while thousands of healthy people, men and women, rejoice over the fact that woman of the modern type is coming to the fore, there are many "calamity howlers," male and female, who bid us pause and consider the direful consequences which they fear (that is, hope), this new stage in the development of mankind will bring to the world.
dr. arabella kenealy in "feminism and sex extinction" forebodes the passing of whatever is masculine in the male. her arguments are not very logical but they are interesting. she believes that "two fates await woman unless she rids herself of contempt for functions and duties purely hers, feminism and feministicism. she is handicapped every month for two or three days by weakness or pain. the craze to do men's work will result in man's emasculation.
"the desire to figure in legislation far from stiffening the manly caliber of weak men will still[pg 304] further enervate them. members of either sex are not capable of doing their best work while in association. sex rivalries are excited. sex ascendency is created. man inherits from his mother some of woman's apprehension, foresight and altruism as required to present woman's bent and viewpoint. more of it would be superfluous. the numerical preponderance of women must ultimately swamp masculine initiative in state affairs unless the political functions of the sexes are separated."
why the process should be more baneful for men than it has been for women who, for countless generations have been decidedly "swamped in state affairs" is not very evident.
is man's virility declining? an editorial writer in the new york medical journal also foresees degeneration ahead unless the male retains his mastery: "the yielding by man to the other sex of masculine essential rights and obligations is a symptom of declining virility, physical and mental."
another medical writer sounds a different alarm: "overworked woman may impair the constitutional vigor of man, while she works with him. she is kept up by nervous excitement, by strong tea or drugs. in short, woman is fussy. in a stress of work she will work on with crimson cheeks and[pg 305] growing irritation, while man will put on his hat and calmly resort to the nearest lunch room. women by their eternal high pressure as heads of departments are making nervous wrecks of themselves."
finally there comes havelock ellis, usually less panicky, who thinks he has noticed a distinct degeneration in the young man of today. "these weak-chinned, neurotic young men are no match at all for the heavy-jawed resolute young women feminist methods are creating. the yielding to women of masculine rights is a symptom of declining virility. equality in all things yielded, pride in himself, in his work, gone, he will descend to the state of the decadent savage who keeps as many wives to work for him as their work for him enables him to keep."
there is undue pessimism in all those warnings. woman has not become brutish as some writers claim, nor has man become effeminate. woman has simply gained a clearer knowledge of her latent powers and the war has provided her with a touchstone for her physical resistance and endurance.
the work woman had to do during the war, which she had never suspected she could do, for until then[pg 306] it had been considered as man's work, has not "masculinised" her but it has rid many "delicate flowers" of their morbid belief in the fragile character of their constitution.
male man is not in danger of passing out of existence but one variety of man is doomed, the type which has always wished to mate with the two types of women which, in the preceding chapter, i declared doomed, the doll and the flirt.
the wise husband. that almost extinct species is the type of husband who speakes of his wife, who knows "women" and what is "good" for them, the home jehovah, all-knowing and all-powerful, who must be served and obeyed, who, on his return from work must find his wife ready to entertain him if so he wishes, or to plunge back into the depths of the kitchen if his mood so requires, the husband who knows that he is the aim and goal of his wife's existence.
a ridiculous old man, abandoned by his too young wife, made to the reporters a statement betraying sadly the infinite conceit of that type: "she will return to me because i love her so."
a most unprepossessing man was bewailing in my office the fact that his wife had grown sexually indifferent to him. i advised him not to compel her[pg 307] to have intercourse with him against her will, especially as he was diseased. he na?vely remarked: "but she is my wife."
that type of husband, in other words, considers a wife as a chattel, to be submitted to any sort of legal indignity because she is "only a female." he may force motherhood upon her to demonstrate his doubtful virility or to protect his jealous egotism. he would accept with enthusiasm goldschmidt's theories which i presented for what they were worth in the chapter on virginity, and according to which, woman is soft wax and characterless, waiting to be shaped into a personality by her husband's caresses.
scientific investigators of a more reliable type than goldschmidt and who avoid drawing "yellow" conclusions from their labors, have supplied the reading world with facts which should cause the jehovah husband to fear for his lofty position.
is the male indispensable? jacques loeb and others have demonstrated that as far as the physical results of love, the continuance of the race, is concerned, the male may not be absolutely indispensable.
loeb had shown that almost anything which causes the protoplasm of the egg to separate itself from its membrane is sufficient to introduce "life"[pg 308] into that curious organism which until then only holds possibilities of life.
nature, in order to produce one individual demands two principles, one male and one female principle. she must have one egg which is modified by some product of the male organism, pollen or sperm.
modern scientists have beaten nature at her own game of creation; they have taken one egg, the female principle and proceeded to fertilise that egg without any male product whatsoever.
the experiment has only been made on low forms of animal life, sea urchins and the like, but the egg of the sea urchin is not different in any essential respect from the egg of the human species.
by taking unfecundated eggs and placing them for two minutes in a mixture of sea water and acetic, or butyric, or valerianic acid, then placing them back in sea water and twenty minutes later, immersing them for about an hour in hypertonic sea water or sugar solution, and finally returning them to sea water, loeb was able to bring to life young larv?. a french scientist, delage, repeating the same experiments managed to keep those larv? alive until the time of their sexual maturity.
loeb also succeeded in fertilising eggs by placing[pg 309] them in the blood serum of cows, sheep, pigs or rabbits.
mathews has fertilised some by shaking them gently for a period of time.
twins to order. loeb and others have gone further even than that and produced not only single individuals but twins, triplets, etc.
the secrets of nature's laboratory are being revealed more and more clearly from day to day.
the conceited fathers who imagine that the bringing into life of twins is a symptom of their powerful virility must learn that a mere chemical phenomenon called osmosis is responsible for the over-fertility of some wives.
remove from sea water sea urchin's eggs and place them for fifteen minutes or so in ordinary water. the density of water being lower than that of sea water, the eggs will absorb a great deal of water and burst open. a drop of protoplasm will come out at the break in the membrane. replace the exploded egg into sea water and two larv? will hatch out of it. separate the two portions of the exploded egg and the twins will be as healthy as tho they had been allowed to grow for a while in siamese style.
[pg 310]
by repeating the experiment, loeb has produced not only twins but triplets and quadruplets, all normal and growing out of the same egg which was only meant originally to produce one urchin.
one can understand how a variation in the pressure of the liquids surrounding the human egg may lead to the same result.
while scientists have created living beings by using the female principles as a basis, they have not thus far attained any results by experimenting with the male principle alone.
the mother is the race apparently and the stubbornness of man in claiming and fighting for the principle of masculine superiority is apparently due to his obscure feeling that after all he is not indispensable.
the more vociferous the claim, the weaker generally the basis for that claim. in certain forms of insanity, the more the organism is destroyed by disease the more extravagant the statements are which the insane man makes about himself, claiming power, wealth, health, youth, beauty, etc.
at least one animal species, the bees, have placed the male on that footing. the male bee represents a convenient and pleasant means of bringing about the fecundation of the eggs. after his chemical[pg 311] part has been played, however, no one takes him seriously and his official existence ends. certain spiders and other insects consider the male in the same light, some of them killing and eating the male as soon as his fecundating activities have come to an end.
the feminine domination, if it should ever implant itself into our world would undoubtedly lead to the absurdities, the exaggerations and the repressions which are the result of our man made civilisation.
matriarchal communities of the past in which the woman was the head of the family and probably of the state and matriarchial groups of tibet have not left visible tokens of their worth as a family system. as they preceded the present family system however, it may be that all traces of their achievements have been obliterated by time. the tibetan experiment may have been blighted by unfavorable geographical conditions and rendered as barren as the mongolian patriarchal experiments in a neighboring part of the world.
man as a means of fecundation is not likely to be discarded by normal women but his prestige is likely to decrease as the secret of his mysterious power becomes better known.
[pg 312]
the passing of the smug, self satisfied jehovah husband, a neurotic in every case, is in sight and his passing will facilitate the adaptation of some of the inadapted women i mentioned in the preceding chapter, some of whom fail to find love, and some of whom do not dare to seek it.
the successful modern woman is rather conceited. some of the things i said about female artists applies in a great measure to the woman who in business or in a profession has managed to make her mark.
after struggling years for a certain object which she has at last attained, she is naturally loath to surrender her personality to the average husband of the self-styled masculine type.
she at times resorts to homosexualism in an effort to retain her independence and yet satisfy her love cravings without submitting to a domination which she feels to be unjustified.
the terrors of the climateric. the passing of the jehovah husband will also ease a process of woman's (and man's) life which has to this day held countless terrors to the uninitiated, the climacteric.
to the old-fashioned and the gullible woman, the change of life meant the end of life as a female. [pg 313] the stupid man, who is constantly endeavoring to subdue his mate thru disparagement and kills speedily her youth, her enthusiasm and her hopes by repeating constantly the trashy "at your age, my dear," is in a great measure responsible for transforming that harmless phenomenon into a painful crisis, mental and physical.
the crisis of the "dangerous age," to use karin michaelis's expression, is generally due to the clash of a weak masochistic female with a weak and sadistic male, a clash in which, owing to age and the staleness of the mates, affection has no redeeming, consoling physical features.
the masculine man is in no danger of passing away and he will for ever be as attractive to woman as the feminine woman is to him.
as shaw said, what has been killed in men by the growth of feminism is "not masculinity but boorishness," a characteristic, not of the strong but of the weak, who is trying to compensate for his weakness and to conceal it. what has been killed in woman is not feminine sweetness but overfeminine silliness which woman used as a deceptive weapon against the domineering male.
in a world which grants equal opportunities to men and women, no husband will be able to justify [pg 314] or excuse his treatment of a woman by saying "she is my wife." he will have to remain her lover in order to hold her. no wife will be able to make the home hideous and, at the same time, brandish over her husband's head the certificate of enslavement called a marriage license. she will have, in order to compete with the free women whose personality will impose itself upon her environment, to remain his mistress.
every step ahead which the world takes fortunately proves a new step which love takes in the direction of completeness and freedom from sordidness and ugliness.
