Part 3

In less invidious terms, where income permits, the wife continues to be the consumer, the husband the producer. Conjugal partnership in production, familiar in Europe, remains by and large unfamiliar in this country. Outside of marriage, on the other hand, the last years have seen considerable lessening in our American forms of segregating the sexes. Not only has there been an increase of women in gainful occupations together with an increase of occupations open to women, but between men and women in business and in the professions relations are increasingly less restricted, influenced less by sex taboo. There is more coöperation, more goodwill, more companionship.

Possibly this companionship between the sexes at large will have a reflex upon marriage, and marriage will become a more comprehensive partnership. The question of the married woman in gainful occupations is related, however, to a larger economic issue. Our capitalistic and competitive economy not only suffers parasites and drones, it compels them by reason of its inelasticity in providing for part-time labor. The whole workday or no work at all is the notice given to women who would be part-day home-keepers, either in their child-bearing years or because of other family exigency, as well as to men who are aging or invalid. For this economic waste and loss to personal happiness and welfare there seems to be no promise of relief in prospect. Just the opposite, in fact, for women, since, given the increasing mechanization of housekeeping and the ramifying organization of hospital, nursery, and school, women at home may have a larger and larger part of the day on their hands and their functions become less and less significant. In this connection birth control has been for some time an important factor. As knowledge of contraception becomes surer and more widespread and births more spaced, even during her child-bearing period the home-staying woman will have less and less call on her vitality and energy.

Discussion of contraception has been active in the last decade or so; but curiously enough its significance aside from contributing to directly saner ways of life[1] has been little realized. Birth control makes possible such clear-cut distinctions between mating and parenthood that it might be expected to produce radical changes in theories of sex attitude or relationship, forcing the discard of many an argument for personal suppression for the good of children or the honor of the family, and forcing redefinition of concepts of honor and sincerity between the sexes. In such redefinition reciprocity in passion, emotional integrity, and mutual enhancement of life might share in the approval once confined to constancy, fidelity, and duty, virtues that are obviously suggested by the hit or miss system of mating and reproducing our social organization has favored. With little or no self-knowledge or knowledge of men, a girl often marries in order to find out how much she cares or whether or not she qualifies, and then when her experience has but begun she finds herself an expectant mother, and maternity begins to supersede other interests. She may become a parent without the assurance of being well-mated, if not, more tragically, with the certainty of being mismated. Advocates of the monogamous family would do well to consider how essential to an enduring union, at least in our society, experience in love may be, together with restraint from child-bearing before experience is achieved.

That neither such considerations nor other changes in the theory of sex morality have yet come to the fore in current discussion is perhaps because the technique of contraception is still in the experimental stage, perhaps because in popular consciousness the morality of contraception in itself is not fully established. How is it going to be established? I doubt if through rationalism or rationalistic propaganda. Social changes, we begin to know, are rarely due to deliberation, in any society. In our society they are due mainly to economic causes. Housing congestion in New York will in time affect birth-control legislation in Albany; and fear of an overpopulated world will drive church as well as state into a new attitude toward multiplying to the glory of God.

As in birth control so in other matters of sex intimacy the growth of cities and the complexity of our economy may be the more potent factors of change. In very large communities there is an ignorance of the personal relations of others, an inevitable ignoring which contributes unconsciously to tolerance toward experiment and variation in sex relations. Indifference to the private life of others is almost an exigency of our economic organization. Attention is directed to the efficiency of the personality encountered and away from the individual means taken to induce that efficiency. What difference does it make to an employer how clerk or stenographer lives after hours provided he or she is competent, alert, and responsive to the business need? In office or in factory one may be but a cog in the machine and yet left larger personal freedom than in a more independent job in a small place or than in a household. Out of such urban influences--negatively, of indifference, and positively, of attention to personality _per se_--come opportunities for personal freedom that will set men and women to ordering their sex life to please themselves rather than to please society. That is, ordinary men and women; certain outstanding figures will have to continue to forego freedom. The President of the United States, presidents of banks or colleges, cinematograph stars, “society ladies,” now and again a clergyman or a prize-fighter--all these will continue to be observed closely in their private life, and, like the gods and goddesses of other cultures or times, will have to conform to popular preconceptions of marriage or celibacy, chastity or libertinism. For them, as for other personages in folk-lore, individual adjustment or variation would be out of the picture.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Dr. Ogburn informs me that his recent and still unpublished analysis of the census of 1920 shows that in localities where birth control is presumedly practiced the marriage rate mounts. He states also that in the country at large there has been a higher marriage rate in the last census decade and that the age at marriage is earlier.

Toward Monogamy

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

_feminist, philosopher, writer was born at Hartford, Conn., July 3rd, 1860. Editor of the_ Forerunner _1909-1916; Author of “Women and Economics,” 1898; “In This, Our World,” 1898; “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” 1899; “Concerning Children,” 1900; “The Home, Its Work and Influence,” 1903; “Human Work,” 1904; “What Diantha Did,” 1910; “The Man-Made World,” 1910; “The Crux,” 1911; “Moving the Mountain,” 1911; “His Religion and Hers,” 1923._

TOWARD MONOGAMY

BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

Physiologists tell us that in all our long ages of animal evolution we have not yet completed the physical changes incident to assuming an erect posture. Psychologists may as plainly see that in the short centuries of social evolution we have naturally failed to complete the changes incident to our growth from tribal to national and international relationships.

Since we remained savages for some 90 per cent of the period of human life on earth, it is to be expected that the long-practiced tribal morals should have modified our characters more deeply than those evolved in the recent, varied, and fluctuating relationship of larger range. Yet we see, during the short period of progressive civilization, such swift and amazing development in some lines, such achievement in knowledge, in wealth, in ability, in breadth of thought, and nobility of feeling that our coincident stupidity and senseless misbehavior call for explanation.

The main reason for this peculiar delay and irregularity in social evolution is that it has been limited to half the race, the other half being restricted to domestic industry and to the still lower level of misused sex. Our specialized knowledge, power, and skill are developed through the organic relationships of the social group; as are also those characteristics of mutual loyalty and love, of truth, honor, and courage which are as natural to a human society as the distinctive virtues of ants or beavers to their groups.

Humanity’s major error, the exploitation of the female by the male, has not only kept her at the lowest step in social progress--solitary hand-labor in and for the family--but has resulted in excessive sex-development through prolonged misuse. This has made her ultra-feminine, to a degree often injurious to motherhood; and him ultra-masculine, his social advance confused, impeded, and repeatedly destroyed by his excessive emotions. In social morals he has of course outdistanced her, as he alone has entered into the relationships which develop them; but he has carefully exempted his essentially male activities from this elevating influence, maintaining that “all’s fair in love and war.” Of her, domestic morality demanded but one virtue, sex-loyalty; her mate or master taking it upon himself to be both judge and executioner in case of failure. She might be a liar and a coward, lazy, selfish, extravagant, or cruel, but if chaste these traits were overlooked. If unchaste, no array of other virtues was enough to save her. In her household labors she developed minor virtues natural to the position; a tireless industry, an instinct for cleanliness and order, with great capacity for self-denial and petty economy. Speaking broadly, of a race where the young, though necessarily inheriting from both parents, yet are divided almost from birth in training and experience, it may be said that the social virtues have belonged to men, the domestic virtues to women.

Our present age, counting the incredible advance of the last century and the swift fruition of these immediate years, shows among its newly distinguishing social movements one of supreme importance. Within a hundred years women, in most civilized countries, have moved from domestic into social relationship. Such a sudden and enormous change, while inherently for the improvement of society, is naturally accompanied by much local and immediate dislocation in previously accepted conditions. Many are alarmed at what is considered “the danger to the home” resultant from the refusal of an increasing number of women to spend their lives as house-servants; they fear “the menace to the family” due to similarly increasing numbers of women who refuse compulsory motherhood; they are shocked at a looseness, even grossness, of behavior between the sexes which seems to threaten marriage itself. Few seem able to look beyond the present inconveniences to a specialized efficiency in household management which will raise the standard of public health and private comfort, with large reduction in the cost of living; to such general improvement in child-culture as will lift the average of citizenship and lower the death-rate appreciably; and to a rational and permanent basis for our monogamous marriage.

To understand rightly this trying period, to be patient with its unavoidable reactions and excesses, to know what tendencies to approve and promote and what to condemn and oppose, requires some practical knowledge of biology and sociology. Men, though as yet beyond women in social morality, are unreliable judges in this time of change because their ox is gored--they are the ones who are losing a cherished possession. The overdeveloped sex instinct of men, requiring more than women were willing to give, has previously backed its demands by an imposing array of civil and religious laws requiring feminine submission, has not scrupled to use force or falsehood, and held final power through the economic dependence of women. It is easy to see that if women had been equally willing no such tremendous machinery of compulsion need have been evolved.

But now that the woman no longer admits that “he shall rule over her,” and is able to modify the laws; now that she has become braver, and above all is attaining financial freedom, her previous master has no hold upon her beyond natural attraction and--persuasion. Toward this end he manifests an instant and vigorous activity. Whereas in the past women were taught that they had no such “imperative instincts” as men, and the wooer, even the husband, sought to preserve this impression, now it is quite otherwise. All that elaborate theory of feminine chastity, that worship of virginity, goes by the board, and women are given a reversed theory--that they are just the same as men, if not more so; our “double standard” is undoubled and ironed flat--to the level of masculine desire.

Clothed in the solemn, newly invented terms of psychoanalysis, a theory of sex is urged upon us which bases all our activities upon this one function. It is exalted as not only an imperative instinct, but as _the_ imperative instinct, no others being recognized save the demands of the stomach. Surely never was a more physical theory disguised in the technical verbiage of “psychology.” We should not too harshly blame the ingenious mind of man for thinking up a new theory to retain what the old ones no longer assured him; nor too severely criticize the subject class, so newly freed, for committing the same excesses, the same eager imitations of the previous master, which history shows in any recently enfranchised people. Just as women have imitated the drug-habits of men, without the faintest excuse or reason, merely to show that they can, so are they imitating men’s sex habits, in large measure. Those who go too far in such excesses will presumably die without issue, doing no permanent harm to the stock. This wild excitement over sex, as if it were a new discovery peculiar to our time, will be allayed by further knowledge. Even a little study of the common facts of nature has a cooling and heartening influence.

The essential facts are these: That all living forms show the tendency to maintain and to reproduce themselves; that some, in differing degree, show tendencies to vary and to improve; that after an immense period of reproduction without it (showing that as the “life force” it was quite unnecessary) the distinction of sex appeared as a means to freer variation and improvement; that the male characteristics of intense desire for the female, personal display, and intermasculine combat, as well as the female’s instinct of selection, are visible contributions to the major purpose of improvement; that in the higher and later life-forms further and more rapid improvement has been made through the development in the female of new organs and functions for the benefit of the young; through her alone have come the upward steps of viviparous birth, the marsupial pouch, and that crowning advantage, the mammary glands; the female solely is responsible for the development of nature’s aristocracy, Order Mammalia.

In the human species she adds to her previous contributions to racial progress the invention of our primitive industries, which were evolved by her in service to the young, and later carried out by men into the trades and crafts which support human life. In the developing care and nurture of her children she laid the foundation for those social functions of government, education, and coöperative industry which are so vitally important to social progress that we have called the family “the unit of the state.”

This is an error. The family is the prototype of the state, a tiny primitive state in itself, often quite inimical to the interests of the larger state which has developed through the wider interaction of individuals. The state does not elect families, tax families, punish families, nor thrive where physical inheritance is made the basis of authority. Where the family persists too powerfully, as in China, there is a commensurate lack in the vitality and efficiency of the state. By restricting women to the family relationship, with its compulsory woman service and domestic morality, we have checked and perverted social growth by keeping out of it the most effective factor in that growth, the mother.

The world having been for so long dominated by the individualistic and combative male, with that vast increment of masculine thought and emotion embodied in our literature, our religion, our art, modifying all our ideals, it is not to be wondered at that the newly freed women are as yet unable to see their opportunity, their power, and their long-prevented sex duty--race improvement.

The collapse of the arbitrary and unjust domestic morality of the past will presently be followed by recognition of the social morality of the future. Rightly discarding artificial standards of virtue based on the pleasure of men, we shall establish new ones based on natural law. Repudiating their duty to an owner and master, women have yet to accept and fulfill their duty to society, to the human race. This is not generally clear to them. In their legitimate rebellion against domestic service and compulsory sex-service they almost inevitably confuse these things with marriage, with which indeed they have been long synonymous. Some of our most valuable women, as well as many of negligible importance, speak of marriage as if it were an invention of Queen Victoria. Surely no excessive education is needed to learn that monogamy, among many of the higher carnivora and birds, is as natural a form of sex union as the polygamy of the grass eaters or the promiscuity among insects, reptiles, and fish. Monogamy appears when it is to the advantage of the young to have the continued care of both parents. This means that the parents share in the activities of supporting the family; it does not mean that the female becomes the servant of the male. Because of the united activities and mutual services of the pair love is developed, and stays. Such profound affection is found in some of these natural “marriages” that if one of a pair is killed the other will not mate again. Mated leopards or ostriches do not remain together because they are “Victorian” or “puritanical,” but because they like to. They could form as many and as variegated “free unions” as Greenwich Villagers if they choose; there is nothing to stop them.

But natural monogamy is as free from sex service as from domestic service. The pairing species adhere to their mating season as do the polygamous ones, or even the promiscuous. Man is the only animal using this function out of season and apart from its essential purpose. These natural monogamists are not “ascetics.” They are not dominated by religious doctrine or civil law. They fulfill their natural desires with the utmost freedom, but these desires do not move them out of season.

The human species, with all its immense advantages, has made many conspicuous missteps. Its eating habits are such as to have induced a wide assortment of wholly unnecessary diseases; its drinking habits are glaringly injurious; and its excessive indulgence in sex-waste has imperiled the life of the race.

Domestic morality vaguely recognized some duty to society and sought through religion to limit masculine desires or at least to restrict their indulgence to marriage. But the desires of a vigorous polygamist are not easily restricted to one wife; and our polygamous period was far longer than that of the recently established monogamy. It is a most reassuring fact in social evolution that monogamy, naturally belonging to our species, has persisted among the common people and in popular ideals: even in “The Arabian Nights” the love story is always about one man and one woman, never of the mad passion for a harem! So with the accelerated progress of recent centuries monogamous union becomes accepted, and is carefully buttressed by the law, while religion, with commandments and ceremonies, does its best to establish “the sanctity of marriage.” But as religion, law, and family authority were all in the hands of men, they naturally interpreted that sanctity to suit themselves, ignored the religious restrictions, and so handled the law as to apply its penalties to but one party in a dual offense.

Social morality requires the promotion of such lines of conduct as are beneficial to the maintenance and improvement of society. It will demand of both man and woman the full development of personal health and vigor, careful selection of the best mate by both, with recognition on her side of special responsibility as the natural arbiter. It will encourage such sex relations as are proved advantageous both to individual happiness and to the race. We are as yet so hag-ridden by domestic morality, with its arbitrary restrictions, and by the threats and punishments of law and religion, that we shrink from the broader biological judgment as if it involved blame, punishment, compulsory reform. Not at all. Men and women are no more to blame for being oversexed than a prize hog for being over-fat. The portly pig is not sick or wicked, he is merely overdeveloped in adipose tissue. Our condition does not call for condemnation, nor can we expect any sudden and violent change in our behavior resting on foolish ideals of celibacy, of self-denial, or of “sublimated sex.” It will take several generations of progressive selection, with widely different cultural influences, to reëstablish a normal sex development in _genus homo_, with its consequences in happier marriage, better children, and wide improvement in the public health.

It is to this end, with all its widening range of racial progress, that social morality tends.

Women--Free for What?

By Edwin Muir

Edwin Muir,

_poet and essayist, has been assistant editor of the_ New Age (_London_) _as well as dramatic critic for the_ Scotsman _and the_ Athenæum. _He was a frequent contributor to_ The Freeman.

WOMEN--FREE FOR WHAT?

BY EDWIN MUIR

In the beginning of the Scottish Shorter Catechism there is a beautiful affirmation. “The chief end of man,” it says, “is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

To any one nourished on the literature and thought of the last half-century that sentence, which defines the chief purpose of life as praise and enjoyment, comes like an audacious blasphemy, a blasphemy, however, bringing light and freedom. The terms of the dogma are a little antiquated now, but it would be easy to restate them in modern language. For “God” we might substitute “nature and man” or, if we were metaphysically inclined, “God in nature and man.” The authors of the Shorter Catechism, entangled as they were in a gloomy theology, recognized that the significance of life cannot reside in the labor by which men maintain it, but in some kind of realization of ourselves and of the world which is the highest enjoyment conceivable of both.