IX
FURTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS: THE NEED FOR SEX CHIVALRY
"Men venerated and even feared women—particularly in their specifically sexual aspect—even while they bullied them; and even in corrupt and superstitious times, when the ideal of womanhood was lost sight of, women tended to get back as witches the spiritual eminence they had failed to retain as saints, matrons and saviours of society."
Northcote: Christianity and Sex Problems, p. 326.
Chivalry is the courtesy of strength to weakness. Yet women who pride themselves on their superior moral strength in regard to sex rarely feel bound to show any chivalry towards the weak. I do not myself believe that women are as a whole stronger than men, or that men are as a whole stronger than women; but I am sure that the sexes are relatively stronger in certain respects and at certain points, and that where one is stronger than the other, that one should feel the chivalrous obligation of strength whether man or woman. Chivalry is not and ought not to be a masculine virtue solely.
For example, it is quite common to be told of (or by) some girl who is an artist in flirtation that she is "quite able to take care of herself." This appears to mean that whoever suffers, she will not; and whatever is given, she will not be the giver. It is possible to go further and say that whatever she buys she will certainly not pay for.
What does she buy? Well, it depends, of course, on what she wants and what is her social class. But, roughly speaking, she wants both pleasure and homage—not only theatres and cinemas, ice-creams or chocolates, but the incense that goes with such things—the demonstration of her triumphant sexual charm, which evokes such offerings.
Of course, in a great deal of this there is no harm. People who like each other will like to please each other, to give pleasure, and to enjoy it together. But there is something beyond this which is not harmless but detestable, and that is the deliberate playing on sexual attraction in order to extract homage and to demonstrate power. A girl will sometimes play on a man as a pianist on his instrument, put a strain on him that is intolerable, fray his nerves and destroy his self-control, while she herself, protected not by virtue but frigidity, complacently affirms that she "can take care of herself." The blatant dishonesty of the business never strikes her for a moment. She takes all she wants and gives nothing in return, and honestly believes that this is because she is "virtuous." That she is a thief—and one who combines theft with torture—never occurs to her; yet it is true.
Observe—I do not suggest that it would be creditable if she did "pay." It would be no more so than Herod's payment of John the Baptist's head. But although it is wrong to take something you want and give in return what you ought not to give, it would be a curious sort of morality that would go on to argue that it is right to take all and give nothing. Both transactions are immoral and one is dishonest.
On the other hand, it must be remembered that a parasite must take all and give nothing or as little as possible. That is the law of its being. And so long as men resent the independence of women, and enjoy the position of perpetual paymaster, so long will many women be driven to use the only weapon they have left. Moreover, it is fair to say—and this is why I plead for light—that many of them are genuinely ignorant that they are playing with fire. The more frigid they are themselves, the less are they able to gauge the forces they are arousing; the more ignorant they are, the less possible is it for them to be chivalrous to those whose strength and weakness they alike misunderstand. The half-knowledge, the instinctive arts, which girls sometimes display continually mislead men into thinking them a great deal cleverer than they are. Each is ignorant of the other's weakness, and each puts the other in danger because of that ignorance.
I once spoke to a big meeting of girls in the neighbourhood of a big camp, during the war; and reflecting on the difficult position of the men—their segregation from ordinary feminine society, their distance from their homes, their unoccupied hours, and the inevitable nervous and emotional strain of preparing for the front—I tried to make the girls realize how hard they could make it for the men to keep straight, if they were ignorant or foolish themselves. I knew—and said so—that the girls were in a difficult position too; but, after all, they prided themselves on being the more "moral" (i.e. the stronger) sex, and should be chivalrous.
Afterwards I got a reproachful letter from a woman-patrol, who assured me that if anything went wrong, it was not the fault of the girls. "They are a rough lot," she wrote, "and, of course, they like to have a soldier to walk out with. They like to romp with the men, and to kiss them, and perhaps they do go rather far in letting the men pull them about. But they have no intention whatever of going any further. If things do go further, it is the men's fault, not the girls'."
I could hardly have a better instance of the sort of thing I mean. The girls want to have "fun" up to a certain point, and there stop. It does not occur to them that there may be a difference in the point at which they propose—or wish—to stop, and that at which the man can. That there is any physiological or psychological factor in the case which makes stopping possible at one moment and next-door to impossible at another, and that these factors may differ between the sexes, so that one cannot stop just where the other can, is quite a new idea not only to factory girls but to women-patrols—at least to some of them. A girl will cheerfully start a man rushing down an inclined plane and then complain because he continues rushing till he reaches the bottom. Well, in a sense, we ought not to complain of either of them: we ought to challenge the senseless way in which they are kept in the dark about each other.
In these days, when so much greater liberty is accorded to boys and girls than was given in the past, the friends of liberty should insist with obstinacy on the need for knowledge. For if liberty is unaccompanied and unguided by knowledge, its degeneration into licence will be triumphantly used by the lovers of bondage as an argument against liberty itself. Let me then say boldly that I am all for liberty. I want boys and girls, men and women, to see far more of each other and get to know each other much better than in the past. I believe in co-education, and in real co-education—not the sham that is practised in some of our universities and colleges. I see the risks and I want to take them. I know there will be "disasters," and I think them much less disastrous than those attending the methods of obscurantism and restraint. I think the idea that a boy and girl may not touch each other introduces a silly atmosphere of unreal "romance" where commonplace friendship is what is wanted. But with all this, and because of all this, I want a girl to know that a boy's body and mind are not exactly like hers; and perhaps a boy to know that a girl's is not totally unlike his!
In what way do they differ? The male, I think, is more liable to sudden gusts of passion, of violence so great as to be almost uncontrollable—at least so nearly so as to make it both cruel and stupid to arouse them. A woman's nature is not (generally) so quickly stirred. She takes longer to move (hence the universal fact of courtship). Or rather it might be more accurate to say that he and she may both start at the same time from the same point, but she takes longer to reach the end, and because this is so, is more capable of stopping before the end is reached. This she does not understand, and expects that if she can pause, so can he; while he also misunderstands, and does not know that there is for her, just as much as for him, a moment when self-control becomes impossible.
I have said so much about the lack of chivalry shown by women to men that it is only reasonable to point out that the reverse is true, and that men are often extraordinarily unchivalrous towards women. The cause is, of course, the same: they do not realize what a strain they are putting on them. There is still a very general assumption, even by those who really know better, that women have no passions and are untempted from within. I have often been assured by "men of the world" that "a woman can always stop a man if she wants to." No doubt she can—some men. She can "stop them if she wants to." The trouble is that a time comes when she cannot want to. The bland assumption that a man has a perfect right to play on a woman's sex-instincts till they are beyond control, and then call her the guilty one because they are beyond control, is based on the age-old determination not to recognize the full humanity of women. They are "different" from men. So they are. I have admitted it. But the likeness is much greater than the difference. And neither the likeness nor the difference makes self-control an easy thing for her. It is easier up to a certain point, because she is more slowly moved; it is harder when that point is reached because her whole nature is involved. She has never learnt to say that she can give her body to one while remaining spiritually faithful to another, and perhaps she never will learn. I at least suspect so. She may be as fickle as a man, but it will be in a different way.
Of course, in all this I generalize very rashly from a very narrow experience. My excuse is that these things must be discussed if we are ever to generalize more safely, or to learn that we must not generalize at all. And I have come to the conclusion that it is perhaps as possible to know something of what is or is not true when one is unmarried as when one is married. At least one escapes the snare into which so many married people surprisingly fall, of generalizing from an experience which is not merely as narrow as everyone's must be, but actually unique; which enables them to pronounce with stupefying confidence that all men are as this man is; all women as his wife; and all marriages as his marriage. When one has had the honour of receiving the confidence of a succession of such prophets and heard them pronounce in turn, but in an entirely different sense, upon the difficulties or easinesses of sex-relationships, always with a full assurance that they are right, not only in their own case but universally, one begins to make a few tentative generalizations oneself in the hope that they will at least provoke discussion and engender light.