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Title: Women’s “Rights” Author: Dora Marsden Date: 1914 Language: en Topics: feminism, egoism, rights, women, anarcha-feminism Source: Retrieved 10/05/2021 from https://web.archive.org/web/20001002135215/http://pierce.ee.washington.edu/~davisd/egoist/marsden/TheEgoist/10_1_1914.html Notes: Originally published in The Egoist: No. 19, Vol. 1, October 1st, 1914.
The War—still the War—has brought the wordy contest about Women’s Rights
to an abrupt finish, and only a few sympathetic words remain to be
spoken over the feminist corpse. Two parties were quarrelling about the
validity of the one party’s claims to “rights,” and without any warning
preliminaries both parties, with the rest of the world, stand spectators
at a demonstration in the natural history of “rights.” To “rights” in
their maturity we have all been accustomed. Men as well as women had
become so implicated in their matured existence that all were inclined
to forget that “rights” had an era of birth and consolidation, as well
as a period of maturity. The “Women’s Rights” agitation was working
industriously on the assumption that rights were conferred by
ordination, and could be allowed by goodwill and favour, when the War
arrived to shatter it. Incidentally it clears up a confusion between
“absolute rights” and “courtesy rights”: a confusion which has already
addled not only the “Women’s Rights” agitation, but also the proletarian
agitation, and was within measuring distance of placing the German
Emperor in the position of schoolmaster, authorised by divine right to
enlighten the world as to the difference. The confusion has arisen out
of an assumption that ultimate authority lies in words; that every
difference can be settled amicably if only it is argued earnestly
enough; that courts of arbitration are final; that the legislature is
the fount of power. The Legislature, as merely the channel of power, has
seemed a contradictally, illogical, perversely inclined institution to
the vast body of opinion which starts out on its reasonings from the
base that “In the beginning was the Word.” Accordingly the
“rights-claiming” women were only one band of a company of humanitarian,
pacifist, proletarian, Christian believers, to whom the regarding of
words as secondary phenomena, addenda attaching to forces with function
merely to describe, assist, disguise and defend such, as circumstances
might require, was simple blasphemy. As they now stand spectator to the
birth-throes of revised order of rights, horror at the blasphemy is the
substance of their mutterings against the forces which have compelled
the revision. Their curses do not spare their eyes the spectacle all the
same; the forces take their course, leaving the verbalists to put what
interpretation they please on them, since interpretations are as little
germane to the forces as straws are to the force of a torrent which
sweeps them along. What would be germane to the forces would be an
exercise of force like their own; short of such exercise, words have the
value—and no more—of the detonation of the combatants’ guns: they have
effects which impress the timid and the simple.
At present, in the greater part of four continents, all “rights” are
suspended, and if, owing to favourable situation of locality, and the
force of long habit, the effect of possessing rights still continues, it
can be regarded only as an accidental escape. In the countries at war
the inhabitants are entitled to the rights of the inhabitants of
Louvain, or to those of two aviators fighting in the air—i.e., to what
they can get. Civil rights, as well as courtesy rights, circumstances
have called in, pending a settlement of fundamental rights, the rights
which tally with the arbitrament of might when exhaustion compels one
body of combatants to ask for terms. Those terms will be the “absolute
right” at the moment of settlement, and will be the foundation and the
ultimate authorisation of all subsequent civil or permitted courtesy
rights, both of which species of right those who control the armed
forces of a community can abrogate whenever they see fit. The granting
of civil rights, in the main, follows a tendency dictated by the nature
of settlement with absolute rights: those in Control granting rights to
those who appear capable of making serious trouble if they are not
granted. Might even in these deluding times still forms nine parts of
most laws; the tenth part is the “scrap of paper” to correspond: the
ocular evidence of might constituting a “right.” Should the nine parts
vary the tenth will rapidly vary to correspond, the flux of rights being
only the outer evidence of the inner spiritual flux of might. Might is
spirit; there is no doubt of that. All great military commanders, and
the commonest observations of ordinary men, agree in that spirit
translates itself as might—physical superiority—a simple phenomenon of
the spirit which verbalists seek to cover by labelling—in a hybrid
lingo—spirit as morale. The great charters embodying new rights have all
been given in response to actual or threatened insurrections in
might—i.e., in spirit—of those who desired them, and as such they fall
into harmony with the spirit of the absolute rights actually established
at the sword’s point. Between such rights and the courtesy rights which
men have conferred on women there is a swing almost to an opposite; a
sweep of difference, bridged to a certain degree by what may be called
“bluffed rights”—rights conferred by astute politicians with an eye to
popular favour in response to agitations too utterly feeble ever to put
their issue to the test of any tribunal other than that of words and
intrigue. It is a highly pernicious process, because it misleads and
subdues spirit, and it is to this increasing vogue of ultra—modern
political institutions that the “Woman’s Rights” agitation is largely
due. Such a vogue existing, women, naturally, who have to obtain most of
their material requirements by “courtesy” means—by request and
persuasion—could not be expected to believe that there existed anything
obtainable on terms of talk which men might obtain but which women might
not. Hence a “movement” founded in confusion: a confusion which women
may truly say they became immersed in only when men themselves had
become lost in it, and out of which, intellectually speaking, it has
been left to the women themselves to make clear a way.
---
Women’s ready acquiescence in the humanitarian belief that, back of all
things, stands the “Word” (translated into practice that means that all
powers flow from laws), led them to make the request—acidulated later
into a demand—that they should be allowed to participate in the making
of the laws. The request’s refusal led to the reviewing of woman’s
status in the community, and it was the evidence brought to light in the
reviewing which became in its turn accountable for an increasing
acridity in the “request.” For the first time women became aware in a
general way of their secondary position—a realisation which,
unaccountably as it may seem to men, came as a genuine shock to their
pride, the reason for the surprise being that women, since men became
articulate, have been the pleasedly persuaded victims of men’s flattery.
Women’s actions, of course, flattered men; they were not sufficiently
articulate to flatter them in words. Men, on the other hand, flattered
mainly by words and women, believed in the superiority which men
ascribed to them. The women who have an unshaken faith in the actuality
of the lofty status ascribed to “woman” by the penny novellette far
exceed in numbers those who have, at any time, followed the banner of
the “Rebel Women.” Hence the unpalatableness of the “facts,” and the
determination to alter their character at the first opportunity: hence
the determination of “advanced” women to ladle out to themselves
“rights” from their primary source—as they imagine, the legislature.
Hence the “Votes for Women” agitation.
---
A slightly increased power of observation in women made them aware that,
while they were competent to secure for themselves every kind of
material advantage, there existed a species of initiatory power, over
and above all material wealth—and in fact the source of it—into touch
with which their existent competence seemed powerless to bring them.
They had the power to draw to themselves the results of the initiatory
power where they found themselves belonging to men whose initiatory
activity was satisfactory: they had no difficulty in securing their own
aggrandising with every form of wealth and comfort. They were the
passive recipients on whom men—the active members—heaped their spoils.
Physically weak, their men protected them as valuable property; mentally
slow—and unimaginative, men could win them by the evidence and results
of their own mental alertness and imaginativeness, as they could keep
them pleased and content with the flattering interpretation they placed
upon the relationship. Men called them their “property” only when
annoyed—their “own” was the more passionate and poetic—they were the
masculine complement, and the better half at that; the stable passive
element which was always reliable—and always there like the house and
the farm stock. In short, women found that the only thing which put men
out was, not extravagance or graspingness, but a desire for activity
beyond a circumscribed limit. Women’s extravagance and irresponsibility
has been regarded, in fact, always with indulgent eye as a very venal
foible; but any enlarging of the sphere of activity was frowned down as
“dewomanising,” showing a break-down in fundamental womanly instinct.
The whole weight of man’s imagination, his “idealism,” his pictured
desire as to what women could mean for him was, is, set directly against
it. Women imagined that “an appeal to reason” would win them their point
(such as they vaguely conceived it). Off-hand they soothed themselves
that their powers had failed in the particular direction for lack of
insistence: lack of laying claim to it. Later, they found that by
claiming it they had put themselves further off from its attainment than
they would have been by quiet requesting and patient waiting for its
conferment. The more they sought to strengthen their claims with
reasons, the easier it became to frame opposition against it. They
failed to appreciate that the appeal was silenced in advance by the
counter-assault on vanity and pride; and where women are concerned
vanity is man’s main feature. It is the pride of possession which has
made it a comparatively easy task for women to turn men into toiling,
hard-pressed, monotonous money-grubbers; and it is a most delicately
ironical fate that confused observation should have led women into an
attempt to carry the assault against men’s vanity, when at the same time
they proposed increasing the pressure on men’s responsibility.
---
Confused observation is the only explanation of the trend which has been
set to the “Woman’s Movement” during the century and more which
constitute its first stage, and to which the war has now affixed the
term. For instance, only confusion could account for women’s umbrage at
being “property,” while at the same time they insist on retaining and
augmenting those protective advantages they are possessed of, just
because they are property. Property is that which, being a
non-initiatory body, can offer no self-defence, and becomes,
automatically, the possession of those who can best defend it. This does
not mean to say it has no value:—its value increases with the power of
its owner; one may not cast a glance awry at the smallest possession of
the very powerful, but its value is to its possessor, not to itself.
“Property rights” is a misnomer: accurately they are “property-owner’s
rights,” just as it is “property-owner’s responsibility.” The property
itself can have neither rights nor responsibilities. The rights of the
owners work out at an agreed claim to accord and receive neighbourly
assistance in the work of protecting the hold over one’s property, and
are based on reciprocal claims that each owner shall prevent his
property from becoming a nuisance, either from allowing it to “run wild”
or fall into such decay as to affect the well-being of his neighbours.
Thus women, being property, have no rights beyond “courtesy” permitted
ones; but their owners have responsibilities towards them, which at
their minimum they must fulfil because of the demands of their
fellow-owners, and at their maximum in order to gratify vanity in the
pride of possession, and to increase that attraction between women and
their owners, which is at the root-cause of men’s assumption of
responsibility.
---
The stronger, therefore, the call for protection, the stronger is the
implication that the responsible one is the owner and the protected one
the property; and as it is the “advanced women” who have pushed the
claims of masculine responsibility to hitherto undreamed of lengths, the
fact that it is they also who make the outcry against women being
“property” invests the movement with the element of uproarious farce:
the more so because they themselves remain sublimely unconscious of any
element of humour. This explains why by comparison with the “advanced
women,” the “womanly” women look the more intelligent. Actually there
is, at present, no difference between the main objectives of either:
they both seek to augment their status through the obliging acquiescence
of their menkind, but they differ as to the means. Both want advantage
in material affairs by civil means: that is, by avoidance of an appeal
to physical force to which a male subject class would have to resort if
it wished to carry an insurrectionary point, but the “womanly” women
have the sense to see that such a procedure can only be put through by
“courtesy” means. The desire for heightened status which is embodied in
the “advanced” women’s demands to share in initiatory power, of course
puts the “courtesy” attitude for them out of the question: they feel
they must needs demand because power is their right. A vague instinct
that power must be self- bestowed is perhaps behind their “fight” for
parliamentary enfranchisement. They imagine when they have laid hands on
voting-power they will be at the source of initiatory power: that they
will then be “free” (i.e., powerful) to help themselves. While this
struggle for voting power has been proceeding, there has been too much
heat engendered for the women to become aware that the reviewing of
their position, which has revealed so much to them, has likewise been
bringing into full consciousness in men’s mind a realisation of women’s
position which was only subconsciously realised before. It is ceasing to
be regarded as an unquestionable, divinely-ordained law of the universe
that men should be “responsible” for their women kind: it is apparent
that if responsibilities are undertaken they are so only in
consideration of privileges in lieu. The day when women can invoke the
responsibility, while denying the privilege, draws to a close after a
brief noon. It is becoming clearer what, in the way of freedom of
activity, women must needs renounce if they proceed with the one species
of feminist propaganda, i.e., unrestricted entry into the labour
markets, payment of wives, and the like; and equally clear, on the other
hand, what responsibilities they must be prepared to take on their own
shoulders if they press the opposing feminist shibboleths: “free” love,
equal claims to divorce, and so on, is becoming clear. The two brands of
the propaganda, though springing from the one source, are heading in
opposite directions; but neither is aimless. One is the instinct towards
the emoluments and conferred status which goes with “property”: the
other is towards the self- responsibilities of “freedom” which, being
interpreted in its only useful sense, means “power.” The question is
whether women have the power, the genuine self-supplying power, and not
the bogus counterfeit of conferred power. Because if they have not, by
assuming heavy and unaccustomed responsibilities, their ambitions are
leading them towards disaster, just as inevitably as every Englishman
believes that German ambitions, backed by over-rated powers, are leading
their nation to disaster. For instance, every form of self-responsible
power demands-not last, but first-capable physical self-defence. One
might venture to say it would be impossible to find in these islands any
“advanced” woman who has not felt herself made into something of a fool
by the unequivocal evidence as to the position of women presented by the
war—not merely in the countries actually devastated by the war—but here
in England. They find that they may busy themselves with efforts to
assist their less “protected” sisters towards maintenance: they may form
an admiring audience: they may have the honour of being allowed to share
in their country’s defence by dint of knitting socks: or “serve,” as one
ungallant soldier put it, by providing one of the “horrors of war” as a
Red Cross Nurse. In the war-area itself, they form part, along with the
rest of the property, of the spoils of the conquered. One cannot easily
refrain from the inference that, though they have weakened the pull of
the old womanly competence, the “advanced women” have done very little
in the way of furnishing the necessary foundations for its successor.
---
Whichever path one takes in considering this question of womanly
complementariness or secondariness, if one so chooses to call it, always
the same conclusion is arrived at: an effectual assertion of physical
force is the first essential to any successful digression from the
normal womanly protected sphere. It is a blunt fact, with a none too
attractive sound, and there will be few women who will care to give
voice to it: which silence, by the way, is more telling evidence of the
amount of distance which the “movement” has travelled than fifty years
of platform oratory. Poor Mrs. Pankhurst, to her bewilderment, found
herself driven irresistibly against the fact only to gib at it each time
she came up with it. She could not avoid it, still less could she go
through with it. “Militancy” in its infancy and “Militancy” now, in its
decrepitude, are the translations into practical effect of her
realisation of and her revolt from it.
---
Whether the “revolting” women will ever move on to the point of
acquiring the elements of self-defensive and aggressive force depends on
the extent to which the ardour of ambition can survive the depressing
effects of the present too realistic presentation of their actual
position. In any case, the set of circumstance and environment are
against it. For it, there is nothing but pride of temper; the same
ferment, however; which has been responsible for the rising of every
subordinate race and class. If Englishwomen elected to, there exists
nothing in themselves to prevent them from being as good a fighting
force as the Japanese, for instance: and that would do to be getting
along with. What does prevent them is lack of desire, and therefore lack
of initiative; consequently there is no apparent necessity to make a
drive through that heavy inertia which the substantial triumphs of
passive womanliness have fostered. They are accustomed to win success
almost solely through well-utilised inertia, and the better they succeed
as “females,” the more encouraged they are to remain inert. The spur of
necessity, occasionally, will overcome it; but, lacking that, there is
nothing to urge them on, and everything to pull them back. Even
status—women’s status—lies that way. Ninety-nine out of every hundred
women can better hope to improve their status by looking to their
marriage chances than by “carving a career.” Only a personal pride (out
of the ordinary), and intelligence, and the unique something which sets
straight for individual power, remains to count on. Their possession is
rare enough, and even when possessed are to be exercised only if
something quite as vital to women can be fitted in alongside. In
exchanging the old competence for the new, no women can afford to forego
that end which was the main objective of the old competence, and which
this earlier proved so superlatively successful in attaining.