The Fraud of Feminism 2

The Fraud of Feminism 2

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 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 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 equality. 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

Sentimental[15:1] Feminism had acquired in public opinion 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_.

 

[15:1] 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

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).

 

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 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