Feminism and Sex-Extinction Part 14

In direct and violent opposition to Nature, the Feminist system does everything possible, however, to frustrate that normal phase of arrest along lines of concrete development whereon the higher evolution of woman--and in woman, of the Race--depends. Just at the age when Nature locks the door upon her const.i.tutional resources, for the purpose of evolving these to higher organisation, the schools and industries do a strenuous best to keep the door forcibly open, and to wrest the resources from the storehouse of potential. With a view to fitting woman to compete with the male, in whom such arrest of individuation, in the racial interests, is occurring to vastly less degree.

In all ways, the natural languors and disabilities of the girl's adolescent phase are vigorously combated. The unfortunate young developing creature is exhorted, spurred--compelled by rigid rule, indeed (whatsoever her physiological disabilities), to take her part in strenuous exertions; hard drill, cricket, hockey, football; with the aim of developing masculine muscles where feminine muscles should be. At the same time, her brain is forced, crammed and exploited by perpetual mental tasks; by compet.i.tive examinations, or by some or another strain of specialism, intellectual or industrial. The result is that she is forcibly precluded from evolving to those higher, subtler modes of body and of mind, which are the essence, the charm and the inspiration of the s.e.x; and the model of the Race to be.

Our school-girls and work-girls, in whose already impoverished, or degenerate, bodies this battle for their resources between Nature and Culture (or Industrialism) is waged--the one to make them normal, the other to make them abnormal--are all more or less in states of disease; are chlorotic, anaemic, neurotic, dyspeptic, hysterical; or suffer from ailments special to their s.e.x. While some are st.u.r.dy and florid and buxom (prematurely middle-aged), more are neurasthenic and attenuated, ill-nourished, spectacled, breastless, hipless, pale or pimply; are restless, emotionless, joyless, cynical, discontented. In but few are found the thrill and joy, the pulse and spring and natural enthusiasms of healthy, happy young creatures in the dawn and grace of maidenhood. Such as are charming and pretty possess these natural woman-characteristics only too often in fragile and weed-like form. The const.i.tutional degeneracy of some shows in precocious s.e.x-development--all precocity being degeneracy, development too rapid and exhaustive, and entailing therefore flimsy and unstable tissue-cells, faulty functioning and premature decline.

A proportion, one is thankful to say, are normal and healthful and charming, endowed with the attributes and graces, personal and mental, for which Nature is shaping in the s.e.x. Others are, biologically speaking, mere lamentable "spoiled copies"; amazons of the hockey, football, tennis or hunting-fields, only just distinguishable in general characteristics from the male, and lacking more or less wholly in womanly psychology and apt.i.tude, and in all the fairer and n.o.bler attributes of their s.e.x. Still others, although handsome and finely female of physique, are "splendidly null" in respect of the emotions, and of the other subtler and psychical developments of natural womanhood.

The Greeks, with their intuitive apprehension, pourtrayed both Athene, G.o.ddess of Intellect, and Artemis, G.o.ddess of Sports, as s.e.xless, pa.s.sionless, unwedded and childless; scorners of men, devoid of all womanly impulse and sentiment. (Strangely enough, as though antic.i.p.ating the argument of this book, Athene is described as having sprung, in full life, from her father's brain. While Scripture tells of Eve derived from Adam's side.)

In _The New System of Gynaecology_, the latest and most authoritative treatise by eminent specialists in women's diseases, the following pa.s.sage occurs, under heading, "Derangement of the s.e.x-Characteristics":

"It is our belief that the more truly feminine a woman is, psychically and physically, in instinct and in performance, so much the more complete and normal will be the functions of her mind and body. We have already alluded to inverted instincts. And in the perversion of functions and characteristics (physical phenomena) we may observe all grades from almost complete masculinity in appearance, _with the disappearance of the feminine functions_, to the lesser degrees of disordered function and characteristics."

II

Nature is so complex, yet so subtly consistent in her workings, that the neuter-state shows in the faces of many of our women as the typical look of the mule--cross between horse and a.s.s, a creature incapable of reproduction. In the eyes of young women of strenuous pursuits--academic, industrial, or athletic, this characteristic sterile glint, part boldness, part antagonism, is common.

The normal condition of woman is attended by the normal expression of woman. The womanly biology entails the womanly psychology. And modesty is one of the natural female secondary s.e.x-characteristics, attendant upon healthy structural development and function. The hard, bold glance--the "mule"-look--of some masculine girls and women by no means necessarily implies conscious immodesty. It is mainly biological and subconscious; sign of an attribute missing, as result of deterioration of the function in which the attribute is normally rooted.

With reduced values of that Reproductive function it is modesty's province to defend, the attribute of modesty declines.

The girls and women of old Sparta, as ignorant of biology as women are to-day, made a cult of athletics--good and zealous, but mistaken patriots!--for the express purpose of mothering a fine, athletic race.

These high and praiseworthy aims failed signally. For Sparta, with all her zeal of racial improvement (so drastic in its methods that she killed her weakly girl-infants) fell upon decline and degeneracy. n.o.ble civilisation that she had been, she died in decadent corruption.

And showing the relation between athletic pursuits and extinction of womanly qualities, the Spartan cult of Maleness led to such decay of modesty that it became the custom for women to run with the men in The Games, naked as they. A custom that sprang less from actual immodesty than from lapse of that normal s.e.x-specialisation, whence arises the normal s.e.x-consciousness which engenders wholesome reserve between the s.e.xes. Modern developments of a similar extinction of womanly modesty are seen in the conduct of latter-day girls and women in public parks and elsewhere; in the unseemly familiarities of mixed bathing; in the decadent, unduly-familiar or frankly indecent dances, and the frankly indecent modes of dress just now in vogue. As too in that so-called "candour" which permits women of culture to talk openly of the most intimate physiological functions, and, without sense of shame, to discuss across the dinner-table prurient scandals and other unsavoury topics.

The mystery of the creative powers of Life occulted in her has ever invested woman, for man, with glamour and reverence, enhancing a thousandfold her charm and appeal to his chivalry and tenderness. In stripping herself of womanly reserve and dignity, alike in demeanour and dress, she shatters her mystery for him and forfeits her supremest claim upon his manhood; while robbing him of his fairest illusions and most inspiring incentives.

III

In cases of s.e.x-transformation in the lower creatures, the lapse to a masculine type is found to be accompanied by atrophy of reproductive glands. As recorded in a previous chapter, investigations by Rorig show that when the ovaries of female deer atrophy from any cause, male antlers develop.

Mannish s.e.x-characteristics in women are as abnormal and as unnatural, and arise from a similar cause as do male antlers in female deer.

With the wane of parental power, normal to middle-age, there occurs a like--but in such case a natural--atrophy of glands. And this it is that causes some women to acquire masculine traits at this epoch.

Degrees, greater or less, of such a decline (natural to middle-aged women) are being artificially, and prematurely, induced in our girls and young women. Some of them become actually sterilised, and are wholly incapable of reproduction. The greater number are only partially sterilised. They are capable still of being mothers. But the function, in place of being the crown and the fulfilment of their natures, is a disability; is more or less of a morbid process, indeed. And their offspring are more or less deteriorate. Not a few, after marriage--called upon to fulfil functions the resources whereof have been sapped by other and abnormal activities--become invalids; a number require surgical treatment.

Non-development, similar atrophy, or other deterioration of the mammary glands precludes the vast majority of our young mothers from nourishing their babes--a deplorable injury to these as well as to the mothers themselves; physical and psychical function being closely and subtly allied.

Women who fence or play hockey and other rough games during girlhood, become, owing to such degenerative atrophy, incapacitated for lactation.

The following is an interesting example of the manner in which cruder and lower-grade power may be increased at the cost of higher faculties.

A patient told me that, having been naturally a poor walker--two miles having been her limit--she had determined to train herself out of this which she regarded as an infirmity. Accordingly, by persistent practice, she succeeded in raising her walking-power to ten miles daily. She mentioned incidentally--seeing no relation of cause and effect--that, for several years (the years during which her walking-powers had been increasing) _she had become progressively deaf_.

That she had been, in point of fact, sapping the potential of the complex, invaluable faculty of hearing, in order to equip her leg-muscles, was confirmed for me a few weeks later, when I read of a number of cyclists, who, after one of those deplorable pacing-exhibitions common to-day, came in, one and all, stone deaf: a consequence of nervous strain. The deafness in these cases pa.s.sed off with rest. But it is easy to understand that from such temporary functional depletions frequently recurring, permanent structural deterioration must result inevitably. Thus it is that over-use, in sports and games, of the muscles of shoulder and chest, occasions atrophy of mammary glands.

By no other way than by artificially inducing in them a premature (partial) climacteric, by perverting their young organisations to the quasi-masculine type of the middle-aged woman, and thereby releasing, for available output, power which should have remained conserved for many years in organisation, can women be fitted for masculine pursuits.

And such sterilisation, where it is not producing actually diseased and degenerate offspring, is producing a pitiful race of pallid and enfeebled babes and children; dyspeptic and spectacled, adenoid-afflicted, unchildlike and generally deteriorate.

That other factors contribute to the wave of Racial decline now menacing our modern civilisations, great and small, is true. Yet mothers of fine vital potential are able to counteract and to minimise the effects of const.i.tutional disease in the other parent to degrees but little realised. Because such mothers are so lamentably rare.

IV

It is the natural release of vital forces, consequent upon the normal wane of mother-power at middle-age, that has been mainly responsible for the errors of the Woman's Movement.

In all its aims and methods it has been essentially a Middle-aged Woman's movement. There are no young ideals in it; no concessions to youth, to love, to graciousness or sentiment; none to wifehood or to motherhood. It has been, for the most part, a grim, dour striving after neuter standards, neuter models, neuter efficiencies, neuter lives and neuter recompenses.

Ident.i.ty of brain and muscle, of aims and claims, of games and avocations; equal rights and equal work and equal pay have been the watchwords of its propaganda. "Fair play and no privileges!" its promoters rigorously demand for these poor weedy girl-neurotics who, beyond all else, require industrial concessions and the human clemency of adequate rest and leisure, to allow of normal and healthful development of their growing brains and bodies.

Pioneered by strenuous, middle-aged women--with the best intentions, be it said--Feminists have adopted the fatal policy of sternly impressing the model of their own quasi-masculine middle-age as the standard of youthful development. Without, for a moment, suspecting that such wresting of male energies and efficiencies from its young women-victims has inevitably entailed upon them degrees of that climacteric of womanhood which is the herald of decline. On the contrary, this middle-aged, quasi-masculine state, because of its release of power for sterner purposes, has been hailed as a triumph of Emanc.i.p.ation and of higher education; proof positive that woman is not man--only because she has lacked opportunity to become so.

In point of fact, these unfortunate young creatures have been, and are being all the while ever further despoiled of their youth, of their s.e.x, and their fair heritage of life and happiness, of function and of faculty. And the Race has been robbed of priceless living wealth in human health and capability.

The b.r.e.a.s.t.s of these despoiled have shrunk, in place of blossoming.

There are no founts of altruistic life in them. Never will they be capable of nurturing babes, or of contributing their mysterious due to psychical attribute. The pelvis remains narrow and puerile. Never can it serve as hostel for a babe of normal, healthful type.

In the vast majority of modern girls and women, the reproductive organs are structurally immature or functionally defective.

Dr. Gaillard Thomas, an eminent American gynaecologist, estimated, some years since, that only about 4 per cent. of American women proper were physiologically fitted to become wives and mothers.

The United States have been and are all the while deriving fresh influx of vigour and vitality in stock, from the continuous immigration of simpler and more vitalised peoples. But American women proper have never recovered from the strain and hardships of adaptation to a new environment, which settlers in alien and undeveloped countries necessarily encounter; the deteriorative influences whereof are shown in const.i.tutional impoverishment of the parent-stock. This is true, as well, of our Colonial kin. Not only the strain of acclimatisation, but too the hard and rough life-conditions women have to cope with in undeveloped lands are responsible for the const.i.tutionally-debilitated, or, on the other hand, for the rawer and less highly-organised racial types found in new settlements.

In the United States, moreover, the standards of culture and of training are pre-eminently artificial. Democratic sentiment and material prosperity induce persons of working-cla.s.s biological organisation to over-tax their children's brains and const.i.tutions by forcing these to the educational standards and culture of stock that has evolved, by generations of higher nurture, to higher evolutionary grades. The "newly-rich," eager for their families to profit (as they regard it) by opportunities denied themselves, invariably commit this radical error of over-estimating academic education and social accomplishment. They fail to realise that one can no more attain culture than one can acquire breeding in a single generation. It takes _three_ generations of culture--of comparative ease and freedom from the strain of industrial labour and living--to evolve the crude muscular arm of a working woman into the shapely, refined arm of a gentlewoman. And so it must be with brains. In nineteen cases out of twenty, a 'Varsity education serves as irreparable injury rather than as benefit to a working-cla.s.s youth, depleting health or warping character as it inevitably does.

The strain of living above the evolutionary level is exhaustive and harmful, physically and mentally, both to individuals and to stock. The prudence of apportioning education to the grade of evolutionary development is strikingly shown in the cases of negroes, who, when over-taxed by the education normal to white races, not seldom become blind or consumptive. And always the morale deteriorates. The forcing upon our own labouring-cla.s.ses of an education above that suited to their natural powers has contributed largely to the const.i.tutional deterioration and the neurasthenia common among them to-day.

One of the factors of modern Labour-unrest, indeed, is the physical unfitness of debilitated and neurotic working-men to cope capably and cheerfully with the tasks of earlier and st.u.r.dier generations.

The urgent need of all our over-civilised races is not more education but more _native faculty_.

Every form of disease and degeneracy, physical and mental, is rampant. A well-known authority on brain-diseases warns us that if mental defectiveness continues to increase at its present rapid pace, soon we shall be unable to support the asylums required to accommodate and segregate the unfortunate victims thereof. They must remain at large--to perpetuate and multiply indefinitely their terrible afflictions.

Yet how is it possible that such weedy, half-sterilised creatures as are so many of our modern mothers, should bear sound and sane and vigorous offspring?

Inherited debilitation and defect are further aggravated by present-day educational methods.

Our modern rendering of the training of the young is the _straining_ of the young.

Developing creatures should never be allowed to over-use function or faculty. Because to over-tire an immature faculty is to deplete its vital resources of development. Nor should young developing creatures be permitted to do anything too strenuously or for too long a time.

Narrowness and mental warp result inevitably from too early and too long periods of concentration in one direction, of the ductile shaping brain.

In defiance, nevertheless, of this first principle of rearing, boys and girls, after the morning's brain-work, are kept at strenuous games for hours in succession.