Eliza Lee Follen - "True Stories About Dogs and Cats"

James Joyce - "Ulysses"

L. Frank Baum - "Glinda of Oz"

Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): Judges"

The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage

A >> Almroth E. Wright >> The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage



Scanned and proofed by Thomas Pollock of The Men's Tribune,
www.menstribune.com


THE UNEXPURGATED CASE AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE


BY SIR ALMROTH E. WRIGHT M.D., F.R.S.

1913



CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

Programme of This Treatise--Motives from which Women Claim the
Suffrage--Types of Men who Support the Suffrage--John Stuart Mill.


PART I

ARGUMENTS WHICH ARE ADDUCED IN SUPPORT OF WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE

I

ARGUMENTS FROM ELEMENTARY NATURAL RIGHTS

Signification of the Term "Woman's Rights"--Argument from
"Justice"--Juridical Justice--"Egalitarian Equity"--Argument from
Justice Applied to Taxation--Argument from Liberty--Summary of
Arguments from Elementary Natural Rights.

II

ARGUMENTS FROM INTELLECTUAL GRIEVANCES OF WOMAN

Complaint of Want of Chivalry--Complaint of "Insults"--Complaint of
"Illogicalties"--Complaint of "Prejudices"--The Familiar Suffragist
Grievance of the Drunkard Voter and the Woman of Property Who is a
Non-Voter--The Grievance of Woman being Required to Obey Man-Made
Laws.

III

ARGUMENTS WHICH TAKE THE FORM OF "COUNSELS OF PERFECTION" ADDRESSED TO
MAN

Argument that Woman Requires a Vote for her Protection--Argument that
Woman ought to be Invested with the Responsibilities of Voting in
Order that She May Attain Her Full Intellectual Stature.


PART II

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE CONCESSION OF THE PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE TO
WOMAN

I

WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF PHYSICAL FORCE

International Position of State would be Imperilled by Woman's
Suffrage--Internal Equilibrium of State would be Imperilled.

II

WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF INTELLECT

Characteristics of the Feminine Mind--Suffragist Illusions with
Regard to the Equality of Man and Woman as Workers--Prospect for
the Intellectual Future of Woman--Has Woman Advanced ?

III

WOMAN'S DISABILITY IN THE MATTER OF PUBLIC MORALITY

Standards by which Morality can be Appraised--Conflict between
Different Moralities--The Correct Standard of Morality--Moral
Psychology of Man and Woman--Difference between Man and Woman in
Matters of Public Morality.

IV

MENTAL OUTLOOK AND PROGRAMME OF THE FEMALE LEGISLATIVE REFORMER

V

ULTERIOR ENDS WHICH THE WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT HAS IN VIEW



PART III

IS THERE, IF THE SUFFRAGE IS BARRED, ANY PALLIATIVE OR CORRECTIVE FOR
THE DISCONTENTS OF WOMAN?

I

PALLIATIVES OR CORRECTIVES FOR THE DISCONTENT OF WOMAN

What are the Suffragist's Grievances?--Economic and Physiological
Difficulties of Woman--Intellectual Grievances of Suffragist and
Corrective.


APPENDIX

LETTER ON MILITANT HYSTERIA



PREFACE



It has come to be believed that everything that has a bearing upon the
concession of the suffrage to woman has already been brought forward.

In reality, however, the influence of women has caused man to leave
unsaid many things which he ought to have said.

Especially in two respects has woman restricted the discussion.

She has placed her taboo upon all generalisations about women, taking
exception to these on the threefold ground that there would be no
generalisations which would hold true of all women; that
generalisations when reached possess no practical utility; and that
the element of sex does not leave upon women any general imprint such
as could properly be brought up in connexion with the question of
admitting them to the electorate.

Woman has further stifled discussion by placing her taboo upon
anything seriously unflattering being said about her in public.

I would suggest, and would propose here myself to act upon the
suggestion, that, in connexion with the discussion of woman's
suffrage, these restrictions should be laid aside.

In connexion with the setting aside of the restriction upon
generalising, I may perhaps profitably point out that all
generalisations, and not only generalisations which relate to women,
are _ex hypothesi [by hypothesis]_ subject to individual exceptions.
(It is to generalisations that the proverb that "the exception proves
the rule" really applies.) I may further point out that practically
every decision which we take in ordinary life, and all legislative
action without exception, is based upon generalisations; and again,
that the question of the suffrage, and with it the larger question as
to the proper sphere of woman, finally turns upon the question as to
what imprint woman's sexual system leaves upon her physical frame,
character, and intellect: in more technical terms, it turns upon the
question as to what are the _secondary sexual character[istic]s_ of
woman.

Now only by a felicitous exercise of the faculty of successful
generalisation can we arrive at a knowledge of these.

With respect to the restriction that nothing which might offend
woman's _amour propre [self love]_ shall be said in public, it may be
pointed out that, while it was perfectly proper and equitable that no
evil (and, as Pericles proposed, also no good) should be said of woman
in public so long as she confined herself to the domestic sphere, the
action of that section of women who have sought to effect an entrance
into public life, has now brought down upon woman, as one of the
penalties, the abrogation of that convention.

A consideration which perhaps ranks only next in importance to that
with which we have been dealing, is that of the logical sanction of
the propositions which are enunciated in the course of such
controversial discussions as that in which we are here involved.

It is clearly a precondition of all useful discussion that the author
and reader should be in accord with respect to the authority of the
generalisations and definitions which supply the premisses for his
reasonings.

Though this might perhaps to the reader appear an impractical ideal, I
would propose here to attempt to reach it by explaining the logical
method which I have set myself to follow.

Although I have from literary necessity employed in my text some of
the verbal forms of dogmatism, I am very far from laying claim to any
dogmatic authority. More than that, I would desire categorically to
repudiate such a claim.

For I do not conceal from myself that, if I took up such a position, I
should wantonly be placing myself at the mercy of my reader. For he
could then, by merely refusing to see in me an authority, bring down
the whole edifice of my argument like a house of cards.

Moreover I am not blind to what would happen if, after I claimed to be
taken as an authority, the reader was indulgent enough still to go on
to read what I have written.

He would in such a case, the moment he encountered a statement with
which he disagreed, simply waive me on one side with the words, "So
you say."

And if he should encounter a statement with which he agreed, he would
in his wisdom, censure me for neglecting to provide for that
proposition a satisfactory logical foundation.

If it is far from my thoughts to claim a right of dictation, it is
equally remote from them to take up the position that I have in my
arguments furnished _proof_ of the thesis which I set out to
establish.

It would be culpable misuse of language to speak in such connexion of
_proof_ or _disproof_.

Proof by testimony, which is available in con-nexion with questions of
fact, is unavailable in connexion with general truths; and logical
proof is obtainable only in that comparatively narrow sphere where
reasoning is based--as in mathematics--upon axioms, or--as in certain
really crucial experiments in the mathematic sciences--upon quasi-
axiomatic premisses.

Everywhere else we base our reasonings on premisses which are simply
more or less probable; and accordingly the conclusions which we arrive
at have in them always an element of insecurity.

It will be clear that in philosophy, in jurisprudence, in political
economy and sociology, and in literary criticism and such like, we are
dealing not with certainties but with propositions which are, for
literary convenience, invested with the garb of certainties.

What kind of logical sanction is it, then, which can attach to
reasonings such as are to be set out here?

They have in point of fact the sanction which attaches to reasonings
based upon premisses arrived at by the method of _diacritical
judgment._

It is, I hasten to notify the reader, not the method, but only the
name here assigned to it, which is unfamiliar. As soon as I exhibit it
in the working, the reader will identify it as that by which every
generalisation and definition ought to be put to the proof.

I may for this purpose take the general statements or definitions
which serve as premisses for my reasonings in the text.

I bring forward those generalisations and definitions because they
commend themselves to my diacritical judgment. In other words, I set
them forth as results which have been reached after reiterated efforts
to call up to mind the totality of my experience, and to de-tect the
factor which is common to all the individual experiences.

When for instance I propose a definition, I have endeavoured to call
to mind all the different uses of the word with which I am
familiar--eliminating, of course, all the obviously incorrect uses.

And when I venture to attempt a generalisation about woman, I
endeavour to recall to mind without distinction all the different
women I have encountered, and to extricate from my impressions what
was common to all,--omitting from consideration (except only when I am
dealing specifically with these) all plainly abnormal women.

Having by this procedure arrived at a generalisation--which may of
course be correct or incorrect--I submit it to my reader, and ask from
him that he should, after going through the same mental operations as
myself, review my judgment, and pronounce his verdict.

If it should then so happen that the reader comes, in the case of any
generalisation, to the same verdict as that which I have reached, that
particular generalisation will, I submit, now go forward not as a
datum of my individual experience, but as the intellectual resultant
of two separate and distinct experiences. It will thereby be immensely
fortified.

If, on the other hand, the reader comes to the conclusion that a
particular generalisation is out of conformity with his experience,
that generalisation will go forward shorn of some, or perchance all,
its authority.

But in any case each individual generalisation must be referred
further.

And at the end it will, according as it finds, or fails to find,
acceptance among the thoughtful, be endorsed as a truth, and be
gathered into the garner of human knowledge; or be recognised as an
error, and find its place with the tares, which the householder, in
time of the harvest, will tell the reapers to bind in bundles to burn
them.

A. E. W.
1913.



INTRODUCTION

Programme of this Treatise--Motives from which Women Claim the
Suffrage--Types of Men who Support the Suffrage--John Stuart Mill.

The task which I undertake here is to show that the Woman's Suffrage
Movement has no real intellectual or moral sanction, and that there
are very weighty reasons why the suffrage should not be conceded to
woman.

I would propose to begin by analysing the mental attitude of those who
range themselves on the side of woman suffrage, and then to pass on to
deal with the principal arguments upon which the woman suffragist
relies.

The preponderating majority of the women who claim the suffrage do not
do so from motives of public interest or philanthropy.

They are influenced almost exclusively by two motives: resentment at
the suggestion that woman should be accounted by man as inherently his
inferior in certain important respects; and reprehension of a state of
society in which more money, more personal liberty (In reality only
more of the personal liberty which the possession of money confers),
more power, more public recognition and happier physiological
conditions fall to the share of man.

A cause which derives its driving force so little from philanthropy
and public interest and so much from offended _amour propre_ and
pretensions which are, as we shall see, unjustified, has in reality no
moral prestige.

For its intellectual prestige the movement depends entirely on the
fact that it has the advocacy of a certain number of distinguished
men.

It will not be amiss to examine that advocacy.

The "intellectual" whose name appears at the foot of woman's suffrage
petitions will, when you have him by himself, very often Make
confession:--"Woman suffrage," he will tell you, "is not the grave and
important cause which the ardent female suffragist deems it to be. Not
only will it not do any of the things which she imagines it is going
to do, but it will leave the world exactly where it is. Still--the
concession of votes to women is desirable from the point of view of
symmetry of classification; and it will soothe the ruffled feelings of
quite a number of very worthy women."

It may be laid down as a broad general rule that only two classes of
men have the cause of woman's suffrage really at heart.

The first is the crank who, as soon as he thinks he has discerned a
moral principle, immediately gets into the saddle, and then rides
hell-for-leather, reckless of all considerations of public expediency.

The second is that very curious type of man, who when it is suggested
in his hearing that the species woman is, measured by certain
intellectual and moral standards, the inferior of the species man,
solemnly draws himself up and asks, "Are you, sir, aware that you are
insulting my wife?"

To this, the type of man who feels every unfavourable criticism of
woman as a personal affront to himself, John Stuart Mill, had
affinities.

We find him writing a letter to the Home Secretary, informing him, in
relation to a Parliamentary Bill restricting the sale of arsenic to
male persons over twenty-one years, that it was a "gross insult to
every woman, all women from highest to lowest being deemed unfit to
have poison in their possession, lest they shall commit murder."

We find him again, in a state of indignation with the English marriage
laws, preluding his nuptials with Mrs. Taylor by presenting that lady
with a formal charter; renouncing all authority over her, and
promising her security against all infringements of her liberty which
might proceed from _himself_.

To this lady he is always ascribing credit for his eminent
intellectual achievements. And lest his reader should opine that woman
stands somewhat in the shade with respect to her own intellectual
triumphs, Mill undertakes the explanation. "Felicitous thoughts," he
tells us, "occur by hundreds to every woman of intellect. But they
are mostly lost for want of a husband or friend . . . to estimate them
properly, and to bring them before the world; and even when they are
brought before it they generally appear as his ideas."

Not only did Mill see woman and all her works through an optical
medium which gave images like this; but there was upon his retina
a large blind area. By reason of this last it was inapprehensible
to him that there could be an objection to the sexes co-operating
indiscriminately in work. It was beyond his ken that the sex element
would under these conditions invade whole departments of life which
are now free from it. As he saw things, there was in point of fact a
risk of the human race dying out by reason of the inadequate
imperativeness of its sexual instincts.

Mill's unfaithfulness to the facts cannot, however, all be put down to
constitutional defects of vision. When he deals with woman he is no
longer scrupulously conscientious. We begin to have our suspicions of
his uprightness when we find him in his _Subjection of Women_ laying
it down as a fundamental postulate that the subjection of woman to man
is always morally indefensible. For no upright mind can fail to see
that the woman who lives in a condition of financial dependence upon
man has no moral claim to unrestricted liberty. The suspicion of
Mill's honesty which is thus awakened is confirmed by further critical
reading of his treatise. In that skilful tractate one comes across,
every here and there, a _suggestio falsi [suggestion of a falsehood],_
or a _suppressio veri [suppression of the truth],_ or a fallacious
analogy nebulously expressed, or a mendacious metaphor, or a passage
which is contrived to lead off attention from some weak point in the
feminist case.[1] Moreover, Mill was unmindful of the obligations of
intellectual morality when he allowed his stepdaughter, in connexion
with feminist questions, to draft letters [2] which went forward as
his own.

[1] _Vide [See]_ in this connexion the incidental references to Mill
on pp. 50, 81 footnote, and 139.
[2] Vide _Letters of John Stuart Mill,_ vol. ii, pp. 51, 79, 80, 100,
141, 157, 238, 239, 247, 288, and 349. There is yet another factor
which must be kept in mind in connexion with the writings of Mill. It
was the special characteristic of the man to set out to tackle concrete
problems and then to spend his strength upon abstractions.

In his _Political Economy_, where his proper subject matter was man
with his full equipment of impulses, Mill took as his theme an
abstraction: an _economic man_ who is actuated solely by the desire of
gain. He then worked out in great elaboration the course of conduct
which an aggregate of these puppets of his imagination would pursue.
Having persuaded

himself, after this, that he had in his possession a _vade mecum_
_[handbook]_ to the comprehension of human societies, he now took it
upon himself to expound the principles which govern and direct these.
Until such time as this procedure was unmasked, Mill's political
economy enjoyed an unquestioned authority.

Exactly the same plan was followed by Mill in handling the question of
woman's suffrage. Instead of dealing with woman as she is, and with
woman placed in a setting of actually subsisting conditions, Mill
takes as his theme a woman who is a creature of his imagination. This
woman is, _by assumption_, in mental endowments a replica of man. She
lives in a world which is, _by tacit assumption_, free from
complications of sex. And, if practical considerations had ever come
into the purview of Mill's mind, she would, _by tacit assumption_, be
paying her own way, and be making full personal and financial
contributions to the State. It is in connexion with this fictitious
woman that Mill sets himself to work out the benefits which women
would derive from co-partnership with men in the government of the
State, and those which such co-partnership would confer on the
community. Finally, practising again upon himself the same imposition
as in his _Political Economy_, this unpractical trafficker in
abstractions sets out to persuade his reader that he has, by dealing
with fictions of the mind, effectively grappled with the concrete
problem of woman's suffrage.

This, then, is the philosopher who gives intellectual prestige to the
Woman's Suffrage cause.

But is there not, let us in the end ask ourselves, here and there at
least, a man who is of real account in the world of affairs, and who
is--not simply a luke-warm Platonic friend or an opportunist
advocate--but an impassioned promoter of the woman's suffrage
movement? One knows quite well that there is. But then one suspects
--one perhaps discerns by "the spirit sense"--that this impassioned
promoter of woman's suffrage is, on the sequestered side of his life,
an idealistic dreamer: one for whom some woman's memory has become,
like Beatrice for Dante, a mystic religion.

We may now pass on to deal with the arguments by which the woman
suffragist has sought to establish her case.


PART I

ARGUMENTS WHICH ARE ADDUCED IN SUPPORT OF WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE

I

ARGUMENTS FROM ELEMENTARY NATURAL RIGHTS

Signification of the Term "Woman's Rights"--Argument from "Justice"
--Juridical Justice-"Egalitarian Equity"--Argument from Justice
Applied to Taxation--Argument from Liberty--Summary of Arguments from
Elementary Natural Rights.


Let us note that the suffragist does not--except, perhaps, when she is
addressing herself to unfledged girls and to the sexually
embittered--really produce much effect by inveighing against the legal
grievances of woman under the bastardy laws, the divorce laws, and the
law which fixes the legal age of consent. This kind of appeal does not
go down with the ordinary man and woman--first, because there are many
who think that in spite of occasional hardships the public advantage
is, on the whole, very well served by the existing laws; secondly,
because any alterations which might be desirable could very easily be
made without recourse to woman's suffrage; and thirdly, because the
suffragist consistently acts on the principle of bringing up against
man everything that can possibly be brought up against him, and of
never allowing anything to appear on the credit side of the ledger.

The arguments which the woman suffragist really places confidence in
are those which are provided by undefined general principles,
apothegms set out in the form of axioms, formulae which are vehicles
for fallacies, ambiguous abstract terms, and "question-begging"
epithets. Your ordinary unsophisticated man and woman stand almost
helpless against arguments of this kind.

For these bring to bear moral pressure upon human nature. And when
the intellect is confused by a word or formula which conveys an
ethical appeal, one may very easily find oneself committed to action
which one's unbiased reason would never have approved. The very first
requirement in connexion with any word or phrase which conveys a moral
exhortation is, therefore, to analyse it and find out its true
signification. For all such concepts as justice, rights, freedom,
chivalry--and it is with these that we shall be specially
concerned--are, when properly defined and understood beacon-lights,
but when ill understood and undefined, stumbling-blocks in the path of
humanity.

We may appropriately begin by analysing the term "Woman's Rights" and
the correlative formula "Woman has a right to the suffrage."

Our attention here immediately focuses upon the term _right_. It is
one of the most important of the verbal agents by which the suffragist
hopes to bring moral pressure to bear upon man.

Now, the term _right_ denotes in its juridical sense a debt which is
owed to us by the State. A right is created when the community binds
itself to us, its individual members, to intervene by force to
restrain any one from interfering with us, and to protect us in the
enjoyment of our faculties, privileges, and property.

The term is capable of being given a wider meaning. While no one
could appropriately speak of our having a _right_ to health or
anything that man has not the power to bestow, it is arguable that
there are, independent of and antecedent to law, elementary rights: a
right to freedom; a right to protection against personal violence; a
right to the protection of our property; and a right to the impartial
administration of regulations which are binding upon all. Such a use
of the term _right_ could be justified on the ground that everybody
would be willing to make personal sacrifices, and to combine with his
fellows for the purpose of securing these essentials--an understanding
which would almost amount to legal sanction.

The suffragist who employs the term "Woman's _Rights_" does not employ
the word rights in either of these senses. Her case is analogous to
that of a man who should in a republic argue about the divine _right_
of kings; or that of the Liberal who should argue that it was his
_right_ to live permanently under a Liberal government; or of any
member of a minority who should, with a view of getting what he wants,
argue that he was contending only for his rights.

The woman suffragist is merely bluffing. Her formula "_Woman's
Rights_" means simply "_Woman's Claims_."

For the moment--for we shall presently be coming back to the question
of the enforcement of rights--our task is to examine the arguments
which the suffragist brings forward in support of her claims.

First and chief among these is the argument that the _Principle of
Justice_ prescribes that women should be enfranchised.

When we inquire what the suffragist understands under the Principle of
Justice, one receives by way of answer only the _petitio principii
[question begging]_ that Justice is a moral principle which includes
woman suffrage among its implications.

In reality it is only very few who clearly apprehend the nature of
Justice. For under this appellation two quite different principles are
confounded.

The primary and correct signification of the term Justice will perhaps
be best arrived at by pursuing the following train of considerations:--

When man, long impatient at arbitrary and quite incalculable
autocratic judgments, proceeded to build up a legal system to take the
place of these, he built it upon the following series of
axioms:--(_a_) All actions of which the courts are to take cognisance
shall be classified. (_b_) The legal consequences of each class of
action shall be definitely fixed. (_c_) The courts shall adjudicate
only on questions of fact, and on the issue as to how the particular
deed which is the cause of action should be classified. And (_d_) such
decisions shall carry with them in an automatic manner the appointed
legal consequences.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.