CHAPTER VIII
SEX
Socialism is understood by the ignorant to stand for promiscuity between the sexes, or what is commonly known as “free love.” Such a condition of things is viewed with pardonable apprehension, and would, indeed, be ample justification for any and every attempt to retard the progress of society in the direction of Socialism, if it were true.
But “free love,” as that term is ordinarily understood, is not the disastrous promise of the future. It is the awful fact of the present. The sacred institution of marriage, the holy ties of family are not sufficiently strong to keep men pure to–day. A sad army of more than four millions of women in Europe alone are, at this time, after all that it is imagined Christian teaching has done for women, ministering to the lusts of men. In each of the great cities of the civilised world there is a city of another kind—a city of "fallen women"—of outraged sisters; many of them driven into that life in order to keep soul and body together; others there because of one false step which society would not pardon. It is this knowledge which makes an honest woman sick and angry when she hears men prate of chivalry and tenderness and protection being the divine rights of women.
The men of to-day divide their women-kind into two classes. They keep the two classes rigidly apart, professedly because of their high ideal of womanhood; really, in order that the one may not confess to the other the wrongs they have suffered. There are the "good women," whom they marry, and who serve them in a hundred ways in return for their support; and there are the "bad women," upon whom they exercise their vilest passions, degrading, poisoning, killing thousands of the unhappy creatures every year, and still demanding a fresh army to supply the places of those they have wickedly destroyed.
Here is the greatest problem which will face the women when the franchise becomes theirs. It is a problem which goes down to the very roots of our civilisation; threatening, if it be not solved, to rot the roots of the tree, to poison the fountain at its source. But it will be solved. Men alone cannot solve it, but men and women together can, and must, do something for wedded and unwedded wives, for fallen womanhood whether within or without the bonds of marriage.
It is because it is seen that the coming of women into politics will mean a much less comfortable time for themselves that so many men violently oppose the granting of the Parliamentary franchise to the sex. They will not be so secure in the indulgence of their vices. They see sex ceasing to become a purchasable commodity. They see a hundred problems of the streets brought before their guilty notice, with demands for an immediate solution. They see their vices stripped bare and their cruelties exposed. And they are afraid—afraid of losing their power, their indulgences, and their reputations.
Although it is by no means commonly recognised and understood, there can be no doubt as to the real cause of the opposition of many men and women to woman suffrage. Though they are not conscious of the fact, it is nevertheless a fact not difficult of proof, that there is an intimate connection between the opposition to the enfranchisement of women and the most revolting incidents revealed in the tremendous murder-trial now taking place in New York. Both are effects of the same cause.
There is a strange psychological law operating in every individual, in some more than in others, by which intense pleasure is derived from the infliction of pain on a helpless creature. A moment's reflection will convince of the truth of this, and will probably bring to the mind of the reader an occasion in his own life when he found pleasure in a cruel act. A helpless baby thrashed, an innocent dog beaten, a cat tormented, a horse maimed—we know them all; and we know the remorse that has often followed the unreasoning cruelty.
In men this love of power and desire for domination has been fostered, and its exercise in its cruellest forms makes copy for the sensational press.
In women the law operates in a still more terrible and disastrous way. It exhibits itself in a desire to suffer from the infliction of pain; to be dominated; to enjoy suffering from the exercise of power. Hence the saying that women love strength in men. Punch put the matter in popular but forceful style in a cartoon which appeared in its pages some little time ago, when "Liza" is made to say to 'Arry, "If 'ee love us, 'Arry, why don't 'ee knock us about a bit." A sad experience came into the life of the writer a few months ago. An acquaintance of hers was passing the door of a working-class house in a Lancashire town, when he heard a noise, and a frightful scream from a woman inside the house. "Murder! help!" she shouted, in such terrified tones that he burst open the door and rushed to her aid. A great hulking fellow, half drunk, was savagely kicking his wife as she lay on the floor, struck down by his hand. She was horribly bruised. He rushed at the man and pulled him away, when, to his surprise, the woman started to her feet with yells and curses on his interference. "Kick me, Teddy," she said, "as hard as you like. You're my own husband. You've a right to. Never mind him."
Surely nothing less than a new social ideal as well as a new economic system is going to allow of a moral relationship between men and women. Surely nothing more is wanted to teach and convince men that the degradation of woman is wrong.
Socialists expect that, under Socialism, the terrible evil of prostitution will disappear. If it does not, it will be either because women are still denied political power, or because their votes have decided that the prostitute must remain. But if, as at present, the "unfortunate woman" be regarded as a necessity in those days of advanced thought and increased opportunities, then her status must be raised. She must not be an acknowledged necessity and a scorned outcast at the same time, as is the case now. Her position in the State will be clearly defined. She will be held to be performing a necessary social service. Whether this idea meets with favour or not, it is the only fair, the only possible solution—if the prostitute is to remain.
But surely she will disappear. The inducements to this life have already been mentioned. A good living without too much hardship or physical and mental strain; a love of finery, not to be bought with a work-girl's wage; a sex-need, refused gratification in the ordinary way of marriage; a desire for freedom, obviously denied to the majority of wives, all these are the causes, the secondary causes of a degradation which seems worse than death. The primary cause is in the hateful system and the wrong ideals it engenders. But with a new order of society these will tend to disappear.
A living will be assured to every woman. Jewels and finery will not be valued as they are now; they will lose their value as they cease to be regarded as marks of special worth and importance, and when the power to acquire them becomes common. The death-rate among male infants is higher to-day than among female children. Careful Socialist mothers and nurses will rear the baby boys, then the adult sexes will be more equal in numbers, and marriage under honourable conditions be possible for those who need and desire it. And lastly, the opening up of new spheres of interest to women, in which they shall be well-paid and honoured, will help to lessen the undue sexuality which at present makes them an easy prey to men.