The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 2/3. Men
MEN.
(From "Der Pionier"' of Oct. 14 and 15, 1855.)
Mr. Editor — On a former occasion you had asked me to speak without reserve in the columns of "Der Pionier." I comply with this request all the more willingly because it was needless in my case. I have always been in the habit of speaking my mind freely, which, as I have often been told, is not considered "wise;" but I could never see why it should be less wise, not to suppress my convictions, not to give up my right, and not to sacrifice my freedom, than t make my regard for the weakness, the folly, and the errors of others the law of my actions. Least of all can I think of this to-day, when I have made up my mind to discuss a subject which, according to my opinion, cannot be treated inconsiderately enough.
Shakspeare says "Frailty, thy name is woman." No one would contradict me less than Shakspeare himself, if I should say, "Deception, thy name is man!' I shall not take the trouble to prove what mountains of lies men have left behind them, whenever they have entered the realm of history; it is sufficient for my purpose to show, first of all, that their whole relationship to us women has ever been one of lies. Just as every tyrant lies, must lie, so men also have always lied, because they were our tyrants. Whether they coddled us with compliments, or pretended to hate us, whether they granted us privileges or disqualified us, whether they carried us on their hands, or trod us under their feet, they never were true, never could be true, because they always proceeded from the great fundamental lie, that we did not possess the same human rights as they, that we are subordinate beings, that we must be their tools. Complete recognition of our equality of rights — that is the first, the indispensable condition, for the possibility that men cease to be liars toward women.
It is not possible for any one to commit themselves more naively than men do, concerning their untruthful attitude toward women, when their arguments, which they oppose to our so-called emancipation, are attacked. I have always found that the chief objections behind which the more intelligent and refined among the men — of the rest I do not wish to speak at all — always entrench themselves, simply amount to this: that men in general are not sufficiently humanized to make it possible for free women to exist among them.
Well, that is at least the beginning of truth. It is a most interesting confession, even if it is a poor proof. What answer would you, as free men, give a slaveholder, who confessed to you that his brutality and egotism did not allow him to grant his slaves the right to freedom? Would you accept this as a proof against the right of the slave?
But you place yourself entirely on the ground of the slaveholder. You only goa step further, and, in denying us our rights, tender us compliments at your own expense. You hold these compliments so cheap that you are even willing, to throw a part of your reason, and your honor, into the bargain, if we will only accept them. We are such delicate plants that we-cannot flourish in the wild climate of masculine brutality, without a protecting hedge and cover — that is the sense of the compliments in which you clothe your last proofs against our equality of rights.
Men would very soon come to recognize our human rights, even without compliments, if we had the power to enforce them. Backed by an army of sharpshooters, and every woman will be recognized by men, not only as their equal in rights, but also honored like a czarina, and worshiped like a goddess. Fortunate for us all that we women have no sharpshooters at our command! If, indeed, enforced rights cannot be enjoyed in peace, security and happiness, till after their opponents have been put out of harm's way, we women would have to wage an endless war for our rights, a war, in the real sense of the word, "to the last man." Ought we to exterminate the men, in order to become free? Fear not, oh noble heroes! You alone require force to become free; all that we need is the renunciation of force. It is our pride, as well as our consolation, that humanity alone, and not iron, can free us from tyranny, and you from your lies. The triumph of weakness over strength, through the sentiments of humanity, that is the ‘surest and noblest triumph that we can think of, and can wish for, and this triumph is exclusively feminine.
It is a lie, therefore, when men deny our equality of rights, and it is a daughter of this lie, when they, instead of acknowledging their own unfitness for a state of humane equality, try to make it appear as though we were not yet adapted to equality. As soon as men begin to be truly humane beings, they will cease to oppose the equality of women; only so long as they remain brutal egotists will they protest against humanity without the bones of a grenadier, i. e., the women, sharing their dominion.
But if that were all we could await the future more calmly, for it would indeed be a difficult task for us to attempt, as a humanizing element, to mitigate the rule of men in the domain of politics, at a time when they still regard it as the greatest honor to slay each other by the hundred thousand, without knowing why; when millions of them still stand prepared like gladiators, to fall upon each other at the command of some emperor, to tear each other to pieces, and fertilize the earth with streams of blood. Why? They have not even the incentive that excuses the gladiator. They slay from habit, or from servility; they allow themselves to be slain for a stiver or a gracious look. What glory to be a man!
In other words, there is nothing tempting, even to an amazon, to share the power of such rulers. Then keep your politics for yourselves until onehalf of you has butchered and buried the other half! Perhaps the gladiatorial spirit of man will then change into humanity from exhaustion, and to us women will then accrue the task of guarding it against relapses.
But there is still another stage of action, upon which we are now daily playing our part, and that is social life. Here, too, we find, as on the throne of legislation, the men as liars, and even as the biggest liars of all.
What is honor? What is character? What is conscience? What is morality?
Should any one ask me these questions, I would first inquire whether they meant them for the male sex alone, or also for the relations of the latter to the female sex. For just as men deny women all rights, to begin with, they also are devoid of honor, of character, of conscience, of morality, in their relations to women, and when they speak of it they lie. In all these things they use quite different weights and measures for the women than for themselves, and whatever they condemn and abhor among themselves, they consider permissible and honorable when it is directed toward the weaker sex. (Let it be borne in mind that, throughout this entire article, am speaking of the great, great majority without condemning the small, the very small, minority along with them.)
Every day we read in books, and papers, the most beautiful effusions of masculine indignation, if some unworthy individual so degrades himself as to flatter some man of money or of power, or a party or even the populace, or sacrifices his principles to attain this or that egotistic aim. But those same moralizers, who condemn such degradation, are capable, at any moment, to deluge any woman who happens to attract their attention by rosy cheeks, or sparkling eyes, or a luxuriant figure, with flatteries and assurances, every letter of which is a hypocrisy, and every phrase of which contains a humiliation. And why? Often this mendacity is due to a mere habit, but for the most part it is meant to deceive, and to further low ends. Men who, in a circle of men, overflow with honor and character, degrade themselves to play the contemptible part of the hypocritical flatterer, before every pretty woman. For the sake of a glance, they become actors; for a kiss, they become rhetoricians; for a favor, they become valets de chambre. And as soon as they have gained their end, they at once rise from the position of valet de chambre to that of tyrant. But for all that, they are always "men!" But I say they are liars. .Either that is a lie, which they call honor, and character, before men, or its opposite, which they manifest before women, deserves the name. I at least cannot conceive how a man, who really possesses honor and character, can put it on and off as he pleases, like a badge, to signify whether he is associating with men or women.
Nothing is more common, and at the same time more disgusting, than the role of hero in love-comedies, the only role that the average man, and especially our military gentlemen, can play with some talent. That this sort of play-acting has not fallen into greater disrepute among men themselves only shows how general a species of lying has become among them, which degrades not only man, not only woman, but the most beautiful relationship by which the sexes can be united. What a frightful state of things in which the first thought that comes to a woman, when she hears a man talk of love, must be: Is he true or is he a liar?
The same question is forced upon me, whenever I hear of or see that kind of "chivalry," which the French call galanterie. Is it a virtue? To me it seems to be either hypocrisy or an abusurdity. A gallant man reminds me either of a lieutenant or a Don Quixote. I can understand how, woman being the weaker, and' more fragile being, a man should wish to be helpful and obliging to her, whenever she needs help; but I do not see why this helpfulness and deference need be anything else, but a manifestation of general culture and humanity, unless, indeed, some personal relationship exists between the respective individuals. No more than The can be called gallant, who helps or obliges a child, an invalid, etc., ought he to be gallant who treats a weak woman with humane considerateness.
Still less, than honor and character, can the conscience, and morality of men — if I am to separate the latter qualities from the former — stand the test of truth before a feminine tribunal. Every man will agree with you unconditionally that it is knavery to rob another of money, honor, liberty and happiness. But this morality is at once lifted off its feet, as soon as the treachery is directed towards a woman, and concerns a sexual relationship. True, you do have a few laws, which, for instance, make it a penal offense to seduce or compromise a girl; but few of you have principles that would condemn such an offense. And what is your punishment for it? Marriage! That the victim of your depravity receives the name of the miscreant, that the unfortunate one is chained to the originator of her misfortune, by order of the police — that is the ‘highest compensation your justice can discover.
Men are accustomed to play with the happiness of women, as boys do with the life of an insect. Does not every day experience teach us that their conscience ceases to exist when their animal desires are aroused; that they do not in the least hesitate to sacrifice the happiness of a woman's life to the sensual enjoyment of a minute; that no means of cunning or even of violence is too wile for the attainment of ends which never, and under no circumstances whatever, can compensate for the one hundredth part of the self-degradation, which their attainment implies? To deceive a man, you consider a disgrace' but is it not a triumph for you to deceive a woman? To lighten a man's purse by a breach of trust is to you a crime; but to poison a heart by a breach of trust is to you a pastime. How many are there among you who would shrink from writing a list of their Don Juan triumphs, with the bloody tears of unhappy women? Have you not been accustomed, I might almost say trained from» early youth, to press women into the service of your low aims, by every means you like, regardless of con-. sequences, and even to boast of their misfortune? Do you not regard a girl, whom you have started on the road to shame, or driven to suicide from despair, as the hunter regards the game he has wounded or slain? But afterward you are all ready to sing:
"Honor to woman! To her it is given
To garden the earth with the roses of heaven!"
It is like hearing a hunter sing: "Honor to game,
for it tastes good, when we have killed it."
What a revolution will yet have to take place, in the conceptions of men; what a change education will have to work in their lives, before they can attain to a knowledge and recognition of the most rudimentary principles of honor, and morality, as concerns their relationship to. weak woman, chained with a thousand fetters of dependency to man-made conditions! If you do not yet wish, or are not yet able, to grant woman equal rights in public life, you can ‘at least accustom yourself, in social life, not to degrade her by a morality, which, among yourselves, would amount to an actual declaration of war. So long as a dishonorable and unscrupulous act, directed against us, has not the same value to you as when it is directed against yourselves, you show that you do not consider us as responsible human beings, that you are our tyrants in life, as you are in politics, and that all your assurances to the contrary are simply lies.
I have begun to discuss a subject which is better adapted for a book than for a newspaper article. In order not to stray too far I will turn aside from my course, and merely add a few concluding remarks about the position which men, entirely apart from their relations to us, now occupy in life and in politics.
Men! What is a man? What exuberance of beauty and greatness is contained in the meaning of this word! It lies in the nature of things, that each of the two sexes should exercise severe criticism over itself, while they are mutually inclined to view each other with favorable eyes, and to discover each other's good qualities. There surely is no woman of any intelligence who would not be willing to find in every man an ideal, and, it seems to me, that the reverse must be just as true. But how bitter the disappointment whenever this willingness casts about for objects of appreciation, among the present masculine world! Can it really have been thus, in all times? It would be terrible to be forced to admit this and to build our expectations of the future upon it. Threefold happy is the woman who, in these times of general enervation and vulgarity, has found a man whom she can truly respect and love! Let no one accuse me of not making due allowance for the exceptions; I know them and know how to appreciate them doubly. But what, I ask, is one to think of that ruling mass and its prominent personages, among whom genuine men are regarded as proscribed and leprous beings? Has it any other aim than money-making, animal pleasures, and political degradation? What has become of that large emigration which once filled our fatherland with the battle-cry against tyrants? Are those men who forgot liberty as soon as it was vanquished? Are those men who, on the other side of the sea, swore eternal hatred against tyranny, and in this country are so lost to shame that they unite with the owners of human beings for the purpose of undermining the republic? I know the weaknesses of my sex, and admit them, although it is not itself responsible for the most of them; but so much I can maintain — no woman whose heart has once been stirred with enthusiasm for liberty is capable of forgetting it over night, or of becoming reconciled with its opposite, for any low considerations. We are true to ideas as we are to persons. But, you men can forget and betray everything for which you once seemed to glow, not singly, not by tens and dozens, not only a hundred fold; thousands and thousands of you turn your backs upon liberty, cast your ballot for slavery, and — are not ashamed! Truly, you men are not merely liars, you are also slaves! Are you not base by nature?
In London lives a man who once excited universal sympathy, and whose romantic fate, I must confess, also fascinated me for a time, and created a sort of enthusiasm in me. It is Gottfried Kinkel. He swore that he would wage endless war against the enemies of our fatherland, and traveled through this country to supply himself with the sinews of war. What has become of him? He has disappeared and is forgotten. His hatred of tyrants has quickly calmed down, his enthusiasm for war has subsided, behind the counters of a bank, where he deposited the money, collected for the revolution, "on interest," much to the satisfaction of the despots! Was there ever a man who claimed the confidence of his country people more obtrusively, and has ever any one betrayed it more basely than this Kinkel? No man could have acted thus who had the least conception of honor, and who had the least regard for the respect of respectable people. And yet, did not Mr. Kinkel become the ideal man, for this entire emigration? Did it not praise everything that he did, and approve everything that he omitted to do? Is it not always approving? Does it not always take part in his infamy? Where, then, I ask, are the men?
And is it not a terrible thought that this emigration represents the flower of the German people? If the flower is like that, what is to become of the tree?
There have been times when, as one author expresses it, the men had to feel ashamed of themselves before the women. Even such times seem to be past for us. Men who are no longer ashamed of each other will feel no shame before women. Then let us feel ashamed for them. To feel ashamed for you, whom we ought to love, that is the severest punishment that we can conceive of for you; but it is no less severe for us.
It makes me sad, unto apathy, when I see how vainly, how hopelessly every nobler aspiration strives, to merely keep alive the humane qualities, — to say nothing at all of progressive development, — which our German emigration has brought over with it. If these qualities had been lost over there, we could at least console ourselves with the thought that they had been crowded out by the tyranny of power; but here one is tempted to lay the blame upon human, or German nature, when one sees how all this liberty, and all the means for a higher development, are only used to trample upon liberty and development, and to help vulgarity and baseness to triumph. You have never written anything that expressed my own sentiments so completely — as the article on "The Art of Despairing." You have given words to what I have so often thought, but never ventured to say. If it were not for the necessity of expressing yourself freely, and the consciousness of sympathy with the few who agree with you, that induces you to continue your activity among this rabble, I could not understand your perseverance, and would call it "casting pearls before swine." Sounds which could cause the innermost fibres of sensitive hearts to vibrate, here die away unheard, like the cry of a bird in the primeval forest; the clearest and most impressive truths only serve to win adherants for the advocates of their opposites. I see every noble zeal rebound in vain from this insensibility and dullness, to say nothing of the scorn and persecution, with which the vulgarity and resentment of the rabble are wont to reward it. It has been an entirely unexpected phenomenon to me that in liberty the higher natures work in vain, and only the meaner natures are successful, and I cannot account for it yet. To see how intellect and sentiment is entirely thrown away upon this population, which, nevertheless, contains some cultured elements, is to me so hopeless that I almost despair, not merely of the majorities, but even of the minorities. It makes me think of the Catholic processions, which I used to see in Germany, and at which the only use that flowers could be put to was to strew them on the way, to be trampled upon by the vulgar feet of a stupid crowd. I cannot at all imagine how the people here can make their lives endurable if they reject everything that can make them beautiful. I ask myself what has become of their intellect, what has become of their heart, can they no longer think and feel? For if they still thought and felt, they would also feel the necessity of embodying their thoughts and feelings in, and of manifesting them through, corresponding aspirations. I cannot help thinking how much these thousands could accomplish if they wanted to; and that they do not want to, although everything, just everything has been done to urge them on, is not that a proof of their complete demoralization and baseness?
Perhaps the colors of my picture are too somber, perhaps other eyes will see it from a more cheerful point of view, which I do not know. But that, on the whole, I do not see things too darkly, you, at least, cannot deny.[1]
I should only like to know whether there are people here who are really happy. Is not the spirit that is sensitive to happiness at the same time so sensitive to unhappiness that its environment here turns everything into bitterness? Who, indeed, can be happy in walking over this battlefield of insensibility where hearts are broken like glass, and human happiness trampled upon like vermin! How many a soul perishes in this country, friendless and unknown, how many a one carries its woe in silence to the grave, because it has once for all resigned itself not to find here any sympathy or appreciation! Every ship that plows the waters, every railway carriage, every log cabin in the forest, every garret in the cities, but especially every hospital, every insane asylum, and every graveyard, harbors a world of pain, without sympathy, and it seems to me as if the only means by which humanity here could bear the consciousness of individual and general misfortune is by becoming callous to it. You might as well write an article on the art of becoming callous as on the art of despairing.
I cannot learn this art; on the contrary, my sensibility increases in the same degree as I see the
insensibility of theirs increase. To tear oneself entirely from every relationship with the rest of the world, to ignore it entirely, to seclude oneself completely, is in no way possible. The relationship will at once be re-established, through the atmosphere, if it has been broken off in some other way.
This atmosphere seems to be strangely oppressive to me. The consciousness of being surrounded by a world so unintellectual and soulless, so completely insensible and unimpressionable to truly humane aspirations, presses upon me and disquiets me, as if I were a prisoner in the midst of liberty. I shall try to liberate myself by returning into bondage. *********
When I shall come to New York, for the purpose of taking leave, I shall hand all my papers over to you. I have not yet arranged them all, and still find much that must be consigned to the flames, because it is too insignificant, or immature. You can then do with the package whatever you please. I give you completely free play. At any rate you will not have to complain of a lack of frankness, truthfulness and recklessness. I make only one condition, to begin with: you are not to make my name known before — well, before you hear of my death. I do not mean to say that I hope to die soon, but that is not within our power. Should you, however, succeed in organizing your colony of the despairing, I promise to become a member, and shall induce those to whom I shall have to devote myself over there to come, too. *********
I am looking forward with much joy to once more ‘experiencing a European spring. What is called spring here, is like a leap of Nature from the cold shivers into fever heat. In these transitions Nature is unnatural; and it is neither conducive to health, nor is it aesthetic. American nature, like American humanity, is much more inhuman than the European, even where culture has come to its aid; and we, with our European depth of feeling, remain orphaned, because we nowhere meet with any response. In order to infuse our own life into a local landscape, we must either first transform it, or become bound to it by the most painful recollections. But even then one must not live near too many people. In Germany, or Switzerland, I felt at home in every pretty spot, even when I had been there but a few days. Here, even the flowers, that I myself have planted, remain strangers to me. Last year I had a couple of crickets about my fireplace. They were the only thing that could really create an illusion for me; but I do not understand how they came here.
This American world is made for homesickness. But what a condition to be in, always to be homesick and never to have a home!
I believe that all those whom you count among the despairing are the homesick, homeless wanderers. There is a sort of intellectual or ideal gypsydom, and we all belong to it. But we are worse off than the gypsies, for they at least hold together, and because they are not granted a portion of this world, they idemnity themselves by stealing it. There are no more helpless people than honest gypsies. And how can intellectual gypsies be otherwise than honest, even if they wanted to? For our opponents have nothing that we could steal from them. Their vulgarity, their intellectual barrenness, their emptiness of heart, their want of ideas, are nothing that they need to guard from our pilfering passion, by the aid of the police. But, alas, they rule the world. I know of no phrase more meaningless than the consolation that "the whole world is our country." A nice country in which every square foot of ground that is no longer wilderness is occupied and deformed by our opponents! Therefore our companions in misery, or the wild animals, can be our only society.
Our country can be conquered only by the revolution. But I do not wish to say more on this subject, for I, too, am a German.
- ↑ However, our friend forgets to make any allowance for the effect which the social and political conditions had upon the emigrants, and especially forgets to consider that a great many of the highest minded, and most cultured of them were, moreover, obliged to struggle with miserable circumstances, which made it hard for them, or discouraged them, from taking part in affairs of general interest. But she is perfectly right in condemning the great mass of the older emigration, whose pecuniary conditions are much better, but who have actually sworn off, and hate every participation in intellectual life and liberal aspirations, while every low and illiberal tendency seems to meet with their approval; moreover, that part of the younger generation, which is likewise quite numerous, who are not suffering from pecuniary disabilities, but who, guided by a shallow conceit, observe a negative or passive attitude toward everything that does not especially curry their favor. The upshot of it all is, of course, that the entire German emigration does not weigh anything whetever in the scale of progress, and everybody looks down upon them with contempt.
We do not at all blame a thoughtful and feeling woman that she cannot endure this climate in an isolated position; to us it is endurable only on account of the freedom of speech, which at least can scatter the seed for the future. — Editor "Pionier,"