The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 1/3. The Emancipation of Woman
THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMAN.
The emancipation of woman has been greatly ridiculed, and partly with good reason. It is generally understood in a way that involves a misconception of woman's lot, a repudiation of the feminine nature, and an ambition to enter the province of the masculine. And this conception (we have found it as early as Plato, as shown in the foregoing chapter) has frequently been provoked or encouraged by women themselves, inasmuch as they sought to manifest their emancipation in the imitation of masculine externalities and in unfeminine display. But the emancipation that is to be considered here has nothing to do with female smokers and with sportswomen, nor with huntresses and amazons, nor with female scholars and bluestockings, nor with female diplomatists and queens. I think it is no offence to women if we consider them as in their proper place only in the manifestations of pure humanity, true culture, and reason. We might otherwise easily come to consider masculine women as the ideal. But there is nothing more repulsive in this world than a masculine woman, even if she should glorify her masculinity with the splendor of a crown. The celebrated Elizabeth of England was a real monster of a woman, and it is astonishing that this "virgin" hypocrite found even a single lover.
In a word, the chief error in the direction of the emancipation of woman has hitherto consisted in the attempt to educate woman into a man, and even into a man of the present state of development, that is, on occasion even into a soldier, instead of vindicating her humanity and her right to citizenship in accordance with her nature as against man, and allowing her nature free scope of development and of activity. Because hitherto man alone could assert himself, the belief has arisen that the self-assertion of woman must begin on masculine domain. But with this sort of emancipation the feminine sex is benefited least of all. Let us but imagine the opposite case, namely, that the oppressed man is to be emancipated by a feminine education and by being assigned a feminine sphere of action. Without a true conception of and strict adherence to the feminine nature, every attempt at emancipation must necessarily lead to error and absurdity. We hear many a woman express the wish that she were a man. Not one of them would ever strike upon such unnatural wishes of despair, if she had the opportunity and liberty of being entirely a woman.
If the woman oversteps the limits of her nature and destiny, she does not find an elevated point in her thought upon which she could place herself. A man, if he attempts to soar beyond his sphere, at least finds in his imagination the aggrandizement and glorification which endow him with a superhuman character: he is called a "giant," a "demon," a "god." But the woman, if she breaks through her circle, does not find a higher stage than that which the aspiring man has left behind, and she never attains to anything more than being the imitator of — man. The man, if he overleaps, loses at most his name, the woman also her sex. The woman can become a "god" or "goddess" only when she aspires to be only a woman. Growth by means of masculine qualities makes a monster of woman. We men have nothing to surrender to you women by which you could improve, beautify, and ennoble yourselves; everything good, beautiful, and noble you possess in your truly humane hearts, your fine feeling, and your susceptible minds. Interchange our qualities we can and must, exchange them, never!
When we speak of the emancipation of woman, the point cannot therefore be to obscure the sexual limits. These limits should and must, rather, be strictly retained, but defined in such a manner that the man cannot infringe on the domain of woman arbitrarily. The woman is not to be his prisoner, his slave, and his tool, and he not her guardian, her master, and her exploiter.
Hitherto woman has only been looked upon as a supplement and appendage to man. The human being per se, the independent personality, the sovereign individual has never been recognized in woman. It seems that the Bushmen on the Cape of Good Hope are the only ones who have considered woman equal to man, for they have only one expression for both. The woman is to belong to the man; the question, why is not the man likewise to belong to the woman, occurs to no one. She is brought up for the man, and must live for the man; she receives her name from the man; she is "taken" by the man, supported by the man, put under obligation to the man, made the ward of the man, punished by the man, used by the man, and forsaken by the man.
The man is considered as a human being, the woman as only the appendix to this human being; but the woman is more a human being than the present man, and human rights know no sex. As a certain French orator said that law is an atheist, it can be said of right that it is a neuter. But hitherto right has always been of the male sex. Men have made the rights, men have made the morals, men have made the duties, men have made the laws, and they have taken good care that woman should be excluded as much as possible from everything.
But, it will be said, you have declared that the limits of womanhood must be adhered to, and yet you wish from the start to introduce woman into the sphere of men? This is only apparently done. Woman is to participate in public and political life only as far as is consistent with her nature; but if public and political life has hitherto been so coarse and violent that only masculine nature and strength could perform the chief work in it, it neither follows for the past that the smaller part the more delicate nature of woman could necessarily have played in public life ought to have furnished a standard for her human rights, nor does it follow for the future that the work of public and political life will always remain so coarse and violent as it has been until now, and that therefore the participation of woman in the same must always meet with the same difficulties.
The chief work of history, that coarse preliminary work which has so far called for the greatest strength, and the purely male qualities, but which at the same time, to the disgrace of reason be it said, gave these qualities their most glorious significance, has hitherto been wholesale murder, war. This work could of course not be performed by the women; but neither could the successes, the fame, and the merit of it fall to their lot. The men carried on this murderous profession alone, had to carry it on alone according to their nature, and whatever the women did in the meantime, according to their nature, was not credited to them as worthy of the same distinction as murder was to the men. The women were therefore neglected and disqualified because they did not — murder. Let us imagine history without war, or the weaker sex capable of engaging in war, and the entire position of woman is changed in an instant. Among warlike nations the woman was least valued, and the abolition of war is the liberation of woman.
At bottom it is therefore chiefly the preponderance of physical strength and of the warlike passion which gives man the right to lay exclusive claim to public and political life. Not alone in war, but also in other branches of public and political work these same qualities are more or less required, so that whithersoever we look, physical strength and the warlike passion, which is wanting in woman, play an important part. But is there here any equitable warrant for considering women less qualified as human beings and as citizens? Does right depend on the size of the gall-bladder, on the strength of the limbs, on the thickness of the bones, on the hardness of the muscles, or the coarseness of the fists? And could not the woman be granted the right to "counsel" even where she was incapable of "acting"? Was it therefore necessary to deprive her of all rights where she was immediately concerned and entirely competent? Because the woman cannot lead an army in the field, may she therefore not have any voice in her own affairs? Because a woman cannot be a policeman, shall therefore a husband be allowed to have her brought back into his house by policemen when she has escaped from him, he having become unbearable? Because a woman cannot become a sheriff, may a sheriff therefore tear away from her the children whom she has borne, and return them to the hated father who will maltreat them? Because a woman perhaps cannot be a minister of finance, must the man therefore be her financial guardian? Because a woman is less fitted for a scholar and philosopher, shall education therefore be forbidden ground to her? Because a woman, in a word, cannot be a man, must she therefore be less a human being and a citizen than man? I admit that besides the physical strength and the warlike passion there are still other qualities of mind and character which in a hundred situations capacitate the man for the work of history where the woman is unable to act. But this can affect the rights of woman all the less since her sphere, in a purely human respect, is infinitely richer in service to society than that of the men. At all events, they must have the same right to develop and to exercise their faculties in every direction, according to their own desires.
Democrats maintain that the dignity and the right of man consist in his self-determination, and that he is to obey only those laws in the making of which he himself has participated. But do the laws of the State only concern men? Why should the women obey laws which were made without their aid? Are there "human dignity" and "self-determination" for men and not for women? Millions of women suffer under the oppression of shameful marriage laws, and women are to be excluded from the deliberation of such laws? Is a law which men dictate to women less an act of violence than the law a despot dictates to men? Whether the men deprive the woman of her rights in a democratic assembly, or whether a despot does the same to the man in his cabinet, amounts to one and the same thing from the standpoint of right; and when a so-called government, having, through all possible means, kept the people in a state of ignorance, declares them to be not ripe for liberty, this declaration is just as justifiable as when the men keep the women in a state of helplessness and on that account judge them incapable of participation in political life. So long, therefore, as the women have not equal political and civil rights with the men, in order to assert themselves so far as their ability and their interest prompt them, there is still a great deal wanting in the logic of democrats. The opinions of a man about women can quite properly be considered as the measure of his qualification for liberty and humanity. Whoever is not just towards women preaches vulgarity and adopts despotism. Daily experience also teaches that those most distinguish themselves by intellectual and moral vulgarity who treat the emancipation of women with scorn or condemnation.
First, therefore, comes the political emancipation of woman, i.e., her installation into her political rights, so that she may have the liberty and the opportunity to guard her own interests in the State without the tutelage of the men.
Besides this emancipation, however, there is still the conventional, the moral, the economic, the religious, etc., to be aspired to, the object of which must always be only to establish the liberty and the right of women within the limits prescribed by the feminine nature, and to protect them against the invasions and the commands of men, or to abolish woman's dependence on the will of the men, and finally also to place woman in a position to freely act out her true nature by means of every aid.
These different points will be discussed in detail in the following pages. It is to be observed that political emancipation is the chief point at issue as against men, even in the freest, while, for instance, religious emancipation, economic emancipation, are questions which remain to be solved even for the majority of the male sex, almost everywhere, and are therefore more of a common concern. In respect to women, however, every single question takes on a special shape, wherefore it may be worth while to consider each-one singly.
It has been intimated before that the liberty and influence of women must grow in the same degree in which the brutal strength of men declines in value. The nearer, therefore, the time approaches when decisions through force are replaced by decisions based on right, when wars are abolished as barbarities, when the strength of the hands is directed only against nature, and even in that struggle has in a great measure become superfluous through the skill of machinery, etc., the more will the man approach the humane plane upon which the woman, so to speak, stands waiting until the savage has become appeased, and has developed the capacity of acknowledging a being as free and endowed with rights, who is wanting the strength to enforce its liberty and its rights. Woman represents, as it were, from the start the humane principle, and man in a certain sense becomes a human being only in so far as he approaches woman. A great part of that which hitherto has passed as "manly" is nothing more than barbarity. Brutal strength, which has been a mere means in the pioneer work of history, has come to be considered as a principle and as a permanent object. Thus what has been looked upon as the highest will hereafter be declared to be the lowest, and women will have to learn that many a "hero" whom they have adored as the ideal of manliness, at a later time will appear as a murderer or a rowdy. From these suggestions, concerning the natural way in which even history in part leads woman on towards emancipation, it does, however, by no means follow that woman is to look towards the future in a mere attitude of expectancy. It is, on the contrary, necessary to strive in all directions that women, through participation in the struggles of the times, should come to the aid of emancipating history, and it is moreover essential to stir up their sense of justice and their moral sense by contact with even the most disgusting phases of life. They will thus acquire a complete survey of their position and their claims. From this point of view the following chapters are especially to be judged.