The Fraud of Feminism 14

The Fraud of Feminism 14

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 nearly 40 per cent. 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 Males 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, 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 “gynœcocentricism,” 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,

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 rôle 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

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