Part 5

The acceptance of this situation is implied in the ideals which are passed down to girls by the good old-fashioned parent. Do the mothers who insist that their daughters shall not go with boys on certain occasions and at certain hours unchaperoned expect boys to refrain from seeing any girls except on occasions thus carefully timed and adequately supervised? I doubt it. Whatever their expectations may be, it is certain that they would rather that the good girl should cling to protection, letting the man seek gayety where he may, than that she should take the chance involved in seeking gayety by his side. They would rather have what they consider the evil sex element taken care of by men and by a class of women devoted by society to that purpose than to risk any slip in conduct on the part of their own daughters. Purity purchased at such a price may be purity in some magical sense, similar to that secured in the ancient mysteries by passing through fire or going in bathing with sacred pigs. Purity in any moral sense it certainly is not. It is simply a social asset, like physical beauty or pleasing accomplishments, so tremendously valuable to woman that for it she has been willing to pay any moral price, however degrading. Its non-moral character is revealed in the common assumption that any man can, without injury to himself, pass through experiences or be placed in situations from which, since they would pollute her, every good woman must be guarded. This assumption, so obviously insulting to women, is at present complacently accepted by them as something of a compliment.

William Graham Sumner in his remarkably unemotional and objective treatment of social customs devotes some pages to a description of the houses of prostitution established and run by the cities of medieval Europe “in the interest of virtuous women.” In this connection Mr. Sumner for once indulges in terms of opprobrium, judging the custom as “the most incredible case” illustrating “the power of the mores to extend toleration and sanction to an evil thing.” The inmates of these houses were dedicated entirely to this special function, wore distinctive dress, and were taboo to all “good” women whose virtue, according to the scheme of things, they made possible. Authority for such a custom can be found, as Sumner points out, in Saint Augustine, the reformed rake. “The bishop,” writes Sumner, “has laid down the proposition that evil things in human society, under the great orderly scheme of things which he was trying to expound, are overruled to produce good.” Is not this the position taken by people who hold that it is better to have prostitution in order to provide for the assumed sex irregularity of men than to risk the loss of a woman’s “virtue” through the removal of those conventions and taboos which prevent her from coping with the situation herself and making her own moral decisions? I can see no difference. Has man at any period of his checkered moral career devised a more unpleasant method of saving his own soul? The good woman sits serenely on the structure upheld for her by prostitutes and occasionally even commits the absurdity of attempting to “reform” these women, the necessity for whose existence is implied by the beliefs according to which she herself lives.

It is hard to follow the mental processes of those persons who, while deploring the increased freedom allowed women and the tendency to judge them less severely, still claim belief in a single standard for both sexes. In so far as woman’s virtue consists in aloofness from the evils which the double standard implies it quite obviously cannot be adopted as the single standard by which all members of society are to live. Even aside from this consideration it would seem to be as undesirable as it is impossible to extend to men the traditions and restrictions which have for so long governed women. Does any one really wish to have grown boys constantly accompanied and watched over by their elders? Does any one wish that the goings and comings of men should be as specifically determined as those of women have always been? Should we look forward to a day when a man will be judged as good or bad on the sole basis of whether or not he has ever had any irregular sex relation?

One would think that the suspicions of even the most uncritical might be aroused by the rigidly absolute and impersonal nature of women’s sex ideals. The notion of purity as lying in the abstention from a particular act except under carefully prescribed circumstances has all the marks of a primitive taboo and none of the characteristics of a rational moral principle. The ideals of woman’s honor and chastity have without doubt been built up in answer to human wants--the defense which is invariably given of customs, good or bad. Probably those sociologists are not far wrong who hold that they have developed as a response, in early times, to the sentiments of man as a property owner; later, in response to masculine vanity and jealousy, though these motives have, of course, been idealized beyond all recognition. We need not be surprised, then, to find that they bear no relation to an interest in woman’s spiritual welfare and growth, an interest to which society is only now giving birth with pitiable pains of labor. To follow an ideal which almost entirely excludes sex interest as something evil is to condemn one of the richest elements in personal experience. And this ideal has regulated not only woman’s sex experience but has demanded and received incalculable sacrifices in all the phases of her life, mercilessly limiting the sphere of her activities, smothering interests of value and nourishing others to an unnatural state of development, and warping her character to satisfy its most exacting demands. Because she must first of all conform to an unpolluted archetype, and because society must be secure in the knowledge that she is indeed so conforming, she has never been able to meet life freely, to make what experience she could out of circumstances, to poke about here and there in the nooks and crannies of her surroundings better to understand the world in which she lives. We find here a more subtle but more deadly limitation than exclusion from institutions of learning or from political privileges. And under this limitation woman has labored in the service of a paltry ideal.

Not only is it undesirable that men should attempt to follow such an ideal but it is quite obvious that as long as they accept it as adequate for women they are prevented in innumerable ways from developing intelligent principles for their own guidance. For one thing, they will come to look upon the sex element in most of its forms as a moral evil. Experience tells them, however, that it is, in their own case, a natural good. Thus they are led to accept a distinction fatal to moral integrity and progress. The sex element is admitted to the life of the average man by the back door; once within, it has fair run of the establishment though it is always looked on askance by the other members of the household. Sex interests are to be recognized and indulged but divorced from all that is “fine” and “ideal.” They are considered desirable though immoral and so are to be tolerated just to the extent that they are divorced from those elements in society--the family, the home, and good women--which are supposed to embody virtue. It is not realized that virtue, far from being a rival of the other good things of life, is to be attained only through an intelligent interest in good things, and that to divorce moral from natural good is to deal a death blow to both. We cannot wonder that at present sex interest so often expresses itself in the form of dubious stories, coarse revues, and degrading physical relations. While the “good” woman who considers sex somehow lowering is apt to develop a personality which is anemic and immature, the man who accepts the conventional scheme of life develops a personality coarse and uncoördinated.

I do not mean to say that there have been no elements of value in the ideal of purity by which some women have lived. It is undoubtedly true that unregulated and impersonal sex desires and activities quarrel with more stable and fruitful interests in life. But while the most valuable experiences of love are, in general, to be found in more lasting relations, it does not follow that society should prescribe for every one of its members a particular line of sex conduct and attempt to see, through constant supervision, that its prescriptions are carried out. The sacrifice in terms of freedom of activity and experience is too great and the living flower of personal purity cannot be manufactured by any such artificial methods.

The sex relations of an individual should no more be subjected to social regulation than his friendships. There is indeed a closely related matter for which he is immediately responsible to society--that is the welfare of any children resulting from such relations. The two matters are, however, quite distinguishable and no one could hold that the effort which society makes to control sex relations is to any extent based upon concern for the welfare of possible offspring. If this were so, one would not hear so much condemnation of birth-control measures on the ground that they “encourage immorality.” No. It is personal experience which society would like to prescribe for its members, personal virtue that it would like to mold for them. But virtue is not a predetermined result, a kind of spiritual dessert that any one can cook up who will follow with due care the proper ethical receipt. It is, on the contrary, something which is never twice alike; something which appears in ever new and lovely forms as the fruit of harmoniously developed elements in a unique character complex. Experience cannot be defined in terms of external circumstances and bodily acts and thus judged as absolutely good or bad. Sex experiences, like other experiences, can be judged of only on the basis of the part which they play in the creative drama of the individual soul. There are as many possibilities for successful sex life as there are men and women in the world. A significant single standard can be attained only through the habit of judging every case, man or woman, in the light of the character of the individual and of the particular circumstances in which he or she is placed.

From the changes taking place in sex morality we may, with sufficient wisdom and courage, win inestimable gains. Certainly we should be grateful that young people are forming the habit of meeting this old problem in a quite new way--that is, with the coöperation of the two sexes. In the interest of this newer approach we should accord to girls as much freedom from immediate supervision as we have always given to boys. The old restrictions, imposed upon girls alone, imply, of course, the double standard with all its attendant evils; imply the placid acceptance of two essentially different systems of value; imply the preference for physical purity over personal responsibility and true moral development. We should encourage the daughters of to-day in their fast developing scorn for the “respect” which our feminine predecessors thought was their due--a respect which man was expected to reveal in the habit of keeping the nice woman untouched by certain rather conspicuous elements, interests, and activities in his own life. In so far as there is something truly gay in these aspects of life, something which men know at the bottom of their hearts they should not be called on to forego, there is much that women can learn. Most people to-day hold in their minds an image of two worlds--one of gayety and freedom, the other of morality. It is because gayety and morality are thus divorced that gayety becomes sordidness, morality dreariness. Not until men and women develop together the legitimate interests which both of these worlds satisfy will the present inconsistency and hypocrisy be done away with and both men and women be free to achieve, if they can, rich and unified personal lives.

Where Are the Female Geniuses?

By Sylvia Kopald

Sylvia Kopald

_is primarily a specialist in labor and the author of a recent study of outlaw strikes, “Rebellion in Labor Unions.”_

WHERE ARE THE FEMALE GENIUSES?

BY SYLVIA KOPALD

Many years ago, Voltaire was initiated into the mysteries of Newton by Mme. du Châtelet. Finishing her translation and her rich commentary upon the _Principles_, in a glow he extended to her the greatest tribute which man has yet found for exceptional women. He said, “A woman who has translated and illuminated Newton is, in short, a very great man.” Genius has long been a masculine characteristic, although some more generous authors admit its possession by certain “depraved” women. Only the courtesans of classical antiquity could be women and individuals at once, and, therefore, Jean Finot found it necessary to remind us emphatically even in 1913 that “women of genius and talent are not necessarily depraved.” Not necessarily, mind you. No, the great woman may be, in short, a great man, but she is not necessarily depraved.

As the twentieth century progresses and women capture the outposts of individuality one after the other, the old questions lose much of their old malignancy. Women battle with the problem of how to combine a home and a career and men become less sure (especially in these days of high living costs) that woman’s place is in the home. As women enter the trades and the arts and the professions, men begin to discover comrades where there were only girls and wives and mothers before. It is an exciting century, this women’s century, and even though prejudices crumble slowly, they crumble. Yet one of the old questions remains, stalwart and unyielding as ever: Where are the female geniuses?

Even a pessimist may find cause for rejoicing in this final wording of the “woman question.” Man’s search for the female genius is more consoling than his sorrowful quest for the snows of yesteryear. For snows, like all beauty, have a way of melting with time; a mind ripens and mellows with age. Granted a mind which it is no longer a shame or a battle to develop, women can look upon the passing of the years with at least as great an equanimity as does man. She remains in the picture of life long after the Maker’s paints have begun to dry. And that is good. But as long as the female geniuses remain undiscovered, it must be also a bit insecure. Women may have minds--every average man will now grant that. But (he will quickly ask) have they ever much more than average minds? Look at history, which this time really does prove what you want it to. Every high peak in the historic landscape is masculine. Point them out just as they occur to you: Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Virgil, Horace, Catullus, Plato, Socrates, Newton, Darwin, Pasteur, Watt, Edison, Steinmetz, Heine, Shelley, Keats, Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, Tolstoi....

Where are the _female_ geniuses?

It has really become much more than a question of feminist conversation. Science has attempted to put its seal of approval upon the implied answer to this rhetorical question. It has sought to put the notion that “a woman is only a woman, but a genius is a man,” into impressively scientific lingo. The argument goes something like this: In regard to practically all anatomical, physiological, and psychic characteristics, the male exhibits a greater variability (i.e. a greater range of spreading down from and up above the average) than the female. The male is the agent of variation; the female is the agent of type conservation. This sex difference operates in the realm of mental ability as everywhere. In any comparable group of men and women, the distribution of intelligence will tend to follow the law of chances (Gaussian Curve). But female intelligence will cluster far more about its average than male. There will be more imbeciles and idiots among men, but there will also be more geniuses. It is really very simple, as the following arbitrary example will show. Supposing you take comparable sample groups of 1000 men and 1000 women from a given population. After testing them for grade of intelligence, you classify them according to previously accepted “intelligence classes.” Your results would tend to read a little like this:

_Number_ _Number_ _Intelligence Class_ _Men_ _Women_ Idiots 10 3 Inferior 100 50 Slow 200 150 Average 380 595 Able 200 150 Highly Talented 100 52 Geniuses 10 ..

Of course none of the proponents of this theory would state the alleged facts of man’s greater variability in such bald terms. But all of them would agree that men do vary more than women and in some such fashion. In this greater variability they see the explanation of men’s monopoly of genius.

According to Karl Pearson this “law of the greater variability of the male” was first stated by Darwin. Somewhat earlier, the anatomist Meckel had concluded that the female is more variable than the male. It is interesting to note in passing that he consequently judged “variation a sign of inferiority.” By the time Burdach, Darwin, and others had declared the male more variable, however, variation had become an advantage and the basis and hope of all progress. To-day great social significance is attached to the comparative variability of the sexes, especially in its application to the questions of sex differences in mental achievement. Probably the outstanding English-speaking supporters of the theory in its modern form have been Havelock Ellis and Dr. G. Stanley Hall. But even so cautious a student as Dr. E. L. Thorndike has granted it his guarded support. And Dr. James McKeen Cattell has explained the results of his study of 1000 eminent characters of history by means of it. Indeed many others hold the theory in one form or another--e.g. Münsterburg, Patrick. What is most important, of course, is that its supporters do not stop with the mere statement of the theory. They ascribe to it tremendous effects in the past and ask for it a large influence in the shaping of our policies in the present.

For Havelock Ellis, the greater variability of the male “has social and practical consequences of the widest significance. The whole of our human civilization would have been a different thing if in early zoölogical epochs the male had not acquired a greater variational tendency than the female.” (“Man and Woman,” p. 387.) Professor Hall builds up upon it a scheme of gushingly paradisaical (and properly boring) education for the adolescent girl, which “keeps the purely mental back” and develops the soul, the body, and the intuitions. (“The Psychology of Adolescence,” Vol. II, Chap. 17.) Just because Professor Thorndike is so careful in his statements, his practical deductions from the theory are most interesting: “Thus the function of education for women, though not necessarily differentiated by the small differences in average capacity, is differentiated by the difference in range of ability. Not only the probability and desirability of marriage and the training of children as an essential feature of women’s career but also the restriction of women to the mediocre grades of ability and achievement should be reckoned with by our educational systems. The education of women for such professions as administration, statesmanship, philosophy, or scientific research, where a few very gifted individuals are what society requires, is far less needed than education for such professions as nursing, teaching, medicine, or architecture, where the average level is essential. Elementary education is probably an even better investment for the community in the case of girls than in the case of boys; for almost all girls profit by it, whereas the extremely low grade boy may not be up to his school education in zeal or capacity and the extremely high grade boy may get on better without it. So also with high school education. On the other hand, post graduate instruction to which women are flocking in great numbers is, at least in its higher reaches, a far more remunerative social investment in the case of men.” (“Sex in Education,” _Bookman_, Vol. XXIII, April, 1906, p. 213.)

Before we begin the revision of our educational systems in accordance with this theory, we must make sure that it really explains away the “female geniuses.” For although the theory is still widely held by biologists and psychologists, it requires only a short study to discover how tenuous is the evidence adduced in support of it--in all its phases, but especially in regard to mental traits. Darwin apparently gave no statistical evidence to support “the principle,” as he called it, and those who have followed him have done little to fill the lack. Professor Hall offers evidence that is almost entirely empirical; Havelock Ellis has been attacked by Karl Pearson for doing much “to perpetuate some of the worst of the pseudo-scientific superstitions to which he [Ellis] refers, notably that of the greater variability of the male human being.” Professor Thorndike, in spite of his conclusions, admits that it “is unfortunate that so little information is available for a study of sex differences in the variability of mental traits in the case of individuals over fifteen.” And while the overwhelming majority of Professor Cattell’s 1000 eminent characters are men, he merely states without proving his explanation that “woman departs less from the normal than man.”

Wise feminists to-day are concentrating their forces upon this theory. Women have won the right to an acknowledged mind; they want now the right to draw for genius and high talents in the “curve of chance.” And this is no merely academic question. For while genius may overcome the sternest physical barriers of environment, it is nourished and developed by tolerant expectancy. Men may accomplish anything, popular thought tells them, and so some men do. But if women are scientifically excluded from the popular expectation of big things, if their educations are toned down to preparation for “the average level,” if motherhood remains the _only_ respected career for _all_ women, then the female geniuses will remain few and far between. And, more important still, all thinking women will continue restless over the problem of how to secure the chance to vary in interests and abilities from the average of their sex, and at the same time to be wives and mothers.

In this fight for a full chance to compete, woman may do one (or all) of three things. She may merely ignore the theory and go on “working and living,” trusting that as environmental barriers fall one after the other, this final question, too, will lose its meaning. She can point out in support of this attitude that the past does contain its female geniuses, however few; and certainly if all the barriers that have been set up against woman’s entry into the larger world have not entirely stifled female genius, we may at least look forward hopefully to a kinder future. Something of this attitude, of this demand for free experimentation, must make part of every woman’s armor against the implications of this theory. But taken alone, it becomes more merely defensive than the status of the theory deserves. For it is really the theory that must defend itself. It must not only bring forward more affirmative evidence, but it must also meet the contrary findings of such investigation as has been made. It must, again, prove its title to _the cause_ of the scarcity of female geniuses when so many other more eradicable causes may be at its bottom.