Women As Sex Vendors/Chapter 4
WE still hear people talk about the relations of the sexes, the family and marriage, as though these human and social relationships had always been and were bound to remain what they are today, whereas they have undergone far-reaching modifications within the period of our own lives.
Every change taking place in industry is always bound to send out infinite ramifications through every branch of our social institutions. The increasing specialization in industry, drawing more and more of the household arts out of the home and into factory, mill and shops, and the following of the jobs by women into the mills and factories, thus freeing woman from economic dependence on man, has already colored every branch of our social fabric. Having become more independent, woman has grown more exacting. She demands a better bargain when she marries, or, refusing to barter, she chooses a mate.
In the early days of America, when the home was the economic unit, and almost all industry was performed in the home and on the farm, women were economically dependent on men. Then woman's place was undoubtedly in the home, since there was no place else where she could earn a living. Modern industry has changed all that.
Women compete for jobs with men today, force down wages to a lower level and demand more from men before they will marry. And yet we see $25.00 a week stenographers giving up their positions to barter themselves, presumably for life, to $35.00 a week clerks or salesmen, rarely because of the mating instinct, but usually because of the personal triumph this means in the competition between members of the sex, and the social approbation which marriage brings.
The only certain thing the wisest man may say about our social institutions is that they have changed in the past and that they will continue to change, or be modified, or to pass away, in the future. In one short year, the war has altered some of our old institutions beyond recall. We believe that a continuation of the war for a considerable period will mean economic and social changes that will rock the world. And out of the storm and stress of things we doubt very much whether any of our existing social institutions will emerge intact—if it emerge at all.
The family as it is known in America today, the marriage contract, the relations of the sexes are bound to alter as they reflect changed economic conditions. Some of the old "pillars of the social structure" in Russia have already crumbled away.
Women are becoming ever more necessary and important in the role they play in industry. With this growing economic importance, and with the increasing need of capitalism for more children to augment the labor and military supply, the power of women will probably increase marvelously during the next few years. Governments will reward the surrender of woman to man, while employers compete among themselves for her labor power. Much will be offered to women.
This, we believe, for only a brief period, for we cannot but think that the final results of this war—the fruit of the present system of production and distribution—will be the utter collapse of the system itself—making way for a New Society wherein the only aristocracy shall be that of Labor and of Merit.
Undoubtedly, in the New Society, conditions will be very much changed for women. But they will also be greatly changed for men. What the future sex relations will be, we do net pretend to know. Perhaps the statement by Frederick Engels in his "Origin of the Family," is as good a forecast as any. He says:
"What we may anticipate about the adjustment of sexual relations after the impending downfall of capitalist production is mainly of a negative nature and mostly confined to elements that will disappear. But what will be added? That will be decided after a new generation has come to maturity: a race of men who never in their lives have had any occasion for buying with money or other economic means of power the surrender of a woman; a race of women who have never had any occasion for surrendering to any man for any other reason but love, or for refusing to surrender to their lover from fear of economic consequences. Once such people are in the world, they will not give a moment's thought to what we today believe should be their course. They will follow their own practice and fashion their own public opinion about the individual practice of every person—only this and nothing more."