The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 1/6. The Excuses of Men
THE EXCUSES OF MEN.
In the previous chapter I have dwelt on the sins against women which our sex commits through prostitution. In order to be just towards both sides I shall also point out the circumstances which for the present may still serve to excuse men, although not to justify them.
The sexual instinct is as natural and as legitimate as the instinct for eating and drinking. Whatever nature demands cannot and should not be denied her; it is only necessary to find the ethical rules which will secure the satisfaction of the natural needs without involving degeneration.
Whatever is unnatural is also immoral. But it is unnatural, consequently immoral, that circumstances will not allow a man after having reached puberty to follow his natural instincts and to associate himself with a woman. If it were possible to the youth to marry young, he would, at the hand of his beloved, pass by all the moral cesspools through which the unmarried are driven by the passion of their sexual instinct. He would not have to go through those schools of corruption in which he learns to fit himself for everything which later makes him unfit for any true conjugal relation. In the arms of his beloved he would preserve the health which he poisons in the arms of the harlot. He would respect women, because he would not have had the opportunity of making their acquaintance in the most contemptible of all states, and his untainted mind would not change into that unscrupulousness which, as Jean Paul says, does not hesitate to pluck to pieces the noblest woman like a bee, only for the sake of getting hold of the honeysack.
With all our civilization we are put to shame even by the savages. The savages know of no fastidiousness of the sexual instinct and of no brothels, because their nature need do no violence to itself and can satisfy its needs in a natural manner. They show us at the same time that health, as well as morals, is less endangered when nature is allowed free play than when it is driven into by-ways through obstacles.
We are, indeed, likewise savages, but in quite a different sense. Proof of this is especially furnished by our youth. But that our students, and young men in general, usually pass through the school of corruption and drag the filth of the road which they have traversed before marriage along with them throughout life, is not their fault so much as the fault of prejudices and of our political and social conditions. Nature demands, as has been said, the satisfaction of the sexual instinct when the age of puberty has been reached. Our priests, moral teachers, and schoolmasters, great and small, maintain, however, that nature is a vicious, disqualified person whose demands must be rejected until they, the priests, etc., shall grant her a hearing, and mark her with the stamp of official approbation. That through this rejection ten times the evil is brought about which these wise gentlemen pretend to avoid, they themselves know very well; but if there is no more censorship the censors will lose their bread and butter.
Our political and social conditions conform to the prejudices sustained by our religious and moral falsifiers. Partly through police limitations, partly through the degeneration of our economic conditions, most men are prevented from marrying until the uneasiest period of their sexual life is passed. Yes, thousands, especially among our idling military, are not able to support a wife until they are almost old men, and after they have for half a lifetime been masters in the school of debauchery and seduction; and as concerns the thousands of priests whom celibacy compels to revenge oppressed nature with hypocrisy and all manner of secret means, I do not know whether the disgust at their loathsome lives or pity for their inhuman lot should furnish the standard by which we should judge them.
Attention must be repeatedly called to the fact that, besides celibacy, student and military life in Europe are the high-schools of prostitution. After the young man for ten years has stood under the lash of pedantic and servile schoolmasters, he feels himself free for the first time at the university. But it is not the freedom which permits him to develop his mental powers in all directions and to accustom himself to participate in public life; no, he has only the freedom to spend the money of his parents without being watched, and to find in inns and brothels an outlet for his longing to exercise his rising powers. The systematic favoring of these doings seems even to be a part of the plan of the governmental system of instruction, and the wish of high statesmanship is fulfilled if the young man leaves the university enervated and dulled; he requires nothing more than ability to pass his examinations and to execute the commands of the powers that be. That the powers that be do not consider whether the youth who is used to debauchery is still capable of making a wife happy need not astonish the female sex as long as they cannot comprehend the connection between their interests and political development.
The women moreover will admit that the standing armies will not be abolished out of gallantry. For do not the standing armies furnish the chief representatives of gallantry? The powers that be are liberal enough to allow the maltreated soldier and the bored officer to seek compensation for the hardships of their profession among the degraded feminine sex, and the degraded feminine sex is sufficiently grateful to recognize the blessing of having fops instead of men, dancing partners instead of friends, whore-hunters instead of husbands, educated for them by raving about the resplendent soldiery. In Switzerland and North America women must be very unhappy, because men must dispense with the chief school of training for married life, namely, the standing armies! But they are compensated here by the moneyed men, who can buy everything, and by the friends of the slave-holders, who see to it that the doctrine of the despoliation of the weak does not suffer.
But marriage also, as it now exists, is a school for the dissemination of conjugal infelicity for men no less than for women. More of this later. It appears on all sides that most men also are the victims of existing conditions, that is, of the present want of freedom and of economic injustice, whereupon the women become the victims of the victims.
A special point which comparatively admits of an excuse for men in the discussion of sexual rights and duties is, finally, "adultery." The condition for equal claims is equal needs. Now if it can be shown that the woman has the same sexual needs as the man, then adultery on her part is of no greater significance than on the part of man. But whether we find the reason for it in the difference of education or in the difference of nature, it can be considered an established fact that the man is much more liable to sexual temptations than the woman; or that the mere sensual need is much less in woman than in the man. A further difference follows from the present conjugal conditions. The man must asa rule take upon himself the care of the family, and the members of the family, the children, depend on the head of the family for the means of existence. By "adultery," therefore, the wife runs the risk not only of unjustly increasing the cares of her husband, but also of lessening the rights of his children, — considerations which the man generally need not overcome in "adultery." Moreover, an extraordinary digression on the part of the man, according to the prevailing and in part justifiable opinions, does not, when it becomes publicly known, reflect any disgrace upon the wife — she is rather sympathized with as the suffering, the injured party; but a digressing wife exposes her husband to scorn and contempt.
All these differences and excuses, however, according to which the husband sins less and the wife more by "adultery," are to be considered as admissible only from the standpoint of our present conditions. It will later appear that from a correct point of view both sexes must be measured by the same standard of right. Least of all do I by excusing men intend to accuse women. I recognize as much the blamelessness of most women who take a false step as the hypocrisy of most men who try to enlarge upon the misdemeanors of women. I even ask the men who would secure the inviolability of female fidelity by referring their wives to the consequences for the family, whether they would grant them the same liberty which they claim for themselves if they knew them to be sterile? The negative answer must here again disclose that Jesuitical egotism which, by using "the right of the stronger," tries to fetter the weaker with forced considerations, in order to secure greater scope for itself, and which tries to magnify the faults of others in order to lessen its own. Should it nevertheless appear desirous to punish the infidelity of women, I would propose capital punishment on condition that the infidelity of the men be punished by Abélardization.