the petition for divorce, but declined to dismiss the wife's counter-claim, reserving that for future decision; therefore, the wife living with her husband, who had abandoned his claim and condoned the wife's faults, had still the claim of the wife held in pressure over him, and also her right to apply for a trial of that claim at any time; a monstrous violation, it would appear, of the rectitude of all judicial procedure. By the decision in the Jackson case above referred to, no compulsion can be exercised on the wife to compel her to obey an order of the court for the restitution of conjugal rights. This had already been provided for so far as the direct action of the law is concerned by Lord Cairns’s Act of 1884, which took away the right of the court to enforce obedience by imprisonment or by the attachment of property. But by a cynical stroke, this same law enacted that the husband's property might be confiscated in the case of disobedience. The Jackson case which decided against the husband's personal rights to retain his wife in the house when she proposed to leave him, i.e. to enforce his legal right to cohabitation is simply in full accordance with the prevailing tendency to free the woman and enslave the man. The Law Lords some years ago extended the principle involved in the above tendency to Scottish law. Previously the law of Scotland allowed desertion for five years to constitute a divorce with the right of re marriage. This arrangement was practically upset by a decision in the House of Lords in 1894, when they refused to grant divorce to a man whose wife had left him for four years and taken her child with her They justified their new interpretation of the law on the ground that the man did not really want her to come back to him. But inasmuch as this plea can be started in every case where it cannot be proved that the husband had absolutely grovelled before his wife, imploring her to return, and possibly even then, since the sincerity even of this grovelling might conceivably be called in question, it is clear that the decision practically rendered this old Scottish law inoperative for the husband. As for bigamy, every newspaper reader must be aware that while a man not uncommonly receives seven years for this offence, I think I am not wrong in stating, that no woman has ever been in recent years imprisoned for marrying again during her husband's lifetime. Having given a cursory statement of the present condition of the law and its administration as regards the matrimonial relation, we will now proceed to deal with the question of the relative incidence of the criminal law on the two sexes. We will start with the crime of murder, especially the murder of a husband or wife, a lover or sweetheart. The law of murder is nominally the same for the woman as for the man, but the effectiveness of its provisions in the two cases is very different.

224 A Creature of Privilege (1911) The general principles as regards women accused of the crime of murder may be roughly formulated as follows: – The least excuse is deemed sufficient to reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter. In order to secure a conviction, the evidence must be at least ten times as strong as the minimum evidence which would carry a conviction in the case of a man. Should the verdict be one of murder, the death penalty is almost invariably commuted probably at the instance of the jury as well as of the judge. If, as is usually the case, the woman is convicted of manslaughter instead of murder, an almost invariably light and oftentimes merely nominal sentence is passed. For older cases I may refer those interested to the pamphlet before mentioned, but a recent case of a particularly flagrant character may be here given extracted from the Morning Leader (September 23rd, 1908). Mrs. E.B.C, twenty six, widow, was remanded at Marylebone on a charge of murdering her husband. A post mortem examination of deceased revealed a portion of a hat pin three inches in the left lung. At the inquest, Mrs. C. said, her husband had told her it ran into him and broke off as he was getting into bed. After the funeral the relatives returned to the house and deceased's two brothers entered the room and called prisoner aside. One of them asked her if she ran the hat pin into her husband. “Yes,” she replied, “I did it in a fit of passion.” He then returned to the room and said “Ladies and gentlemen, Elsie has owned up that she stabbed Arthur in a fit of passion.” Finally at the trial the jury found her guilty of manslaughter and on her declaring that she was maddened by her husband accusing her of immorality, she was merely bound over. Now here is a case which had a man been in the dock and his wife the victim, he would undoubtedly have been convicted of murder and probably hanged. But the woman is let off scot free. A similar case, not quite so recent, is the following: Extract from The Times for January 9th and 16th, 1905, R.G., forty nine, who fatally stabbed A.S., a barrister at law, with whom she had lived for upwards of thirty years, on December 21st, 1904. She was alleged to have stabbed him in the back with a knife at their residence. Jury returned a verdict of manslaughter and she was sentenced by Mr. Justice Darling to six months in the second division! A further case may be cited, taken from a report in the News of the World of February 28th, 1909. A young woman shot at the local postman with a revolver, the bullet grazed his face, she, having fired point blank at his head. Jury returned a verdict of not guilty although the revolver was found on her when arrested, and the facts were admitted and were as follows: At noon she left her house crossing three fields to the house of the victim, who was at home and alone; upon his appearing she fired point blank at his head, he banged to the door and thus turned off the bullet, which grazed his face and “ploughed a furrow through his hair.” She had by her, when arrested, a revolver cocked and with four chambers undischarged.

225 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader These cases are good illustrations of the attitude taken by judges and juries towards the crimes of murder and attempted murder when committed by women against men. What that attitude is, where crimes of identical nature are committed by men against women, we have only to open our morning newspapers to see. Let us now take the crime of violent assault with attempt to do bodily injury. The following cases will serve as illustrative examples: — From the News of the World (May 9th, 1909): A nurse in Belfast sued her lost swain for breach of promise. She obtained £100 damages, although it was admitted by her counsel that she had thrown vitriol over the defendant, thereby injuring him, and the defendant had not prosecuted her. Also it was admitted that she had been carrying on with another man. From the Morning Leader of July 8th 1905 I have taken the following extraordinary facts as to the varied punishment awarded in cases of vitriol throwing. That of a woman, who threw vitriol over a sergeant at Aldershot and was sentenced to six months imprisonment without hard labour, while a man, who threw vitriol over a woman at Portsmouth, was tried and convicted at the Plants Assizes on July 7th, 1905 and sentenced by Mr. Justice Bigham to twelve years penal servitude. As regards the first case, it will be observed that notwithstanding her crime, which in the case of the man was described by the judge as “cowardly and vile” and meriting twelve years penal servitude, the woman was rewarded by damages for £100 to be obtained from the very man whom she had done her best to maim for life, besides being unfaithful to him, and who had generously abstained from prosecuting. But it is not merely in cases of murder, attempted murder or serious assault that justice is mocked by the present state of our law and its administration in the interests of the female sex; the same attitude is observed, the same farcical sentences passed on women, whether the crime be theft, fraud, common assault, criminal slander, or other minor offences. We have the same preposterous excuses admitted, the same preposterous pleas allowed, and the same farcical sentences passed, if indeed any sentence be passed at all. The following examples I have culled at random: – From John Bull (February 26th, 1910): At the London Sessions Mr. Robert Wallace had to deal with the case of a well-dressed woman living at Hampstead, who pleaded guilty to obtaining goods to the amount of £50 by false pretences. In explication of her crime it was stated, that she was under a mistaken impression that her engagement would not lead to marriage, that she became depressed, and that “she did not know what she said or did”; while in mitigation of punishment it was urged the money had been repaid, that her fiancé could not marry her if she was sent to gaol, and that her life would be irretrievably ruined; and she was discharged. From the Birmingham Post (February 4th, 1902): M.W., twenty six, clerk, pleaded guilty to embezzling £5 1s. 9d., on November 16th £2 2s. 4d. on December 21st, and £5 0s. 9d. on December 23rd last, the moneys of her employers. Prosecuting counsel said prisoner entered prosecutor's employ in 1900, and in June last, her salary was raised to 27s. 6d. a week. The defalcations, which began a month before the increase, amounted to 134. She had falsified

226 A Creature of Privilege (1911) the books, and when suspicion fell upon her, destroyed two books in order as she thought to prevent detection. Her counsel pleaded for leniency on the ground of her previous good character, and because she was engaged. The Recorder merely bound her over, stating that her parents and young man were respectable, and so was the house in which she lodged. A correspondent mentions in the Birmingham Post of February 8th, 1902, a case where a woman had burned her employer's outhouses and property doing £1,800 worth of damage and got off with a month's imprisonment. On the other hand the same judge at the same Quarter Sessions thus dealt with two male embezzlers C.C., twenty eight, clerk, who pleaded guilty to embezzling two sums of money from his master in August and September of 1901, amounts not given, was sent to gaol for six calendar months, and S. Gr., twenty four, clerk, pleaded guilty to embezzling 7s 6d and 3s. For the defence it was urged that the prisoner had been poorly paid and the Recorder, hearing that a gentleman was prepared to employ the man as soon as released, sentenced him to three months hard labour. A further and more recent case, and one which is also mentioned in John Bull of February 26th, 1910, is worthy of being noted here: A sentence of a month's hard labour was passed by the Mortlake magistrates on a porter convicted of stealing sixpenny worth of milk from a churn at Barnes railway station. He had been in the employ of the railway company for ten years and nothing was known against him apart from this—at least the only thing against him was that he had not been born a woman. In cases of annoyance and harassing of men in their business occupation or profession by women, however aggravated, and however serious the injury, the magistrate will generally tell the prosecutor that he cannot interfere. This incident is so common in police court reports that hardly any newspaper reader could fail to remark it. In the opposite case, that of a man harassing a woman, he is invariably called upon to find sureties, failing which he is sent to gaol. We now come to one of the most infamous pieces of one sided sex-legislation on the statute book I refer to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1886. The Act in its entire inception shows sufficiently the cloven hoof of feminist bias, but it contains one provision which, to use the Yankee phrase, “fairly licks creation” for its brazen bare faced outrage on every elementary sense of justice. It is well known that the English law has never regarded the corruption of minors by a woman as a crime or even as a misdemeanour. But the Act in question goes a step further. While consecrating this female sex-privilege, it enacts in effect that a boy of fourteen years can be prosecuted and sent to gaol for an offence to which he has been instigated by a girl just under sixteen years, whom the law of course on the basis of the aforesaid sex-privilege holds guiltless. When one considers the usual greater precocity of girls than boys, the iniquity of such a measure as this will appear in its strongest light. A particularly bad case in point was decided on appeal from the Central Criminal Court to the

227 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Court for Crown Cases reserved in June 1894, in which a designing female wretch appeared as witness against a number of boys younger than herself, whom it came out in cross examination, she had been directly instrumental in debauching. In some respects this clause of what is known as Mr. Stead's Act, puts the coping stone on to the legal privileging of women, since here all semblance even of justice and fairness is flung to the winds, and the legal sex-privilege stands forth naked and unashamed. In the pamphlet before referred to will be found a number of illustrative cases collected by the late Dr. Lawson Tait of Birmingham, from his own experience as medical officer of police showing the direct encouragement offered by the law, as it at present stands, to blackmail and bogus charges on the part of women. It must not be forgotten as regards the citation of criminal cases illustrating the infamous partiality of the law and its administration towards female prisoners, that one whole class— probably the most numerous—and certainly the most important class of such cases, the law of libel, as it stands to-day, bars anyone from alluding to, individually. I refer to the acquittal of women notoriously guilty on the evidence. This last class of cases as already stated, cannot be used in illustration of the partiality of the law, owing to the incidence of the law of libel, which gives an acquitted person the right of action no matter how notoriously wrongful the acquittal may have been. We have seen now the privilege at the expense of the man which the law itself and still more its administration affords to women. It remains to consider the preferential treatment in prison after conviction. What prison discipline is for the male offender is perfectly well known: He is liable, in addition to severe physical labour as part of his penalty, to the torture of the plank bed; and for any breach of prison discipline may be given the punishment of flogging. Now, female prisoners are expressly exempted as such from all these frightful aggravations of confinement in gaol. The work they have to do is invariably of a light character, laundry work, needle work, &c. They are not condemned at night to the plank bed, but are allowed an ordinary mattress and pillow with bed covering, while by the law of England no woman can be flogged for the most heinous offence, even as a part of her sentence, much less at the behest of prison justices for mere breach of rules. It must not be forgotten either here that a sentence of imprisonment on a woman compared with that on a man in a like case is often not more than a third of the duration. A woman has moreover special privileges as regards good conduct marks, and as to the chances generally of being released before her time has expired. The history of the suffragette movement in this direction is instructive when, according to the newspapers, the prisoners were allowed with practical impunity to bite, scratch, and kick the wardresses, and to throw their food and utensils through the window, and for a long time had only to go for two or three days without their dinner to be let out scot free. Let us

228 A Creature of Privilege (1911) picture to ourselves what would have happened to a man under like circumstances: solitary confinement for weeks, bread and water diet, plank bed, lash, &c, even if he were not brought before the magistrates for additional sentence for assault. But even all these exemptions did not satisfy the females in question. Did not they and their male backers make the welkin ring for weeks together with a veritable howl of indignation at the harsh treatment they received—they being political prisoners, if you please? As regards this last point, most of those who shouted loudest must have known perfectly well that up to that time never had there been recognised in English law or custom any difference as regards prison treatment between political and other offences. How often have male Socialist speakers been imprisoned for the technical offence of obstruction without a voice being raised as to their not receiving first class treatment? Moreover, even had such a distinction ever existed, those who shrieked loudest on the subject could hardly have been so devoid of intelligence, one would think, as not to see that breaking windows, assaulting the police, &c., could not be considered otherwise than as common law offences, rendering those guilty of them liable to the ordinary punishment for such misdemeanours. Everyone knows that the term “political offence,” apart from actual insurrection, refers to spoken or written words, the attempt to maintain the right of public meeting in the face of, say, a Government order to the contrary, and has never been used to cover the vulgar, silly, and objectless police offences, by which the suffragettes made themselves notorious. From the state of things of which the foregoing is a very imperfect sketch, it is evident, we are confronted in modern society, in addition to the only too obvious class opposition which divides the possessors and controllers of the land and means of production of wealth, generally from the propertyless proletariat, with another line of demarcation, this time having not an economical, but a physiological basis: that of sex. We have, in fact, society divided into two portions, with the dividing line of sex. One side is held fully responsible for its actions before the law, and fully amenable to the penalties provided by the law for offences, the other section is not held responsible for its actions or, if it is, only in an attenuated degree, and is practically immune from at least all the severer penalties of the law. Such is the position, as regards this much debated question, of the social status and relations of the sexes at the present day. Now there may be various arguments for the granting of the suffrage to women, as there are undoubtedly many weighty reasons against it, based on the physical intellectual and moral characteristics of women, but quite apart from these considerations, nay, even granting for the sake of argument the justice of the pro suffragists case, even then, I say, so long as women remain as they are to-day in a position of privilege, which exempts them to a large extent from the pains and penalties for committing crimes and breaking the law, generally to which men are liable, so long, quite apart from any other consideration, to talk of their having a right to the suffrage on the ground of democratic justice is a farcical absurdity.

229 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader But. it will be observed by the feminist, “women are not responsible for these privileges, which are the work of male legislation!” “All they are asking for is equality!” I have even heard it said: “Your argument tells in favour of admitting women to the franchise, if, as you say, this legislation in which women have had no hand is so bad!” This sounds like a plausible argument, but unfortunately it won’t work. For as a matter of fact, women are largely responsible for the whole body of one sided sex-legislation, which has arisen within the last half century. It is they who have created the public opinion that has rendered it possible. It has been by a ceaseless agitation, by an untiring misrepresentation of fact, by nobbling members of the Press and of Parliament, that the infamous laws we have been considering have come into being. This has been the work of precisely the same type of women, and in so far as they are yet living, even of the individual women themselves, who are at the present moment clamouring for the franchise. It is only necessary to listen to the leaders of the modern suffrage movement for a few minutes, to find out that their aim is to use the suffrage as a means of forcing on to the statute book more one sided legislation of the same description. What else is the meaning of the outcry against man made laws and of the reiterated assertion that women will never get their rights until they obtain the suffrage. No suggestion here that women already possess privileges of which equity would deprive them!36 On the contrary, the whole walk and conversation of the present day female agitator is a proof, if such were needed, that it is hoped to exercise directly, by means of the franchise, a similar pressure and for a similar object to that previously exercised indirectly, which we have to thank for the existing sex-privileges. That the granting of the suffrage to women, in spite of what is often said as regards this point, means sex-tyranny over men by women, is sufficiently indicated by recent results. For example, New Zealand, where, as is well known, women possess the franchise, has recently afforded an instructive case of such tyranny. In the conscription law lately passed there, which of course affects men alone, it is provided that no alcohol shall be permitted in the camps of the citizen soldiers. But this is not all. A deputation of women some time ago interviewed the responsible Minister to exact assurances that the law should not be evaded. That the desired assurances were given was hailed by the spokeswoman of the deputation as a great triumph for the principle of female suffrage. “Did women not possess the vote,” said she, “such a deputation would have been put off with the reply that men must have their drinks!” If this is not sex-tyranny I do not know what is. Again in Australia (Victoria) where

36 The extent to which “political” women cling to the most iniquitous privileges of their sex is aptly illustrated by the agitation got up lately by the Suffrage Societies for the reprieve of the Italian murderess Napolitano in Canada, who had been condemned to death for having in the most cold blooded manner butchered her husband in his sleep. Verily anything female has the heartfelt sympathy of the “anti-man” suffragette!! 230 A Creature of Privilege (1911) women also possess all political and municipal rights, a law, I understand, has been passed reserving in the parks’ special seats for women, on which, if any man rest, he shall be heavily fined. To come nearer home, in that special resort of the advanced person, the Garden City at Letchworth, teetotalism has at the biennial referendum been hitherto enforced against a majority of male votes by the female inhabitants. Now seeing that it is generally the male proletarian who, after his day's work, wants his drink, we have here another instance upon a small scale of a piece of sex-despotism. I put the case once for all, in conclusion, to all advanced women who pretend to advocate equal laws between the sexes, political and otherwise—“are you able to drink of the cup that men drink of and to be baptised with the baptism that men are baptised with?” You know perfectly well that you do not believe you are able and that if you were able, you would certainly not be willing. You know quite well in your heart of hearts, however much you may profess it with your lips, not only that you are not willing to surrender one iota of your present privileges, but that your talk of equality is but a blind! What you are really aiming at is not merely the consolidation of your existing privileges, but the acquirement of as many fresh sex-privileges, political, social, or economical, as you can obtain. You know perfectly well that the notion of protesting against the sex-privileges you enjoy as unjust has never entered the head of any of your number. Your aim, I again insist, addressing, as I am, of course, the leaders of the present feminist movement, and excluding possible exceptions in the rank and file, your aim is the conversion of the female sex into a dominant sex noblesse!37 In your endeavours in this respect you are aided by that sex-glamour of which Schopenhauer speaks and by which the bulk of men are hypnotized. You are well aware that it is this sex-blindness which prevents large numbers of men from seeing things as they really are, and upon this you mainly rely for the success of your agitation! E Belfort Bax

37 As a proof that this is the object of the modern woman's agitation, we have only to cast our eyes down the clauses of Mrs. M. Laren's Woman's Charter, one of which is that the husband, in addition to his present burdens, should be compelled to pay a weekly sum to his wife, ostensibly as wages for her housekeeping services, which bien entendu she may perform badly or well or not at all without forfeiting her right to be paid for them at full rate. Another clause is that a wife is to be under no obligation to follow a husband who is compelled by circumstances, in order to earn a livelihood for himself and her, to reside out of the country. 231 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

The Problem of Modern Feminism (1912) The Problem of Modern Feminism. Chapter VIII of Problems of Mind and Morals. Grant Richards, London 1912. Reprinted by Grant Richards, London 1920. We may trace the origin of modern Feminism in a fairly continuous line back to the eighteenth century – to protagonists in revolutionary and pre-revolutionary literature – notably to Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. From that time onward the Feminist question has always been present, though it only became prominent during the second half of the nineteenth century. It was about the end of the sixties that the Woman’s Suffrage plank first made its appearance in the modern Socialist movement, in the original International at the instance of Michael Bakounin and his followers, and was one of the few proposals emanating from that quarter that was accepted by the Marx party. But for a long time the question remained in the background, being hardly referred to at all in the earlier programmes of the Continental parties. In fact, in the German party the “Woman Question,” as apart from the general Social question, first received serious attention in 1883 in Bebel’s book, the first edition of which was issued under the title of Woman in the Past, Present, and Future contained very much Woman and very little Socialism. (In the later editions, under the title Woman and Socialism, it is only fair to say, the proportions have been altered.) In this work, Bebel, who virtually admits in his preface that the bulk of the party at that time was against him, maintained the dogma of the equal capacity of woman with man, with its corollary, the right of women to occupy all positions and exercise all functions hitherto controlled by men. In France, Lafargue was active on the Feminist side during the early eighties. Since then the Feminist dogma has found much favour with Socialists everywhere, and the demand for Female Suffrage has been officially embodied among the planks in the immediate political platform of the Social Democratic party. At the same time, it has been sought to exercise a pressure within the party to prevent dissentient Social Democrats from expressing an adverse opinion. Time was when Manhood Suffrage was the cry of all Democrats, and there are, doubtless, plenty of Social Democrats to-day who would be glad enough, if they did but dare, to take their stand on the old Suffrage platform, which was good enough for Chartists and earlier Socialists. The fact is, of course, this sex question cuts athwart other issues. Hence it is that the conventional bourgeois, unwilling as he is to admit the sins of his class towards the proletariat, is often perfectly ready to smite his manly breast and deplore the assumed

232 The Problem of Modern Feminism (1912) harshness of his own to the opposite sex. There is no logical reason for Socialism specially championing the position of modern Feminism. That Socialism must bring about changes in the position of women may be allowed, but the special direction of these changes must be the coefficient of the permanent physiological structure and functions of the female sex, with the new economic conditions and the resultant new social forces. To dogmatise on the future as to the precise nature of these changes at the present stage is eminently unscientific. Let us take the practical issue of the Suffrage. People commonly talk as if the franchise was an end in itself rather than what it is, simply a means to other ends. But Feminists and Suffragists know very well for what purpose they want the franchise. They intend to use their new weapon to give a further edge to what may be termed anti-man legislation. They rightly think that this class of law-making which they have been so successful in promoting indirectly for a generation past, they will in future, with the leverage of the vote, be able to promote directly with a still greater success. This is what lies behind all protestations of sex equality and the like. The equality desired is the species of equality the chief characteristic of which is to be “all on one side.” At the same time, some of the arguments adduced against Female Suffrage do not strike me in themselves as altogether conclusive. For example, it cannot be denied that the argument as to the sphere of women being the home, though undoubtedly true in the past, and though containing more truth to-day than the average Feminist would admit, has undoubtedly lost some of its force owing to the changed economic conditions of the present time. Then, again, I have heard it argued that contact with the rough and tumble of political life, with its intrigue, ambitions, sordid rivalries, etc., would defile the pure spirit of womanhood. Well, here again I do not think the argument is altogether convincing, since the rabid Feminist might insist that the pet sex would, on the contrary, infuse an elevating spirit into public life, that a whiff of the breath of Womanhood (with a capital W) would act like magic in disinfecting political life and raising it to a uniform level of pure disinterested virtue. And although we may be personally quite convinced that such would not be the case, yet, seeing that the experiment has not yet been tried on any large scale or for any considerable length of time, it might not be easy to prove our conviction to anyone choosing to affirm the contrary. Now the foregoing and some other arguments are put forward, I think, by many men with the unconscious desire to avoid acknowledging the real ground of their objections to Female Suffrage. They don’t like to state this ground straight out. Some, if hard pressed, will try to shuffle out of admitting it, perhaps even to themselves. But their secret conviction is that women, as a sex, are organically inferior to men, not only physically, but intellectually and morally as well, and hence not fit to be trusted promiscuously (i.e. barring exceptions) with political power. Now, no man likes to say this, because it sounds rude and arrogant to “the

233 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader ladies,” even though the evidence, physiological, psychological, historical, and common observational for his conviction, is conclusive for him. In my essay on Female Suffrage and its Implications, I have briefly indicated some of the main heads of this evidence and do not propose to enter into it again here. But I must insist on the fact that for me (barring one other reason which, though decisive for the moment, is not of a fundamental nature, and which I shall refer to directly) there seems no logical ground for opposition to the granting of the franchise to women save the recognition of inferiority, at least, an inferiority ad hoc. If one acknowledges complete equality in capacity between men and women, the case for the Suffrage seems to me, in itself, unanswerable. I have said in itself, since, as things are at present in this and most other countries, even if the capacity for political and administrative judgment were conceded, there is another ground on which, so long as it obtains, it would be just to refuse women the franchise. And this ground is the fact that women at present constitute an almost boundlessly privileged section of the community. A woman may, in the present day, do practically what she likes without fear of anything happening to her beyond a nominal punishment. The English marriage laws, with their right of the wife to maintenance, give her almost unlimited power to oppress her husband. (See a case reported in detail, with names and witnesses, etc., in John Bull for September 19, 1908.) Not very long ago a case occurred in the north of England where a workman, out of employment, was about to be committed to prison at his wife’s behest for omitting to pay her the weekly allowance ordered by the court. Exasperated, the poor fellow struck his tyrant a fatal blow – hanged! About the same time a wife, during an admittedly trifling tiff with her husband, stabbed him fatally with a hatpin – released on her recognisances. These two cases are typical. It is this practical immunity of women from all consequences for their actions upon which the crew of Suffragists traded. Had they been liable to one quarter of the penalties men incur they would have “thought” a good many times before inciting to raid the House of Commons or to commit other breaches of the law. As it is, they knew the worst they had to fear was a short term of pampered imprisonment. Male Socialists have had to go to prison, not for trying to raid the House of Commons, but for merely breaking some local bye-law while maintaining the right of free speech. Do not let us forget that the women who are loudest in bawling for the Suffrage do so on the ground that they are not sufficiently privileged already, and that, as we have said, to obtain the supremacy over men, the savagely vindictive laws against men and complete immunity for women they consider their due, they require the leverage the vote will give them. Under the circumstances one would like to examine with a very strong electric light the intellects of those persons who profess to believe in equality between the sexes, and who yet, as things are to-day, can advocate Female Suffrage. Their idea of equality is, I suppose, “All

234 The Problem of Modern Feminism (1912) yours is mine and all mine’s my own.” No military service for women, and yet they shall dictate war or peace! No corporal punishment for them, and yet they shall decide on the maintenance of corporal punishment for men in prisons, etc.! No liability to maintain husband or children, and yet the right to decree laws relating to marriage; and many more such anomalies. For – let us make no mistake – no Feminist has the smallest intention of abandoning any one of the existing privileges of women. On the contrary, the intention of increasing the power and privileges of the sex is expressly declared without any subterfuge. And be it remembered the “adult suffrage” so much advocated by Socialists means an excess of a million female over male votes so far as Great Britain is concerned. Socialist bodies proclaim “social and economic equality between the sexes” as one of their aims. Now, as a “stepping stone” towards this end, I would suggest to the advocates of sex equality (from the standpoint of our present society), besides equal wages for equal work, which we are all able to agree to, (1) obligation of wife to maintain herself, also her husband if sick, and to contribute something to the maintenance of the children of the marriage; and further (2) equal punishment for equal crime as between men and women; and (3) abolition of all laws (e.g.the law as regards libel and slander) favouring women at the expense of men; and (4) the liability of women to all duties imposed on men. I can imagine the sort of wry face the Feminists would make at the bare suggestion of these equitable demands. Otherwise, I would suggest that wherever “social and economic equality” between the sexes is proposed a note should be added that (to borrow a phrase from the famous Rule in Shelley’s case) the words be taken as “words of limitation,” in short, that the term equality is to be understood in a non-natural sense as implying all the kicks for the brute man and all the halfpence for the angel woman. Otherwise unsophisticated comrades might be disposed to take it in a natural sense, which would involve a grievous misconception. Now, speaking as a plain man, surely it would be unjust, quite apart from any question of intrinsic suitability, for women to possess the Suffrage until something like the conditions I have before formulated obtain. If others think that giving an already privileged order of human beings the franchise spells equality, I do not. But supposing the present balance of inequality in favour of women were remedied, there would then remain solely the question of the average inferiority of women. Now here I must again point out that the exercise of the vote is mainly a means to an end – the progress and well-being of society. Hence, if women on the average show an inferiority all round to men, or even an inferiority in the power of practical and equitable judgment in public affairs, then there is no injustice in refusing them “in the bulk” the right of interfering in these matters, where they are ex hypothesi less competent than men. Here we have to deal with a question of fact and evidence. For those who, like myself, regard the evidence for the inferiority as conclusive, there is no possible alternative to opposition to a disintegrative force such as can

235 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader only be harmful to progress. To discuss the question as to the nature of the evidence would take us outside the immediate purpose of this chapter, but I deny that those to whom the evidence for incapacity appears conclusive can consistently be otherwise than opponents of Female Suffrage in all its forms. For to favour it in the teeth of such a conviction would mean sacrificing the interests of society to a barren abstraction, to wit, the abstract right to exercise a function whether fitted for it or not. And to this no one who really values progress ought surely to be prepared to consent. The Feminism of modern public opinion, which is reflected in recent statutes and judicial decisions and in the administration of law generally, has been very persistently and very subtly fostered for more than a generation past. The Feminist attitude of public opinion has been sedulously cultivated not only by journalism but by modern literature and art, especially such as is of a popular character. The aim has been to portray Man as an ignoble, mean creature, as a foil to the courage, resource, and gentle virtues of Woman. Who has not seen a well-known picture representing the Thames Embankment at night, and the “unfortunate,” possessed of an improbably angelic face, being taken from the river, with the gentleman and lady in evening dress, who have just got out of the cab, in the foreground, the gentleman with ostentatious callousness – brute that he is! – turning away and lighting a cigarette, and the lady – gentle creature! – bending over the dripping form and throwing up her arms in sympathetic horror? It is by claptrap of this sort, both literary and artistic, that sentimental Feminism is both evoked and nourished. Some time ago I received a provincial Socialist paper (I.L.P.) which contained a feuilleton consisting of the story of a woman who had killed her baby and died after a few weeks in prison – the moral being apparently the monstrous wickedness of imprisoning such women at all, rather than rewarding them with a comfortable pension for life. There are well-known writers I could name who seem to take peculiar pleasure in painting their own sex in an abject light by way of pandering to current Feminist prejudices. The result of all this nurture of the public mind in Feminist sentiment is everywhere noticeable. An influential section of public opinion has come to regard it as axiomatic that women are capable of everything of which men are capable, and therefore they ought to have full responsibility in all honourable and lucrative functions and callings. There is only one thing for which unlimited allowance ought to be made on the ground of their womanly inferiority, otherwise so strenuously denied, and that is their own criminal or tortuous acts! In a word, they are not to be held responsible, in the sense that men are, for their own actions when these entail unpleasant consequences for themselves. On the contrary, the obloquy and, where possible, the penalty for the wrong-doing is to be shifted on to the nearest wretched man with whom they have consorted. I cannot quote unlimited cases, but, by way of illustration, I will mention two that occur to me at the moment of writing.

236 The Problem of Modern Feminism (1912) A few years ago a woman deliberately shot at and wounded a solicitor (a married man) with whom she had had relations. The act was so premeditated that it came out in evidence she had been practising shooting with the revolver for days beforehand. There was, moreover, no question of a child in the case, and not even one of financial embarrassment, as she was in receipt of a quarterly allowance under a trust. Hence the case presented itself as a cold- blooded one of attempted murder without a single circumstance of extenuation. The woman was sentenced to the very lenient penalty of seven years’ penal servitude. (Had a man attempted to murder in this way a jilting mistress he would have received, without doubt, twenty years at least, if not a life sentence.) Now it seems incredible, but it is a fact, that a campaign was immediately started throughout the whole of the press, largely by “advanced” women and male Feminists, in favour of this dastardly female criminal, who only fell short of being a murderess by accident! The second case is that of Daisy Lord three or four years ago. To read the gush on that occasion one might have thought that the murder of new-born children represented the highest ideal of motherhood. This Daisy Lord became for the nonce a kind of pinchbeck Madonna in the eyes of the Feminist public. Such women as the above ought, of course, to have equal voting rights with men, but equal consequences for their actions – oh dear, no! If there is one demand which is popular with the Feminists, it is for raising the age of consent from sixteen to eighteen or twenty-one years, at which latter age, presumably, the right to the Franchise, if conceded, would come into operation. They are therefore evidently of opinion that the woman who has only just ceased to need the protection of the law in the control of her own body becomes immediately fully qualified to have a voice in the management of public affairs! The extent to which Feminist sentiment can fling justice to the winds in these days is shown by the savage demand, in cases of infant murder, for vicarious vengeance on one who, as regards the offence in question, is wholly innocent – to wit, on that vile and obnoxious creature, “the man.” The way in which the modern Feminist is dead to every sense of equity in the relations of the sexes as regards elementary fairness to the man’s side of the sexual equation, is illustrated by such documents as Lady Maclaren’s Woman’s Charter. One of the demands it contains is that “no married woman should be bound to accept a foreign domicile.” This is delightful! A poor man cannot get work in this country and has to take a position abroad. At her sweet whim his wife may live apart from him as a single woman and compel him to keep her all the same! Here we have a splendid example of “woman’s right” to treat man as a slave! Suggestions of this sort, be it remembered, come from those who indignantly repudiate any desire for female privilege. As regards this point of the protestations of zeal for equality between the sexes, when specially challenged, I would suggest to the Feminist advocate, male or female, that it would not be amiss if this zeal for sex equality ceased to assume the form of concocting bogus

237 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader grievances on the woman’s side, and occasionally, at least, took shape in protests against modern one-sided sex legislation, and the favouritism uniformly shown to women in the courts, civil and criminal. To this might be added a self-denying ordinance by which advanced ladies should agitate for the abolition of reserved seats for “ladies only” in the British Museum reading room, reserved compartments in railway carriages, etc. The New York elevated railway has, I read, begun to reserve whole carriages for women, from which men are rigidly excluded, no matter how full the train may be otherwise. For be it remembered that though all men are forbidden access to female reserves, women in these cases, as a rule, have the run of all available space, there being usually no male reserves. Were they to act thus, the advocates of Feminism would at least give an earnest of their sincerity in the matter of sex equality, which at present assumes such a questionable shape in their agitation and discourses.

238 The Problem of Sex and Sentiment (1912)

The Problem of Sex and Sentiment (1912) The Problem of Modern Feminism. Chapter IX of Problems of Mind and Morals. Grant Richards, London 1912. Reprinted by Grant Richards, London 1920. We are every day reminded of the vitality of survivals in habits of thought no less than in ways of life. With the insidiousness of black beetles in an old house they return again and again to the charge after you think you have finally extirpated them. What I have elsewhere termed the “ethics of introspection” as opposed to the ethics of social utility seems to have a most astonishing vitality. Now the “ethic of introspection” finds its sanction in some traditional sentiment, or mayhap in some catch phrase or abstract formula, which has probably had a meaning once, but which has degenerated into a “canting motto.” The ethic of social utility, on the other hand, finds its sanction solely in the definite and obvious demands of the welfare of the social body, and recognises the greatest possible free play of the individual in all matters not directly conflicting with social interests as a whole. The object of the introspective ethics is to erect asceticism into a standard of conduct. Though it will equally attack any of the wants of the flesh, its special and favourite hunting-ground has always been the sexual impulse. Here it takes the most specious forms calculated to deceive the very elect. We must not, however, be led astray by the sweet reasonableness it may assume. Let us remember that we have to do with a Melusina – that the fair-looking exterior is but a metamorphosed serpent – the old serpent, asceticism, the subtle enemy of human rights, father of hypocrisy, and of every violation of nature – the accursed thing which to recognise should be to strike down. Now the touchstone of the ethics of Socialism is that the “ought,” though necessarily concerned with motive, as opposed to mere outward act, is none the less only concerned with it in so far as its object is definitely social and not where its subject matter merely concerns individual taste. The latter belongs not to ethics, but to aesthetics, two standpoints many persons seem to confound. Believers in the old theological sanctions have no difficulty in finding justification for asceticism. Those, however, who, having abandoned the old ethics of supernaturalism, still possess a hankering after an ascetic ideal, are driven to forage about for a new justification which has a semblance of being based on rational considerations. I say a semblance, since at bottom these considerations are not one whit more rational than the old ones. Thus some years ago a pseudonymous writer put forward the thesis that the sexual act was “wrong,” “degrading,” “a prostitution of woman,” and I do not know what all else, when not followed – or at least not engaged in with the object of being followed – by offspring! Now if he had been in a position to inform us that God Almighty, Jesus Christ, the Holy Virgin,

239 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader the angel Gabriel, or other personages we in divers times and places have been taught to love and reverence, had miraculously revealed this ethical dogma to him, his position would at least have been intelligible. He made no pretensions of this sort, however, so what remained was this pseudonymous gentleman’s assurance – his ipse dixit – that it was so “even as he had said.” I have quoted the above instance not on account of its intrinsic importance, but as an extreme example of the Introspective Ethics as applied to sexual matters. There is a mass of writing and thinking to be found not so logical and hence so obvious in its absurdity as the case quoted, but all tending in the same direction. Another example of the attempt to smuggle in asceticism under cover of lofty ideals is furnished by a writer on the subject of sexual ethics in a Socialist periodical, also of some few years back. This writer, after giving a sufficiently good general sketch of the development of the sexual instinct, concludes with the thesis that in its highest development in man it is bound up with a “complexity of psychological states which is covered by the term love.” This is all right. But now comes the extraordinary non-sequitur of the article. Obviously, no one objects to the high idyllic sentiment which, from the context, is what the writer evidently understands by the “complexity of states” termed love. This may always remain the highest ideal of sex relationship. And I have yet to learn of any recent development of morality which, as the writer alleges, “bids us divest ourselves of this most important element of our spiritual nature.” If there be such, it must be so rare and sporadic a development of “degeneracy” as not to be worth serious consideration. But here, as just said, comes in the extraordinary logical gymnastic of our writer. From the above unimpeachable propositions, to which we can all subscribe, he draws the astounding conclusion that love (in his sense) “alone can supply the necessary ethical sanction,” etc., for sexual connection. Now, how by any ordinary rational method he has succeeded in reaching this result, I submit, is enough to puzzle the celebrated lawyer of Philadelphia. I for one, when I read this, was fain driven to the hypothesis that he had been interviewing the angel Gabriel or some other distinguished character from above, as to the sexually right and wrong. The sexual act viewed on mundane principles, like any other animal function, per se belongs to the domain of aesthetics, not of ethics at all. In order to be brought within the sphere of ethics it must be connected in some way with a distinct social relation outside the persons immediately concerned, otherwise it is, what Mill would have called, “a self- regarding action.” We all admit that the idyllic-love sexual relation is the most beautiful. But according to the writer’s own showing there are a number of persons who, from temperament or circumstances, are condemned to remain outside it. All these poor creatures whose “complexity of states of the psychological order ... covered by the term love,” do not reach the prescribed sixth-form standard with respect to each other, are to be sent away howling into the wilderness. This is clear since, in spite of his talk about “love in its

240 The Problem of Sex and Sentiment (1912) manifold manifestations,” our moralist rules out mutual consent, which to most of us would cover one of the most common “manifestations” of love. What he wants is, clearly, love a la Senta and the Flying Dutchman – the ich bin die dick durch ihre Heil erlöse sort of thing. Now I should much like to know the percentage of married couples in England who, supposing “the great white throne” were set, the books were opened, and the writer in question acting as heavenly attorney-general, would not quail before his searching eye as he rose to indict their morality on the principles of his “ethics of sexual relationship.” No one is more alive than myself to the fact that the idyllic love of the poets exists. But it is an exception, rather than the rule, and will, so far as we can see, remain so for a very long time to come. To require of a man, to whom circumstances have not granted this idyllic love, sexual abstention, is about as reasonable as to require him to stop breathing in the courts and alleys of Whitechapel, where he cannot obtain good air, or to tell him that since he cannot get the highest class of French cookery, his “clear line of conduct” ethically is to abstain from eating altogether. For even in the affairs of the stomach there is a higher and a lower, just as in those of other organs. And more betoken this higher and lower has its influence on character. Feeding on “cagmag,” London “fried fish,” or such-like abominations, under the filthy conditions that prevail, future ages will probably recognise to have defiled the men of to-day as much as what is deemed the most degraded form of sexual indulgence has ever done. The influence of food and drink (apart, of course, from the well-worn subject of excess in alcohol) has been far too much neglected as a factor in the making or marring of character. There is a sentiment in cookery as well as in love. If my analogy be objected to on the ground that while we cannot live without food we can without sexual satisfaction, I would point out that this is only relatively true, since, as the anchorites and the Hindoo Yogis have taught us, we can do with a very exiguous minimum of food, and, moreover, I have never heard of even partial starvation being advocated by the modern Puritan as sexual abstinence has been and is advocated by the same individual. Again, when it is said we can live without sexual satisfaction, that is also only true very relatively. There are exceptions, I am aware, but for the average man sexual satisfaction is just as essential to a healthy life, i.e. to the mens sana in corpore sano, as food is to bare existence. “Continence” is, for the average man, I do not hesitate to say unconditionally, to be deprecated as directly producing an uncleanly habit of body, usually accompanied by an uncleanly habit of mind, if nothing worse. That the latter is the case has been proved ad nauseam by the history of religious movements. “Continence” may be conducive to a “virtuously” ascetic life, but it certainly does not conduce to a socially ethical life (at least for the vast majority of men). Hence, I can only again repeat that if you choose to seek for an immediate ethical bearing in the sexual act, you must find it in the duty of a man to be natural (for the sake of his health and usefulness in society), and natural in the obvious sense and meaning of the word of living according to his nature.

241 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Our pure and lofty moralist wants to be an angel and with the angels sing. That is all right. But then he should not wish to force his neighbours to be angels also, and to make them sing, too, whether they want to or not. The illogical attempt to take back under the name of duty what he has conceded under the name of right will not help him, since no clear ethical thinker will admit that it can be a ‘‘duty” to forego any “right,” i.e. as a matter of principle. (There may be, of course, special occasions on which, for exceptional and clearly defined reasons, it may be a duty to forego for the moment the particular exercise of a right, but never to surrender the right itself as such.) No, no, my worthy friend, the attempt to force the angelic wings on unwilling recipients has been tried too long and too often throughout history, and has uniformly resulted in failure! Asceticism (i.e. a false introspective view of duty) has invariably proved the parent of hypocrisy and corruption. Socialistic morality must once for all break with it. Our watchword must be, “Let us be natural!” If we are destined to become angels, the wings will grow in their own good time. Surely ever so small a growth of true and genuine angel’s wing is of more worth than any amount of the great flapping stage-property wing with which Asceticism would adorn us. Applying what is here said to sexual ethics, what results do we obtain? Clearly these: (1) Every human being has a complete ethical right to the physical exercise of his or her sexual instincts apart from anything else whatever. This moral right is, per se, “full, round, and orbicular.” (2) It is also the duty of every human being to exercise this faculty in pro-portion to the needs of his or her physical constitution, in order to ensure a healthiness of mind and body. (3) The ideal of sexual exercise may be that it take place under the conditions of the love of the idyllic poet. But the most usual condition, and for most men and women a fairly satisfactory one, is what the writer terms “mutual consent” (be the marriage “free” or “legal”), which may also develop into the idyllic love in time, or, least-ways, into a very good imitation of it. The third condition mentioned by the writer – prostitution – must be regarded as a pis aller of capitalistic society, a deplorable necessity sometimes within the limits of that society, but in all cases the most undesirable form of sexual relation – though, perhaps, intrinsically not worse than the marriage for money. It is necessary to come back from heaven to earth in sexual matters, to recognise that the “physical basis” has its own concrete rights apart from aught else. By all means seek the highest form of sexual relationship, but let us recognise the ethical right of every man – that he is not immoral when, if he cannot have what he likes in this connection, he makes himself content with what he has. As to the “pure-minded man and woman” (a cold-blooded human entity unfortunately oftentimes apt to degenerate into the insufferable prig), he or she has a good deal to learn, and will have to be educated. First of all, he or she will have to be taught to clear his or her

242 The Problem of Sex and Sentiment (1912) mind of cant, sexual as well as other, and to recognise differences of constitution as severally having their own justification. He or she will further have to be taught that it is as wrong to hate those who differ from us sexually as those who differ from us in other matters. Let me adjure our aspiring moralist to take in hand the pure-minded man and woman of his acquaintanceship lest a worse thing happen! For if “the pure-minded man and woman” be allowed to rampage too much in their wild state, the average sexually-minded man and woman may eventually rise in riotous revolt, calling for three cheers for the “old Adam and the old Eve” – and let him think what a shocking thing that would be! In the foregoing paragraphs I have dealt with an extreme expression of a form of introspective ethics which still lurks consciously or unconsciously in a good many minds and still colours the views of many persons on the subject of the ethical sanction of sex. Other aspects of the problem are here left untouched. I have purposely, in the foregoing, left the question of offspring on one side, in itself, undoubtedly, an ethical problem of deep import, and this for the simple reason that I hold it to be, per se, distinct from the problem of sexual conduct considered as such. There exists a vast mass of sexual intercourse into which the question of off-spring does not enter at all. The two problems, (1) love and sexual intercourse, per se, and (2) the procreation of children, should be clearly distinguished and threshed out apart from one another. After having done this thoroughly, we shall be in a position to consider clearly their mutual bearings. This we certainly are not when we incontinently mix up these two perfectly distinct aspects of the great problem of sex with one another, thereby hopelessly confusing the issues involved. The first is, per se, an aesthetic and personal self-regarding question; the second is pre-eminently an ethical and social question. The recognition of this distinction is for me the primary condition for adequate discussion of the subject. The sexual relation, as such, is a thing of purely personal taste. This is, as yet, not fully recognised. Time was when the notion of toleration in religious belief was unknown, when not merely Catholics but every Protestant sectary thought of nothing else than to impose his own set of dogmas and his own theory of church organisation vi et armis on the rest of the world. Then came the epoch when the doctrine of toleration appeared, and finally gave rise to a mutual resolve that, while each sectary might maintain the belief in the superiority of his own position, it should be regarded as “bad form” to “damn” his neighbour for thinking otherwise – in a word, when the attempt to obtain religious uniformity was abandoned. The world has yet to learn toleration in sexual matters; it has yet to learn that various temperaments must have a latitude of outlook in these things, that, however estimable the current sexual theory of Christendom may be, mechanical monogamy must be definitely abandoned, and freedom of choice, within at least certain limits, granted as just and righteous. The endeavour to enforce sexual uniformity has hitherto been productive of nothing but human misery, and has proved the seed-ground of the worst form of hypocrisy, a hypocrisy which has helped to sap the moral fibre of one

243 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader generation after another. Whatever else may be natural, that is certainly unnatural, and not merely unnatural, but also in the highest degree immoral. These are thy fruits, oh, misnamed “purity”! When, I ask, will society learn the lesson of toleration in sexual matters as it has even now, as compared with past ages, learnt it as regards intellectual matters?

244 The Marriage Relation Under Socialism (1912)

The Marriage Relation Under Socialism (1912) E. Belfort Bax, The Marriage Relation Under Socialism, Justice, 20th January 1912, p.6. (letter) Comrade, – I am surprised that so cute and able a critic as our friend “Tattler” should have so completely missed the point of an animadversion on his remarks, as he appears to have done. In the first instance I did not, as “Tattler” seems to suggest, state it as my own opinion that under an economically free society life-long monogamy would necessarily by its own “inherent strength” maintain itself as the dominant form of the marriage relation. I merely suggested that this was an admissible opinion, and that it might possibly have been the opinion “Tattler” meant to express. In this it appears I was wrong. For my own part I am very far from regarding life-long monogamy as necessarily the best form of sexual union for everyone. It undoubtedly is for some. But it takes many types to make a world. An economically free society must allow for many variations of character and temperament in personal matters. Hence the necessity for the maintenance of the principle of personal liberty in such matters in full integrity. But the main point of my strictures upon “Tattler’s” position was that no Socialist society could consistently with its principles enforce any such life-long binding contract. Even at the present day, as doubtless “Tattler” knows, the law refuses to enforce certain contracts as being “contrary to public policy.” The typical instance of such a contract is that by which one man should bind himself over as a body-slave to another. This is a contract, for example, which the existing law would under no circumstances enforce. It is a contract which the modern law regards as, ab initio, invalid. Now, what I maintain is that the economically free society of Socialism must, in accordance with its principles, similarly regard as invalid in itself and hence refuse to enforce, any “sacrosanct” and binding contract by which a man and a woman undertook to pledge themselves to remain united for all future time no matter what might happen, and to form no other union. I would point out to “Tattler” that if such a contract could not be enforced it would only have a moral validity and that the rationally- educated public opinion of such a society would inevitably tend to discourage the insistence on a contract of this sort, and even to condone its breach when made, just as existing public opinion would not hold a man morally, any more than legally, bound to carry out a contract to sell himself into slavery which, in a weak moment, he might have entered. Under these circumstances it strikes me that “Tattler’s” friends, the “sacrosancters” would be likely to look rather foolish. They might continue to exist as an innocuous sect, like the “Peculiar People” or the “Seventh Day Baptists,” but their poisoned fangs would have been drawn.

245 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader I would point out further to “Tattler” that his attitude on this question is radically inconsistent with any acceptance of the Marxian Economic Theory of History. If this means anything at all, it means that a convention having originally an economic basis, as this one clearly has, must lose its vitality and die of inanition once this basis is removed. But it is not this particular instance of “Tattler” alone that I object to. I enter my protest most emphatically against all the attempts so frequently made nowadays to whittle down the extra-economic consequences of Socialism. “Tattler” must know that the professed zeal of the Anti-Socialist for “religion” and the “family” is simply blatant humbug which ought to be treated with the contempt it merits, and does not deserve being pandered to be obsequious protestations and apologies. I am convinced that taking the bull by the horns will not lose us a single convert to Socialism. yours, etc. E. Belfort Bax

246 Marriage Under Socialism (1912)

Marriage Under Socialism (1912) E. Belfort Bax, Marriage Under Socialism, Justice, 10th February 1912, p.6. (letter) Comrade, – Just one word more in explication of thy position on the above question. “Tattler” finds an “admission” by me of the “possibility” of “sacrosanct and binding” marriage-contracts under Socialism. I thought I made it perfectly clear that I did not admit the possibility in an economically free society of any binding contract whatever of this nature. A binding contract implies a power of enforcement upon an unwilling party. Now this, I pointed out, would be in contravention of the principle of personal liberty inevitably prevailing in such a society. Of course, there may be any amount of inconsistencies and anomalies during the transition period; but I was, of course, referring to conditions under a completely established Socialistic Commonwealth. “Tattler” expresses surprise at my pointing out to him that his theory was inconsistent with the Marxian economic doctrine of history, inasmuch as the sexual, as every other human relation, implies a good deal more than can be explained by its economic basis alone. I do not deny it; I only affirm that the element of coercion by law, or even by public opinion, in the marriage relation of to-day is solely deducible from the economic basis of private property-holding, and from nothing else. I know that, as “Tattler” says, many marriages in our existing society are not the result of economic pressure; but this does not say that the element of coercion in them has not its ground in economic reasons. This, I contend, it has in all cases, and the economic reasons, though they may manifest themselves differently, are quite as prominent in marriages among the well-to-do as among the working classes. Barring these economic reasons as justification for legal or moral coercion in the question of marriage, we are left with the bare and naked claim of one party to coerce the other against his or her will: and this is a claim which I say no decent man or woman ought to make and a contract based on which no rationally and ethically constituted Socialist society could consistently enforce. E. Belfort Bax

247 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

The Suffrage Outrages (1912) E. Belfort Bax, The Suffrage Outrages, Justice, 30th March 1912, p.5. (letter) Dear Comrade, – The attempt of Mr. Leonard Hall to justify the criminally mad antics of the suffragettes by identifying their cause with that of the proletariat struggling for emancipation, though a very old trick of controversy, ought to rouse the indignation of every logically-minded Socialist. The complete disparity between the case of a class fighting for its economic independence that of a sex clamouring for domination has been often pointed out. One would think, indeed, that the fallacy of the parallel attempted to be drawn ad nauseam between sex and class ought to be obvious to any person, of ordinary intelligence. As you justly imply in your note to the article in question, the mean advantage taken of their sex-privileges by, these women in committing outrages for which the heaviest penalties would be exacted from men ought only to inspire contempt in any sanely-thinking person. Mr. Hall characterises the authorities as “poltroons.” Well, to judge from the way they allow the administration of the law, the guardians of whose dignity they are supposed to be, to be made a farce of, out of pusillanimous deference to the feminist sentimentalism of modern public opinion, the epithet would seem to be justified. Those who have read the facts stated in the letter published recently in the Daily Telegraph. Headed: A Holiday in Holloway, describing the freedom and fun allowed the female window-smashers in gaol, will appreciate what I say. It requires apparently more pluck in our days to put into practice sex- equality and treat women as men would be treated than it does to face a battery, and this pluck the present Government certainly seems to lack. Women in the present day are not effectively called upon to obey the same laws as men, and are not subjected to any penalties worth the name for the breach of those laws. This is apparently all right and as it should be. What is wrong is, that while retaining all the special privileges of one sex they should not be handed over all the rights of the other! At least, so says the theory of “Equality between the Sexes” – new version! And in the enthusiastic adoption of this theory the Socialist and bourgeois feminist join hands. E. Belfort Bax

248 Cant, Cowardice and Cruelty. (1912)

Cant, Cowardice and Cruelty. (1912) New Age, 21 November 1912, p. 69; Sir, – The excellent remarks in THE NEW AGE’s “Notes of the Week” for November 7, in conjunction with a former series of Notes on the “White Slave” humbug, ought to be re- published as a pamphlet and scattered broadcast throughout the land as a wholesome corrective to the slavery of public opinion and Press to that organised hypocrisy called the “Nonconformist Conscience.” It has been made only too clear lately how the latter has become the safe refuge of the bestial lust and cruelty which lurks beneath the veneer of civilised man, e.g., bishops and M.P. ‘s. The whole agitation is unquestionably also a move in the anti-man crusade of modern Feminism. Men can be arrested on suspicion of being procurers or souteneurs, and are liable as such to torture and heavy terms of imprisonment, while procuresses (much more numerous than procureurs) are to be let off, on the ground of their belonging to the privileged sex, with practical immunity. In short we have before us nothing less than a savage sex-war being waged against man on behalf of a certain section of women. While reading the accounts in the papers of the sickening exhibition of the bête humaine on the part of Colonel Lockwood, Mr. Crooks, and other “honourable” Members, I could not help thinking how refreshing it would be if while they were engaged in the, to them (as they were not ashamed to boast), congenial task of torturing their helpless victim, some unregenerate who had gained access to the scene with a concealed revolver should cut short their operations by a well-directed shot in the region of the lungs and heart. Though I am proud to consider myself a sentimentalist, I wear my sentiment like Ophelia wore her “rue,” to wit, “with a difference.” To my thinking the man who can deliberately inflict a horrible torture upon a fellow-creature who is helpless for self-defence, be it man or woman, saint or souteneur, is a coward, a cur, and a cad. The best I can hope for the honourable gentlemen who distinguished themselves in the House on the occasion in question is that the temptation to pander to Feminism and prudish-prurient cant, led them to do injustice to their true selves. Of course, the very expression “White Slavery” is itself indicative of the lying humbug of which the whole movement for which it stands, consists. Where you have slavery there must be coercion into being or continuing a slave, and how can there be any coercion of the procurer’s “victim” when the whole force of law, police, and public opinion is against the procurer and in favour of the “victim’ and when that “victim” has only to raise the faintest cry or to lift a little finger to bring down upon her “enslaver” a “multitude that no man can number” of amateur detectives, male and female, hysterically eager to hand him over to the

249 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader tormentors appointed by law. In the case of the souteneur, morally indefensible though his conduct may be, his “grue” hands him over the earnings she has made in her trade just as willingly as the moneyed bourgeois hands over the profits he has made in his trade, whatever it may be, to the mistress of his choice. There are many foul things in this capitalist society of ours of which the institution of souteneur is only one and by no means the most radical or important, either by reason of its extent or even of its effects. The real nature of the objects of the promoters of this “White Slave” Bill is shown alike by their savage eagerness to torture men guilty of breach of its provisions, and the shuddering horror with which they greet any proposal to apply the lash to the backs of women when guilty of precisely the same offences. It may be also, as has been suggested, that a touch of Xénophobism enters in to add a spice to the vindictive brutality of our patriotic parliamentary heroes who pose as the champions of virtue. The majority of souteneurs, it is alleged, whether rightly or wrongly I do not know, are foreigners. E. BELFORT BAX.

250 The Fraud of Feminism (1913)

The Fraud of Feminism (1913) E. Belfort Bax, The Fraud of Feminism, Grant Richards Ltd., London 1913.

Contents Preface to 1921 Reissue Preface Introduction Chapter I. Historical Chapter II. The Main Dogma Of Modern Feminism Chapter III. The Anti-Man Crusade Chapter IV. Always The “Injured Innocent” Chapter V. The “Chivalry” Fake Chapter VI. Some Feminist Lies And Fallacies Chapter VII. The Psychology Of The Movement Chapter VIII. The Indictment The Fraud of Feminism

Note by Transcriber, Ted Crawford The Fraud of Feminism can be regarded as an unconsciously very funny book – or alternatively as a monstrous monument to male chauvinism. To be fair, many of the court reports of which Bax speaks were appalling examples of British injustice though the weird beliefs of the many medical men that he adduces merely says something of the scientific status of medicine at the time. And it must always be remembered how splendid was the line that Bax took on the imperialism, colonialism and racism in the 1890’ties, let alone religion where he speaks great sense to us still. However when looking at his diatribes against females some might like to know what EBB’s own personal life and attitude to women were. In so far as one of those outside the family can tell, the facts were these. His first marriage was to Emily Gordon Wright, daughter of James Wright, merchant, on 20 August1877 at Upper Brook Street Chapel, Charlton, Hulme, in presence of Alfred Ridley Bax and Ada Mary Wright. He is described as gentleman. In between November 1878 and

251 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader June 1886 she had seven children which may have been normal for the time but was by no means normal for an “advanced” socialist when English Trade Unionists could describe themselves on public platforms as “practical Malthusians”. At any rate she was treated as a baby making machine and appears to have had some form of nervous breakdown some time after the birth of her youngest child. She died a lonely individual 23 April 1893 at 12 Albert Place, Cheltenham without any members of her family present. Her death certificate says she was 40 which from the register of births, marriages and deaths seems correct though one of her sons, when cited by Cowley in EBB’s biography, says 34. That may be the age she had her breakdown when she left her children and was dead to them. He married again 15 November 1897 at the Registry Office in the City of London, where he is described as widower, barrister, aged 43, Maria Johanna Cecilia Henneberg, a German spinster aged 41, a daughter of a physician. He had no children by her and they died within a few hours of one another in 1925. His biography mentions his marriage to his first wife once and there are three other mentions of his second but only in passing and he never mentions the name of either. His four sons were all professionally educated though none of the three daughters seem to have been and his eldest daughter, Elsa, unmarried, died in London in 1905 like her mother without a member of her family in attendance. The remaining two have been referred to as “two sad old aunts”. Again this matter of female education, or lack of it, was not so unusual for the time but was unusual among those, like Bax, of “advanced” views and middle class incomes. At his death however his will divides his property equally among all his children in the old Quaker manner save for his books which were left to the boys. Girls after all had smaller brains. So he seems to have been consistent. Rebuttal from the Editor: the above note by transcriber Ted Crawford was retained despite its ad hominem character, out of respect to his intellectual honesty in laboring to transmit these historical documents into wide public availability. The biographical detail also remains interesting if far less indicting of any personal defect let alone defect of Bax’ arguments. Since Bax himself has considered it, quite in accordance with other authors of his time, of no relevance to disclose in detail his personal life, it cannot possibly be held against him that he has not mentioned his first and second wife in great detail. Since the circumstances over the death of his first wife are no further described, it does not seem justified to craft diffuse allegations against Bax. Nor can it be held against Bax that this same first wife had been pregnant many times. Such allegations, whatever they might imply, abuse or neglect, are entirely unjustified. But more to the point, they are evidence of the sentimental chivalry which consumes any rational consideration of the relationship between the sexes.

252 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) The idea that this collection of Bax’ works (much of which has also appeared in separate writings) is in some form a “monstrous monument to male chauvinism” let alone “a very funny book” speaks to the blind spot of Crawford and the entire progressive orthodoxy of the late 20th and early 21st century. The sad truth is that many of Bax’ reason, his meticulous evidence, remain valid today. The pro women bias in family court and criminal court continues today as in did in Bax times. Even Bax’ characterization of the feminist polemic, its use of half-truths, falehoods, sentimentality and emotional outrage, holds true unchanged even today. The most important of which is the post-modern feminist projection of female oppression into the past, i.e., the time in which E. Belfort Bax himself lived and about which he gives testimony. Thus, Bax provides the evidence of the fraud of feminism as it continues unchecked in the days of the early 21st century. However, since the allegation of “male chauvinism” has been made, it is fruitful to provide some appreciative critique of Bax view of women, particularly their capacity for the responsible discharge of their voting rights. Bax lived at a time when the dogma of female equality was about to be firmly established in the modern and post-modern cultural orthodoxy. However, this establishment in orthodoxy did not occur with any particular objective rationality. Instead, the sentimental arguments which Bax characterizes so vividly simply won the day and few thinkers had dared to oppose them in such systematic manner as Bax, until this day. In fact, today one can witness a breakdown of parts of the post- modern orthodoxy of , as brain scientists and childhood developmental scientists have now proven all the ideas of “gender” being but a social construct as false. Women’s inferiority in physical strength is mostly undisputed and new proof for it is delivered by the failing attempts to integrate women in frontline military combat while maintaining equal standards for physical performance. As for intelligence, while the IQ testing finds women on par with men on average, this is a mere tautology owing to the fact that the IQ is calibrated to find equality between the sexes, in other words, the IQ constructs the concept of “intelligence” in line with the orthodoxy and therefore is without power to support it. However, the observer with a remnant of common sense can easily observe the lack of women in objective, technical professional fields, despite over a generation of special support to girls to enter these fields. Even in the countries rated highest in “gender equality”, Norway and Sweden, women, when given the choice, do not in significant amounts enter these fields, which is proof against the orthodox notion of sex equality of mental functions. But as Bax himself insisted, even if we concede the argument to today’s feminist orthodoxy that women may not lack capacity for the same intellectual feats as men, we find that Bax’ strongest argument for the different performance between the sexes remains the innate female privilege granted to her by the chivalrous male sex. And perhaps more than Bax

253 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader could see it at the time, we must attribute this female privilege not only to legal and political injustices, but the injustices must be attributed to the female privilege. And also, the relative underperformance of women must be attributed to the same privilege, i.e., that of being offered the helping and caring hand of man.

Preface to the 1921 Reissue THE following essay was published at the end of 1913 and is now reissued as originally written. Since the year before the World War the situation of woman has, of course, changed. Feminism in this and in some other countries has won well-nigh all its formal demands. Mr Asquith, who before the war declared he would have nothing to do with a House of Commons elected by a female vote, during the war, for no assignable reason, suddenly made a volte-face and became a strong advocate of female franchise. The acquisition of the suffrage has as its result carried with it the right to all occupations and offices, as decreed by the “Sex-Disability Repeal Act,” and so the pitch-forking of women into administrative posts proceeds galore. But the main contentions of The Fraud of Feminism have not been affected by the change in question. Though women have been conceded all the rights of men, their privileges as females have remained untouched, while the sentimental “pull” they have over men, and the favouritism shown them in the courts, civil and criminal, often in flagrant violation of elementary justice, continues as before. The result of their position on juries, as evinced in certain trials, has rather confirmed the remarks made in Chapter II anent hysteria than otherwise. The sex-bias of men in favour of women and the love of the advanced woman towards her sex-self show no sign of abatement. Proposals to the effect that in the event of infanticide by a mother the putative father should be placed in the dock merely because he is a man are received with applause. The other day, at a court held in a fashionable town of the south coast, on a prostitute being brought up charged with soliciting, a female “justice,” recently appointed, declaimed against the wickedness of punishing prostitutes for soliciting while men were never brought up charged with the offence. (Needless to say, there was the usual male fool to be found in the body of the court, who shouted: “Hear! Hear!”) Now is it conceivable, I ask, that anybody can be so infatuated with Feminism as not to see that a prostitute who solicits nightly in the exercise of her trade – i.e. for the purpose of money-making – is in a different position from a man who, once in a way, may, urged by natural passion, make advances to a woman? Such a person must be unable to see distinctions in anything, one would think. Besides, it is not true that men, if charged with the annoyance or molestation of women, cannot be, and have not been, prosecuted for the offence. The lady “justice” in question would probably like to see a man paired with a prostitute in the dock every time the latter gave occasion for police action. Such is the Feminist notion of justice.

254 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) There are a vast number of men who cultivate the pretence of having a contempt for, or a prejudice against, their own sex. The idea seems to be to pander to the sex-vanity of the “New Woman.” Every popular writer caters for this prejudice. No one can have failed to notice the persistent journalistic and literary “stunt” by which the man is portrayed in the light of a miserable and abject living creature as a foil to the “noble animal” woman. There is scarcely a play, short story or novel the plot of which in any way admits of it where this now stale device is not dragged in some form or shape. Even Shaw, with all his somewhat ostentatious flouting of convention, cannot resist the temptation of yielding to it in one or two of his plays – e.g. Catherine the Great. This sort of thing is not without its influence on the course of justice, as the daily papers still continue to show us. Times have not changed in this respect. The war, which has altered the face of things otherwise and in the matter of the social and political aspect of sex-relations, has been the occasion of revolutionary transformation in the shape of political sex-equality, has left female privilege, civil and criminal, as it was in 1913. There is no indication that the general public has a dawning sense that, to adapt the common metaphor, “What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” Everywhere we hear the same old bogus grievances of the female sex trotted out as crying for remedy, but never the injustice of a man being compelled, whatever his economic position, to keep his wife, while a woman is under no corresponding obligation to keep her husband. No urgency is suggested for removing the anomaly that a husband is amenable for his wife’s libels and slanders; none that a boy of fourteen is punishable for a sexual offence to which he has been incited by a girl of sixteen, who gets off scot-free; none that the obligation of a husband, whose wife wishes to bring an action for divorce against him, to furnish her with the money to fight him, should be abolished. On the other hand, every law, every judicial decision, every case in the courts, civil and criminal, that on the most superficial view can be exploited by the conventional Feminist claptrap to prove the wickedness of “man-made law” to woman, is gripped by the beak of the Feminist harpy to help build up her nest of lying sex-prejudice, whence she and her confraternity may sally forth and by their raids on male sentiment not merely help to buttress up existing female privilege, but wherever possible to increase the already one- sided injustice of the law and its administration towards men in the interest of the other sex. August 1921

Preface The present volume aims at furnishing a succinct exposure of the pretensions of the Modern Feminist Movement. It aims at presenting the case against it with an especial view to tracking down and gibbetting the infamous falsehoods, the conventional statements, which are not merely perversions of the truth, but which are directly and categorically contrary to

255 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader the truth, but which pass muster by sheer force of uncontradicted repetition. 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. Of course the “fatuous indulgence” for “womanhood in general,” practised by the “world at large,” is precisely one of the most conspicuous features of our time, and the person who denies it, if he is not deliberately prevaricating, must be a veritable Rip van Winkle awakening out of a sleep lasting at least two generations. Similarly the story of the “miserable girls sent to the gallows,” etc., is, as far as living memory is concerned, a pure legend. It is well known that in the cases referred to of the murder of their new-born children by girls, at the very outside a year or two’s tight imprisonment is the only penalty actually inflicted. The acquittal of women on the most serious charges, especially where the victims are men, in the teeth of the strongest evidence, is, on the other hand, an every-day occurrence. Now it is statements like the above on which, as already said, the Feminist Movement thrives; its most powerful argumentative weapon with the man in the street is the legend that woman is oppressed by man. It is rarely that anyone takes the trouble to refute the legend in general, or any specific case adduced as an illustration of it. When, however, the bluff is exposed, when the real facts of the case are laid bare to public notice, and woman is shown, not only as not oppressed but as privileged, up to the top of her bent, then the apostles of feminism, male and female, being unable to make even a plausible case out in reply, with one consent resort to the boycott, and by ignoring what they cannot answer, seek to stop the spread of the unpleasant truth so dangerous to their cause. The pressure put upon publishers and editors by the influential Feminist sisterhood is well known. For the rest, it must not be supposed that this little book makes any claim to exhaust the subject or to be a scientific treatise. It is, and is meant to be, a popular refutation of the current arguments in favour of Feminism, and a brief statement of the case against Feminism. Sir Almroth Wright’s short treatise, The Unexpurgated Case against Woman’s Suffrage, which deals with the question from a somewhat different standpoint, may be consulted with advantage by the reader. An acknowledgment should be made to the editor of The New Age for the plucky stand made by that journal in the attempt to dam the onrush of sentimental slush set free by the self-constituted champions of womanhood. I have also to thank two eminent medical authorities for reading the proofs of my second chapter.

256 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) Introduction IN the following pages it is not intended to furnish a treatise on the evolution of woman generally or of her place in society, but simply to offer a criticism on the theory and practice of what is known as Modern Feminism. By Modern Feminism I understand a certain attitude of mind towards the female sex. This attitude of mind is often self-contradictory and illogical. While on the one hand it will claim, on the ground of the intellectual and moral equality of women with men, the concession of female suffrage, and commonly, in addition thereto, the admission of women to all professions, offices and functions of public life; on the other it will strenuously champion the preservation and intensification of the privileges and immunities before the law, criminal and civil, in favour of women, which have grown up in the course of the nineteenth century. The above attitude, with all its inconsistencies, has at its back a strong sex-conscious party, 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. Now this theory, if it ever represented the true state of the case, has long ceased to do so. The powerful female sex union spoken of, in the present day, exercises such a strong pressure in the formation of public opinion among women, that it is rapidly becoming next to impossible, even in the most flagrant cases, where man is the victim, to get any woman to acknowledge that another woman has committed a wrong. 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. It is again often supposed, and this is also a mistake, that in individual cases of dispute between the sexes, the verdict, let us say of a jury of men, in favour of the female prisoner or the female litigant is solely or even mainly determined by the fact of the latter’s good looks. This may indeed play a part; but it is easy to show from records of cases that it is a subordinate one – that, whatever her looks or her age may be, the verdict is given her not so much because she is a pretty woman as because she is a woman. Here again the question of attractiveness may have played a more potent part in determining male verdicts in the days before Feminist sentiment and Feminist views had reached their present dominance. But

257 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader now the question of sex alone, of being a woman, is sufficient to determine judgment in her favour. There is a trick with which votaries of Feminism seek to prejudice the public mind against its critics, and that is the “fake” that any man who ventures to criticise the pretensions of Feminism, is actuated by motives of personal rancour against the female sex, owing to real or imaginary wrongs suffered by him at the hands of some member or members of the sex. I suppose it may be possible that there are persons, not precisely microcephalous idiots, who could be made to believe such stuff as this in disparagement of him who ventures an independent judgment on these questions; otherwise the conduct of Feminists in adopting this line of argument would be incomprehensible. But we would fain believe that the number of these feebleminded persons, who believe there is any connection between a man having independent judgement enough to refuse to bend the knee to Modern Feminist dogma, and his having quarrelled with any or all of his female friends or relations, cannot be very numerous. 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 womankind. There is only one case known of indirectly by the present writer, and that not of a prominent writer or speaker on the subject, that would afford any plausible excuse whatever for alleging anti-Feminist views to have been influenced by personal motives of this kind. I am aware, of course, that Feminists, with their usual mendacity, have made lying statements to this effect respecting well-nigh every prominent writer on the anti- Feminist side, in the hope of influencing the aforesaid feeble-minded members of the public against their opponents. But a very little investigation suffices to show in every case the impudent baselessness of their allegations. The contemptible silliness of this method of controversy should render it unworthy of serious remark, and my only excuse for alluding to it is the significant sidelight it casts upon the intellectual calibre of those who resort to it, and of the confidence or want of confidence they have in the inherent justice of their cause and the logical strength of their case.

Chapter I – Historical THE position of women in social life was for a long time a matter of course. It did not arise as a question, because it was taken for granted. The dominance of men seemed to derive so obviously from natural causes, from the possession of faculties physical, moral and intellectual, in men, which were wanting in women, that no one thought of questioning the situation. At the same time, the inferiority of woman was never conceived as so great as to diminish seriously, much less to eliminate altogether, her responsibility for crimes she might commit. There were cases, of course, such as that of offences committed by women under

258 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) coverture, in which a diminution of responsibility was recognised and was given effect to in condonation of the offence and in mitigation of the punishment. But there was no sentiment in general in favour of a female more than of a male criminal. It entered into the head of no one to weep tears of pity over the murderess of a lover or husband rather than over the murderer of a sweetheart or wife. Similarly, minor offenders, a female blackmailer, a female thief, a female perpetrator of an assault, was not deemed less guilty or worthy of more lenient treatment than a male offender in like cases. The law, it was assumed, and the assumption was acted upon, was the same for both sexes. The sexes were equal before the law. The laws were harsher in some respects than now, although not perhaps in all. But there was no special line of demarcation as regards the punishment of offences as between men and women. The penalty ordained by the law for crime or misdemeanour was the same for both and in general applied equally to both. Likewise in civil suits, proceedings were not specially weighted against the man and in favour of the woman. There was, as a general rule, no very noticeable sex partiality in the administration of the law. This state of affairs continued in England till well into the nineteenth century. Thenceforward a change began to take place. Modern Feminism rose slowly above the horizon. Modern Feminism has two distinct sides to it: (1) an articulate political and economic side embracing demands for so-called rights; and (2) a sentimental side which insists in an accentuation of the privileges and immunities which have grown up, not articulately or as the result of definite demands, but as the consequence of sentimental pleading in particular cases. In this way, however, a public opinion became established, finding expression in a sex favouritism in the law and even still more in its administration, in favour of women as against men. 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. As a rule, however, the two sides go together, the vast bulk of the advocates of “Women’s Rights” being equally keen on the retention and extension of women’s privileges. Indeed, it would seem as though the main object of the bulk of the advocates of the “Woman’s Movement” was to convert the female sex into the position of a dominant sexe noblesse. The two sides of Feminism have advanced hand in hand for the last two generations, though it was the purely sentimental side that first appeared as a factor in public opinion. The attempt to paint women in a different light to the traditional one of physical, intellectual and moral inferiority to men, probably received its first literary expression in a treatise

259 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader published in 1532 by Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim entitled De Nobilitate et Praecellentia Feminei Sexus and dedicated to Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands, whose favour Agrippa was at that time desirous of courting. The ancient world has nothing to offer in the shape of literary forerunners of Modern Feminism, although that industrious collector of historical odds and ends, Valerius Maximus, relates the story of one Afrania who, with some of her friends, created disturbances in the Law Courts of ancient Rome in her attempt to make women’s voices heard before the tribunals. As regards more recent ages, after Agrippa, we have to wait till the early years of the eighteenth century for another instance of Feminism before its time, in an essay on the subject of woman by Daniel Defoe. But it was not till the closing years of the eighteenth century that any considerable expression of opinion in favour of changing the relative positions of the sexes, by upsetting the view of their respective values, founded on the general experience of mankind, made itself noticeable. The names of Mary Wollstonecraft in English literature and of Condorcet in French, will hardly fail to occur to the reader in this connection. During the French Revolution the crazy Olympe de Gouges achieved ephemeral notoriety by her claim for the intellectual equality of women with men. Up to this time (the close of the eighteenth century) no advance whatever had been made by legislation in recognising the modern theory of sex quality. 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. It effectuated in the Act passed in 1820 by the English Parliament abolishing the punishment of flogging for female criminals. This was the first beginning of the differentiation of the sexes in the matter of the criminal law. The parliamentary debate on the Bill in question shows clearly enough the power that Sentimental38 Feminism had acquired in public opinion

38 I should explain that I attach a distinct meaning to the word sentimental; as used by me it does not signify, as it does with most people, an excess of sentiment over and above what I feel myself, but a sentiment unequally distributed. As used in this sense, the repulsion to the flogging of women while no repulsion is felt to the flogging of men is sentimentalism pure and simple. On the other hand the objection to flogging altogether as punishment for men or women could not be described as sentimentalism, whatever else it might be. In the same way the anti-vivisectionist’s aversion to “physiological” experiments on animals, if confined to household pets and not extended to other animals, might be justly described as sentimentalism; but one who objected to such experiments on all animals, no matter whether one agreed with his point of view or not, could not be justly charged 260 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) in the course of a generation, for no proposal was made at the same time to abolish the punishment of flogging so far as men were concerned. Up to this time the criminal law of England, as of other countries, made no distinction whatever between the sexes in the matter of crime and punishment, or at least no distinction based on the principle or sentiment of sex privilege. (A slight exception might be made, perhaps, in the crime of “petty treason,” which distinguished the murder of a husband by his wife from other cases of homicide.) But from this time forward, legislation and administration have diverged farther and farther from the principle of sex equality in this connection in favour of female immunity, the result being that at the present day, assuming the punishment meted out to the woman for a given crime to represent a normal penalty, the man receives an additional increment over and above that accorded to the crime, for the offence of having been born a man and not a woman. The Original Divorce Law of 1857 in its provisions respecting costs and alimony, constitutes another landmark in the matter of female privilege before the law. Other measures of unilateral sex legislation followed in the years ensuing until the present state of things, by which the whole power of the State is practically at the disposal of woman to coerce and oppress men. But this side of the question we propose to deal with later on. The present actual movement of Feminism in political and social life may be deemed to have begun in the early sixties, in the agitation which preceded the motion of John Stuart Mill in 1867, on the question of conferring the parliamentary franchise upon women. This was coincident with an agitation for the opening of various careers to women, notably the medical faculty. We are speaking, of course, here of Great Britain, which was first in the field in Europe, alike in the theory and practice of Modern Feminism. But the publication by the great protagonist of the movement, John Stuart Mill, of his book, The Subjection of Women, in 1868, endowed the cause with a literary gospel which was soon translated into the chief languages of the Continent, and corresponding movements started in other countries. Strangely enough, it made considerable headway in Russia, the awakening of Russia to Western ideas having, recently begun to make itself felt at the time of which we are speaking. The movement henceforth took its place as a permanent factor in the political and social life of this and other countries. Bills for female suffrage were introduced every year into the British House of Commons with, on the whole, yearly diminishing majorities against these measures, till a few years back the scale turned on the other side, and the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill passed every year its second reading until 1912, when for the first time for many years it was rejected by a small majority. Meanwhile both sides of the Feminist movement, apart from the question of the franchise, had been gaining in influence. Municipal franchise “on the same terms as for men” had been conceded. Women with sentimentalism (or at least, not unless, while objecting to vivisection, he or she were prepared to condone other acts involving an equal amount of cruelty to animals). 261 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader have voted for and sat on School Boards, Boards of Guardians, and other public bodies. Their claim to exercise the medical profession has been not merely admitted in law but recognised in public opinion for long past. All the advantages of an academic career have been opened to them, with the solitary exception of the actual conferment of degrees at Oxford and Cambridge. Such has been the growth of the articulate and political side of the theory of Modern Feminism. The sentimental side of Feminism, with its practical result of the overweighting of justice in the interests of women in the courts, civil as well as criminal, and their practical immunity from the operation of the criminal law when in the dock, has advanced correspondingly; while at the same time the sword of that same criminal law is sharpened to a razor edge against the man even accused, let alone convicted, of any offence against the sacrosanct majesty of “Womanhood.” Such is the present position of the Woman question in this country, which we take as typical, in the sense that in Great Britain, to which we may also add the United States of America and the British Colonies, where – if possible, the movement is stronger than in the mother country itself – we see the logical outcome of Feminist theory and sentiment. It remains to consider the existing facts more in detail, and the psychological bearings of that large number of persons who have been in the recent past, and are being at the present time, influenced to accept the dogmas of Modern Feminism and the statements of alleged facts made by its votaries. Before doing so it behoves us to examine the credibility of the dogmas themselves, and the nature of the arguments used to support them and also the accuracy of the alleged facts employed by the Feminists to stimulate the indignation of the popular mind against the pretended wrongs of women.

Chapter II. The Main Dogma of Modern Feminism 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. We have further pointed out that there is another side in Modern Feminism which in a vague way claims for women immunity from criminal law and special privileges on the ground of sex in civil law. The basis of this side of Feminism is a sentimentalism – i.e. an unequally distributed sentiment in favour of women, traditional and acquired. It is seldom even attempted to base this sentimental claim for women on argument at all. The utmost attempts in this direction amount to vague references to physical weakness, and to the claim for special consideration deriving from the old theory of the mental and moral weakness of the female sex, so

262 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) strenuously combated as out of date, when the first side of Modern Feminism is being contended for. The more or less inchoate assumptions of the second or sentimental side of the modern “Woman’s Movement” amounts practically, as already stated, to a claim for women to be allowed to commit crimes without incurring the penalties imposed by the law for similar crimes when committed by men. It should be noted that in practice the most strenuous advocates of the positive and articulate side of Feminism are also the sincerest upholders of the unsubstantial and inarticulate assumptions of the sentimental side of the same creed. This is noticeable whenever a woman is found guilty of a particularly atrocious crime. It is somewhat rare for women to be convicted of such crimes at all, since the influence of sentimental Feminism with judges and juries is sufficient to procure an acquittal, no matter how conclusive the evidence to the contrary. Even if women are found guilty it is usual for a virtually nominal sentence to be passed. Should, however, a woman by any chance be convicted of a heinous crime, such as murder or maiming, under specially aggravated circumstances, and a sentence be passed such as would be unanimously sanctioned by public opinion in the case of a man, then we find the whole Feminist world up in arms. The outcry is led by self-styled upholders of equality between the sexes, the apostles of the positive side of Feminism, who bien entendu claim the eradication of sex boundaries in political and social life on the ground of women being of equal capacity with men, but who, when moral responsibility is in question, conveniently fall back on a sentiment, the only conceivable ground for which is to be found in the time-honoured theory of the mental and moral weakness of the female sex. As illustrations of the truth of the foregoing, the reader may be referred to the cases of Florence Doughty in 1906, who shot at and wounded a solicitor with whom she had relations, together with his son; to Daisy Lord in 1908, for the murder of her new-born child; to the case of the Italian murderess, Napolitano in Canada, convicted of the cold-blooded butchery of her husband in his sleep in 1911, for whose reprieve a successful agitation was got up by the suffrage societies! Let us first of all consider the dogma at the basis of the positive side of Modern Feminism, which claims rational grounds of fact and reason for itself, and professes to be able to make good its case by virtue of such grounds. This dogma consists in the assertion of equality in intellectual capacity, in spite of appearances to the contrary, of women with men. I think it will be admitted that the articulate objects of Modern Feminism, taking them one with another, rest on this dogma, and on this dogma alone. I know it has been argued as regards the question of suffrage, that the demand does not rest solely upon the admission of equality of capacity, since men of a notoriously inferior mental order are not excluded from voting upon that ground, but the fallacy of this last argument is obvious. In all these matters we have to deal with averages. Public opinion has hitherto recognised the average of women as being intellectually below the voting standard, and the average man as not. This, if admitted, is enough to establish the anti-suffrage thesis. The latter is not affected by the fact that it is

263 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader possible to find certain individual men of inferior intelligence and therefore less intrinsically qualified to form a political judgment than certain specially gifted women. The pretended absurdity of “George Eliot having no vote, and of her gardener having one” is really no absurdity at all. In the first place, given the economic advantages which conferred education upon the novelist, and not upon the gardener, there is not sufficient evidence available that his judgment in public affairs might not have been even superior to that of George Eliot herself. Moreover, the possession of exceptionally strong imaginative faculty, expressing itself as literary genius or talent in works of fiction, does not necessarily imply exceptional power of political judgment. But, be this as it may, where averages are in question, exceptions obviously do not count. The underlying assumption of the suffrage movement may therefore be taken to be the average equality of the sexes as regards intellectual value.39 An initial difficulty exists in proving theoretically the intellectual inferiority of women to men, or even their relative unsuitability for fulfilling functions involving a special order of judgment. There are such things as matters of fact which are open to common observation and which none think of denying or calling in question unless they have some special reason for doing so. Now it is always possible to deny a fact, however evident it may be to ordinary perception, and it is equally impossible to prove that the person calling in question the aforesaid evident fact is either lying (or shall we say “prevaricating”), or even that he is a person hopelessly abnormal is his organs of sense-perception. At the time of writing, the normal person who has no axe to grind in maintaining the contrary, declares the sun to be shining brightly, but should it answer the purpose of anyone to deny this obvious fact, and declare that the day is gloomy and overcast, there is no power of argument by which I can prove that I am right and he is wrong. I may point to the sun, but if he chooses to affirm that he doesn’t see it I can’t prove that he does. This is, of course, an extreme case, scarcely likely to occur in actual life. But it is in essence similar to those cases of persons (and they are not seldom met with) who, when they find facts hopelessly destructive of a certain theoretical position adopted by them, do not hesitate to cut the knot of controversy in their own favour by boldly denying the inconvenient facts. One often has experience of this trick of controversy in discussing the question of the notorious characteristics of the female sex. The Feminist driven into a corner endeavours to save his face by flatly denying matters open to common observation and admitted as obvious by all who are not Feminists. Such facts are the pathological mental condition peculiar to the

39 I believe there are some Feminist fanatics who pretend to maintain the superiority of the female mind, but I doubt whether this thesis is taken seriously even by those who put it forward. In any case there are limits to the patent absurdities which it is worth while to refute by argument. 264 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) female sex, commonly connoted by the term hysteria; the absence, or at best the extremely imperfect development of the logical faculty in most women; the inability of the average woman in her judgment of things to rise above personal considerations; and, what is largely a consequence of this, the lack of a sense of abstract justice and fair play among women in general. The aforesaid peculiarities of women, as women, are, I contend, matters of common observation and are only disputed by those persons – to wit Feminists – to whose theoretical views and practical demands their admission would be inconvenient if not fatal. Of course these characterisations refer to averages, and they do not exclude partial or even occasionally striking exceptions. It is possible, therefore, although perhaps not very probable, that individual experience may in the case of certain individuals play a part in falsifying their general outlook; it is possible – although, as I before said not perhaps very probable – that any given man’s experience of the other sex has been limited to a few quite exceptional women and that hence his particular experience contradicts that of the general run of mankind. In this case, of course, his refusal to admit what to others are self-evident facts would be perfectly bona fide. The above highly improbable contingency is the only refuge for those who would contend for sincerity in the Feminist’s denials. In this matter I only deal with the male Feminist. The female Feminist is usually too biassed a witness in this particular question. Now let us consider the whole of the differentiations of the mental character between man and woman in the light of a further generalisation which is sufficiently obvious in itself and which has been formulated with special clearness by the late Otto Weininger in his remarkable book, Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character). I refer to the observations contained in Section II., Chaps. 2 and 3. The point has been, of course, previously noted, and the present writer, among others, has on various occasions called special attention to it. But its formulation and elaboration by Weininger is the most complete I know. The truth in question consists in the fact, undeniable to all those not rendered impervious to facts by preconceived dogma, that, as I have elsewhere put it, while man has a sex, woman is a sex. Let us hear Weininger on this point. “Woman is only sexual, man is also sexual. Alike in time and space this difference may be traced in man, parts of his body susceptible to sexual excitement are small in number and strictly localised. In woman sexuality is diffused over the whole body, every contact on whatever part excites her sexually.” Weininger points out that while the sexual element in man, owing to the physiological character of the sexual organs, may be at times more violent than that in woman, yet that it is spasmodic and occurs in crises separated by intervals of quiescence. In woman, on the other hand, while less spasmodic, it is continuous. The sexual instinct with man being, as he styles it, “an appendix” and no more, he can raise himself mentally entirely outside of it.

265 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader “He is conscious of it as of something which he possesses but which is not inseparate from the rest of his nature. He can view it objectively. With woman this is not the case; the sex element is part of her whole nature. Hence, it is not as with man, clearly recognisable in local manifestations, but subtly affects the whole life of the organism. For this reason the man is conscious of the sexual element within him as such, whereas the woman is unconscious of it as such. It is not for nothing that in common parlance woman is spoken of as ‘the sex.’ In this sexual differentiation of the whole life-nature of woman from man, deducible as it is from physiological and anatomical distinctions, lies the ground of those differentiations of function which culminate in the fact that while mankind in its intellectual moral and technical development is represented in the main by Man, Woman has continued to find her chief function in the direct procreation of the race.” A variety of causes, notably modern economic development, in their effect on family life, also the illegitimate application of the modern democratic notion of the equality of classes and races, to that of sex, has contributed to the modern revolt against natural sex limitations. Assuming the substantial accuracy of the above statement of fact, the absurdity and cheapness of the clap-trap of the modern “social purity” monger, as to having one and the same sexual morality for both sexes will be readily seen. The recognition of the necessity of admitting greater latitude in this respect to men than to women is based clearly on physiology and common-sense. With men sexual instinct manifests itself locally, and at intervals its satisfaction is an urgent and pressing need. With woman this is not so. Hence the recognised distinction between the sexes in this respect is, as far as it goes, a thoroughly sound one. Not that I am championing the severity of the restrictions of the current sexual code as regards women. On the contrary, I think it ought to be and will be, in a reasonable society of the future, considerably relaxed. I am only pointing out that the urgency is not so great in the one case as in the other. And this fact it is which has led to the toleration of a stringency, originally arising mainly from economic causes (questions of inheritance and the like), in the case of women, which would not have been tolerated in that of men, even had similar reasons for its adoption in their case obtained. Any successful attempt of social purity mongers to run counter to physiology in enforcing either by legislation or public opinion the same stringency on men in this respect as on women could but have the most disastrous consequences to the health and well-being of the community. It was a saying of the late Dr Henry Maudsley: “Sex lies deeper than culture.” By this we may understand to be meant that sex differences are organic. All authorities on the physiological question are agreed that woman is less well-organised, less well-developed, than man. Dr de Varigny asserts that this fact is traceable throughout the whole female organism, throughout all its tissues, and all its functions. For instance, the stature of the human female is less than that of the man in all races. As regards weight there is a

266 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) corresponding difference. The adult woman weighs, on the average, rather more than 11 lbs. less than the man; moreover as a rule a woman completes her growth some years earlier than a man. The bones are lighter in the woman than in the man; not absolutely but in proportion to the weight of the body. They are, it is stated, not merely thinner but more fragile. The difference may be traced even to their chemical composition. The whole muscular development is inferior in woman to that in man by about one-third. The heart in woman is smaller and lighter than in man – being about 10½ oz. in man as against slightly over 8 oz. in woman. In the woman the respiratory organs show less chest and lung capacity. Again, the blood contains a considerably less proportion of red to white corpuscles. Finally, we come to the question of the size and constitution of the brain. (It should be observed that all these distinctions of sex show themselves more or less from birth onwards.) Specialists are agreed that at all ages the size of the brain of woman is less than that of man. The difference in relative size is greater in proportion according to the degree of civilisation. This is noteworthy, as it would seem as though the brain of man grew with the progress of civilisation, whereas that of woman remains nearly stationary. The average proportion as regards size of skull between the woman and man of to-day is as 85 to 100. The weight of brain in woman varies from 38½ oz. to 45½ oz.; in man, from 42 oz. to 49 oz. This represents the absolute difference in weight, but, according to Dr de Varigny, the relative weight – i.e. the weight in proportion to that of the whole body – is even more striking in its indication of inferiority. The weight of the brain in woman is but one-forty-fourth of the weight of the body, while in man it is one-fortieth. This difference accentuates itself with age. It is only 7 per cent in favour of man between twenty and thirty years; it is 11 per cent between thirty and forty years. As regards the substance of the brain itself and its convolutions, the enormous majority of physiologists are practically unanimous in declaring that the female brain is simpler and smoother, its convolutions fewer and more superficial than those of the male brain, that the frontal lobes, generally associated with the intellectual faculties, are less developed than the occipital lobes, which are universally connected with the lower psychological functions. The grey substance is poorer and less abundant in woman than in man, while the blood vessels of the occipital region are correspondingly fuller than those supplying the frontal lobes. In man the case is exactly the reverse. It cannot be denied by any sane person familiar with the barest elements of physiology that the whole female organism is subservient to the functions of child-bearing and lactation, which explains the inferior development of those organs and faculties which are not specially connected with this supreme end of Woman. 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

267 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader by wicked and evil-minded Man. The absurdity of this contention has been more than once pointed out. Assuming its foundation in fact, what does it imply! Clearly that the girls inherit only through their mothers and boys only through their fathers, an hypothesis plainly at variance with the known facts of heredity. Yet those who maintain that distinction of intelligence, etc., between the sexes are traceable to external conditions affecting one sex only and inherited through that sex alone, cannot evade the above assumption. Those, therefore, who regard it as an article of their faith that Woman would show herself not inferior in mental power to man, if only she had the chance of exercising that power, must find a surer foundation for their opinion than this theory of the centuries of oppression, under which, as they allege, the female sex has laboured. We now come to the important question of morbid and pathological mental conditions to which the female sex is liable and which are usually connected with those constitutional disturbances of the nervous system which pass under the name of hysteria . The word is, as everyone knows, derived from hystera – the womb, and was uniformly regarded by the ancients as directly due to disease of the uterus, this view maintaining itself in modern medicine up till well-nigh the middle of the nineteenth century. Thus Dr J. Mason Good (in his Study of Medicine, 1822, vol.iii., p.528, an important medical text-book during the earlier half of the nineteenth century) says: “With a morbid condition of this organ, hysteria is in many instances very closely connected, though it is going too far to say that it is always dependent upon such condition, for we meet with instances, occasionally, in which no possible connexion can be traced between the disease and the organ,” etc. This is perhaps the first appearance, certainly in English medicine, of doubts being thrown on the uterine origin of the various symptoms grouped under the general term, hysteria . Towards the latter part of the nineteenth century the prevalent view tended more and more to dissociate hysteria from uterine trouble. Lately, however, some eminent pathologists have shown a tendency to qualify the terms of the latter view. Thus Dr Thomas Stevenson in 1902 admits that “it frequently accompanies a morbid state of the uterus,” especially where inflammation and congestion are present, and it is not an uncommon thing for surgeons at the present time to remove the ovaries in obstinate cases of hysteria. On the other hand Dr Thomas Buzzard, in an article on the subject in Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine, 1902, states that hysteria is only exceptionally found in women suffering from diseases of the genital organs, and its relation to uterine and ovarian disturbances is probably neither more nor less than that which pertains to the other affections of the nervous system which may occur without any obvious material cause. Dr Thomas Luff (Text-Book on Forensic Medicine,” 1895) shows that the derangements of the reproductive functions are undoubtedly the cause of various attacks of insanity in the female. Dr Savage, in his book

268 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) On Neuroses, says that acute mania in women occurs most frequently at the period of adult and mature life, and may occasionally take place at either extreme age. Acute mania sometimes occurs at the suppression of the menses. The same is true of melancholia and other pathological mental symptoms. Dr Luff states that acute mania may replace hysteria; that this happens at periods such as puberty, change of life and menstruation. These patients in the intervals of their attacks are often morbidly irritable or excitable, but as time goes on their energies become diminished and their emotions blunted (Forensic Medicine, ii. 307). Such patients are often seized with a desire to commit violence; they are often very mischievous, tearing up clothes, breaking windows, etc. In this mental disorder the patient is driven by a morbid and uncontrollable impulse to such acts. It is not accompanied by delusions, and frequently no change will have been noticed in the individual prior to the commission of the act, and consequently, says Dr Luff, “there is much difference of opinion as to the responsibility of the individual” (ii. 297). Among the acts spoken of Dr Luff mentions a propensity to set fire to furniture, houses, etc. All this, though written in 1895, might serve as a commentary on the Suffragette agitation of recent years. The renowned French professor, Dr Paul Janet (Les Hysteriques, 1894) thus defined hysteria: “Hysteria is a mental affection belonging to the large group of diseases due to cerebral weakness and debility. Its physical symptoms are somewhat indefinite, consisting chiefly in a general diminution of nutrition. It is largely characterised by moral symptoms, chief of which is an impairment of the faculty of psychological synthesis, an abolition and a contraction of the field of consciousness. This manifests itself in a peculiar manner and by a certain number of elementary phenomena. Thus sensations and images are no longer perceived, and appear to be blotted out from the individual perception, a tendency which results in their persistent and complete separation from the personality in some cases and in the formation of many independent groups. This series of psychological facts alternate the one with the other or co-exist. Finally this synthetic defect favours the formation of certain independent ideas, which develop complete in themselves, and unattached from the control of the consciousness of the personality. These ideas show themselves in affections possessing very various and unique characteristics.” According to Mr A.S. Millar, F.R.C.S.E. (Encyclopædia Medica, vol.v.), “Hysteria is that ... condition in which there is imagination, imitation, or exaggeration .... It occurs mostly in females and persons of nervous temperament, and is due to some nervous derangement, which may or may be pathological.” Sir James Paget (Clinical Lectures on Mimicry) says also that hysterical patients are mostly females of nervous temperament.

269 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader “They think of themselves constantly, are fond of telling everyone of their troubles and thus court sympathy, for which they have a morbid craving. Will power is deficient in one direction, though some have it very strongly where their interests are concerned.” He thinks the term “hysteria” in the sense now employed incorrect, and would substitute “mimicry.” “The will should be controlled by the intellect,” observes Dr G.F. Still of King’s College Hospital, “rather than by the emotions and the lack of this control appears to be at the root of some, at least, of the manifestations of hysteria.” Dr Thomas Buzzard, above mentioned, thus summarises the mental symptoms: “The intelligence may be apparently of good quality, the patient evincing sometimes remarkable quickness of apprehension; but carefully tested it is found to be wanting in the essentials of the highest class of mental power. The memory may be good, but the judgment is weak and the ability to concentrate the attention for any length of time upon a subject is absent. So also regard for accuracy, and the energy necessary to ensure it in any work that is undertaken, is deficient. The emotions are excited with undue readiness and when aroused are incapable of control. Tears are occasioned not only by pathetic ideas but by ridiculous subjects and peals of laughter may incongruously greet some tragic announcement, or the converse may take place. The ordinary signs of emotion may be absent and replaced by an attack of syncope, convulsion, pain or paralysis. Perhaps more constant than any other phenomenon in hysteria is a pronounced desire for the sympathy and interest of others. This is evidently only one of the most characteristic qualities of femininity, uncontrolled by the action of the higher nervous centres which in a healthy state keep it in subjection. There is very frequently not only a deficient regard for truthfulness, but a proneness to active deception and dishonesty. So common is this, that the various phases of hysteria are often assumed to be simple examples of voluntary simulation and the title of disease refused to the condition. But it seems more reasonable to refer the symptoms to impairment of the highly complex nervous processes which form the physiological side of the moral faculties (Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine, 1902).” “It is not uncommon to find hysteria in females accompanied by an utter indifference and insensibility to sexual relations. Premature cessation of ovulation is a frequent determining cause. In cases where the ovaries are absent, the change from girl to woman, which normally takes place at puberty, does not occur. The girl grows but does not develop, a masculine appearance supervenes, the voice becomes manly and harsh, sexual passion is absent, the health remains good. The most violent instances of hysteria are in young women of the most robust and masculine constitution” (John Mason Good, M.D., Study of Medicine, 1822).

270 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) Other determining causes are given, as painful impressions, long fasting, strong emotions, imitation, luxury, ill-directed education and unhappy surroundings, celibacy, where not of choice but enforced by circumstances, unfortunate marriages, long-continued trouble, fright, worry, overwork, disappointment and such like nervous perturbations, all which causes predispose to hysteria. “It attacks childless women more frequently than mothers and particularly young widows,” and, says Dr J. Mason Good, “more especially still those who are constitutionally inclined to that morbid salacity which has often been called nymphomania ... the surest remedy is a happy marriage” (Study of Medicine, 1822, iii. 531). Hysteria is, in common with other nervous disorders, essentially a hereditary malady, and. Briquet (Traité de l’hysterie, 1899) gives statistics to show that in nine cases out of ten hysterical parents have hysterical children. Dr Paul Sainton of the Faculty of Medicine, Paris, says: “The appearance of a symptom of hysteria generally proves that the malady has already existed for some time though latent. The name of a provocative agent of hysteria is given to any circumstance which suddenly reveals the malady but the real cause of the disorder is a hereditary disposition. If the real cause is unique, the provocative agents are numberless. The moral emotions, grief, fright, anger and other psychic disturbances are the most frequent causes of hysterical affections and in every walk of life subjects are equally liable to attacks.” Hysteria may appear at any age. It is common with children, especially during the five or six years preceding puberty. Of thirty-three cases under twelve years which came under Dr Still’s notice, twenty-three were in children over eight years. Hysteria in women is most frequent between the ages of fifteen and thirty, and most frequently of all between fifteen and twenty. As a rule there is a tendency to cessation after the “change.” It frequently happens, however, that the disease is continued into an advanced period of life. “There is a constant change,” says Professor Albert Moll (Das nervöse Weib, p.165), “from a cheerful to a depressed mood. From being free and merry the woman in a short time becomes sulky and sad. While a moment before she was capable of entertaining a whole company without pause, talking to each member about that which interested him, shortly afterwards she does not speak a word more. I may mention the well- worn example of the refusal of a new hat as being capable of converting the most lively mood into its opposite. The weakness of will shows itself here in that the nervous woman [by “nervous” Dr Moll means what is commonly termed “hysterical”] cannot, like the normal one, command the expression of her emotions. She can laugh uninterruptedly over the most indifferent matter until she falls into veritable laughing fits. The crying fits which we sometimes observe belong to the same category. When the nervous woman is excited about anything she exhibits outbreaks of fury wanting all the characteristics of womanhood, and she is not able

271 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader to prevent these emotional outbursts. In the same way just as the emotions weaken the will and the woman cannot suppress this or that action, it is noticeable in many nervous women that quite independently of these emotions there is a tendency to continuous alterations in their way of acting. It has been noticed as characteristic of many nervous persons that their only consistency lies in their inconsistency. But this must in no way be applied to all nervous persons. On this disposition, discoverable in the nature of so many nervous women, rests the craving for change as manifested in the continual search for new pleasures, theatres, concerts, parties, tours, and other things (p.147). Things that to the normal woman are indifferent or to which she has, in a sense, accustomed herself, are to the nervous woman a source of constant worry. Although she may perfectly well know that the circumstances of herself and her husband are the most brilliant and that it is unnecessary for her to trouble herself in the least about her material position as regards the future, nevertheless the idea of financial ruin constantly troubles her. Thus if she is a millionaire’s wife she never escapes from constant worry. Similarly the nervous woman creates troubles out of things that are unavoidable. If in the course of years she gets more wrinkles, and her attraction for man diminishes, this may easily become a source of lasting sorrow for the nervous woman.” We now have to consider a point which is being continually urged by Feminists in the present day when confronted with the pathological mental symptoms so commonly observed in women which are usually regarded as having their origin in hysteria. We often hear it said by Feminists in answer to arguments based on the above fact: “Oh, but men can also suffer from hysteria!” “In England,” says Dr Buzzard, “hysteria is 42 comparatively rarely met with in males, the female sex being much more prone to the affection.” The proportion of males to females in hysteria is, according to Dr Pitré (Clinical Essay on Hysteria, 1891), 1 to 3; according to Bodensheim, 1 to 10; and according to Briquet, 1 to 20. The author of the article on Hysteria in The Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911) also gives 1 to 20 as the numerical proportion between male and female cases. Dr Pitré, in the work above cited, gives 82 per cent of cases of convulsions in women as against 22 in men. But in all this, under the concept hysteria are included, and indeed chiefly referred to, various physical symptoms of a convulsive and epileptic character which are quite distinct from the mental conditions rightly or wrongly connected, or even identified, with hysteria in the popular mind, and by many medical authorities. But even as regards hysteria in the former sense of the word, a sharp line of distinction based on a diagnosis of cases was long ago drawn by medical men between hysteria masculina and hysteria fœminina, and in the present day eminent authorities – e.g. Dr Bernard Holländer – would deny that the symptoms occasionally diagnosed as hysteria in men are identical with or due to the same causes as the somewhat similar conditions known in women under the name.

272 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) After all, this whole question in its broader bearings is more a question of common-sense observation than one for medical experts. What we are here chiefly concerned with as “hysteria” (in accordance with popular usage of the term) are certain pathological mental symptoms in women open to everybody’s observation, and denied by no one unprejudiced by Feminist views. Every impartial person has only to cast his eye round his female acquaintance, and to recall the various women, of all classes, conditions and nationalities, that he may have come in contact with in the course of his life, to recognise those symptoms of mental instability commonly called hysterical, as obtaining in at least a proportion of one to every four or five women he has known, in a marked and unmistakable degree. The proportion given is, in fact, stated in an official report to the Prussian Government issued some ten years back as that noticeable among female clerks, post office servants and other women employed in the Prussian Civil Service. Certainly as regards women in general, the observation of the present writer, and others whom he has questioned on the subject, would seem to indicate that the proportions given in the Prussian Civil Service report as regards the number of women afflicted in this way are rather under than over stated.40 There are many medical men who aver that no woman is entirely free from such symptoms at least immediately before and during the menstrual period. The head surgeon at a well-known London hospital informed a friend of mine that he could always tell when this period was on or approaching with his nurses, by the mental change which came over them. Now these pathological symptoms noticeable in a slight and more or less unimportant degree in the vast majority, if not indeed in all women, and in a marked pathological degree in a large proportion of women, it is scarcely too much to say do not occur at all in men. I have indeed known, I think, two men, and only two, in the course of my life, exhibiting mental symptoms analogous to those commonly called “hysterical” in women. On the other hand my own experience, and it is not alone, is that very few women with whom I have come into more or less frequent contact, socially or otherwise, have not at times shown the symptoms referred to in a marked degree. If, therefore, we are to admit the bare possibility of men being afflicted in a similar way it must be conceded that such cases represent such raræ aves as to be negligible for practical purposes. A curious thing in pronounced examples of this mental instability in women is that the symptoms are often so very similar in women of quite different birth, surroundings and

40 The insanities mentioned above are the extremes. There are mental disturbances of less severity constantly occurring which are connected with the regular menstrual period as well as with disordered menstruation, with pregnancy, with parturition, with Lactation, and especially with the change of life. 273 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader nationality. I can recall at the present moment three cases, each different as regards birth, class, and in one case nationality, and yet who are liable to develop the same symptoms under the influence of quite similar idées fixes. But it seems hardly necessary to labour the point in question at greater length. 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. This view, based as it is on the unanimous experience of mankind and confirmed by the observation of all independent persons, has, I repeat, not been challenged before the appearance of the present Feminist Movement and hardly by anyone outside the ranks of that movement. It is not proposed here to dilate at length on the fact, often before insisted upon, of the absence throughout history of the signs of genius, and, with a few exceptions, of conspicuous talent, in the human female, in art, science, literature, invention or “affairs.” The fact is incontestable, and if it be argued that this absence in women, of genius or even of a high degree of talent, is no proof of the inferiority of the average woman to the average man the answer is obvious. Apart from conclusive proof, the fact of the existence in all periods of civilisation, and even under the higher barbarism, of exceptionally gifted men, and never of a correspondingly gifted woman, does undoubtedly afford an indication of inferiority of the average woman as regards the average man. From the height of the mountain peaks we may, other things equal, undoubtedly conclude the existence of a tableland beneath them in the same tract of country whence they arise. I have already, in the present chapter, besides elsewhere, referred to the fallacy that intellectual or other fundamental inferiority in woman existing at the present day is traceable to any alleged repression in the past, since (Weissmann and his denial of transmission of acquired characteristics apart), assuming for the sake of the argument such repression to have really attained the extent alleged, and its effects to have been transmitted to future generations, it is against all the laws of heredity that such transmission should have taken place through the female line alone, as is contended by the advocates of this theory. Referring to this point, has expressed the conviction of most scientific thinkers on the subject when he declares a difference between the mental powers of men and women to result from “a physiological necessity, and no amount of culture can obliterate it.” He further observes (the passages occur in a letter of his to John Stuart Mill) that “the relative deficiency of the female mind is in just those most complex faculties, intellectual and moral, which have political action for their sphere.”

274 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) One of the points as regards the inferiority of women which Feminists are willing and even eager to concede, and it is the only point of which this can be said, is that of physical weakness. The reason why they should be particularly anxious to emphasise this deficiency in the sex is not difficult to discern. It is the only possible semblance of an argument which can be plausibly brought forward to justify female privileges in certain directions. It does not really do so, but it is the sole pretext which they can adduce with any show of reason at all. Now it may be observed (1) that the general frailty of woman would militate coetaris paribus, against their own dogma of the intellectual equality between the sexes; (2) that this physical weakness is more particularly a muscular weakness, since constitutionally the organism of the human female has enormous power of resistance and resilience, in general, far greater than that of man (see below, pp.125-128). It is a matter of common observation that the average woman can pass through strains and recover in a way few men can do. But as we shall have occasion to revert to these two points at greater length later on, we refrain from saying more here. How then, after consideration, shall we judge of the Feminist thesis, affirmed and reaffirmed, insisted upon by so many as an incontrovertible axiom, that woman is the equal, intellectually and morally, if not physically, of man? Surely that it has all the characteristics of a true dogma. Its votaries might well say with Tertullian, credo quia absurdum. It contradicts the whole experience of mankind in the past. It is refuted by all impartial observation in the present. The facts which undermine it are seriously denied by none save those committed to the dogma in question. Like all dogmas, it is supported by “bluff.” In this case the ‘“bluff” is to the effect that it is the “part, mark, business, lot” (as the Latin grammars of our youth would have had it) of the “advanced” man who considers himself up to date, and not “Early Victorian,” to regard it as unchallengeable. Theological dogmas are backed up by the bluff of authority, either of scriptures or of churches. This dogma of the Feminist cult is not vouchsafed by the authority of a Communion of saints but by that of the Communion of advanced persons up to date. Unfortunately dogma does not sit so well upon the community of advanced persons up to date – who otherwise profess to, and generally do, bring the tenets they hold to the bar of reason and critical test – as it does on a church or community of saints who suppose themselves to be individually or collectively in communication with wisdom from on high. Be this as it may, the “advanced man” who would claim to be “up to date” has to swallow this dogma and digest it as best he can. He may secretly, it is true, spew it out of his mouth, but in public, at least, he must make a pretence of accepting it without flinching.

275 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Chapter III. The Anti-Man Crusade WE have already pointed out that Modern Feminism has two sides or aspects. The first formulates definite political, juridical and economic demands on the grounds of justice, equity, equality and so forth, as general principles; the second does not formulate in so many words definite demands as general principles, but seems to exploit the traditional notions of chivalry based on male sex sentiment, in favour of according women special privileges on the ground of their sex, in the law, and still more in the administration of the law. 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 sex sentiment of Man towards Woman. It may be here premised that most Political Feminists, however much they may refuse to admit it, are at heart also Sentimental Feminists. Sentimental Feminists, on the other hand, are not invariably Political Feminists, although the majority of them undoubtedly are so to a greater or lesser extent. 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. Now both the orders of Feminism referred to have been active for more than a generation past in fomenting a crusade against the male sex – an Anti-Man Crusade. Their efforts have been largely successful owing to a fact to which attention has, perhaps, not enough been called. In the case of other classes, or bodies of persons, having com munity of interests this common interest invariably interprets itself in a sense of class, caste, or race solidarity. The class or caste has a certain esprit de corps in its own interest. The whole of history largely turns on the conflict of economic classes based on a common feeling obtaining between members of the respective classes; on a small scale, we see the same thing in the solidarity of a particular trade or profession. But it is unnecessary to do more than call attention here to this fundamental sociological law upon which alike the class struggles of history, and of modern times, the patriotism of states from the city-state of the ancient world to the national state of the modern world, is based. Now note the peculiar manner in which this law manifests itself in the sex question of the present day. While Modern Feminism has succeeded in establishing a powerful sex-solidarity amongst a large section of women as against men, there is not only no sex-solidarity of men as against women, but, on the contrary, the prevalence of an altogether opposed sentiment. Men hate their brother-men in their capacity of male persons. In any conflict of interests between a man and a woman, male public opinion, often in defiance of the most obvious considerations of equity, sides

276 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) with the woman, and glories in doing so. Here we seem to have a very flagrant contradiction with, as has already been said, one of the most fundamental sociological laws. The explanations of the phenomena in question are, of course, ready to hand:– Tradition of chivalry, feelings, perhaps inherited, dating possibly back to the pre-human stage of man’s evolution, derived from the competition of the male with his fellow-male for the possession of the coveted female, etc. These explanations may have a measure of validity, but I must confess they are to me scarcely adequate to account for the intense hatred which the large section of men seem to entertain towards their fellow-males in the world of to-day, and their eagerness to champion the female in the sex war which the Woman’s “sex union,” as it has been termed, has declared of recent years. Whatever may be the explanation, and I confess I cannot find one completely satisfactory, the fact remains. A Woman’s Movement unassisted by man, still more if opposed energetically by the public opinion of a solid phalanx of the manhood of any country, could not possibly make any headway. As it is, we see the legislature, judges, juries, parsons, specially those of the non-conformist persuasion, all vie with one another in denouncing the villainy and baseness of the male person, and ever devising ways and means to make his life hard for him. To these are joined a host of literary men and journalists of varying degrees of reputation who contribute their quota to the stream of anti-manism in the shape of novels, storiettes, essays, and articles, the design of which is to paint man as a base, contemptible creature, as at once a knave and an imbecile, a bird of prey and a sheep in wolfs clothing, and all as a foil to the glorious majesty of Womanhood. There are not wanting artists who are pressed into this service. The picture of the Thames Embankment at night, of the drowned unfortunate with the angel’s face, the lady and gentleman in evening dress who have just got out of their cab – the lady with uplifted hands bending over the dripping form, and the callous and brutal gentleman turning aside to light a cigarette – this is a typical specimen of Feminist didactic art. By these means, which have been carried on with increasing ardour for a couple of generations past, what we may term the anti-man cultus has been made to flourish and to bear fruit till we find nowadays all recent legislation affecting the relations between the sexes carrying its impress, and the whole of the judiciary and magistracy acting as its priests and ministrants. On the subject of Anti-man legislation, I have already written at length elsewhere41, but for the sake of completeness I state the case briefly here. The marriage laws of England to-day are a monument of Feminist sex partiality. If I may be excused the paradox, the partiality of the marriage laws begins with the law relating to

41 Cf. Fortnightly Review, November 1911, A Creature of Privilege, also a pamphlet (collaboration) entitled The Legal Subjection of Men, Twentieth Century Press, reprinted by New Age Press, 1908. 277 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader breach of promise, which, as is well known, enables a woman to punish a man vindictively for refusing to marry her after having once engaged himself to her. I ought to add, and this, oftentimes, however good his grounds may be for doing so. Should the woman commit perjury, in these cases, she is never prosecuted for the offence. Although the law of breach of promise exists also for the man, it is well known to be totally ineffective and practically a dead letter. It should be remarked that, however gross the misrepresentations or undue influences on the part of the woman may have been to induce the man to marry her, they do not cause her to lose her right to compensation. As, for instance, where an experienced woman of the world of thirty or forty entraps a boy scarcely out of his teens. Again, according to the law of England, the right to maintenance accrues solely to the woman. Formerly this privilege was made dependent on her cohabitation with the man and generally decent behaviour to him. Now even these limitations cease to be operative, while the man is liable to imprisonment and confiscation of any property he may have. A wife is now at full liberty to leave her husband, while she retains her right to get her husband sent to gaol if he refuses to maintain her – to put the matter shortly, the law imposes upon the wife no legally enforceable duties whatever towards her husband. The one thing which it will enforce with iron vigour is the wife’s right of maintenance against her husband. In the case of a man of the well-to-do classes, the man’s property is confiscated by the law in favour of his wife. In the case of a working man the law compels her husband to do corvée for her, as the feudal serf had to do for his lord. The wife, on the other hand, however wealthy, is not compelled to give a farthing towards the support of her husband, even though disabled by sickness or by accident; the single exception in the latter case being should he become chargeable to the parish, in which case the wife would have to pay the authorities a pauper’s rate for his maintenance. In a word, a wife has complete possession and control over any property she may possess, as well as over her earnings; the husband, on the other hand, is liable to confiscation of capitalised property or earnings at the behest of the law courts in favour of his wife. A wife may even make her husband bankrupt on the ground of money she alleges that she lent him; a husband, on the other hand, has no claim against his wife for any money advanced, since a husband is supposed to give, and not to lend , his wife money, or other valuables. The law affords the wife a right to commit torts against third parties – e.g. libels and slanders – the husband alone being responsible, and this rule applies even although the wife is living apart from her husband, who is wholly without knowledge of her misdeeds. With the exception of murder, a wife is held by the law to be guiltless of practically any crime committed in the presence of her husband. No man can obtain a legal separation or divorce from his wife (save under the Licensing Act of 1902, a Police Court separation for habitual drunkenness alone) without a costly process

278 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) in the High Court. Every wife can obtain, if not a divorce, at least a legal separation, by going whining to the nearest police court, for a few shillings, which her husband, of course, has to pay. The latter, it is needless to say, is mulcted in alimony at the “discretion of the Court.” This “discretion” is very often of a queer character for the luckless husband. Thus, a working man earning only twenty shillings a week may easily find himself in the position of having to pay from seven to ten shillings a week to a shrew out of his wages In cases where a wife proceeds to file a petition for divorce, the way is once more smoothed for her by the law, at the husband’s expense. He has to advance her money to enable her to fight him. Should the case come on for hearing the husband finds the scale still more weighted against him; every slander of his wife is assumed to be true until he has proved its falsity, the slightest act or a word during a moment of irritation, even a long time back, being twisted into what is termed “legal cruelty,” even though such has been provoked by a long course of ill treatment and neglect on the part of the wife. The husband and his witnesses can be indicted for perjury for the slightest exaggeration or inaccuracy in their statements, while the most calculated falsity in the evidence of the wife and her witnesses is passed over. Not the grossest allegation on the part of the wife against the husband, even though proved in court to be false, is sufficient ground for the husband to refuse to take her back again, or from preventing the court from confiscating his property if he resists doing so. Knowledge of the unfairness of the court to the husband, as all lawyers are aware, prevents a large number of men from defending divorce actions brought by their wives. A point should here be mentioned as regards the action of a husband for damages against the seducer of his wife. Such damages obviously belong to the husband as compensation for his destroyed home life. Now these damages our modern judges in their feminist zeal have converted into a fund for endowing the adulteress, depriving the husband of any compensation whatever for the wrong done him. He may not touch the income derived from the money awarded him by the jury, which is handed over by the court to his divorced wife. It would take us too long to go through all the privileges, direct and indirect, conferred by statute or created by the rulings of judges and the practice of the courts, in favour of the wife against the husband. It is the more unnecessary to go into them here as they may be found in detail with illustrative cases in the aforesaid pamphlet in which I collaborated, entitled The Legal Subjection of Men (mentioned in the footnote to p.55). At this point it may be well to say a word on the one rule of the divorce law which Feminists are perennially trotting out as a proof of the shocking injustice of the marriage law to women: that to obtain her divorce the woman has to prove cruelty in addition to adultery against her husband, while in the case of the husband it is sufficient to prove adultery alone. Now to make of this rule a grievance for the woman is, I submit, evidence of the destitution of the Feminist case. In default of any real injustice pressing on the woman the Feminist is

279 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader constrained to make as much capital as possible out of the merest semblance of a grievance he can lay his hand on. The reasons for this distinction which the law draws between the husband and the wife, it is obvious enough, are perfectly well grounded. It is based mainly on the simple fact that while a woman by her adultery may foist upon her husband a bastard which he will be compelled by law to support as his own child, in the husband’s case of having an illegitimate child the wife and her property are not affected. Now in a society such as ours is, based upon private property-holding, it is only natural, I submit, that the law should take account of this fact. But not only is this rule of law almost certainly doomed to repeal in the near future, but in even the present day, while it still nominally exists, it is practically a dead letter in the divorce court, since any trivial act of which the wife chooses to complain is strained by the court into evidence of cruelty in the legal and technical sense. As the matter stands, the practical effect of the rule is a much greater injustice to the husband than to the wife, since the former often finds himself convicted of “cruelty” which is virtually nothing at all, in order that the wife’s petition may be granted, and which is often made the excuse by Feminist judges for depriving the husband of the custody of his children. Misconduct on the wife’s part, or neglect of husband and children, does not weigh with the court which will not on that ground grant relief to the husband from his obligation for maintenance, etc. On the other hand, neglect of the wife by the husband is made a ground for judicial separation with the usual consequences – alimony, etc. “Thus,” as it has been put, “between the upper and the nether millstone, cruelty on the one hand, neglect on the other, the unhappy husband can be legally ground to pieces, whether he does anything or whether he does nothing.” Personal violence on the part of the husband is severely punished; on the part of wife she will be let off with impunity. Even if she should in an extreme case be imprisoned, the husband, if a poor man, on her release will be compelled to take her back to live with him. The case came under the notice of the writer a few years ago in which a humane magistrate was constrained to let off a woman who had nearly murdered a husband on the condition of her graciously consenting to a separation, but she had presumably still to be supported by her victim. The decision in the notorious Jackson case precluded the husband from compelling his wife to obey an order of the court for the restitution of conjugal rights. The persistent Feminist tendency of all case-law is illustrated by a decision of the House of Lords in 1894 in reference to the law of Scotland constituting desertion for four years a ground ipso facto for a divorce with the right of remarriage. Here divorce was refused to a man whose wife had left him for four years and taken her child with her. The Law Lords justified their own interpretation of the law on the ground that the man did not really want her to come back. But inasmuch as this plea can be started in every case where it cannot be proved that the

280 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) husband had absolutely grovelled before his wife, imploring her to return, and possibly even then – since the sincerity even of this grovelling might conceivably be called in question – it is clear that the decision practically rendered this old Scottish law inoperative for the husband. As regards the offence of bigamy, for which a man commonly receives a heavy sentence of penal servitude, I think I may venture to state, without risking contradiction, that no woman during recent years has been imprisoned for this offence. The statute law, while conferring distinct privileges upon married women as to the control of their property, and for trading separately and apart from their husbands, renders them exempt from the ordinary liabilities incurred by a male trader as regards proceedings under the Debtors Acts and the Bankruptcy Law. See Acts of 1822 (45 & 46 Vict. c.75); 1893 (56 & 57 Vict. c.63), and cases Scott v. Morley, 57 L.J.R.Q.B. 43. L.R. 20 Q.B.D. In re Hannah Lines exparte Lester C.A. (1893), 2. 2. B. 113. In the case of Lady Bateman v. Faber and others reported in Chancery Appeal Cases (1898 Law Reports) the Master of the Rolls (Sir N. Lindley) is reported to have said: “The authorities showed that a married woman could not by hook or by crook – even by her own fraud – deprive herself of restraint upon anticipation. He would say nothing as to the policy of the law, but it had been affirmed by the Married Woman’s Property Act” (the Act of 1882 above referred to) “and the result was that a married woman could play fast and loose to an extent to which no other person could.” (N.B. – Presumably a male person.) It has indeed been held, to such a length does the law extend its protection and privileges to the female, that even the concealment by a wife from the husband at the time of marriage that she was then pregnant by another man was no ground for declaring the marriage null and void. The above may be taken as a fair all-round, although by no means an exhaustive, statement of the present one-sided condition of the civil law as regards the relation of husband and wife. We will now pass on to the consideration of the relative incidence of the criminal law on the two sexes. We will begin with the crime of murder. The law of murder is still ostensibly the same for both sexes, but in effect the application of its provisions in the two cases is markedly different. As, however, these differences lie, as just stated, not in the law itself but rather in its administration, we can only give in this place, where we are dealing with the principles of law rather than with their application, a general formula of the mode in which the administration of the law of murder proceeds, which, briefly stated, is as follows: The evidence even to secure conviction in the case of a woman must be many times stronger than that which would suffice to hang a man. Should a conviction be obtained, the death penalty, though pronounced, is not given effect to, the female prisoner being almost

281 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader invariably reprieved. In most cases where there is conviction at all, it is for manslaughter and not for murder, when a light or almost nominal sentence is passed. Cases confirming what is here said will be given later on. There is one point, however, to be observed here, and that is the crushing incidence of the law of libel. This means that no case of any woman, however notoriously guilty on the evidence, can be quoted, after she has been acquitted by a Feminist jury, as the law holds such to be innocent and provides them with “a remedy” in a libel action. Now, seeing that most women accused of murder are acquitted irrespective of the evidence, it is clear that the writer is fatally handicapped so far as confirmation of his thesis by cases is concerned. Women are to all intents and purposes allowed to harass men, when they conceive they have a grievance, at their own sweet will, the magistrate usually telling their victim that he cannot interfere. In the opposite case, that of a man harassing a woman, the latter has invariably to find sureties for his future good behaviour, or else go to gaol. One of the most infamous enactments indicative of Feminist sex bias is the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1886. The Act itself was led up to with the usual effect by an unscrupulous newspaper agitation in the Feminist and Puritan interest, designed to create a panic in the public mind, under the influence of which legislation of this description can generally be rushed through Parliament. The reckless disregard of the commonest principles of justice and common-sense of this abominable statute may be seen in the shameless sex privilege it accords the female in the matter of seduction. Under its provisions a boy of fourteen years can be prosecuted and sent to gaol for an offence to which he has been instigated by a girl just under sixteen years, whom the law, of course, on the basis of the aforesaid sex privilege, holds guiltless. The outrageous infamy of this provision is especially apparent when we consider the greater precocity of the average girl as compared with the average boy of this age. We come now to the latest piece of Anti-man legislation, the so-called White Slave Trade Act of 1912 (Criminal Law Amendment Act 1912, 2 & 3 Geo. V. c.20). This statute was, as usual, rushed through the legislature on the wave of factitious public excitement organised for the purpose, and backed up by the usual faked statements and exaggerated allegations, the whole matter being three parts bogus and deliberate lying. The alleged dangers of the unprotected female were, for the object of the agitation, purposely exaggerated in the proverbial proportion of the mountain to the molehill. But as regards many of those most eager in promoting this piece of Anti-man legislation, there were probably special psychological reasons to account for their attitude. The special features of the Bill, the Act in question, are (1) increased powers given to the police in the matter of arrest on suspicion, and (2) the flogging clauses. Up till now the flogging of garrotters was justified against opponents, by its upholders, on the ground of the peculiarly brutal nature of the offence of highway robbery with violence.

282 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) It should be noted that in the Act in question no such excuse can apply, for it is appointed to be indicted for offences which, whatever else they may be, do not in their nature involve violence, and hence which cannot be described as brutal in the ordinary sense of the term. The Anti-man nature of the whole measure, as of the agitation itself which preceded it, is conclusively evidenced by the fact that while it is well known that the number of women gaining a living by “procuration” is much greater than the number of men engaged therein, comparatively little vituperation was heard against the female delinquents in the matter, and certainly none of the vitriolic ferocity that was poured out upon the men alleged to participate in the traffic. A corresponding distinction was represented in the measure itself by the allocation of the torture of the lash to men alone. It is clear, therefore, that the zeal for the suppression of the traffic in question was not the sole motive in the ardour of the flogging fraternity. Even the Anti-manism at the back of the whole of this class of legislation seems insufficient to account for the outbreak of bestial blood-lust, for the tigerish ferocity, of which the flogging clauses in the Act are the outcome. There is, I take it, no doubt that psychical sexual aberration plays a not inconsiderable part in many of those persons – in a word, that they are labouring under some degree of homosexual Sadism. The lustful glee on the part of the aforesaid persons which greets the notion of the partial flaying alive, for that is what the “cat” means, of some poor wretch who has succumbed to the temptation of getting his livelihood by an improper method, is hardly to be explained on any other hypothesis. Experts allege that traces of psycho-sexual aberration are latent in many persons where it would be least expected, and it is, prima facie, likely enough that these latent tendencies in both men and women should become active under the cover of an agitation in favour of purity and anti-sexuality, to the point of gratifying itself with the thought of torture inflicted upon men. A psycho-sexual element of another kind doubtless also plays a not unimportant rôle in the agitation of “ladies” in favour of that abomination, “social purity,” which, being interpreted, generally means lubricity turned upside down. The fiery zeal manifested by many of those ladies for the suppression of the male sex is assuredly not without its pathological significance. The monstrosity of the recent White Slave Traffic enactment and its savage anti-male vindictiveness is shown not merely, as already observed, in the agitation which preceded it, with its exaggerated vilification of the male offenders in the matter of procuration and its passing over with comparative slight censure the more numerous female offenders, or in the general spirit animating the Act itself, but it is noticeable in the very preposterous exaggeration of its provisions. For example, in the section dealing with the souteneur, the framers of this Act, and the previous Criminal Law Amendment Acts to which this latest one is merely supplementary, are not satisfied with penalising the man who has no other means of subsistence beyond what he derives from the wages of some female friend’s prostitution, but they strike with impartial rigour the man who knowingly lives wholly or in

283 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader part from such a source. If, therefore, the clause were taken in its strict sense, any poor out- at-elbow man who accepted the hospitality of a woman of doubtful virtue in the matter of a drink, or a dinner, would put himself within the pale of this clause in the Act, and might be duly flayed by the “cat” in consequence. The most flagrant case occurred in a London police court in March 1913, in a youth of eighteen years, against whose general character nothing was alleged and who was known to be in employment as a carman, was sentenced to a month’s hard labour under the following circumstances: – It was reported that he had been living with a woman apparently considerably older than himself, whom admittedly he had supported by his own exertions and, when this was insufficient, even by the pawning of his clothes, and whom as soon as he discovered she was earning money by prostitution he had left. Would it be believed that a prosecution was instituted by the police against this young man under the iniquitous White Slave Traffic Act? But what seems still more incredible is that the magistrate, presumably a sane gentleman, after admitting that the poor fellow was “more sinned against than sinning,” did not hesitate to pass on him a sentence of one month’s hard labour!!! Of course the woman, who was the head and front of the offending, if offending there was, remained untouched. The above is a mild specimen of “justice” as meted out in our police courts, “for men only”! Quite recently there was a case in the north of England of a carter, who admittedly worked at his calling but who, it was alleged, was assisted by women with whom he had lived. Now this unfortunate man was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment plus flogging. For the judges, of course, any extension of their power over the prisoner in the dock is a godsend. It is quite evident that they are revelling in their new privilege to inflict torture. One of them had the shamelessness recently to boast of the satisfaction it gave him and to sneer at those of his colleagues who did not make full use of their judicial powers in this direction. The bogus nature of the reasons urged in favour of the most atrocious clauses of this abominable Act came out clearly enough in the speeches of the official spokesmen of the Government in its favour. For example, Lord Haldane in the House of Lords besought the assembled peers to bethink themselves of the unhappy victim of the souteneur. He drew a picture of how a heartless bully might beat, starve and otherwise ill treat his victim, besides taking away her earnings. He omitted to explain how the heartless bully in a free country could coerce his “victim” to remain with him against her will. He ignored the existence of the police, or of a whole army of social purity busy- bodies, and vigilance societies for whom her case would be a tasty morsel only too eagerly snapped at. If the “victim” does not avail herself of any of those means of escape, so ready to her hand, the presumption is that she prefers the company of her alleged brutal tyrant to that of the chaste Puritan ladies of the vigilance societies. To those who follow the present state of artificially fomented public opinion in the matter, Lord Haldane’s suggestion that there was any danger of the precious “victim” not being sufficiently slobbered over, will seem to be not without a touch of

284 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) humour. Furthermore, as illustrating the utter illogicality of the line taken by the promoters of the Act, for whom Lord Haldane acted as the mouthpiece, we have only to note the fact that the measure does not limit the penalties awarded to cases accompanied by circumstances of aggravation such as Lord Haldane pictures, which it might easily have done, but extends it impartially to all cases whether accompanied by cruelty or not. We can hardly imagine that a man of Lord Haldane’s intellectual power and general humanity should not have been aware of the hollowness of the case he had to put as an official advocate, and of the rottenness of the conventional arguments he had to state in its support. When confronted with the unquestionably true contention that corporal punishments, especially such as are of a savage and vindictive kind, are degrading alike to the inflicters of them and to those who are their victims, he replied that criminals in the cases in question were already so degraded that they could not be degraded further. One would imagine he could hardly have failed to know that he was talking pernicious twaddle. It is obvious that this argument, in addition to its being untrue, in fact opens the flood- gates to brutal penal legislation all round, so far at least as the more serious offences are concerned. One could equally well assert of murder, burglary, even abus de confidence in some cases, and other offences, that the perpetrators of them must be so degraded that no amount of brutal punishment could degrade them further. Everybody can regard the crime to which he has a pet aversion more than other crimes as indicating the perpetrator thereof to be outside the pale of humanity. But as regards the particular case in point, let us for a moment clear our minds of cant upon the subject. Procuration and also living on the proceeds of prostitution may be morally abominable methods of securing a livelihood, though even here, as in most other offences, there may be circumstances of palliation in individual cases. But after all [is] said and done, it is doubtful whether, apart from any fraud or misrepresentation, which, of course, places it altogether in a different category, these ought to be regarded as criminal offences. To offer facilities or to act as an agent for women who are anxious to lead a “gay life,” or even to suggest such a course to women, so long as prostitution itself is not recognised by the law as crime, however reprehensible morally, would scarcely seem to transcend the limits of legitimate individual liberty. In any case, the constituting of such an action a crime must surely open out an altogether new principle in jurisprudence, and one of far-reaching consequences. The same remarks apply even more forcibly to the question of sharing the earnings of a prostitute. Prostitution per se is not in the eyes of the law a crime or even a misdemeanour. The woman who makes her living as a prostitute is under the protection of the law, and the money she receives from her customer is recognised as her property. If she, however, in the exercise of her right of free disposition of that property, gives some of it to a male friend, that friend, by the mere acceptance of a free gift, becomes a criminal in the eyes of the law. Anything more preposterous, judging by all hitherto recognised principles of

285 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader jurisprudence, can scarcely be imagined. Even from the moral point of view of the class of cases coming under the purview of the Act, of men who in part share in the proceeds of their female friends’ traffic, must involve many instances in which no sane person – i.e. one who is not bitten by the rabid man-hatred of the Feminist and social purity monger – must regard the moral obliquity involved as not very serious. Take, for instance, the case of a man who is out of work, who is perhaps starving, and receives temporary assistance of this kind. Would any reasonable person allege that such a man was in the lowest depths of moral degradation, still less that he merited for this breach, at most, of fine delicacy of feeling, the flaying alive prescribed by the Act under consideration. Besides all this, it is well known that some women, shop assistants and others, gain part of their living by their reputable avocation and part in another way. Now presumably the handing over of a portion of her regular salary to her lover would not constitute the latter a flayable criminal, but the endowment of him with a portion of any of the “presents” obtained by her pursuit of her other calling would do so. The process of earmarking the permissible and the impermissible gift strikes one as very difficult even if possible. The point last referred to leads us on to another reflection. If the man who “in whole or in part” lives on the proceeds of a woman’s prostitution is of necessity a degraded wretch outside the pale of all humanity, as he is represented to be by the flogging fraternity, how about the employer or employeress of female labour who bases his or her scale of wages on the assumption that the girls and women he or she employs, supplement these wages by presents received after working hours, for their sexual favours – in other words, by prostitution? Many of these employers of labour are doubtless to be found among the noble band of advocates of White Slave Traffic Bills, flogging and social purity. The above persons, of course, are respectable members of society, while a souteneur is an outcast. In addition to the motives before alluded to as actuating the promoters of the factitious and bogus so-called “White Slave” agitation, there is one very powerful political and economic motive which must not be left out of sight. In view of the existing “labour unrest,” it is highly desirable from the point of view of our possessing and governing classes that popular attention should be drawn off labour wrongs and labour grievances on to something less harassing to the capitalist and official mind. Now the Anti-man agitation forms a capital red herring for drawing the popular scent off class opposition by substituting sex antagonism in its place. If you can set public opinion off on the question of wicked Man and down-trodden Woman, you have done a good deal to help capitalistic enterprise to tide over the present crisis. The insistence of public opinion on better conditions for the labourer will thus be weakened by being diverted into urging forward vindictive laws against men, and for placing as far as may be the whole power of the State at the disposal of the virago, the shrew and the female

286 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) sharper, in their designs upon their male victim. For, be it remembered, it is always the worst type of woman to whom the advantage of laws passed as the result of the Anti-man campaign accrues. The real nature of the campaign is crucially exhibited in some of the concrete demands put forward by its advocates. One of the measures proposed in the so-called Woman’s Charter drawn up with the approval of all prominent Feminists by Lady M’Laren (now Lady Aberconway) some four or five years back, and which had been previously advocated by other Feminist writers, was to the effect that a husband, in addition to his other liabilities, should be legally compelled to pay a certain sum to his wife, ostensibly as wages for her housekeeping services, no matter whether she performs the services well, or ill, or not at all. Whatever the woman is, or does, the husband has to pay all the same. Another of the clauses in this precious document is to the effect that a wife is to be under no obligation to follow her husband, compelled probably by the necessity of earning a livelihood for himself and her, to any place of residence outside the British Islands. That favourite crank of the Feminist, of raising the age of consent with the result of increasing the number of victims of the designing young female should speak for itself to every unbiassed person. One of the proposals which finds most favour with the Sentimental Feminist is the demand that in the case of the murder by a woman of her illegitimate child, the putative father should be placed in the dock as an accessory! In other words, a man should be punished for a crime of which he is wholly innocent, because the guilty person was forsooth a woman. That such a suggestion should be so much as entertained by otherwise sane persons is indeed significant of the degeneracy of mental and moral fibre induced by the Feminist movement, for it may be taken as typical. It reminds me of a Feminist friend of mine who, challenged by me, sought (for long in vain) to find a case in the courts in which a man was unduly favoured at the expense of a woman. At last he succeeded in lighting upon the following from somewhere in Scotland: A man and woman who had been drinking went home to bed, and the woman caused the death of her baby by “overlaying it.” Both the man and the woman were brought before the court on the charge of manslaughter, for causing the death, by culpable negligence, of the infant. In accordance with the evidence, the woman who had overlaid the baby was convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, and naturally the man, who had not done so, was released. Now, in the judgment of my Feminist friend, in other matters sane enough, the fact that the man who had not committed any offence was let off, while his female companion, who had, was punished, showed the bias of the court in favour of the man!! Surely this is a noteworthy illustration, glaring as it is, of how all judgment is completely overbalanced and destroyed in otherwise judicial minds – of how such minds are completely hypnotised by the adoption of the Feminist dogma. As a matter of fact, of course, the task my friend set himself to do was hopeless. As against the cases, which daily occur all over the country, of flagrant injustice to men and partiality to women on the part of the courts, there is, I venture

287 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader to assert, not to be found a single case within the limits of the four seas of a judicial decision in the contrary sense – i.e. of one favouring the man at the expense of the woman. This sex hatred, so often vindictive in its character, of men for men, which has for its results that: “man-made” laws invariably favour the opposite sex, and that “man-administered justice” follows the same course, is a psychological problem which is well worth the earnest attention of students of sociology and thinkers generally.

Chapter IV. Always the “Injured Innocent”! 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. It does so on grounds which presuppose the old theory of the immeasurable inferiority, mental and moral, of woman, which are so indignantly spurned by every Political Feminist – i.e. in his or her capacity as such. 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. But does Political Feminism consistently adopt this logical position? Not one whit. It is quite true that some Feminists, when hard pressed, may grudgingly concede the untenability on rational grounds of the Sentimental Feminists’ claims. But taken as a whole, and in their practical dealings, the Political Feminists are in accord with the Sentimental Feminists in claim- ing female immunity on the ground of sex. This is shown in every case where a female criminal re- ceives more than a nominal sentence. We have already given examples of the fact in question, and they could be indefinitely extended. At the end of the year 1911, at Birmingham, in the case of a woman convicted of the murder of her paramour by deliberately pouring inflammable oil over him while he was asleep, and then setting it afire, and afterwards not only exulting in the action but saying she was ready to do it again, the jury brought in recommendation to mercy with their verdict. And, needless to say, the influence of Political and Sentimental Feminism was too strong to allow the capital sentence to be carried out, even with such a fiendish wretch as this. In the case of the Italian woman in Canada, Napolitano, before mentioned, the female franchise societies issued a petition to Mr Borden, the Premier of Canada, in favour of the commutation of sentence. The usual course was adopted in this case, as in most others in which a woman murders a man – to wit, the truly “chivalrous” one of trying to blacken the character of the dead victim in defence of the action of the murderess. In other cases, more

288 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) especially, of course, where the man is guilty of a crime against a woman, when mercy is asked for the offender, we are pitifully adjured to “think of the poor victim.” As we have seen, Lord Haldane trotted out this exhortation in a case where it was absurdly inappropriate, since the much-commiserated “victim” had only herself to thank for being a “victim,” and still more for remaining a “victim.” We never hear this plea for the “victim” urged where the “victim” happens to be a man and the offender a woman. Compare this with the case of the boy of nineteen, Beal, whom Mr M’Kenna hanged for the murder of his sweetheart, and that in the teeth of an explanation given in the defence which was at least possible, if not probable, and which certainly, putting it at the very lowest, introduced an element of doubt into the case. Fancy a girl of nineteen being convicted, whatever the evidence, of having poisoned her paramour or even if, per impossibile, she were convicted, fancy her being given more than a short term of imprisonment! A man murdered by a woman is always the horrid brute, while the woman murdered by the man is just as surely the angelic victim. Anyone who reads reports of cases with an unbiassed mind must admit the absolute accuracy of this statement. Divine woman is always the “injured innocent,” not only in the graver crimes, such as murder, but also in the minor offences coming under the cognisance of the law. At the Ledbury Petty Sessions a woman in the employment of a draper, who had purloined goods to the amount of £150, was acquitted on the ground of “kleptomania,” and this notwithstanding the fact that she had been in the employment of the prosecutor for over five years, had never complained of illness and had never been absent from business; also that her landlady gave evidence showing that she was sound in mind and body. At the very same sessions two men were sentenced respectively to eight and twelve months’ imprisonment for stealing goods to the value of £5! (John Bull, 12th November 1910). At this point I may be permitted to quote from the article formerly alluded to (Fortnightly Review, November 1911, case taken from a report in The News of the World of 28th February 1909): “A young woman shot at the local postman with a revolver; the bullet grazed his face, she having fired point blank at his head. Jury returned a verdict of not guilty, although the revolver was found on her when arrested, and the facts were admitted and were as follows: – At noon she left her house, crossing three fields to the house of the victim, who was at home and alone; upon his appearing she fired point blank at his head; he banged to the door, and thus turned off the bullet, which grazed his face and ‘ploughed a furrow through his hair.’ She had by her when arrested a revolver cocked and with four chambers undischarged.” Let us now take the crime of violent assault with attempt to do bodily injury. The following cases will serve as illustrative examples: – From The News of the World, 9th May 1909: A nurse in Belfast sued her lost swain for breach of promise. She obtained £100 damages although it was admitted by her counsel that she had thrown vitriol over the defendant,

289 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader thereby injuring him, and the defendant had not prosecuted her! Also it was admitted that she had been “carrying on” with another man. From The Morning Leader of 8th July 1905 I have taken the following extraordinary facts as to the varied punishment awarded in cases of vitriol-throwing: That of a woman who threw vitriol over a sergeant at Aldershot, and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment without hard labour while a man who threw it over a woman at Portsmouth was tried and convicted at the Hants Assizes, on 7th July 1905, and sentenced by Mr Justice Bigham to twelve years’ penal servitude! As regards the first case it will be observed that, (notwithstanding a crime, which in the case of a man was described by the judge as “cowardly and vile” and meriting twelve years’ penal servitude) the woman was rewarded by damages for £100, to be obtained from the very victim whom she had done her best to maim for life (besides being unfaithful to him) and who had generously abstained from prosecuting. But it is not merely in cases of murder, attempted murder or serious assault that justice is mocked by the present state of our law and its administration in the interests of the female sex. The same attitude is observed, the same farcical sentences on women, whether the crime be theft, fraud, common assault, criminal slander or other minor offences. We have the same preposterous excuses admitted, the same preposterous pleas allowed, and the same farcical sentences passed – if, indeed, any sentence be passed at all. The following examples I have culled at random: – From John Bull, 26th February 1910: At the London Sessions, Mr Robert Wallace had to deal with the case of a well-dressed woman living at Hampstead, who pleaded guilty to obtaining goods to the amount of £50 by false pretences. In explanation of her crime it was stated that she was under a mistaken impression that her engagement would not lead to marriage, that she became depressed, and that she “did not know what she said or did,” while in mitigation of punishment it was urged that the money had been repaid, that her fiancé could not marry her if she were sent to gaol, and that her life would be irretrievably ruined, and she was discharged! From The Birmingham Post, 4th February 1902: A female clerk (twenty-six) pleaded guilty to embezzling £5, 1s. 9d. on 16th November, £2, 2s. 4d. on 2lst December and £5, 0s. 9d. on a 23rd December last, the moneys of her employer. Prosecuting counsel said prisoner entered prosecutor’s employ in 1900, and in June last her salary was raised to 27s. 6d. a week. The defalcations, which began a month before the increase, amounted to £134. She had falsified the books, and when suspicion fell upon her destroyed two books, in order, as she thought, to prevent detection. Her counsel pleaded for leniency on the ground of her previous good character and because she was engaged! The recorder merely bound her over, stating that her parents and young man were respectable, and so was the house in which she lodged! A correspondent mentions in The Birmingham Post of February 1902 a case where a woman had burned her employer’s outhouses and property, doing £1800 worth of damage, and got off with a month’s imprisonment. On the other hand, the same judge, at the same Quarter Sessions,

290 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) thus dealt with two male embezzlers: C.C. (twenty-eight), clerk, who pleaded guilty to embezzling two sums of money from his master in August and September of 1901 (amounts not given), was sent to gaol for six calendar months; and S.G. (twenty-four), clerk, pleaded guilty to embezzling 7s. 6d. and 3s. For the defence it was urged that the prisoner had been poorly paid, and the recorder, hearing that a gentleman was prepared to employ the man as soon as released, sentenced him to three months’ hard labour! O merciful recorder! The “injured innocent” theory usually comes into play with magistrates when a woman is charged with aggravated annoyance and harassing of men in their business or profession, when, as already stated, the administrator of the law will usually tell the prosecutor that he cannot interfere. In the opposite case of a man annoying a woman under like circumstances he invariably has to find substantial sureties for his good behaviour or go to gaol. No injured innocence for him! There is another case in which it seems probable that, animated by the same fixed idea, those responsible for the framing of laws have flagrantly neglected an obvious measure for public safety. We refer to the unrestricted sale of sulphuric acid (vitriol) which is permitted. Now here we have a substance subserving only very special purposes in industry, none in household economy, or in other departments, save for criminal ends, which is nevertheless procurable without let or hindrance. Is it possible to believe that this would be the case if men were in the habit of using this substance in settling their differences with each other, even still more if they employed it by way of emphasising their disapproval of the jilting of sweethearts? That it should be employed by women in wreaking their vengeance on recalcitrant lovers seems a natural if not precisely a commendable action, in the eyes of a Sentimental Feminist public opinion, and one which, on the mildest hypothesis, “doesn’t matter.” Hence a deadly substance may be freely bought and sold as though it were cod- liver oil. A very nice thing for dastardly viragoes for whom public opinion has only the mildest of censures! In any reasonable society the indiscriminate sale of corrosive substances would in itself be a crime punishable with a heavy term of imprisonment. It is not only by men, and by a morbid public opinion inflamed by Feminist sentiment in general, that female criminals are surrounded by a halo of injured innocence. The reader can hardly fail to notice that such women have the effrontery to pretend to regard themselves in this light. This is often so in cases of assault, murder or attempted murder of lovers by their sweethearts. Such is, of course, particularly noticeable in the senselessly wicked outrages, of which more anon. The late Otto Weininger, in his book before quoted, Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character), has some noteworthy remarks on this, remarks which, whether we accept his suggested theory or not, might well have been written as a comment on recent cases of suffragette crimes and criminals.

291 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader “The male criminal,” says Weininger, “has from his birth the same relation to the idea of value as any other man in whom the criminal tendencies governing himself may be wholly absent. The female on the other hand often claims to be fully justified when she has committed the greatest conceivable infamy. While the genuine criminal is obtusely silent against all reproaches, a woman will express her astonishment and indignation that anyone can doubt her perfect right to act as she has done. Women are convinced of their being in the right without ever having sat in judgment on themselves. The male criminal, it may be true, does not do so either, but then he never maintains that he is in the right. He rather goes hastily out of the way of discussing right and wrong, because it reminds him of his guilt. In this fact we have a proof that he has a relationship to the idea, and that it is unfaithfulness to his better self of which he is unwilling to be reminded. No male criminal has ever really believed that injustice has been done him by punishment. The female criminal on the other hand is convinced of the maliciousness of her accusers, and if she is unwilling no man can persuade her that she has done wrong. Should someone admonish her, it is true that she often bursts into tears, begs for forgiveness and admits her fault; she may even believe indeed that she really feels this fault. Such is only the case, however, when she has felt inclined to do so, for this very dissolving in tears affects her always with a certain voluptuous pleasure. The male criminal is obstinate, he does not allow himself to be turned round in a moment as the apparent defiance of a woman may be converted into an apparent sense of guilt, where, that is, the accuser understands how to handle her “(“Geschlecht und Charakter,” pp. 253- 254). Weininger’s conclusion is: “Not that woman is naturally evil or anti-moral, but rather that she is merely a-moral, in other words that she is destitute of what is commonly called ‘moral sense.’” The cases of female penitents and others which seem to contradict this announcement. Weininger choose to consider them as indicating that the Roman matrons felt sometimes that they were badly treated, that they ought not to endure the bad treatment, and that they ought to take the only means that they possessed of expressing their feelings, and of wreaking vengeance, by employing poison (p.92). Now though it may be said that in this passage we have no direct justification of the atrocious crime attributed to the Roman matrons, yet it can hardly be denied that we have here a distinct condonation of the infamous and dastardly act, such a condonation as the worthy Principal of St Andrews University would hardly have meted out to men under any circumstances. Probably Professor Donaldson, in writing the above, felt that his comments would not be resented very strongly, even if not actually approved, by public opinion, steeped as it is at the present time in Feminism, political and sentimental.

292 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) Another instance, this time of direct special pleading to prove a woman guilty of an atrocious crime to be an “injured innocent.” It is taken from an eminent Swiss alienist in his work on Sex. Dr Forel maintains a thesis which may or may not be true to the effect that the natural maternal instinct is either absent or materially weakened in the case of a woman who has given birth to a child begotten by rape, or under circumstances bordering upon rape, and indeed more or less in all cases where the woman is an unwilling participant in the sexual act. By way of illustration of this theory he cites the case of a barmaid in St Gallen who was seduced by her employer under such circumstances as those above mentioned; a child resulted, who was put out to nurse at an institution until five years of age, when it was handed over to the care of the mother. Now what does the woman do? Within a few hours of receiving the little boy into her keeping she took him to a lonely place and deliberately strangled him, in consequence of which she was tried and condemned. Now Dr Forel, in his Feminist zeal, feels it incumbent upon him to try to whitewash this female monster by urging, on the basis of this theory, the excuse that under the circumstances of its conception one could not expect the mother to have the ordinary instincts of maternity as regards her child. The worthy doctor is apparently so blinded by his Feminist prejudices that (quite apart from the correctness or otherwise of his theory) he is oblivious of the absurd irrelevancy of his argument. What, we may justly ask, has the maternal instinct, or its absence, to do with the guilt of the murderess of a helpless child committed to her care! Who or what the child was is immaterial! That a humane and otherwise clear-headed man like Dr Forel could take a wretch of this description under his ægis, and still more that in doing so he should serve up such utterly illogical balderdash by way of argument, is only one more instance of how the most sane-thinking men are rendered fatuous by the glamour of Sentimental Feminism. In the present chapter we have given a few typical instances of the practice which constitutes one of the most conspicuous features of Modern Feminism and of the public opinion which it has engendered. 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. This state of public opinion reacts, of course, upon the tribunals and has the result that women are practically free to commit any offence they please, with always a splendid sporting chance of getting acquitted altogether, and a practical certainty that even if convicted they will receive farcical sentences, or, should the sentence be in any degree adequate to the offence, that such sentence will not be carried out. The way in which criminal law is made a jest and a mockery as regards female prisoners, the treatment of criminal suffragettes, is there in evidence. The excuse of health being endangered by their going without their breakfasts has resulted in in the release after a few days of women guilty of the vilest crimes – e.g. the

293 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader attempt to set fire to the theatre at Dublin. It may be well to recall the outrageous facts of modern female immunity and free defiance of the law as illustrated by one quotation of a description of the merry time of the window-smashers of March 1912 in Holloway prison given by a correspondent of The Daily Telegraph. The correspondent of that journal describes his visit to the aforesaid prison, where he said there appeared to have been no punishment of any kind for any sort of misbehaviour. “All over the place,” he writes, “is noise – women calling to women everywhere, and the officials seem powerless to preserve even the semblance of discipline. A suffragist will call out her name while in a cell, and another one who knows her will answer, giving her name in return, and a conversation will then be carried on between the two. This chattering obtains all day and far into the night. The ‘officials’ as the wardresses prefer themselves called, have already given the prison the name of ‘the monkey-house.’ Certain it is that the prisoners are treated with all deference, the reason being perhaps that the number of officials is insufficient to establish proper order. While I was waiting yesterday one lady drove up in a carriage and pair, in which were two policemen and several bundles of clothes, to enter upon her sentence and this is the note which seems to dominate the whole of the prison. Seventy-six of the prisoners are supposed to be serving sentences with hard labour, but none of them are wearing prison clothes, and in only one or two instances have any tasks of any description been given, those generally being a little sewing or knitting.” Again a member of the Women’s Freedom League at a meeting on 19th May 1912 boasted that the suffragettes had a wing of their own at Holloway. “They had nice hot water pipes and all the latest improvements and were able to climb up to the window and exchange sentiments with their friends.” She had saved money and enjoyed herself very much!! Here we have a picture of the way the modern authorities of the law recognise the “injured innocence” of female delinquents who claim the right wantonly to destroy property. Our present society, based as it is on private property-holding, and which usually punished with the utmost severity any breach of the sanctity of private property, waives its claims where women are concerned. Similarly arson under circumstances directly endangering human life, for which the law prescribes the maximum sentence of penal servitude for life, is considered adequately punished by a week or two’s imprisonment when those convicted of the crime are of the female sex. Oh, but they were acting from political motives! Good, and have not terrorist anarchists, Fenians and Irish dynamiters of the Land League days also acted from political motives? The terrorist anarchist, foolish and indefensible though his tactics may be, believes honestly enough that he is paving the way for the abolition of poverty, misery and social injustice, a far more vital thing than the franchise! The Irish Fenians and dynamiters

294 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) pursued a similar policy and there is no reason to doubt their honest belief that it would further the cause of the freedom and national independence of Ireland. Yet were these “political” offenders dealt with otherwise than as ordinary criminals when convicted of acts qualified by the law as felonies? And their acts, moreover, whatever we may think of them otherwise, were, in most cases at least, politically logical from their own point of view, and not senseless injuries to unoffending persons, as those of the present-day female seekers after the suffrage.

Chapter V. The “Chivalry” Fake THE justification for the whole movement of Modern Feminism in one of its main practical aspects – namely, the placing of the female sex in the position of privilege, advantage and immunity – is concentrated in the current conception of “chivalry.” It behoves us, therefore, to devote some consideration to the meaning and implication of this notion. Now this word chivalry is the dernier ressort of those at a loss for a justification of the modern privileging of women. But those who use it seldom give themselves the trouble to analyse the connotation of this term. Brought to book as to its meaning, most persons would probably define it as deference to, or consideration for, weakness, especially bodily weakness. Used in this sense, however, the term covers a very much wider ground than the “kow-towing” to the female section of the human race, usually associated with it. Boys, men whose muscular strength is below the average, domestic animals, etc., might all claim this special protection as a plea of chivalry, in their favour. And yet we do not find different criminal laws, or different rules of prison treatment, say, for men whose stamina is below the average. Neither do we find such men or boys exempted by law from corporal punishment in consequence of their weakness, unless as an exception in individual cases when the weakness amounts to dangerous physical disability. Neither, again, in the general affairs of life are we accustomed to see any such deference to men of weaker muscular or constitutional development as custom exacts in the case of women. Once more, looking at the question from the other side, do we find the claim of chivalry dropped in the case of the powerful virago or the muscularly developed female athlete, the sportswoman who rides, hunts, plays cricket, football, golf and other masculine games, and who may even fence or box? Not one whit! It would seem then that the definition of the term under consideration, based on the notion of deference to mere weakness as such, will hardly hold water, since in its application the question of sex always takes precedence of that of weakness. Let us try again! Abandoning for the moment the definition of chivalry as a consideration for weakness, considered absolutely, as we may term it, let us see whether the definition of consideration for relative defencelessness – i.e. defencelessness in a given situation – will coincide with the current usage of the word. But here again we are met with the fact that the man in the hands of the

295 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader law – to wit, in the grip of the forces of the State, ay, even the strongest man, were he a very Hercules, is in as precisely as defenceless and helpless a position relative to those in whose power he finds himself, as the weakest woman would be in the like case, neither more nor less! And yet an enlightened and chivalrous public opinion tolerates the most fiendish barbarities and excogitated cruelties being perpetrated upon male convicts in our gaols, while it shudders with horror at the notion of female convicts being accorded any severity of punishment at all even for the same, or, for that matter, more heinous offences. A particularly crass and crucial illustration is that infamous piece of one-sided sex legislation which has already occupied our attention in the course of the present volume – to wit, the so-called “White Slave Traffic Act” 1912. It is plain then that chivalry as understood in the present day really spells sex privilege and sex favouritism pure and simple, and that any attempts to define the term on a larger basis, or to give it a colourable rationality founded on fact, are simply subterfuges, conscious or unconscious, on the part of those who put them forward. The etymology of the word chivalry is well known and obvious enough. The term meant originally the virtues associated with knighthood considered as a whole, bravery even to the extent of reckless daring, loyalty to the chief or feudal superior, generosity to a fallen foe, general open- handedness, and open-heartedness, including, of course, the succour of the weak and the oppressed generally, inter alia, the female sex when in difficulties. It would be idle, of course, to insist upon the historical definition of the term. Language develops and words in course of time depart widely from their original connotation, so that etymology alone is seldom of much value in practically determining the definition of words in their application at the present day. But the fact is none the less worthy of note that only a fragment of the original connotation of the word chivalry is covered by the term as used in our time, and that even that fragment is torn from its original connection and is made to serve as a scarecrow in the field of public opinion to intimidate all who refuse to act upon, or who protest against, the privileges and immunities of the female sex.42 I have said that even that subsidiary element in the old original notion of chivalry which is now well-nigh the only surviving remnant of its original connotation is torn from its connection and hence has necessarily become radically changed in its meaning. From being part of a general code of manners enjoined upon a particular guild or profession it has been degraded to mean the exclusive right in one sex guaranteed by law and custom to certain

42 One among many apposite cases, which has occurred recently, was protested against in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, 21st March 1913, in which it was pointed out that while a suffragette got a few months’ imprisonment in the second division for wilfully setting fire to the pavilion in Kew Gardens, a few days previously, at the Lewes Assizes, a man had been sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for burning a rick!! 296 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) advantages and exemptions with- out any corresponding responsibility. Let us make no mistake about this. When the limelight of a little plain but critical common-sense is turned upon this notion of chivalry hitherto regarded as so sacrosanct, it is seen to be but a poor thing after all; and when men have acquired the habit of habitually turning the light of such criticism upon it, the accusation, so terrible in the present state of public opinion, of being “unchivalrous” will lose its terrors for them. In the so-called ages of chivalry themselves it never meant, as it does to-day, the woman right or wrong. It never meant as it does to-day the general legal and social privilege of sex. It never meant a social defence or a legal exoneration for the bad and even the criminal woman, simply because she is a woman. It meant none of these things. All it meant was a voluntary or gratuitous personal service to the forlorn women which the members of the Knights’ guild among other such services, many of them taking precedence of this one, were supposed to perform, explains by the hypothesis that “it is only in company and under external influence that woman can feel remorse.” Be all this as it may, the fact remains that women when most patently and obviously guilty of vile and criminal actions will, with the most complete nonchalance, insist that they are in the right. This may be, and very possibly often is, mere impudent effrontery, relying on the privilege of the female sex, or it may, in part at least, as Weininger insists, be traceable to “special deep-lying sex-characteristics.” But in any case the singular fact is that men, and men even of otherwise judicial capacity, are to be found who are prepared virtually to accept the justice of this attitude, and who are ready to condone, if not directly to defend, any conduct, no matter how vile or how criminal, on the part of a woman. We have illustrations of this class of judgment almost every day, but I propose to give two instances of what I should deem typical, if slightly extreme, perversions of moral judgment on the part of two men, both of them of social and intellectual standing, and without any doubt personally of the highest integrity. Dr James Donaldson, Principal of the University of St Andrews, in his work entitled Woman, her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome and among the Early Christians, commenting on the well-known story attributed to the year 331 BC, which may or may not be historical, of the wholesale poisoning of their husbands by Roman matrons, as well as of subsequent cases of the same crime, concludes his remarks with these words: “It seems to me that we must regard them [namely these stories or facts, as we may xxxxx So far as courage is concerned, which was perhaps the first of the chivalric virtues in the old days, it certainly requires more courage in our days to deal severely with a woman when she deserves it (as a man would be dealt with in like circumstances) than it does to back up a woman against her wicked male opponent.

297 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader It is a cheap thing, for example, in the case of a man and woman quarrelling in the street, to play out the stage rôle of the bold and gallant Englishman “who won’t see a woman maltreated and put upon, not he!” and this, of course, without any inquiry into the merits of the quarrel. To swim with the stream, to make a pretence of boldness and bravery, when all the time you know you have the backing of conventional public opinion and mob-force behind you, is the cheapest of mock heroics. Chivalry to-day means the woman, right or wrong, just as patriotism to-day means “my country right or wrong.” In other words, chivalry to-day is only another name for Sentimental Feminism. Every outrageous pretension Of Sentimental Feminism can be justified by the appeal to chivalry, which amounts (to use the German expression) to an appeal from Pontius to Pilate. This Sentimental Feminism commonly called chivalry is sometimes impudently dubbed by its votaries, “manliness.” It will presumably continue in its practical effects until a sufficient minority of sensible men will have the moral courage to beard a Feminist public opinion and shed a little of this sort of “manliness.” The plucky Welshmen at Llandystwmdwy in their dealings with the suffragette rowdies on memorable occasion showed themselves capable of doing this. In fact one good effect generally of militant suffragetteism seems to be the weakening of the notion of chivalry – i.e. in its modern sense of Sentimental Feminism – amongst the populace of this country. The combination of Sentimental Feminism with its invocation of the old-world sentiment of chivalry which was based essentially on the assumption of the mental, moral and physical inferiority of woman to man, for its justification, with the pretensions of modern Political Feminism, is simply grotesque in its inconsistent absurdity. In this way Modern Feminism would fain achieve the feat of eating its cake and having it too. 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! 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. The plea of physical weakness, if such be entertained, is here in most cases purely irrelevant. Thus, as regards the commutation of the death sentence, the question of the muscular strength or weakness of the condemned person does not come in at all. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to many other forms of criminal punishment. But it must not be forgotten that there are two aspects of physical strength or weakness. There is, as we have already pointed out, the muscular

298 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) aspect and the constitutional aspect. If we concede the female sex as essentially and inherently weaker in muscular power and development than the male, this by no means involves the assumption that woman is constitutionally weaker than man. On the contrary, it is a known fact attested, as far as I am aware, by all physiologists, no less than by common observation, that the constitutional toughness and power of endurance of woman in general far exceeds that of man, as explained in an earlier chapter. This resilient power of the system, its capacity for enduring strain, it may here be remarked in passing, is by no means necessarily a characteristic of a specially high stage of organic evolution. We find it indeed in many orders of invertebrate animals in striking forms. Be this as it may, however, the existence of this greater constitutional strength or resistant power in the female than in the male organic system – as crucially instanced by the markedly greater death-rate of boys than of girls in infancy and early childhood – should, in respect of severity of punishment, prison treatment, etc., be a strong counter-argument against the plea for leniency, or immunity in the case of female criminals, made by the advocates of Sentimental Feminism. But these considerations afford only one more illustration of the utter irrationality of the whole movement of Sentimental Feminism identified with the notion of “chivalry.” For the rest, we may find illustrations of this galore. A very flagrant case is that infamous “rule of the sea” which came so much into prominence at the time of the Titanic disaster. Recording to this preposterous “chivalric” Feminism, in the case of a ship foundering, it is the unwritten law of the seas, not that the passengers shall leave the ship and be rescued in their order as they come, but that the whole female portion shall have the right of being rescued before any man is allowed to leave the ship. Now this abominable piece of sex favouritism, on the face of it, cries aloud in its irrational injustice. Here is no question of bodily strength or weakness, either muscular or constitutional. In this respect, for the nonce, all are on a level. But it is a case of life itself. A number of poor wretches are doomed to a watery grave, simply and solely because they have not had the luck to be born of the privileged female sex. Such is “chivalry” as understood to-day – the deprivation, the robbery from men of the most elementary personal rights in order to endow women with privileges at the expense of men. During the ages of chivalry and for long after it was not so. Law and custom then was the same for men as for women in its incidence. To quote the familiar proverb in a slightly altered form, then – “what was sauce for the gander was sauce for the goose.” Not until the nineteenth century did this state of things change. Then for the first time the law began to respect persons and to distinguish in favour of sex. Even taking the matter on the conventional ground of weakness and granting, for the sake of argument, the relative muscular weakness of the female as ground for her being allowed the immunity claimed by Modern Feminists of the sentimental school, the distinction is altogether lost sight of between weakness as such and aggressive weakness. Now I submit

299 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader there is a very considerable difference between what is due to weakness that is harmless and unprovocative, and weakness that is aggressive , still more when this aggressive weakness presumes on itself as weakness, and on the consideration extended to it, in order to become tyrannical and oppressive. Weakness as such assuredly deserves all consideration, but aggressive weakness deserves none save to be crushed beneath the iron heel of strength. Woman at the present day has been encouraged by a Feminist public opinion to become meanly aggressive under the protection of her weakness. She has been encouraged to forge her gift of weakness into a weapon of tyranny against man, unwitting that in so doing she has deprived her weakness of all just claim to consideration or even to toleration.

Chapter VI. Some Feminist Lies and Fallacies BY Feminist lies I understand false statements put forward by persons, many of whom should be perfectly well aware that they are false, apparently with the deliberate intention of misleading public opinion as to the real position of woman before the law. By fallacies I understand statements doubtless dictated by Feminist prepossessions or Feminist bias, but not necessarily suggesting conscious or deliberate mala fides. Of the first order, the statements are made apparently with intentional dishonesty in so far as many of the persons making them are concerned, since we may reasonably suppose them to have intelligence and knowledge enough to be aware that they are contrary to fact. The talk about the wife being a chattel, for example, is so palpably absurd in the face of the existing law that it is nowadays scarcely worth making (although we do hear it occasionally even now). But it was not even true under the old common law of England, which, for certain disabilities on the one hand, conceded to the wife certain corresponding privileges on the other. The law of husband and wife, as modified by statute in the course of the nineteenth century, as I have often enough had occasion to point out, is a monument of legalised tyranny over the husband in the interests of the wife. If in the face of the facts the word chattel, as applied to the wife, has become a little too preposterous even for Feminist controversial methods, there is another falsehood scarcely less brazen that we hear from Feminist fanatics every day. The wife, we are told, is the only unpaid servant! A more blatant lie could scarcely be imagined. As every educated person possessing the slightest acquaintance with the laws of England knows, the law requires the husband to maintain his wife in a manner according with his own social position; has, in other words, to feed, clothe and afford her all reasonable luxuries, which the law, with a view to the economic standing of the husband, regards as necessaries. This although the husband has no claim on the wife’s property or income, however wealthy she may be. Furthermore, it need scarcely be said, a servant who is inefficient, lazy, or otherwise intolerable, can be dismissed or her wage can be lowered. Not so that privileged person, the

300 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) legally wedded wife. It matters not whether she perform her duties well, badly, indifferently, or not at all, the husband’s legal obligations remain just the same. It will be seen, therefore, that the wife in any case receives from the husband economic advantages compared with which the wages of the most highly paid servant in existence are a mere pauper’s pittance. This talk we hear ad nauseum, from the Feminist side, of the wife being an “unpaid servant,” is typical of the whole Feminist agitation. We find the same deliberate and unscrupulous dishonesty characterising it throughout. Facts are not merely perverted or exaggerated, they are simply turned upside down. Another statement commonly made is that women’s lower wages as compared with men’s is the result of not possessing the parliamentary franchise. Now this statement, though not perhaps bearing on its face the wilful deception characterising the one just mentioned, is not any the less a perversion of economic fact, and we can hardly regard it otherwise than as intentional. It is quite clear that up to date the wages of men have not been raised by legislation, and yet sections of the working classes have possessed the franchise at least since 1867. What legislation has done for the men has been simply to remove obstacles in the way of industrial organisation on the part of the workman in freeing the trade unions from disabilities, and even this was begun, owing to working- class pressure from outside, long before – as long ago as the twenties of the last century under the auspices of Joseph Hume and Francis Place. Now women’s unions enjoy precisely the same freedom as men’s unions, and nothing stands in the way of working women organising and agitating for higher wages. Those who talk of the franchise as being necessary for working women in order to obtain equal industrial and economic advantages with working men must realise perfectly well that they are performing the oratorical operation colloquially known as “talking through their hat.” The reasons why the wages of women workers are lower than those of men, whatever else may be their grounds, and these are, I think, pretty obvious, clearly are not traceable to anything which the concession of the franchise would remove. If it be suggested that a law could be enacted compulsorily enforcing equal rates of payment for women as for men, what the result would be the merest tyro in such matters can foresee – to wit, that it would mean the wholesale displacement of female by male labour over large branches of industry, and this, we imagine, is not precisely what the advocates of female suffrage are desirous of effecting. Male labour, owing to its greater efficiency and other causes, being generally preferred by employers to female labour, it is not likely that, even for the sake of female beaux yeux, they are going to accept female labour in the place of male, on an equal wage basis. All this, of course, is quite apart from the question referred to on a previous page, as to the economic responsibilities in the interests of women, which our Feminist law-makers have saddled on the man – namely, the responsibility of the husband, and the husband alone, for the

301 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader maintenance of his wife and family, obligations from anything corresponding to which the female sex is wholly free. In a leaflet issued by the “Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage” it is affirmed that many laws are on the statute book which inflict injustice on Women. We challenge this statement as an unmitigated falsehood. Its makers ought to know perfectly well that they cannot justify it. There are no laws on the statute book inflicting injustice on women as a Sex, but there are many laws inflicting injustice on men in the supposed interests of women. The worn-out tag which has so long done duty with Feminists in this connection – viz. the rule of the Divorce Court, that in order to procure divorce a wife has to prove cruelty as well as adultery on the part of a husband, whereas a husband has to prove adultery alone on the part of a wife – has already been dealt with and its rottenness as a specimen of a grievance sufficiently exposed in this work and elsewhere by the present writer. Is what the authors of the leaflet may possibly have in their mind (if they have anything at all) when they talk about statutes inflicting injustice on women, that the law does not carry sex vindictiveness against men far enough to please them! With all its flogging, penal servitude, hard labour and the rest, for offences against women, some of them of a comparatively trivial kind, does the law as regards severity on men not even yet satisfy the ferocious Feminist souls of the members of the “Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage”? This is the only explanation of the statement in question other than that it is sheer bald bluff designed to mislead those ignorant of the law. Another flagrant falsehood perpetually being dinned into our ears by the suffragists is the statement that women have to obey the same laws as men. The conclusion drawn from this false statement is, of course, that since they have to obey these laws equally with men, they have an equal claim with men to take part in the making or the modifying of them. Now without pausing to consider the fallacy underlying the conclusion, we would point out that it is sufficient for our present purpose to call attention to the falsity of the initial assumption itself. It needs only one who follows current events and reads his newspaper with impartial mind to see that to allege that women have to, in the true sense of the words ( i.e. are compelled to), obey the same laws as men is a glaringly mendacious statement. It unnecessary in this place to go over once more the mass of`evidence comprised in previous writings of my own – e.g. in the pamphlet, The Legal Subjection of Man (Twentieth Century Press), in the article, A Creature of Privilege (Fortnightly Review, November 1911), and elsewhere in the present volume, illustrating the unquestionable fact that though in theory women may have to obey the law as men have, yet in practice they are absolved from all the more serious consequences men have to suffer when they disobey it. The treatment recently accorded to the suffragettes for crimes such as wilful damage and arson, not to speak of their previous prison treatment when convicted for obstruction, disturbance and

302 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) minor police misdemeanours, is a proof, writ large, of the mendacity of the statement that women no less than men have to obey the laws of the country, so far, that is, as any real meaning is attached to this phrase. Another suffragist lie which is invariably allowed to pass muster by default, save for an occasional protest by the present writer, is the assumption that the English law draws a distinction as regards prison treatment, etc., as between political and non- political offenders. Everyone with even the most elementary legal knowledge is aware that no such distinction has ever been recognised or suggested by the English law – at least until the prison ordinance made quite recently, expressly to please the suffragettes, by Mr Winston Churchill when Home Secretary. However desirable many may consider such a distinction to be, nothing is more indubitable than the fact that it has never previously obtained in the letter or practice of the law of England. And yet, without a word of contradiction from those who know better, arguments and protests galore have been fabricated on the suffragist side, based solely on this impudently false assumption. Misdemeanours and crimes at common law when wilfully committed, have in all countries always remained misdemeanours and crimes, whatever motive can be conveniently put forward to account for them. A political offence has always meant the expression of opinions or the advocacy of measures or acts (not of the nature of common law crimes) which are in contravention of the existing law – e.g. a “libel” on the constituted authorities of the State, or the forcible disregard of a law or police regulation in hindrance of the right of public speech or meeting. This is what is meant by political offence in any country recognising such as a special class of offence entitling those committing it to special treatment. This is so where the matter refers to the internal legislation of the country. Where the question of extradition comes in the definition of political offence is, of course, wider. Take the extreme case, that of the assassination of a ruler or functionary, especially in a despotic State, where free Press and the free expression of opinion generally do not exist. This is undoubtedly a political, not a common law offence, in so far as other countries are concerned, and hence the perpetrator of such a deed has the right to claim immunity, on this ground, from extradition. The position assumable is, that under despotic conditions the progressive man is at war with the despot and those exercising authority under him; therefore, in killing the despot or the repositories of despotic authority, he is striking directly at the enemy. It would, however, be absurd for the agent in a deed of this sort to expect special political treatment within the jurisdiction of the State itself immediately concerned. As a matter of fact he never does so. Fancy a Russian Nihilist, when brought to trial, whining that he is a political offender and hence to be exempted from all harsh treatment! No, the Nihilist has too much self- respect to make himself ridiculous in this way. Hardly even the maddest Terrorist Anarchist would make such a claim. For example, the French

303 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader law recognises the distinction between political and common law offences. But for all this the bande tragique, Bonnet and his associates, did not receive any benefit from the distinction or even claim to do so, though otherwise they were loud enough in proclaiming the political motives inspiring them. Even as regards extradition, running amuck at large, setting fire promiscuously to private buildings or injuring the ordinary non-political citizen, as a “protest,” would not legally come into the category of political offences and hence protect their authors from being surrendered as ordinary criminals. The real fact, of course, is that all this talk on the part of suffragettes and their backers about “political” offences and “political” prison treatment is only a mean and underhand way of trying to secure special sex privileges under false pretences. Those who talk the loudest in the strain in question know this perfectly well. These falsehoods are dangerous, in spite of what one would think ought to be their obvious character as such, by reason of the psychological fact that you only require to repeat a lie often enough, provided you are uncontradicted, in order for the aforesaid lie to be received as established truth by the mass of mankind (“mostly fools,” as Carlyle had it). It is a preposterous claim, I contend, that any misdemeanour and a fortiori any felony has, law apart, and even from a merely ethical point of view, any claim to special consideration and leniency on the bare declaration of the felon or misdemeanant that it had been dictated by political motive. In no country, at any time, has the mere assertion of political motive been held to bring an ordinary crime within the sphere of treatment of political offences. According to the legal and ethical logic of the suffragettes, it is perfectly open for them to set on fire theatres, churches and houses, and even to shoot down the harmless passer-by in the street, and claim the treatment of first-class misdemeanants on the ground that the act was done as a protest against some political grievance under which they imagined themselves to be labouring. The absurdity of the suggestion is evident on its mere statement. And yet the above preposterous assumption has been suffered equally with the one last noted to pass virtually without protest, and what is more serious, it has been acted upon by the authorities as though it were indubitably sound law as well as sound ethics! It may be pointed out that what has cost many an Irish Fenian in the old days, and many a Terrorist Anarchist at a later date, a sentence of penal servitude for life, can be indulged in by modern suffragettes at the expense of a few weeks’ imprisonment in the first or second division. Of course, this whole talk of “political offences,” when they are, on the face of them, mere common crimes, is purely and simply a trick designed to shield the cowardly and contemptible female creatures who perpetrate these senseless and dastardly outrages from the punishment they deserve and would receive if they had not the good fortune to be of the privileged sex. In the case of men this impudent nonsense would, of course, never have been put forward, and, if it had, would have been summarily laughed out of court. That it should

304 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) be necessary to point out these things in so many words is a striking illustration of the moral and intellectual atrophy produced by Feminism in the public mind. There is another falsehood we often hear by way of condoning the infamous outrages of the suffragettes. The excuse is often offered when the illogical pointlessness of the “militant” methods of the modern suffragette are in question: “Oh! men have also done the same things: men have used violence to attain political ends!” Now the fallacy involved in this retort is plain enough. It may be perfectly true that men have used violence to attain their ends on occasion. But to assert this fact in the connection in question is purely irrelevant. There is violence and violence. It is absolutely false to say that men have ever adopted purposeless and inane violence as a policy. The violence of men has always had an intelligible relation to the ends they had in view, either proximate or ultimate. They pulled down Hyde Park railings in 1866. Good! But why was this? Because they wanted to hold a meeting, and found the park closed against them, the destruction of the railings being the only means of gaining access to the park. Again, the Reform Bill riots of 1831 were at least all directed against Government property and governmental persons – that is, the enemy with whom they were at war. In most cases, as at Bristol and Nottingham, there was (as in that of the Hyde Park railings) a very definite and immediate object in the violence and destruction committed – namely, the release of persons imprisoned for the part they had taken in the Reform movement, by the destruction of the gaols where they were confined. What conceivable analogy have these things with a policy of destroying private property, setting fire to tea pavilions, burning boat-builders’ stock-in-trade, destroying private houses, poisoning pet dogs, upsetting jockeys, defacing people’s correspondence, including the postal orders of the poor, mutilating books in a college library, pictures in a public gallery, etc., etc.? And all these, bien entendu, not openly and in course of a riot, but furtively, in the pursuit of a deliberately premeditated policy! Have, I ask, men ever, in the course of the world’s history, committed mean, futile and dastardly crimes such as these in pursuit of any political or public end? There can be but one answer to this question. Every reader must know that there is no analogy whatever between suffragettes’ “militancy” and the violence and crimes of which men may have been guilty. Even the Terrorist Anarchist, however wrong-headed he may be, and however much his deeds may be deemed morally reprehensible, is at least logical in his actions, in so far as the latter have always had some definite bearing on his political ends and were not mere senseless “running amuck.” The utterly disconnected, meaningless and wanton character signalising the policy of the “militant” suffragettes would of itself suffice to furnish a conclusive argument for the incapacity of the female intellect to think logically or politically, and hence against the concession to women of public powers, political, judicial or otherwise.

305 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Another fallacy analogous to the preceding, inasmuch as it seeks to counterbalance female defects and weaknesses by the false allegation of corresponding deficiencies in men, is the Feminist retort sometimes heard when the question of hysteria in women is raised: “Oh! men can also suffer from hysteria!” This has been already dealt with in an earlier chapter, but for the sake of completing the list of prominent Feminist fallacies I restate it concisely here. Now as we have seen it is exceedingly doubtful whether this statement is true in any sense whatever. There are eminent authorities who would deny that men ever have true hysteria. There are others, of course, again, who would extend the term hysteria so as to include every form of neurasthenic disturbance. The question is largely, with many persons who discuss the subject, one of terminology. It suffices here to cut short quibbling on this score. For the nonce, let us drop the word hysteria and formulate the matter as follows: – Women are frequently subject to a pathological mental condition, differing in different cases but offering certain well-marked features in common, a condition which seldom, if ever, occurs in men. This I take to be an incontrovertible proposition based upon experience which will be admitted by every impartial person. Now the existence of the so-called hysterical man I have hitherto found to be attested on personal experience solely by certain Feminist medical practitioners who allege that they have met with him in their consulting-rooms. His existence is thus vouchsafed for just as the reality of the sea-serpent is vouchsafed for by certain sea captains or other ancient mariners. Far be it from me to impugn the ability, still less the integrity, of these worthy persons. But in either case I may have my doubts as to the accuracy of their observation or of their diagnosis. It may be that the sea-serpent exists and it may be that hysteria is at times discoverable in male persons. But while a conclusive proof of the discovery of a single sea- serpent of the orthodox pattern would go far to justify the yarn of the ancient mariner, the proof of the occurrence, in an occasional case, of hysteria in men, would not by far justify the implied contention that hysteria is not essentially a female malady. If hysterical men are as common a phenomenon as certain hard-pressed Feminists would make out, what I want to know is: Where are they? While we come upon symptoms which would be commonly attributed to hysteria in well- nigh every second or third woman of whose life we have any intimate knowledge, how often do we find in men symptoms in any way resembling these! In my own experience I have come across but two cases of men giving indications of a temperament in any way analogous to that of the “hysterical woman.” After all, the experience of the average layman, and in this I contend my own is more or less typical, is more important in the case of a malady manifesting itself in symptoms obvious to common observation, such as the one we are considering, than that of the medical practitioner, who by reason of his profession would be especially likely to see such, if there were any at all, however few they might be. The possibility, moreover, at least suggests itself, that the latter may often mistake for hysteria (using the word in the sense commonly applied to the

306 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) symptoms presented by women) symptoms resulting from general neurasthenia or even from purely extraneous causes, such as alcohol, drugs, etc. That this is sometimes the case is hardly open to question. That the pathological mental symptoms referred to as prevalent in the female, whether we attribute them to hysteria or not, are rarely if ever found in the male sex is an undoubted fact. The rose, it is said, is as sweet by any other name, and whether we term these affections symptoms of hysteria, or describe them as hysteria itself, or deny that they have anything to go with “true hysteria,” their existence and frequency in the female sex remains nevertheless a fact. No! whether some of the symptoms of hysteria, “true” or “so-called,” are occasionally to be found in men or not, every impartial person must admit: that they are extremely rare, whereas as regards certain pathological mental symptoms, common in women and popularly identified (rightly or wrongly) with hysteria, there is, I contend, little evidence of their occurring in men at all. Wriggle and prevaricate as they may, it is impossible for Suffragists and Feminists to successfully evade the undoubted truth that the mentality of women is characterised constitutionally by a general instability, manifesting itself in pathological symptoms radically differing in nature and in frequency from any that obtain in men. Very conspicuous among the fallacies that have done yeoman service in the Feminist Movement is the assumption that women are constitutionally the “weaker sex.” This has also been discussed by us in Chapter II., but the latter may again be supplemented here by a few further remarks, so deeply rooted is this fallacy in public opinion. The reason of the unquestioned acceptance of the assumption is partly due to a confusion of two things under one name. The terms, “bodily strength” and “bodily weakness” cover two distinct facts. The attribution of greater bodily weakness to the female sex than to the male undoubtedly expresses a truth, but no less does the attribution of greater bodily strength to the female than to the male sex equally express a truth. In size, weight and muscular development, average man has an unquestionable, and in most cases enormous, advantage over average woman. It is in this sense that the bodily structure of the human female can with some show of justice be described as frail. On the other hand, as regards tenacity of life, recuperative power and what we may term toughness of constitution, woman is without doubt considerably stronger than man. Now this vigour of constitution may, of course, also be described as bodily strength, and to this confusion the assumption of the general frailty of the female bodily organism as compared with the male has acquired general currency in the popular mind. The most carefully controlled and reliable statistics of the Registrar-General and other sources show the enormously greater mortality of men than of women at all ages and under all conditions of life. Under the age of five the evidence shows that 120 boys die to every 100 girls. In adult life the Registrar-General shows that diseases of the chest are the cause of

307 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader nearly 40 per cent of more deaths among men than among women. That violence and accident should be the occasion of 150 per cent more deaths amongst men than women is accounted for, partly, at least, by the greater exposure of men, although the enormous disparity would lead one to suspect that here also the inferior resisting power in the male constitution plays a not inconsiderable part in the result. The report of the medical officer to the Local Government Board proves that between the ages of fifty- five and sixty-five there is a startling difference in numbers between the deaths of men and those of women. The details for the year 1910 are as follows:-

Diseases Male Females Nervous system 1614 1240 Heart 5762 5336 Blood vessels 3424 3298 Respiratory system 3110 2473 Digestive system 1769 1681 Kidneys, etc. 2241 1488 Acute infections 2259 1164 Violent deaths 1624 436

Various additional causes, connected with the more active and anxious life of men, the greater strain to which they are subjected, their greater exposure alike to infection and to accident, may explain a certain percentage of the excessive death-rate of the male population as opposed to the female, yet these explanations, even allowing the utmost possible latitude to them, really only touch the fringe of the difference, with the single exception of deaths from violence and accident above alluded to, where liability and exposure may account for a somewhat larger percentage. The great cause of the discrepancy remains, without doubt, the enormously greater potentiality of resistance, in other words of constitutional strength, in the female bodily organism as compared with the male. We must now deal at some length with a fallacy of some importance, owing to the apparatus of learning with which it has been set forth, to be found in Mr Lester F. Ward’s book, entitled Pure Sociology, notwithstanding that its fallacious nature is plain enough when analysed. Mr Ward terms his speculation the “Gynœcocentric Theory,” by which he understands apparently the Feminist dogma of the supreme importance of the female in the scheme of humanity and nature generally. His arguments are largely drawn from general biology, especially that of inferior organisms. He traces the various processes of reproduction in the lower departments of organic nature, subdivision, germination, budding,

308 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) etc., up to the earlier forms of bi-sexuality, culminating in conjugation or true sexual union. His standpoint he thus states in the terms of biological origins: “Although reproduction and sex are two distinct things, and although a creature that reproduces without sex cannot properly be called either male or female, still so completely have these conceptions become blended in the popular mind that a creature which actually brings forth offspring out of its own body, is instinctively classed as female. The female is the fertile sex, and whatever is fertile is looked upon as female. Assuredly it would be absurd to look upon an organism propagating sexually as male. Biologists have proceeded from this popular standpoint and regularly speak of ‘mother cells,’ and ‘daughter cells.’ It, therefore, does no violence to language or to science to say that life begins with the female organism and is carried on a long distance by means of females alone. In all the different forms of a-sexual reproduction, from fission to parthenogenesis, the female may in this sense be said to exist alone and perform all the functions of life, including reproduction. In a word, life begins as female.” In the above remarks it will be seen that Mr Ward, so to say, jumps the claim of a-sexual organisms to be considered as female. This, in itself a somewhat questionable proceeding, serves him as a starting-point for his theory. The a-sexual female (?), he observes, is not only primarily the original sex, but continues throughout, the main trunk, though afterwards the male element is added “for the purposes of fertilisation.” “Among millions of humble creatures,” says Mr Ward, “the male is simply and solely a fertiliser.” The writer goes on in his efforts to belittle the male sex in the sphere of biology. “The gigantic female spider and the tiny male fertiliser, the Mantis insect with its similarly large and ferocious female, bees, and mosquitoes,” all are pressed into the service. Even the vegetable kingdom, in so far as it shows signs of sex differentiation, is brought into the lists in favour of his theory of female supremacy, or “gynæcocentricism,” as he terms it. This theory may be briefly stated as follows: – In the earliest organisms displaying sex differentiation, it is the female which represents the organism proper, the rudimentary male existing solely for the purpose of the fertilisation of the female. This applies to most of the lower forms of life in which the differentiation of sex obtains, and in many insects, the Mantis being one of the cases specially insisted upon by our author. The process of the development of the male sex is by means of the sexual selection of the female. From being a mere fertilising agent, gradually, as evolution proceeds, it assumes the form and characteristics of an independent organism like the original female trunk organism. But the latter continues to maintain its supremacy in the life of the species, by means chiefly of sexual selection, until the human period, i.e. more or less(!), for Mr Ward is bound to admit signs of male superiority in the higher vertebrates – viz. birds and mammals. This superiority manifests itself in size, strength, ornamentation, alertness, etc. But it is with man,

309 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader with the advent of the reasoning faculty, and, as a consequence, of human supremacy, that it becomes first unmistakably manifest. This superiority, Mr Ward contends, has been developed under the ægis of the sexual selection of the female, and enabled cruel and wicked man to subject and enslave down- trodden and oppressed woman, who has thus been crushed by a Frankenstein of her own creation. Although in various earlier phases of human organisation woman still maintains her social supremacy, this state of affairs soon changes. Androcracy establishes itself, and woman is reduced to the role of breeding the race and of being the servant of man. Thus she has remained throughout the periods of the higher barbarism and of civilisation. Our author regards the lowest point of what he terms the degradation of woman to have been reached in the past, and the last two centuries as having witnessed a movement in the opposite direction – namely, towards the emancipation of woman and equality between the sexes. (Cf. Pure Sociology, chap.xiv., and especially pp. 290-377.) The above is a brief, but, I think, not unfair skeleton statement of the theory which Mr Lester Ward has elaborated in the work above referred to, in great detail and with immense wealth of illustration. But now I ask, granting the correctness of Mr Ward’s biological premises and the accuracy of his exposition, and I am not specialist enough to be capable of criticising these in detail: What does it all amount to? The “business end” (as the Americans would say) of the whole theory, it is quite evident, is to afford a plausible and scientific basis for the Modern Feminist Movement, and thus to further its practical pretensions. What Mr Ward terms the androcentric theory, at least as regards man and the higher vertebrates, which is on the face of it supported by the facts of human experience and has been accepted well- nigh unanimously up to quite recent times, is, according to him, all wrong. The male element in the universe of living things is not the element of primary importance, and the female element the secondary, but the converse is the case. For this contention Mr Ward, as already pointed out, has, by dint of his biological learning, succeeded at least in making out a case in so far as lower forms of life are concerned. He has, however, to admit – a fatal admission surely – that evolution has tended progressively to break down the superiority of the female (by means, as he contends, of her own sexual selection) and to transfer sex supremacy to the male, according to Mr Ward, hitherto a secondary being, and that this tendency becomes very obvious in most species of birds and mammals. With the rise of man, however, out of the pithecanthropos, the homosynosis, or by whatever other designation we may call the intermediate organism between the purely animal and the purely human, and the consequent supersession of instinct as the dominant form of intelligence by reason, the question of superiority, as Mr Ward candidly admits, is no longer doubtful, and upon the unquestionable superiority of the male, in due course of time, follows the unquestioned supremacy. It is clear then that, granting the biological premises of our author that the lowest sexual organisms are virtually female and that in the hermaphrodites the female

310 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) element predominates; that in the earliest forms of bi-sexuality the fertilising or male element was merely an offshoot of the female trunk and that this offshoot develops, mainly by means of sexual selection on the part of the female, into an organism similar to the latter; that not until we reach the higher vertebrates, the birds and the mammals, do we find any traces of male superiority; and that this superiority only becomes definite and obvious, leading to male domination, in the human species – granting all this, I say, what argument can be founded upon it in support of the equal value physically, intellectually and morally of the female sex in human society, or the desirability of its possessing equal political power with men in such society? On the contrary, Mr Ward’s whole exposition, with his biological facts of illustration, would seem to point rather in the opposite direction. We seem surely to have here, if Mr Ward’s premises be accepted as to the primitive insignificance of the male element – at first overshadowed and dominated by the female stem, but gradually evolving in importance, character and fruition, till we arrive at man the highest product of evolution up to date – a powerful argument for anti-Feminism. On Mr Ward’s own showing, we find that incontestible superiority, both in size and power of body and brain, has manifested itself in Androcracy, when the female is relegated, in the natural course of things, to the function of child-bearing. This, it can hardly be denied, is simply one more instance of the general process of evolution, whereby the higher being is evolved from the lower, at first weak and dependent upon its parent, the latter remaining dominant until the new being reaches maturity, when in its turn it becomes supreme, while that out of which it developed, and of which it was first the mere offshoot, falls into the background and becomes in its turn subordinate to its own product. Let us turn now to another scientific fallacy, the result of a good man struggling with adversity – i.e. a sound and honest scientific investigator, but one who, at the same time, is either himself obsessed with the principles of Feminism as with a religious dogma, or else is nervously afraid of offending others who are. His attitude reminds one of nothing so much as that of the orthodox geologist of the first half of the nineteenth century, who wrote in mortal fear of incurring the odium theologicum by his exposition of the facts of geology, and who was therefore nervously anxious to persuade his readers that the facts in question did not clash with the Mosaic cosmogony as given in the Book of Genesis. With Mr Havelock Ellis in his work, Man and Woman, it is not the dogma of Biblical infallibility that he is concerned to defend, but a more modern dogma, that of female equality, so dear to the heart of the Modern Feminist. Mr Ellis’s efforts to evade the consequences of the scientific truths he honestly proclaims are almost pathetic. One cannot help noticing, after his exposition of some fact that goes dead against the sex-equality theory as contended for by Feminists, the eagerness with which he hastens to add some qualifying statement tending to show that after all it is not so incompatible with the Feminist dogma as it might appear at first sight.

311 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader The pièce de résistance, however, of Mr Havelock Ellis is contained in his “conclusion.” The author has for his problem to get over the obvious incompatibility of the truth he has himself abundantly demonstrated in the course of his book, that the woman-type, in every respect, physiological and psychological, approaches the child-type, while the man-type, in its proper progress towards maturity, increasingly diverges from it. The obvious implication of this fact is surely plain, on the principle of the development of the individual being a shorthand reproduction of the evolution of the species, or, to express it in scientific phraseology, of ontogeny being the abbreviated recapitulation of the stages presented by philogeny. If we proceed on this well- accredited and otherwise universally accepted principle of biology, the inference is clear enough – to wit, that woman is, as Herbert Spencer and others have pointed out, simply “undeveloped man” – in other words, that Woman represents a lower stage of evolution than Man. Now this would obviously not at all suit the book of Mr Ellis’s Feminism. Explained away it has to be in some fashion or other. So our author is driven to the daring expedient of throwing overboard one of the best established generalisations of modern biology, and boldly declaring that the principle contained therein is reversed (we suppose “for this occasion only”) in the case of Man. In this way he is enabled to postulate a theory consoling to the Feminist soul, which affirms that adult man is nearer in point of development to his pre-human ancestor than either the child or the woman! The physiological and psychological analogies observable between the child and the savage, and even, especially in early childhood, between the child and the lower mammalian types – analogies which, notably in the life of instinct and passion, are traceable readily also in the human female – all these count for nothing; they are not dreamt of in Mr Ellis’s Feminist philosophy. The Modern Feminist dogma requires that woman should be recognised as equal in every respect (except in muscular strength) with man, and if possible, as rather superior to him. If Nature has not worked on Feminist lines, as common observation and scientific research alike testify on the face of things, naughty Nature must be “corrected,” in theory, at least, by the ingenuity of Feminist savants of the degraded male persuasion. To this end we must square our scientific hypotheses! The startling theory of Mr Havelock Ellis, which must seem, one would think, to all impartial persons, so out of accord with all the acknowledged laws and facts of biological science, appears to the present writer, it must be confessed, the very reductio ad absurdum of Feminist controversial perversity. I will conclude this chapter on Feminist Lies and Fallacies with a fallacy of false analogy or false illustration, according as we may choose to term it. This quasi-argument was recently put forward in a defence speech by one of the prisoners in a suffragette trial and was subsequently repeated by George Bernard Shaw in a letter to The Times. Put briefly, the point attempted to be made is as follows: – Apostrophising men, it is said:

312 The Fraud of Feminism (1913) “How would you like it if the historical relations of the sexes were reversed, if the making and the administrating of the laws and the whole power of the State were in the hands of women? Would not you revolt in such a condition of affairs?” Now to this quasi-argument the reply is sufficiently clear. The moral intended to be conveyed in the hypothetical question put, is that women have just as much right to object to men’s domination, as men would have to object to women’s domination. But it is plain that the point of the whole question resides in a petitio principii – to wit, in the assumption that those challenged admit equal intellectual capacity and equal moral stability as between the average woman and the average man. Failing this assumption the challenge becomes senseless and futile. If we ignore mental and moral differences it is only a question of degree as to when we are landed in obvious absurdity. In Gulliver’s Travels we have a picture of society in which horses ruled the roost, and lorded it over human beings. In this satire Swift in effect put the question: “How would you humans like to be treated by horses as inferiors, just as horses are treated by you to-day?” I am, be it remembered, not instituting any comparison between the two cases, beyond pointing out that the argument as an argument is intrinsically the same in both.

313 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

Chapter VII. The Psychology of the Movement WE have already spoken of two strains in Modern Feminism which, although commonly found together, are nevertheless intrinsically distinguishable. The first I have termed Sentimental Feminism and the second Political Feminism. Sentimental Feminism is in the main an extension and emotional elaboration of the old notion of chivalry, a notion which in the period when it was supposed to have been at its zenith, certainly played a very much smaller part in human affairs than it does in its extended and metamorphosed form in the present day. We have already analysed in a former chapter the notion of chivalry. Taken in its most general and barest form it represents the consideration for weakness which is very apt to degenerate into a worship of mere weakness. La faiblesse prime le droit is not necessarily nearer justice than la force prime le droit; although to hear much of the talk in the present day one would imagine that the inherent right of the weak to oppress the strong were a first principle of eternal rectitude. But the theory of chivalry is scarcely invoked in the present day save in the interests of one particular form of weakness – viz. the woman as the muscularly weaker sex, and here it has acquired an utterly different character.43 Chivalry, as understood by Modern Sentimental Feminism, means unlimited licence for women in their relations with men, and unlimited coercion for men in their relations with women. 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. It never seems to strike anyone that the muscular weakness of woman has been forged by Modern Feminists into an abominable weapon of tyranny. Under cover of the notion of chivalry, as understood by Modern Feminism, Political and Sentimental Feminists alike would deprive men of the most elementary rights of self-defence against women and would exonerate the latter practically from all punishment for the most dastardly crimes against men. They know they can rely upon the support of the sentimental section of public opinion with some such parrot cry of’ “What! Hit a woman!”

43 As regards this point it should be remarked that mediæval chivalry tolerated (as Wharton expressed it in his History of Poetry) “the grossest indecencies and obscenities between the sexes,” such things as modern puritanism would stigmatise with such words as “unchivalrous,” “unmanly” and the like. The resemblance between the modern worship of women and the relations of the mediæval knight to the female sex is very thin indeed. Modern claims to immunity for women from the criminal law and mediæval chivalry are quite different things. 314 Chapter VII. The Psychology of the Movement Why not, if she molests you? “Treat a woman in this way!” “Shame!” responds automatically the crowd of Sentimental Feminist idiots, oblivious of the fact that the real shame lies in their endorsement of an iniquitous sex privilege. If the same crowd were prepared to condemn any special form of punishment or mode of treatment as inhumane for both sexes alike, there would, of course, be nothing to be said. But it is not so. The most savage cruelty and vindictive animosity towards men leaves them comparatively cold, at most evoking a mild remonstrance as against the inflated manifestation of sentimental horror and frothy indignation produced by any slight hardship inflicted by way of punishment (let us say) on a female offender. The psychology of Sentimental Feminism generally is intimately bound up with the curious phenomenon of the hatred of men by their own sex as such. With women, in spite of what is sometimes alleged, one does not find this phenomenon of anti-sex. On the contrary, nowadays we are in presence of a powerful female sex-solidarity indicating the beginnings of a strong sex-league of women against men. But with men, as already said, in all cases of conflict between the sexes, we are met with a callous indifference, alternating with positive hostility towards their fellow-men, which seems at times to kill in them all sense of justice. This is complemented on the other side by an imbecile softness towards the female sex in general which reminds one of nothing so much as of the maudlin bonhomie of the amiable drunkard. This besotted indulgence, as before noted, is proof even against the outraged sense of injury to property. As we all know, offences against property, as a rule, are those the average bourgeois is least inclined to condone, yet we have recently seen a campaign of deliberate wanton destruction by arson and other means, directed expressly against private property, which nevertheless the respectable propertied bourgeois, the man of law and order, has taken pretty much “lying down.” Let us suppose another case. Let us imagine an anarchist agitation, with a known centre and known leaders, a centre from which daily outrages were deliberately planned by these leaders and carried out by their emissaries, all, bien entendu, of the male persuasion. Now what attitude does the reader suppose “public opinion” of the propertied classes would adopt towards the miscreants who were responsible for these acts? Can he not picture to himself the furious indignation, the rabid diatribes, the advocacy of hanging, flogging, penal servitude for life, as the minimum punishment, followed by panic legislation on these lines, which would ensue as a consequence. Yet of such threatenings and slaughter, where suffragettes who imitate the policy of the Terrorist Anarchist are concerned, we hear not a sound. The respectable propertied bourgeois, the man of law and order, will, it is true, probably condemn these outrages in an academic way, but there is an undernote of hesitancy which damps down the fire of his indignation. There is no vindictiveness, no note of atrocity

315 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader in his expostulations; nay, he is even prepared, on occasion, to argue the question, while maintaining the impropriety, the foolishness, the “unwomanliness” of setting fire to empty houses, cutting up golf links, destroying correspondence, smashing windows and the like. But of fiery indignation, of lurid advocacy of barbaric punishments, or of ferocity in general, we have not a trace. On the contrary, a certain willingness to admit and even to emphasise the disinterestedness of these female criminals is observable. As regards this last point, we must again insist on what was pointed out on a previous page, that the disinterestedness and unselfishness of many a male bomb-throwing anarchist who has come in for the righteous bourgeois’ sternest indignation, are, at least, as unquestionable as those of the female house- burners and window-smashers. Moreover the anarchist, however wrong-headed he may have been in his action, as once before remarked, it must not be forgotten, had at least for the goal of his endeavours, not merely the acquirement of a vote, but the revolution which he conceived would abolish human misery and raise humanity to a higher level. 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. 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. As we indicated above, not only is the sense of esprit de corps entirely absent among modern men as regards their own sex, while strongly present in modern women, but this negative characteristic has become positive on the other side. Thus the modern sex problem presents us with a reversal of the ordinary sociological law of the solidarity of those possessing common interests. It remains to consider the psychological explanation of this fact. Why should men so conspicuously prefer the interests of women before those of their own sex? That this is the case with modern man the history of the legislation of the last fifty years shows, and the undoubted fact may be found further illustrated in the newspaper reports of well-nigh every trial, whether at civil or criminal law, quite apart from the ordinary “chivalric” acts of men in the detail of social life. This question of sex, therefore, as before said, forms the solitary exception to the general law of the esprit de corps of those possessing common characteristics and interests. It cannot be adequately explained by a reference to the evolution of sex functions and relations from primitive man onwards, since it is at least in the extreme form we see it to-day, a comparatively recent social phenomenon. The theory of the sacrosanctity of women by virtue of their sex, quite apart from their character and

316 Chapter VII. The Psychology of the Movement conduct as individuals, scarcely dates back farther than a century, even from its beginnings. The earlier chivalry, where it obtained at all, applied only to the woman who presented what were conceived of as the ideal moral feminine characteristics in some appreciable degree. The mere physical fact of sex was never for a moment regarded as of itself sufficient to entitle the woman to any special homage, consideration, or immunity, over and above the man. No one suggested that the female criminal was less guilty or more excusable than the male criminal. No one believed that a woman had a vested right to rob or swindle a man because she had had sexual relations with him. This notion of the mere fact of sex – of femality – as of itself constituting a title to special privileges and immunities, apart from any other consideration, is a product of very recent times. In treating this question, in so far as it bears on the criminal law, it is important to distinguish carefully between the softening of the whole system of punishment due to the general development of humanitarian tendencies and the special discrimination made in favour of the female sex. These two things are very often inadequately distinguished from one another. Punishment may have become more humane where men are concerned, it may have advanced up to a certain point in this direction, but its character is not essentially changed. As regards women, however, the whole conception of criminal punishment and penal discipline has altered. Sex privilege has been now definitely established as a principle. Now a complete investigation of the psychology of this curious phenomenon we have been considering – namely, the hatred so common with men for their fellow-men as a sex – is a task which has never yet been properly taken in hand. Its obverse side is to be seen on all hands in the conferring and confirming of sex prerogative on women. Not very long ago, as we have seen, one of its most striking manifestations came strongly under public notice – namely, the “rule of the sea,” by which women, by virtue of their sex, can claim to be saved from a sinking ship before men. The fact that the laws and practices in which this man- hatred and woman-preference find expression are contrary to every elementary sense of justice, in many cases conflict with public policy, and can obviously be seen to be purely arbitrary, matters not. The majority of men feel no sense of the injustice although they may admit the fact of the injustice, when categorically questioned. They are prepared when it comes to the point to let public policy go by the board rather than entrench upon the sacred privilege and immunity of the female; while as to the arbitrary and unreasoning nature of the aforesaid laws and practices, not being troubled with a logical conscience, this does not affect them. I must confess to being unequal to the task of accurately fathoming the psychological condition of the average man who hates man in general and loves woman in general to the extent of going contrary to so many apparently basal tendencies of human nature as we know it otherwise. The reply, of course, will be an appeal to the power of the sexual instinct. But this, I must again repeat, will not explain the rise, or, if not the rise, at least the marked expansion of the sentiment in question during the last three generations or

317 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader thereabouts. Even apart from this, while I am well aware of the power of sexual love to effect anything in the mind of man as regards its individual object, I submit it is difficult to conceive how it can influence so strongly men’s attitude towards women they have not seen, or, even where they have seen them, when there is no question of sexual attraction, or, again, as regards the collectivity of women – the abstract category, Woman (in general). We have already dealt with the Anti-man campaign in the Press, especially in modern novels and plays. This, as we have remarked, often takes the form of direct abuse of husbands and lovers and the attempt to make them look ridiculous as a foil to the brilliant qualities of wives and sweethearts. But we sometimes find the mere laudation of woman herself, apart from any direct anti-manism, assume the character of an intellectual emetic. A much-admired contemporary novelist, depicting a wedding ceremony in fashionable society circles, describes the feelings of his hero, a young man disgusted with the hollowness and vanity of “Society” and all its ways, as follows:– “The bride was opposite him now, and by an instinct of common chivalry he turned away his eyes; it seemed to him a shame to look at that downcast head above the silver mystery of her perfect raiment; the modest head full, doubtless, of devotion and pure yearnings; the stately head where no such thought as ‘How am I looking this day of all days, before all London?’ had ever entered: the proud head, where no such fear as, ‘How am I carrying it off?’ could surely be besmirching ... He saw below the surface of this drama played before his eyes; and set his face, as a man might who found himself assisting at a sacrifice.” Now, I ask, can it be believed that the writer of the above flamboyant feminist fustian is a novelist and playwright of established reputation who undoubtedly has done good work. The obvious criticism must surely strike every reader that it is somewhat strange that this divinely innocent creature he glorifies should arise straight out of a milieu which is shown up as the embodiment of hollowness and conventional superficiality. If men can lay the butter on thick in their laudation of womanhood, female idolaters of their own sex can fairly outbid them. At the time of writing there has just come under my notice a dithyramb in the journal, The Clarion, by Miss Winnifred Blatchford, on the sacrosanct perfections of womanhood in general, especially as exemplified in the suicidal exploits of the late lamented Emily Wilding Davidson of Epsom fame, and a diatribe on the purity, beauty and unapproachable glory of woman. According to this lady, the glory of womanhood seems to extend to every part of the female organism, but, we are told, is especially manifested in the hair (oozing into the roots apparently). Evidently there is something especially sacred in woman’s hair! This prose ode to Woman, as exemplified in Emily Davidson, culminates in the invocation: “Will the day ever come when a woman’s life will be rated higher ... than that of a jockey?”

318 Chapter VII. The Psychology of the Movement Poor jockey! We will trust not, though present appearances do indicate a strong tendency to regard a woman as possessing the prerogatives of the sacred cow of Indian or ancient Egyptian fame! It is impossible to read or hear any discussion on, say, the marriage laws, without it being apparent that the female side of the question is the one element of the problem which is considered worthy of attention. The undoubted iniquity of our existing marriage laws is always spoken of as an injustice to the woman and the changes in the direction of greater freedom which are advocated as a relief to the wife bound to a bad or otherwise unendurable husband. That the converse case may happen, that that reviled and despised thing, a husband, may also have reason to desire relief from a wife whose angelic qualities and vast superiority to his own vile male self he fails to appreciate, never seems to enter into the calculation at all. That no satisfactory formulation of the psychology of the movement of Feminism has yet been offered is undoubtedly true. For the moment, I take it, all we can do is co-ordinate the fact as a case of what we may term social hypnotism, of those waves of feeling uninfluenced by reason which are a phenomenon so common in history – witchcraft manias, flagellant fanaticisms, religious “revivals,” and similar social upheavals. The belief that woman is oppressed by man, and that the need for remedying that oppression at all costs is urgent, partly, at least, doubtless belongs to this order of phenomena. That this feeling is widespread and held in various degrees of intensity by large numbers of persons, men no less than women, is not to be denied. That it is of the nature of a hypnotic wave of sentiment, uninfluenced by reason, is shown by the fact that argument does not seem to touch it. You may show conclusively that facts are opposed to the assumption; that, so far from women being oppressed, the very contrary is the case; that the existing law and its administration is in no essential respect whatever unfavourable to women, but, on the contrary, is, as a whole, grossly unfair to men – it is all to no purpose. Your remonstrances, in the main, fall on deaf ears, or, shall we say, they fall off the mind coated with Feminist sentiment as water falls from the proverbial duck’s back. The facts are ignored and the sentiment prevails; the same old catchwords, the same lies and threadbare fallacies are repeated. The fact that they have been shown to be false counts for nothing. The hypnotic wave of sentiment sweeps reason aside and compels men to believe that woman is oppressed and man the oppressor, and believe it they will. If facts are against the idée fixe of the hypnotic suggestion, so much the worse for the facts. Thus far the Feminist dogma of the oppression of the female sex. As regards the obverse side of this Sentimental Feminism which issues in ferocious sex- laws directed against men for offences against women – laws enacting barbarous tortures, such as the “cat,” and which are ordered with gusto in all their severity in our criminal courts – this probably is largely traceable to the influence of Sadic lusts. An agitation such

319 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader as that which led to the passing of the White Slave Traffic Act, so-called, of 1812, is started, an agitation engineered largely by the inverted libidinousness of social purity mongers, and on the crest of this agitation the votaries of Sadic cruelty have their innings. The foolish Sentimental Feminist at large, whose indignation against wicked man is fanned to fury by bogus tales and his judgment captured by representations of the severities requisite to stamp out the evil he is assured is so widespread, lends his fatuous support to the measures proposed. The judicial Bench is, of course, delighted at the increase of power given it over the prisoner in the dock, and should any of the puisnes happen to have Sadic proclivities they are as happy as horses in clover and the “cat” flourishes like a green bay tree. 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. This is its avowed basis. With modern notions of universal suffrage it is declared that the exclusion of women from the franchise is logically incompatible. If you include in the parliamentary voting lists all sorts and conditions of men, it is said, it is plainly a violation of the principle of democracy to exclude more than one half of the adult population from the polls. As Mill used to say in his advocacy of female suffrage, so long as the franchise was restricted to a very small section of the population, there may have been nothing noteworthy in the exclusion of women. But now that the mass of men are entitled to the vote and the avowed aim of democracy is to extend it to all men, the refusal to extend it still further to women is an anomaly and a manifest inconsistency. But in this, Mill, and others who have used his argument, omitted to consider one very vital point. The extensions of the suffrage, such as have been demanded and in part obtained by democracy up to the present agitation, have always referred to the removal of class barriers, wealth barriers, race barriers, etc. – in a word, social barriers – but never to the removal of barriers based on deep-lying organic difference – i.e. barriers determining not sociological but biological distinctions. The case of sex is unique in this connection, and this fact vitiates any analogy between the extension of suffrage to women and its extension to fresh social strata such as democracy has hitherto had in view, terminating in the manhood suffrage which is the ultimate goal of all political democrats. Now sex constitutes an organic or biological difference, just as a species constitutes another and (of course) a stronger biological difference. Hence I contend the mere fact of this difference rules out the bare appeal to the principle of democracy per se as an argument in favour of the extension of the suffrage to women. There is, I submit, no parity between the principle and practice of democracy as hitherto understood, and the new extension proposed to be given to the franchise by the inclusion of women within its pale. And yet there is no question but that the apparent but delusive demand of logical consistency in this question, has influenced and still influences many an honest democrat in his attitude in this matter.

320 Chapter VII. The Psychology of the Movement But although the recognition of the difference of sex as being an organic difference and therefore radically other than social differences of caste, class, wealth, or even race, undoubtedly invalidates the appeal to the democrat on the ground of consistency, to accept the principle of female suffrage, yet it does not necessarily dispose of the question. It merely leaves the ground free for the problem as to whether the organic distinction implied in sex does or does not involve corresponding intellectual and moral differences in the female sex which it is proposed to enfranchise; and furthermore whether such differences, if they exist, involve general inferiority, or at least an unfitness ad hoc for the exercise of political functions. These questions we have, I think, sufficiently discussed already in the present work. The fact of the existence of exceptionally able women in various departments, does undoubtedly mislead many men in their judgment as to the capacity of the average woman to “think politically,” or otherwise to show herself the effective equal of the average man, morally and intellectually. The reasons for answering this question in the negative we have already briefly indicated in the course of our investigations. This renders it unnecessary to discuss the matter any further here. 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. Thus, when the census was taken in 1911 and the Women’s Political and Social Union conceived, as they thought, the brilliant idea of annoying the authorities and vitiating the results of the census by refusing to allow themselves to be enrolled, one of the leaders, when interviewed on the point, gave her reason for her refusal to be included, in the following terms: – “I am not a citizen” (meaning that she did not possess the franchise) “and I am not going to pretend to be one.” The silliness of this observation is, of course, obvious, seeing that the franchise or even citizenship has nothing whatever to do with the census, which includes infants, besides criminals, lunatics, imbeciles, etc. Again, in a manifesto of the Women’s Political and Social Union defending window- smashing and other “militant” outrages, it was pointed out that the coal strike had caused more injury than the window-smashing and yet the strikers were not prosecuted as the window-smashers were – in other words, the exercise of the basal personal right of the free man to withhold his labour save under the conditions agreed to by him, is paralleled with criminal outrage against person and property! Again, some three or four years ago, when the Women’s Suffrage Bill had passed the Commons, on its being announced by the Government that for the remainder of the Session no further facilities could be given for private members’ Bills, save for those of a non-contentious character, one of these sapient females urged in the Press that, seeing that there were persons to be found in both the orthodox political camps who were in favour of female suffrage, therefore the Bill in question must be regarded as of a non-contentious character! Once more, a lady, writing a

321 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader few months ago to one of the weekly journals, remarked that though deliberate window- breaking, destruction of letters, and arson, might be illegal acts, yet that the punishing of them by imprisonment with hard labour, they being political offences, was also an illegal act, with the conclusion that the “militants” and the authorities, both alike having committed illegal acts, were “quits”! These choice specimens of suffragettes’ logic are given as throwing a significant light on the mental condition of women in the suffragette movement, and indirectly on female psychology generally. One would presumably suppose that the women who put them forward must have failed to see the exhibition they were making of themselves. That any human being out of an asylum, could have sunk to the depth of fatuous inconsequent idiocy they indicate would seem scarcely credible. Is the order of imbecility which the above and many similar utterances reflect, confined to suffragette intelligence alone, or does it point to radical inferiority of intellectual fibre, not in degree merely, but in kind, in the mental constitution of the human female generally! Certainly it is hard to think that any man, however low his intelligence, would be capable of making a fool of himself precisely in the way these women are continually doing in their attempts to defend their cause and their tactics. In the foregoing pages we have endeavoured to trace some of the leading strands of thought going to make up the Modern Feminist Movement. Sentimental Feminism clearly has its roots in sexual feeling, and in the tradition of chivalry, albeit the notion of chivalry has essentially changed in the course of its evolution. For the rest, Sentimental Feminism, with its double character of man-antipathy and woman-sympathy, as we see it to-day, has assumed the character of one of those psychopathic social phenomena which have so often recurred in history. It can only be explained, like the latter, as an hypnotic wave passing over society. As for Political Feminism, we have shown that this largely has its root in a fallacious application of the notion of democracy, partaking largely of the logical fallacy known technically as a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter. This logical fallacy of Political Feminism is, of course, reinforced and urged forward by Sentimental Feminism. As coming under the head of the psychology of the movement, we have also called attention to some curious phenomena of logical imbecility, noticeable in the utterances of educated women in the suffragette agitation.

Chapter VIII. The Indictment FEMINISM, or, as it is sometimes called, the emancipation of woman, as we know it in the present day, may be justifiably indicted as a gigantic fraud – a fraud in its general aim and a fraud alike in its methods of controversy and in its practical tactics. It is through and through disingenuous and dishonest. Modern Feminism has always professed to be a movement for

322 Chapter VII. The Psychology of the Movement political and social equality between the sexes. The claim for this equalising of position and rights in modern society is logically based upon the assumption of an essential equality in natural ability between the sexes. As to this, we have indicated in the preceding pages on broad lines, the grounds for regarding the foregoing assumption as false. But quite apart from this question, I contend the fraudulent nature of the present movement can readily be seen by showing it to be not merely based on false grounds, but directly and consciously fraudulent in its pretensions. It uniformly professes to aim at the placing of the sexes on a footing of social and political equality. A very little inquiry into its concrete demands suffices to show that its aim, so far from being equality, is the very reverse – viz. to bring about, with the aid of men themselves, as embodied in the forces of the State, a female ascendancy and a consolidation and extension of already existing female privileges. That this is so may be seen in general by the constant conjunction of Political and Sentimental Feminism in the same persons. It may be seen more particularly in detail, in the specific demands of Feminists. These demands, as formulated by suffragists as a reason why the vote is essential to the interests of women, amount to little if anything else than proposals for laws to enslave and browbeat men and to admit women to virtual if not actual immunity for all offences committed against men. It its enough to consult any suggestions for a woman’s “charter” in order to confirm what is here said. Such proposals invaribly suggest the sacrificing of man at every turn to woman.44 In the early eighties of the last century appeared a skit in the form of a novel from the pen of the late Sir Walter Besant, entitled The Revolt of Man, depicting the oppression of man under a Feminist regime, an oppression which ended in a revolt and the re-establishment of male supremacy. The ideas underlying this jeu d’esprit of the subjection of men would seem to be seriously entertained by the female leaders of the present woman’s movement. It is many years ago now since a minister holding one of the highest positions in the present Cabinet made the remark to me:– “The real object, you know, for which these women want the vote is simply to get rascally laws passed against men!”

44 This is arrived at by the clever trick of appealing to the modern theory of the equal mental capacity of the sexes when it is a question of political and economic rights and advantages for women, and of counterappealing to the traditional sentiment based on the belief in the inferiority of the female sex, when it is a question of legal and administrative privilege and consideration. The Feminist thus succeeds by his dexterity in the usually difficult feat of “getting it both ways” for his fair clients. 323 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Subsequent Feminist agitation has abundantly proved the truth of this observation. An illustration of the practical results of the modern woman’s movement is to be seen in the infamous White Slave Traffic Act of 1912 rushed through Parliament as a piece of panic legislation by dint of a campaign of sheer hard lying. The atrocity of this act has been sufficiently dealt with in a previous chapter.45 Other results of the inequality between the sexes so effectively urged by present-day Feminism, may be seen in the conduct of magistrates, judges and juries, in our courts civil and criminal. This has been already animadverted upon in the course of the present work, and illustrative cases given, as also in previous writings of the present author to which allusion has already been made. It is not too much to say that a man has practically no chance in the present day in a court of law, civil or criminal, of obtaining justice where a woman is in the case. The savage vindictiveness exhibited towards men, as displayed in the eagerness of judges to obtain, and the readiness of juries to return, convictions against men accused of crimes against women, on evidence which, in many cases, would not be good enough (to use the common phrase) to hang a dog on, with the inevitable ferocious sentence following conviction, may be witnessed on almost every occasion when such cases are up for trial. I have spoken of the eagerness of judges to obtain convictions. As an illustration of this sort of thing, the following may be given:– In the trial of a man for the murder of a woman, before Mr Justice Bucknill, which took place some time ago, it came out in evidence that the woman had violently and obscenely abused and threatened the man immediately before, in the presence of other persons. The jury were so impressed with the

45 There is one fortunate thing as regards these savage laws aimed at the suppression of certain crimes, and that is, as it would seem, they are never effective in achieving their purpose. As Mr Tighe Hopkins remarks, apropos of the torture of the “cat” (Wards of the State, p.203):– “The attempt to correct crime with crime has everywhere repaid us in the old properly disastrous way.” It would indeed be regrettable if it could be shown that penal laws of this kind were successful. Far better is it that the crimes of isolated individuals should continue than that crimes such as the cold-blooded infliction of torture and death committed at the behest of the State, as supposed to represent the whole of society, should attain their object, even though the object be the suppression of crimes of another kind perpetrated by the aforesaid individuals within society. The successful repression of crimes committed by individuals, by a crime committed by State authority, can only act as an encouragement to the State to continue its course of inflicting punishment which is itself a crime. 324 Chapter VII. The Psychology of the Movement evidence of unusually strong provocation that they hesitated whether it was not sufficient to reduce the crime to that of manslaughter, and, unable to agree offhand on a verdict of murder, asked the judge for further guidance. Their deliberations were, however, cut short by the judge, who remarked on the hesitation they had in arriving at their verdict, finally adding: “Only think, gentlemen, how you would view it had this been your own wife or sister who was cruelly done to death!” With the habitual obsequiousness of a British jury towards the occupant of the Bench, the gentlemen in question swallowed complacently the insult thrown at their wives and sisters in putting them in the same category with a foul strumpet, and promptly did what the judge obviously wanted of them – to wit, brought in a verdict of wilful murder. The cases on the obverse side, where the judge, by similar sentimental appeal, aims at procuring the acquittal of female prisoners notoriously guilty on the evidence, that palladium of rogues, the English law of libel, precludes me from referring to individually. As regards the disparity in punishment, however, we have an apt and recent illustration in the execution of the youth of nineteen, convicted on doubtful evidence of the murder of his sweetheart, and the reprieve of the woman convicted on her own admission of the murder of her paramour by soaking him in paraffin during his sleep and setting him alight! Another effect of the influence of Sentimental Feminism, is seen in crimes of the “unwritten law” description, the crime passionel of the French. The most atrocious and dastardly murders and other crimes of violence are condoned and even glorified if they can but be covered by the excuse that they are dictated by a desire to avenge a woman’s “honour” or to enable her to obtain the object of her wishes. The incident in Sir J.M. Barrie’s play of the lady who murders a man by throwing him out of a railway carriage over a dispute respecting the opening of a window, and gets acquitted on the excuse that her little girl had got a cold, represents a not exaggerated picture of “modern justice” – for women only! The outrageous application of the principles, if such you may call them, of Sentimental Feminism in this country in the case of the suffragettes, has made English justice and penal administration the laughing-stock of the world. But the way in which the crimes of the suffragettes have been dealt with, is after all only a slight exaggeration of the immunity from all the severer penalties of the law enjoyed by female convicts generally. This has been carried in the case of suffragette criminals to the utmost limits of absurdity. In fact, the deference exhibited towards these deliberate perpetrators of crimes of wanton destruction is sometimes comic, as in the case of the Richmond magistrate who rebuked the policeman-witness in an arson charge for omitting the “Miss” in referring to one of the female prisoners in the dock: as well as in the “high character” usually attributed to the perpetrators of these deeds of outrage and violence even by certain functionaries of Church and State. They did not speak

325 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader in this strain morebetoken, when mere male anarchists or Fenians were involved in difficulties with the law due to overzeal for their cause! The whole movement, it is quite evident, depends for its success, largely, at least, on the apathy of men. The bulk of men undoubtedly do not sympathise with the pretensions of the Feminist agitation, but the bulk of men are indifferent one way or the other. They do not take the Feminist Movement seriously. The bare notion of women, as such, being a danger to men as such, strikes them as absurd. 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 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. The feeling at the root of most men’s good-humoured patronage of, or indifference to, Modern Feminist claims, is roughly expressed in a remark of the late William Morris in replying to some animadversions of mine on the subject:– “What does it matter? A man ought to be always able to deal with a woman if necessary. Why, I could tackle a half dozen women at once for that matter!” This is a common attitude of mind on the subject among otherwise sane and sensible men. The absurdity of it is manifest when one considers that the issue of man versus woman as units of physical strength respectively, is purely irrelevant. It is not a question of the man tackling the woman or any number of women. It is the question of the whole force of the State tackling the man in favour of the woman. The prevalent idea in many men’s minds seems to be that of the State drawing a ring-fence around the disputant man and woman and letting them fight the matter out between themselves, which, to speak the language of the great geometer of antiquity – “is absurd.” 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. It is not content with respect for the ideal of good womanhood but it would fain place on a pedestal the mere fact of femalehood in itself. This is illustrated in a thousand ways. Thus while public opinion tolerates the most bestial and infamous forms of corporal punishment for men in gaols, it will regard the slight chastisement by the medical head of an institution for mental cases, of a girl who is admittedly obstinate and refractory rather than mentally afflicted in the ordinary sense of the term, as “degrading.” Again, in order to sustain its favourite thesis, the intellectual equality of woman with man, it resorts, whenever a plausible case presents itself, to its usual policy of the falsification of fact. Take the instance of Madame Curie. When radium was first discovered in the laboratory of the late Professor Curie we were told that the latter had made the discovery, it being at the same time mentioned that he possessed in his wife a valuable aid in his

326 Chapter VII. The Psychology of the Movement laboratory work. We were afterwards told that the discovery of radium was the joint work of both, the implication being that the honours were equally divided. Now, Feminist influence has succeeded in getting Madame Curie spoken of as herself the discoverer of radium! I venture to affirm that there is no evidence whatever for assuming that radium would ever have seen the light had the late Professor Curie not himself experimented in his laboratory, not to speak of his predecessor Becquerel. We have seen that Feminists are, in this country, at least, zealous in championing the Puritan view of sexual morality. Many of them, in the vehemence of their Anti-man crusade, look forward with relish to the opportunity they anticipate will be afforded them when women get the vote, of passing laws rigorously enforcing asceticism on men by means of severe penal enactments. All forms of indulgence (by men), sexual or otherwise, uncongenial to the puritanic mind, would be equally placed under the ban of the criminal law! Anyone desirous of testing the truth of the above statement has only to read the suffragette papers and other expositions of the gospel of Feminism as held by its most devoted advocates. One point should not be lost sight of, and that is the attitude of the Press. Almost all journals are ready to publish any argument in favour of the suffrage or of the other claims of the movement on behalf of women. In defiance of this fact, a prominent Feminist prelate some time ago, in a letter to The Times, alleged among the other so-called grievances of women at the present day, and apparently as in some sort a condonation of “militancy,” that the Press was closed to women anxious to air their grievances! A statement more directly the reverse of the truth could hardly have been made. Open any paper of general circulation – say any of the morning dailies – and you will find letters galore advocating the Feminist side of the question! According to my own observation, they are in the proportion of something like three or four in favour to one against. The fact is useless denying that this sex-agitation has every favour shown it by current “public opinion,” including even that of its opponents. Female “militants” of the suffrage have pleas urged in condonation of their criminal acts, such as their alleged “high character,” which would be laughed at, in the case of men – and yet they whine at being boycotted. The readiness, and almost eagerness, with which certain sections of British public opinion are ready to view favourably anything urged on behalf of female suffrage, is aptly illustrated by the well-known argument we so often hear when the existence of “militancy” is pointed out as a reason for withholding the suffrage – the argument, namely, as to the unfairness of refusing the franchise to numbers of peaceable and law-abiding women who are asking for it, because a relatively small section of women resort to criminal methods of emphasising their demand. Now let us examine the real interpretation of the facts. It is quite true that the majority of the women agitating for the suffrage at the present day are themselves non- militants. But what is and has been their attitude towards their militant sisters? Have they

327 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader ever repudiated the criminal tactics of the latter with the decision and even indignation one might reasonably have expected had they really regarded the campaign of violence and wanton outrage with strong disapprobation, not to say abhorrence? The answer must be a decided negative. At the very most they mildly rebuke the unwisdom of militant methods, blessing them, as it were, with faint blame, while, as a general rule, they will not go even so far as this, but are content, while graciously deigning to tell you that, although their own methods are not those of militancy, yet that they and the militants are alike working for the same end, notwithstanding they may differ as to the most effective methods of attaining it. The non-militant woman suffragist is always careful never to appear an anti-militant. Everyone can see that had the bulk of the so-called “peaceable and law-abiding” suffragists, to whose claims we are enjoined to give ear, honestly and resolutely set their faces against, and vigorously denounced, the criminal campaign, refusing to have anything to do with it or its authors, the campaign in question would have come to an end long ago. But no! this would not have suited the book of the “peaceable and law abiding” advocates of woman’s suffrage. Their aim has been, and is still, to run with the “militant” hare and hunt with the “peaceable and law-abiding” hounds. While themselves abstaining from any unlawful act they are perfectly willing and desirous that they and their movement shall reap all the advantages of advertisement and otherwise that may accrue from the militant policy. That the above is a true state of the case as regards the “peaceful and law-abiding” elements in the suffragist movement, which we are assured so largely outnumber the militant section, one would think must be plain to everyone, however obtuse, who has followed with attention the course of the present agitation. And yet there are fools of the male sex who consider seriously this preposterous plea of the injustice of refusing to concede the suffrage to a large number of “peaceable and law-abiding” women who are demanding it, because of the action of a small body of violent females – with whom, bien entendu, the aforesaid large body of “peaceable and law-abiding” women (while keeping themselves carefully aloof from active participation in militancy), do not pretend to conceal their sympathy! 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! The unsoundness of this view ought to be apparent to every unbiassed student of history, anthropology, and physiology. The Feminist prefers to see evidence of male oppression in the place woman has occupied in social and political life, rather than the natural consequence of her organic constitution, her secondary sexual characteristics, and the natural average inferiority which flows therefrom. As regards the personal relations between men and women, an impartial view of the case must inevitably lead to the conclusion that whatever else man in general may have on his conscience, no reasonable reproach lies to his score as regards his treatment

328 Chapter VII. The Psychology of the Movement of woman. The patience, forbearance, and kindliness, with which, from Socrates downwards, men as a rule have encountered the whims, the tempers, and the tantrums of their often unworthy womankind is indeed a marvel. But it is a still greater marvel that Modern Feminism in this, as in other things, should have succeeded in hocussing public opinion into the delusion that the exact opposite of the truth represents the real state of the case. This, however, is a marvel which runs through the history of the controversial exploits of the whole Feminist Movement. In the foregoing pages we have striven to unmask the shameless imposture which, in the main, this movement represents. We have tracked down one dishonest argument after another. We have pointed out how the thinnest and hollowest of subterfuges are allowed to pass muster, and even to become current coin, by dint of unrefuted reiteration. The Feminist trick of reversing the facts of the case, as, for example, the assertion that man-made law and its administration is unjust to women, and then raising a howl of indignation at the position of affairs they picture, such being, of course, the diametrical opposite of the real facts – all this has been exposed. In conclusion I can only express the hope that honest, straightforward men who have been bitten by Feminist wiles will take pause and reconsider their position. Whatever sentiment or sympathy they may have with the aims of the movement intrinsically, it ought to be not too much to expect them to view with contempt and abhorrence the mass of disingenuous falsehood and transparent subterfuge, which the votaries of Feminism systematically seek to palm off upon a public opinion – only too easily gullible in this matter – as true fact and valid argument. E. Belfort Bax

329 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader

The Woman Question and Marxian Historical Materialism (1918) E. Belfort Bax, The Woman Question and Marxian Historical Materialism, Justice, 19th December 1918, p.7. (review) Women as Sex Vendors, by R.B Tobias and Mary E. Marcy (Chicago, Kerr and Company), 50 cents. (Included in this volume at page. 333ff) In the little book before us the writers endeavour to explain the general position of women by a novel application of the economic theory of history. The privileged situation of woman socially and economically in our existing society, so often pointed out by the present writer, is freely admitted and often insisted upon by them, and their explanation of this phenomenon is that it is deducible from the fact that women are the monopolists of a saleable or barterable commodity necessary to the vast majority of men – viz., their sex. This it is which makes women on the average conservative. Even where not possessed of personal attraction they know they have an asset which on a push they can realise, and every fairly personable woman is in the position of the small shopkeeper who always cherishes the dear hope of some day carrying off one of the big prizes of retail trade, of seeing his small- shop develop into a Whiteley’s or a Harrod’s Stores. The theory is certainly ingenious, and there is doubtless a good deal to be said for it, but, like most applications of the famous formula of Marx, it will hardly, we fear, as here set forth, cover all the facts – though it undoubtedly will some. The structure and attitude of male emotion towards the opposite sex, for example, certainly plays a part in the result which can hardly be described as wholly economic. Meanwhile, it is refreshing to find a female writer (or writers) honest enough to admit freely and openly the true facts of the case, facts which completely knock the bottom out of the conventional feminist jeremiads on Man the tyrant and Woman the victim. The picture of American law (pages 47 to 52), throws a lurid light on the iniquitous privileging of women at the expense of men in the United States. While the man is bound hand and foot and may not even raise a finger in his own defence, the woman is practically free to commit any crime of which the victim is a man. The little work, it should be said, is based as regards its historical and anthropological side on Friedrich Engels’s well-known book Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privat-Eigenthums und des Staats. E.B.B.

330 The Helpless League. (1923)

The Helpless League. (1923) E. Belfort Bax, The Helpless League of Nations, Justice, 13 September 1923, p.1. We think no well-wisher of the League can deny that the course of affairs in the recent, or rather present – for it is not ended yet – dispute between Italy and Greece has abundantly justified the opinion expressed by the present writer three months ago. My critic, who maintained the sufficiency of moral force to enable the League to materialise its decisions, could apparently only furnish one concrete example in support of his argument. That example was the successful carrying through, as it seems of some peddling point the League had decided upon anent the ‘White Slave Traffic’. I ventured to point out at the time that this was of no significance whatever as against my contention. The much betrumpeted “White Slave Traffic,” which is only too plainly three parts a puritanical and feminist ‘stunt’ is not a question which can be worth the while of any Power great or small to raise trouble about. On the contrary, any measure which was alleged to tend to suppression of that “traffic” would be only too readily adopted, whether in itself good or bad, by any power seeking an easy way of showing its virtue. The Real Test for the League I maintained in my letter in Justice of May 31 last, in reply to Thomas, the question he gave was no test; the real test would come when a great Power, anxious to stir up a quarrel ultimately with a view to its own aggrandisement, was in the position of having its game spoilt by the League in performing the duty for which the latter had been created by the Covenant. Now we have it. The very first case of the kind which has arisen has resulted in the League being flouted by an aggressive power. Another body of no judicial standing in the matter, the Conference of the Ambassadors of the Allied Nations – including Italy, one of the Parties to the dispute – has, at the demand of Italy, taken the matter out of the hands of the League of Nations. What can the poor League do to assert its authority and guard its prestige from insult? Nothing at all. Had it a powerful backing in the shape of an armed force to be mobilised when necessary, Signor Mussolini would have thought a good many times before he acted as he has done, I am aware that the matter is not ended so long as Corfu remains occupied, and I am therefore fully prepared to await this event before final comment on the situation. However, I may say this. I hold it quite within the bounds of possibility, and perhaps even of a certain probability, that Mussolini may order the evacuation of Corfu within the next few weeks. But if he does so, it will not be out of any respect for the League of Nations or its decisions, but for other reasons, e.g., the desire not to have diplomatic difficulties with

331 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader England, or possibly owing to the suasion of M. Poincaré, who may be glad to use this question as a means of distracting attention from the Ruhr occupation and regaining to some extent English good opinion. It is not impossible, either, on the analogy of “Philip drunk and Philip sober” that Signor Mussolini, after his recent attack of jingoism, may himself begin to have his doubts as to the wisdom of risking war with the Little Entente backed up by the sympathies of large sections of European and American public opinion. The League Must Have a Force But whatever happens, I think events have sufficiently shown that however well intentioned and however superior in ability its leading men may be, relying upon the armour and weapons of spirit alone, and utterly devoid of material force behind it, the League of Nations is hopeless for practical purposes on all great issues. It may still continue to regulate the “White Slave Traffic,” the importation of cocaine and such like questions; but for larger questions involving peace or war and the international status of nations, I submit that, as matters stand at present, it will prove helpless and hopeless, and will, in fact, inevitably suggest, the bold hero that uttered the fateful words: “Who dares this pair of boots displace, Shall meet Bombastes face to face.” E. Belfort Bax

332 R.B. Tobias and M.E. Marcy, Women as Sex Vendors (1918)

R.B. Tobias and M.E. Marcy, Women as Sex Vendors (1918) Note by the editor: this little book has been included in the present volume since Bax himself reviewed it and it is one of the few works which at least in part received his approval and in its testimony supports some of Bax views thereby providing proof today that Bax, while certainly holding a minority opinion which became all but extinct, nevertheless has not been an idiosyncratic one, and must not be easily waived by the post- modern reader based on the mere referral to post-modern orthodox beliefs. Women as Sex Vendors or Why Women are Conservative (being a view of the economic status of woman) by R. B. Tobias and Mary E. Marcy. Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Company Co-Operative.

Contents Chapter I: Why Women are Conservative Chapter II: Youth and Maid Chapter III: The Evolution of the Family Chapter IV: The Future

Chapter I: Why Women are Conservative We have often heard discussions of the reason we do not find women, as a sex, in the vanguard of world affairs; why the great educators, strong figures in progressive or revolutionary movements, are men rather than women; why these movements, themselves, are made up almost entirely of men rather than women. People have asked over and over again why, in the fields of the arts, the sciences, in the world of "practical affairs," men, rather than women, generally excel. We believe the answer lies in the fact that women, as a sex, are the owners of a commodity vitally necessary to the health and well-being of man. Women occupy a more fortunate biologic, and in many countries, a more fortunate economic position, in the increasingly intensified struggle for existence. And the preferred class, the biologically and economically favored class, or sex, has rarely been efficient-to-do, has never been revolutionary to attack a social system that accords advantage to it. As a sex, women have rarely been rebels or revolutionists. We do not see how they can ever be as long as there exists any system of exploitation to revolt against. Revolt comes from the

333 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader submerged, never from the group occupying a favored place. Today the revolutionist is he who has nothing to sell but his labor power. The skilled trade union group is least revolutionary among the workers. The best paid unions are not the most militant in acts calculated to improve the conditions of even their own group, and are least aggressive in conduct for improving the conditions of the whole working class. So long as they occupy a more favorable position in the industrial world, the trade unions will have something to conserve. They become conservative. We see the small, struggling farmers, who have probably very little to lose in this world save their debts and their mortgages, counting themselves in a class of possible property owners and small exploiters, and generally throwing their support into movements promising petty reforms, when nothing but the abolition, or downfall of the system of private ownership in the means of production and distribution, can possibly help them. The petty shop-keepers rail more against the "outrageously" high wages and the short hours of the skilled workers than against the large business organizations, like the packing interests, or the great monopolies, that hold them constantly on the edge of failure. Desperately and consistently, as they behold their competitors forced out in the irresistible march of centralization, they cling to their sinking ships, their small deceits and petty ideology in the hope of one day winning out against the terrific odds opposed to them, and landing high and dry in the capitalist class. No shoe dealer in the darkest side street of the smallest village but hopes some day to leave his dingy shop behind and to climb into the class economically above him. He counts himself a man of business, and thinks and acts and goes down to failure, individualistically. He hates and fears his competitors, ascribes most of his wrongs to them or to the highly paid skilled workers, and apes and envies the men whom he sees rising to wealth in the economic conflict. As a sex, women occupy a position similar to the petty shop-keeper, because they possess a commodity to sell or to barter. Men, as a sex, are buyers of, or barterers for, this commodity. The general attitude on this question of sex may be, and in fact usually is, wholly unconscious; but the fact remains that men and women meet each other, in the capitalist system, as buyers and sellers of, or barterers for, a commodity. Scarcely anybody recognizes this fact, and those who sense it fail to understand the inevitable result upon society and upon women themselves. There is no office or saloon scrub-woman so displeasing and decrepit, no stenographer so old and so unattractive, no dish-washer so sodden, that she does not know, tucked far away in her inner consciousness, perhaps, that, if the very worst comes and she loses her job, there is the truck driver or the

334 R.B. Tobias and M.E. Marcy, Women as Sex Vendors (1918) office clerk, the shaky-legged bar patron on the road to early locomotor ataxia, or the squint- eyed out-of-town salesman, who can be counted on to tide her over an emergency—usually for goods delivered. When a man is out of a job and broke, he is flat on his back. His appetites, his desires cry out for satisfaction exactly as they did when he had money in his pockets to pay for the satisfaction of these appetites and these desires. When a woman loses a job, she has always the sale of her sex to fall back upon as a last resort. Please understand that this is in no way a criticism of the conduct of women. We desire to lay no stigma upon them. We lay no stigma upon any class or sex or group, for down at bottom, men and women do what they do because they have to do it. The more we understand the economic and biological status of any group, the more we see they are compelled to act, under the circumstances, and in the environment they occupy, precisely as they do act. In the struggle for existence today the laurels are only to those who use any and all methods to save themselves. We only want to point out that women are able to save themselves because of their "favored" position in the biological world. Since economic interest and economic control are at the basis of all social institutions, we want to show some of the results of this sex monopoly possessed by women, and required by men. Every group which possesses anything which is necessary to the health and well-being of any other group, is bound to be pursued, wooed, bribed, paid. The monopolistic class, or sex, in turn, learns to withhold, to barter, to become "uncertain, coy and hard to please," to enhance and raise the price of her commodity, even though the economic basis of the transaction be utterly concealed or disguised. All this is exactly as natural and inevitable as a group of wage workers demanding all they can get in payment for their labor power, or the land-owner holding up the farm renters for all the tenants will bear, or the broker selling to the highest bidder. No one is to be blamed. The private possession of a commodity necessary to man, the lower cost of living for women, are the natural causes of lower wages for women than for men, and explains why women are actually able to live on lower wages, as a sex, than men. Few people speak frankly about sex matters today. And still fewer understand them and their economic basis. The subject of sex is clothed in pretense. We discuss women philosophically, idealistically, sometimes from the viewpoint of biology, but never from an economic and a biological standpoint, which is the only scientific basis from which to regard them.

335 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Everywhere in the animal world except among humankind, the male possesses the gay and attractive plumage, the color and form to please the eye. Naturally he should possess them. But this is not so in the world of man. Here we find the woman decorating herself in the colorful garb. Woman has ceased to ask, "Is he beautiful?" She asks "What does he own?" or, "How much can he pay?" Men love to dress their women in expensive clothes, to provide them with luxurious surroundings, because this advertises to the world the fact that they are able to purchase a superior, i. e., a higher priced commodity. Women give much time and spend money extravagantly in articles of conspicuous waste for the simple reason that by so doing they announce the fact that they are finer than other women, higher priced, of a fancier brand, possessed of better wares. Everybody knows that the office clerk who aspires to the affections of an artistically gowned, jewel decked young woman, often spends most of his wages upon her in the hope of winning her attention. His office associates may describe her as "fancy," or speak of her as "an expensive package." And so the twenty dollar-a-week clerk magnifies his "income" in order to bribe the young lady into "giving herself" to him in exchange for his name and some sort of life-long support, provided he can produce it. How many young wives have learned, to their chagrin, of the deceits thus practiced upon them by their husbands! Alas! The scenes that are enacted when it is discovered, after the ceremony, that the diamond engagement ring is not yet paid for, and that the mahogany furniture in the new flat so joyously selected by the young bride-elect, was bought upon the installment plan! That John earns only twenty dollars a week in the shipping room instead of the fifty a week he had declared, as assistant manager! Here the man has not paid as promised and every one feels that the woman has made a "bad bargain." On the other hand, women disguise the economic basis of the deal in every possible way; lie, cheat and compete in a life and death struggle with others of their sex. A thousand illusions, tricks, subtleties, hypocrisies are employed to cover the bald fact that wares are being displayed, are being bidden for by other men. The deal is smothered in chivalrous urbanities and sentimental verbiage. Unnumbered circumlocutions are resorted to, to conceal the salesmanship of one who has a commodity to sell.

Monogamy for Wives When certain strong men found themselves able to garner a larger share of property than their fellows, they rebelled against the communistic ownership of property, and the state, with the system of private ownership, was evolved, came into being to protect the private owners in their private ownership against the community, or the mass, which possessed no

336 R.B. Tobias and M.E. Marcy, Women as Sex Vendors (1918) private property. Wealthy men then began to desire to leave their fortunes to their own children and so the marriage system, with theoretical monogamy for both sexes and practical monogamy for wives, arose. Men of property then felt tolerably certain that their wealth would descend to their own sons and to the sons of no others. We are not inclined to believe this was due to the prevalence of any so-called paternal instinct. Paternal instinct is, we suspect, a minus, rather than a plus, quantity. It seems to us that fathers more often learn to love their children through following the conduct prescribed by good form and pretending to love them, or through love of display, pride or by association, than through any "natural tendency." The almost universality of the maternal instinct is proven by the peoples in the world today, for scarcely anybody would have a chance for existence if it were not for the care of the mothers. Generally the coming of children is a handicap to a woman in the market in which Nature and the present system have placed her. Where this is the case, it is here that society, customs and laws speak for the family, in ways built up, sometimes blindly, sometimes consciously, to preserve the species, and upon the old biological and economic foundations. It is generally granted that women with children are more conservative than women without children. We believe this is true only when they and their children are provided for. When a mother is left with no one to support her children, she becomes more predatory than other women in the pursuit of a new provider. Our jails and workhouses are full of unsuccessful mothers of this class, convicted of crimes against property. Mothers are conservative when their children are secure; more predatory when they are in want. Mothers often compete successfully in making their wares attractive and in binding the male by habits and associations that hold him and induce him to continue to pay. Among men, the possession of, and ability to support a woman in perpetuity, whom no other may touch, is honorific, a high sign of display. It announces to the world that such a man is able to hold a trophy in the struggle for existence. A monogamous wife is, in fact, an emblem of well-off-ness, and greatly to be desired. A man does not wish to be one among a corporation of men owning a woman any more than he desires to be owner of a sixth part of an automobile. Not because there is anything more intrinsically wrong in purchasing one-sixth than six-sixths, but because, in a world where the ownership of private property is the greatest of all good things, individual ownership denotes respectability, comfort, ability to buy outright. Hence we have monogamy for wives and mistresses in general, and polygamy for men.

337 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader For if it is honorific to possess one woman, it is still more proof of one's buying power to support half a dozen different establishments. Besides, biologically, a man may require many women for the satisfaction of his desires.

Chastity Why do young girls remain chaste before the importunities of their lovers and, perhaps, against their own desires, if not for the purpose of forcing or inducing them to offer the sure and permanent price of matrimony? Do not all respectable and well-meaning parents (and others not so respectable) seek gently to guide their daughters into safe matrimonial harbors where they barter themselves for a respectable meal-ticket, or an income, presumably, for life? They would be shocked beyond measure if you told them that back of all their exalted mummeries, they desired to see their daughters barter their sex for the highest and most enduring stake rather than to see them selling their labor or brain power for wages, or selling their sex on the installment, or retail plan, to the chance purchaser. Yet these are the facts. And it is this hope of bartering their sex privileges for permanent support and the title of "wife" that keeps the girls of the working class in the same category as the small shop- keeper. Nearly every ordinary woman under ninety hopes some day to find a man who will marry her and support her for the rest of her days. Instead of fitting herself for a trade or a profession, young women, and old women, devote their time to schemes for prevailing upon some man, to pay the ultimate price and marry them. And so women, not every individual, but as a sex, are ever individualistic, ever competing among themselves, ever displaying their wares, ever looking for a possible purchaser of the commodity they have to sell, ever endeavoring to keep the purchaser satisfied and willing to pay more. Human beings are human animals however much we may pretend to the contrary. In the rest of the animal world the fact of the mating season is frankly acknowledged. It has never been recognized among humankind within the period of written history. Is it possible that when women are released from economic and social coercion, this periodic mating instinct in the woman of the species may assert, or reassert, itself? Wives and mistresses often submit to their husbands or lovers only through fear of losing economic security to the ever alert competitor. It is certain that when all men and all women have gained individual economic opportunity and security, social institutions will change also. May it not be possible that the jealousies now prevalent, because of the economic import or the social standing that the private claim on the individual brings, may vanish also?

338 R.B. Tobias and M.E. Marcy, Women as Sex Vendors (1918) Which Is Superior? But do not imagine for a single moment that women are inferior to men. Biology has long since proven that daughters inherit the same natural tendencies from their fathers and their grandfathers, their mothers and their grandmothers that sons do. In the case of the girls it is only as it would be if the sons in a family all inherited a share in the monopoly of a commodity that half the human race requires. The son of your butcher may have all the nervous and intellectual capacities of Thomas Edison, or Dr. E. L. Thorndyke. Perhaps he has. But the economic environment in which he is born will give him small opportunity to so prove himself. Women are intellectually capable of all that men can do. They always will be because the paternal branch of the family bequeathes to its daughters the same natural tendencies and capacities that are the heritage of its sons. It is biologically impossible for sons to inherit the cumulative capacities of their fathers alone just as it is biologically impossible for the daughters to inherit from their mothers alone. So that, at birth, it appears that both sexes must remain on an equal footing so far as heredity is concerned. But the social and economic environment differentiates. Boys and girls learn to differ more than they differ physically at birth. We believe it is due to the fact that woman, biologically possessed of a necessary commodity, something to sell besides her labor power, leans and reckons upon this ownership, which prevents her, not individually, but as a sex, from taking an active and permanent part in the affairs and workshops of the world today. There are exceptions to the rule, of course. And often, unconsciously, perhaps, she seeks to excel in the fields occupied by the men who surround her, for the purpose of enhancing her wares. It is to be remembered that in nearly all phases of the relations between men and women, both are almost always at least partially unconscious of the economic basis of the bargain they make, although, legally, marriage is a contract. Here society and social institutions protect the possible future mothers of the race. We are in no way denying the existence of affection between the sexes. We see undoubted instances of self-sacrifice (in the economic sense) on the part of women everywhere. We are not gainsaying these. We only claim that the root of the relation of the sexes in America is today the economic basis of buyers and sellers of a commodity and that this basis of sex, sold as a commodity, affects every phase of our social life, and all of our social institutions, and that we fail to recognize these economic roots because of the leaves upon the social tree. Why, do you imagine, the woman who brings to a penniless husband, not only herself but a fortune as well, is looked down upon in many countries? Why is the woman of the streets,

339 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader who spends her sex earnings upon her lover, scorned universally? Is it not because both are unconsciously violating thecode, or the trade "understandings," in giving not only of themselves, but their substance as well? These women are selling below the market, or scabbing on the job.

Chapter II: Youth and Maid It is customary to speak of Youth as the period of rebellion or revolt. But to us it seems to be the normal age of conquest. Youth is the world's eternal and undaunted conqueror. No matter what the odds, no matter how slim the chances of success in any undertaking, Youth dares. Experience and wisdom know, fear and hesitate. Youth rushes in and—sometimes— finds a way. People speak of the colossal egotism of Youth. It is not egotism; it is unfathomable ignorance. The youth knows neither himself, the world nor his adversaries. He is unafraid because he does not know the strength of the forces he would conquer. But society learns from the threshings about of its individuals. And it is the young who thresh about. Mailed in their own ignorance, and propelled by their own marvelous energy, the young go forth to conquer. And so the world learns many things. Youth rebels only when it is thwarted in entering the lists and may then turn the flood of its activities into channels of rebellion or revolt against authority. The boy revolts when his father declines to permit him to accomplish the impossible, to invent, discover, explore, to overwhelm. It seems to him that if he received encouragement and help instead of censure at home, the son of the house would soon be recognized by the world as one of the Great Ones of the Earth. When he finds his talents unappreciated, he usually decides to write a book that will influence the whole future course of human events, or a novel that will alter dynasties and change social systems; or he decides to become a powerful political leader, or the silver- tongued orator of the times. Thwarted youth may aspire to become the world's greatest rebel, or the most heroic victim of despotic authority. Even in rebellion youth aspires to conquer the heights, though it be through the depths. A boy finds consolation in planning to become the world's greatest hero or martyr when he is thwarted in becoming an epoch-making inventor, or discoverer. This on the male side of the house. The daughter aspires to beauty, lovely clothes, charm, or to stardom on the theatrical or operatic stage, achievements and characteristics which mean popularity and the ultimate disposal of her wares to the highest available bidder.

340 R.B. Tobias and M.E. Marcy, Women as Sex Vendors (1918) Listen to a group of boys talking among themselves. You will probably add some useful knowledge to your mental equipment, for you will hear them discussing feats in civil engineering, problems in electricity, mechanics, physics, chemistry, surgery, as well as events in the world of sports. On the other hand, the conversations among girls are almost entirely on the subject of boys, men, clothes and the theatre. The psychology of the sexes in youth is totally different. The ideas of the average young man are those of one who expects to become some day a producer or at least a worker; the ideas of the average young woman are those of one who expects and intends (for here, too, Youth sees only personal victory) to rise into the leisure, non-producing or supported class. The small boy sent forth to play with his comrades with his hair done up in curls by a fond mama, would encounter the jeers of the whole neighborhood. From babyhood, the ribbons, curls, frills and silks are for the girls, who are thereby rendered deeply conscious of their appearance and taught above all things to keep themselves clean and "looking nice." Nothing is sacred from the invasion of small boys, who climb in, and under and over all obstacles to discover what makes the wheels go around, while the small girls sit about and take care of their clothes and learn to count them of supreme importance. And the matter of clothes is a vital one to the woman of today. Clothes are the frame that enhances the picture as well as its price tag; they are the carton wrapping the package in the show window, the case that best displays the jewel for sale within. All our social institutions encourage girls and young women, and all women up to the age of ninety, or more, in believing that it is the supreme good for a woman to make the best possible matrimonial bargain. On the stage, in our press, and pulpit, in the books and magazines produced for the consumption of the young people in this country, marriage is nearly always represented as the safe, ultimate and greatly-to-be-desired haven for a woman. Hence, young women, intent upon securing the best the world has to offer, rarely take any sort of work seriously. They regard jobs as merely temporary conveniences, or inconveniences. The wise employer hires ugly women stenographers, when he cannot afford to engage men, because he knows they usually possess more brains than their lovely sisters, and because they remain longer. The beautiful woman sees no need for intelligence nor for understanding because she has always been able to outstrip her less attractive competitors in making the best match and securing the rich husbands. And so her neurones rarely "connect," or react, except to stimuli pertaining to things that will enhance her charms and increase her selling price.

341 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader The young man expects to accomplish something in the world, to earn much money, or "high position," in order to be able to marry the most charming girl. The "most charming girl," if she be temporarily forced to earn her own living, expects to find somebody who will marry her, give her more luxuries than she has been accustomed to, and lift her far above her companions. She hopes to become a member of the leisure class even if she never attains it. Arnold Bennett says that men usually marry through the desire to mate, while women marry for economic reasons. It seems to us that this is often true. Women are potential parasites even if they never become real ones, and this is the gist of the matter we are discussing. Why are nearly all small farmers reactionary, individualistic, distrustful, competitive? Because they hope some day to become gentleman farmers. Why are most small business men narrow, egoistic, conservative? For the reason that they hope one day to become men of Big Business. The young woman in America today possesses the same psychology. Being young, she not only hopes, she expects, to rise into the leisure class when some young man asks her for the privilege of supporting her through life. We are making no claim that the lot of millions of housekeeping mothers, married to working men, is more enviable than is the condition of their husbands. We merely wish to point out that millions of women, potentially, actually, or psychologically, are "of the leisure class," and that fact andexpectation keep women, as a sex, allied to the forces of reaction. When a woman is competing in a life and death struggle among a score of other young women, to make a permanent legal bargain which entails the promise of an income or support for life, she has little leisure or energy to spare in making over, or revolutionizing the present social system. The mind of the average woman today is that of the petty shop-keeper. Entertaining, ofttimes, impossible dreams, these dreams, are, nevertheless, productive of a conservative and bourgeois ideology of a life of leisure and non-productiveness. It was the machine process in production that permitted the rise of a parasitical, or leisure, class. As long as both men and women were forced to produce things in order to live, an exploiting class, that lives off the labor of others, was impossible. But as spinning, weaving, canning, soap-making, butter, bread, candle, clothes-making and a hundred other functions formerly performed by women in the home, were absorbed into the factories, the young girls often followed the old task into the new plant. This was also true of the boys on the farms, who turned toward the cities and entered factories, where hogs were slaughtered, farm machines manufactured, or where shoes were made.

342 R.B. Tobias and M.E. Marcy, Women as Sex Vendors (1918) But the farm youths expected to become permanent producers in the shops and mills; they sought to become able to support a woman, and, perhaps, children. The girls entering the factories, on the other hand, did so to earn money to help pay their expenses at home until they married, or in order to buy gay and expensive clothes, unconsciously, perhaps, for advertising as well as decorative purposes.

Chapter III: The Evolution of the Family Undoubtedly the early savages drew together for self-protection against their forest enemies. And out of this necessity grew the love of society. Man became a gregarious animal. Promiscuity in sexual intercourse among these herds was another factor for holding the tribes, or groups together. In his "Origin of the Family," Frederick Engels says: "The development of the family is founded on the continual contraction of the circle, originally comprising the whole tribe, within which marital intercourse between both sexes was general. By the continual exclusion, first of near, then of ever remoter relatives, including finally even those who were simply related legally, all group marriage becomes practically impossible. At last only one couple, temporarily and loosely united, remains ... even from this we may infer how little the sexual love of the individual in the modern sense of the word had to do with the origin of monogamy." Any casual student of sociology can prove that marriage and the family have not always been what they are today. Lewis J. Morgan, in his well-known work, "Ancient Society," says: "When the fact is accepted that the family has passed through four successive forms, and is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether this form can be permanent in the future. The only answer that can be given is that it must advance as society advances, and change as society changes, even as it has done in the past. It is the creature of the social system and will reflect its culture." Engels says: "We have three main forms of the family, corresponding in general to the three main stages of human development. For savagery group marriage, for barbarism the pairing family, for civilization, monogamy supplemented by adultery and prostitution."

343 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader The Pairing Family "A certain pairing for a longer or shorter term took place even during the group marriage or still earlier. A man had his principal wife among other women, and he was to her the principal husband among others.... Such a habitual pairing would gain ground the more the gens developed and the more numerous the classes of "brothers" and "sisters" became who were not permitted to marry one another.... "By this increasing complication of marriage restrictions, group marriage became more and more impossible; it was displaced by the pairing family. "The communistic household, in which most or all the women belong to one and the same gens, while the husbands come from different gentes, is the cause and foundation of the general and widespread supremacy of women in primeval times. "It is one of the most absurd notions derived from eighteenth century enlightenment that in the beginning of society woman was the slave of man. Among all savages and barbarians of the lower and middle stages, sometimes even of the higher stage, women not only have freedom but are held in high esteem." In writing of the pairing family among the Iroquois, Arthur Wright says: "As to their families, at a time when they still lived in their old long houses (communistic households of several families) ... a certain clan (gens) always reigned so that the women chose their husbands from other clans. The female part generally ruled the house; the provisions were held in common; but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too indolent or too clumsy to contribute his share to the common stock. No matter how many children or how much private property he had in the house, he was liable at any moment to receive a hint to gather up his belongings and get out. And he could not dare to venture any resistance; the house was made too hot for him and he had no other choice but to return to his own clan or, as was mostly the case, to look for another wife in some other clan. The women were the dominating power in the clans and everywhere else." Bachofen discovered that in the communistic household, the supremacy of woman was caused by the fact that the women all belonged to the same gens while the men came from different gentes. During this period the children belonged to the same gens as the mother and took her name. At this time man's tools and weapons were yet crude and they were his only possession. The woman owned the household goods and utensils, the value of which for the preservation and preparation of food was very great.

344 R.B. Tobias and M.E. Marcy, Women as Sex Vendors (1918) Bachofen has shown how women were strong factors in the demand for monogamy through this and the earlier periods. Man learned to till the soil and to domesticate animals; he captured enemies from neighboring tribes and learned to make slaves instead of food of them. And the conqueror became a master, and the slave an instrument of production. It was the men who were lucky enough to be first to enslave the enemy, to acquire more precious metals and larger flocks, who evolved the state, to protect them against the commune, or the mass, in their ownership of private property. At the death of the father his own children were disinherited, in the matriarchy. As increasing wealth strengthened the position of man, he began to desire to overthrow the old maternal law and to establish a new one that would permit inheritance in favor of his children. And so monogamy became the law, and descent was traced by male instead of female lineage. Engels says that "the downfall of maternal law was the historic defeat of the female sex." In order to insure the faithfulness of the wife, and the reliability of paternal lineage, the women were given absolutely into the power of the men. Husbands had power of life and death over their wives. In certain countries today it is only the man who can dissolve the marriage bonds and cast off his wife. But gradually the old standards which were applied to men and women are changing. New laws are written on our statute books. Civil laws protectingmale rule apply only to the wealthy classes and their intercourse with the working class. In sex relations the sentiment, in America particularly, has swung around in favor of woman. Undoubtedly her growing economic independence, arising from her ability to support herself in shop and factory, has had some influence on this social attitude. Also, one can imagine the feelings of the tax-payers of a small community when the father of several small children deserted his wife and the expenses of supporting his family devolved upon them. It would call for little imagination to picture these respectable members of society scrambling to pass laws for the punishment of the errant one and to force him back to his wife and support-producing labor. But, basically, the legal favoritism which has arisen in the past thirty years in America, is probably due to a desire on the part of the employing class to protect and make secure the mothers of children for the sake of the future labor supply. Only recently a great national reform body, dedicated to child welfare, declared frankly that there are "no illegitimate" children; that the misdeeds of parents can remove nothing from the legality of birth and that unmarried mothers must be granted some legal status and a measure of economic security for the sake of the future supply of labor.

345 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader It is evident, whether due to one cause or to many, that the law, which usually protects those who possess bestowable favors, has gradually built up strong protective measures for women. Among the rich, men and women find protection for their property in the laws, according to the measure of their economic power, but among the wage working and middle classes, woman occupies a privileged legal position. As long as a husband possesses anything, his wife may be certain of support or an "adequate" income at least. The husband may be punished for his lack of possessions, or his failure to produce an income.

The Marriage Contract Of course, every one knows that marriage is a legal contract; but whom does it bind? Certainly not the woman, nor any woman in America. For she may easily free herself and even divorce and penalize her husband if she is dissatisfied either with him or his earnings; or she may evade all the obligations she is supposed to meet, almost always with absolute impunity. Whatever she may do or leave undone in the marriage relation, if it but be with sufficient pretense and discretion, in America, at least, the world and the courts absolve her from all blame. If she be discreet, she may entertain lovers galore; she may refuse to perform any of the theoretical duties of the home; she may refuse to bear children or to surrender to her husband, without censure, and often without the knowledge of the world. If she be addicted to drunkenness, people will divine that her husband must have treated her brutally; if she be seen with other men, folks suspect that he neglects her. If her husband seeks satisfaction for his desires elsewhere, she may divorce him and secure alimony; if he deserts her the law will return him to her side, if it can find him. If he fails to bring home the wherewithall to provide for her, she may have him sent to jail. If she discovers that he is getting the affection and the sex life which she has denied him, outside of his home, and if she buys a revolver and murders him in cold blood, the jury will exonerate her. If a wife deserts her husband and her children, the law does not make her a criminal; for wife abandonment, the husband is held criminally liable. No matter what the offense of the woman, custom and public opinion demand that every "decent" man permit his wife to accuse him on "just grounds" and to secure the divorce and call on the law to force him to pay her alimony for the rest of their natural lives.

346 R.B. Tobias and M.E. Marcy, Women as Sex Vendors (1918) No matter what the provocation, legally or sentimentally, no man can be exonerated for killing a woman. No matter how little the provocation, legally or sentimentally, any woman may kill almost any man, and the jury will render a verdict of Not Guilty. She has only to say that he "deceived her." A husband may become crippled or invalided and there is no law even suggesting that it is the duty of his wife to support him; most communities would lynch a man who neglected a sick or helpless wife, and the law would certainly deal most harshly with him. The law throws no safeguards about the man, to protect him against his wife's failure to live up to her theoretical marital obligations, to protect him when he is ill, or in the enjoyment of separate maintenance, alimony, or against non-support or abandonment. The laws today protect the owners of property and the economically powerful. The more economic power a group, or a class, or a sex possesses, the more the state throws the mantle of its protective laws about it. Women are owners of a commodity for which men are buyers or barterers, and our modern laws protect woman at the expense of man. In his "Origin of the Family," Engels says: "The supremacy of man in marriage is simply the consequence of his economic superiority and will fall with the abolition of the latter." In a large per cent of the American homes, man no longer possesses any economic superiority. He has four vital needs to satisfy while woman has only three, and woman possesses, for barter, for sale, or for gift, the wherewithall to satisfy one of these. Few men any longer possess any property worthy of the name; hence, they are forced to sell their labor power for wages to keep from starving. And men are not always able to secure jobs. The propertyless woman today is rarely reduced to starvation. If the price (or wages) offered for the sale of her laboring power are unsatisfactory, she may always supplement them through the barter or sale of her sex. That there are no women hoboes in the civilized world today is incontestable proof of the superiority of the economic status of woman over man.

Chapter IV: The Future We still hear people talk about the relations of the sexes, the family and marriage, as though these human and social relationships had always been and were bound to remain what they are today, whereas they have undergone far-reaching modifications within the period of our own lives.

347 The E. Belfort Bax Antifeminism Reader Every change taking place in industry is always bound to send out infinite ramifications through every branch of our social institutions. The increasing specialization in industry, drawing more and more of the household arts out of the home and into factory, mill and shops, and the following of the jobs by women into the mills and factories, thus freeing woman from economic dependence on man, has already colored every branch of our social fabric. Having become more independent, woman has grown more exacting. She demands a better bargain when she marries, or, refusing to barter, she chooses a mate. In the early days of America, when the home was the economic unit, and almost all industry was performed in the home and on the farm, women were economically dependent on men. Then woman's place was undoubtedly in the home, since there was no place else where she could earn a living. Modern industry has changed all that. Women compete for jobs with men today, force down wages to a lower level and demand more from men before they will marry. And yet we see $25.00 a week stenographers giving up their positions to barter themselves, presumably for life, to $35.00 a week clerks or salesmen, rarely because of the mating instinct, but usually because of the personal triumph this means in the competition between members of the sex, and the social approbation which marriage brings. The only certain thing the wisest man may say about our social institutions is that they have changed in the past and that they will continue to change, or be modified, or to pass away, in the future. In one short year, the war has altered some of our old institutions beyond recall. We believe that a continuation of the war for a considerable period will mean economic and social changes that will rock the world. And out of the storm and stress of things we doubt very much whether any of our existing social institutions will emerge intact—if it emerge at all. The family as it is known in America today, the marriage contract, the relations of the sexes are bound to alter as they reflect changed economic conditions. Some of the old "pillars of the social structure" in Russia have already crumbled away. Women are becoming ever more necessary and important in the role they play in industry. With this growing economic importance, and with the increasing need of capitalism for more children to augment the labor and military supply, the power of women will probably increase marvelously during the next few years. Governments will reward the surrender of woman to man, while employers compete among themselves for her labor power. Much will be offered to women. This, we believe, for only a brief period, for we cannot but think that the final results of this war—the fruit of the present system of production and distribution—will be the utter

348 R.B. Tobias and M.E. Marcy, Women as Sex Vendors (1918) collapse of the system itself—making way for a New Society wherein the only aristocracy shall be that of Labor and of Merit. Undoubtedly, in the New Society, conditions will be very much changed for women. But they will also be greatly changed for men. What the future sex relations will be, we do not pretend to know. Perhaps the statement by Frederick Engels in his "Origin of the Family," is as good a forecast as any. He says: "What we may anticipate about the adjustment of sexual relations after the impending downfall of capitalist production is mainly of a negative nature and mostly confined to elements that will disappear. But what will be added? That will be decided after a new generation has come to maturity: a race of men who never in their lives have had any occasion for buying with money or other economic means of power the surrender of a woman; a race of women who have never had any occasion for surrendering to any man for any other reason but love, or for refusing to surrender to their lover from fear of economic consequences. Once such people are in the world, they will not give a moment's thought to what we today believe should be their course.

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