CHAPTER XVIII
Before proceeding to the consideration of homosexuality I propose to give a brief account of contemporary misogyny, in order to avoid confusing these two distinct phenomena under one head, and also to avoid making the male homosexuals, who are often erroneously regarded as “woman-haters,” responsible for the momentarily prevalent spiritual epidemic of hatred of women. This would be a gross injustice, because, in the first place, this movement has in no way proceeded from the homosexual, but rather from heterosexual individuals, such as Schopenhauer, Strindberg, etc.; and because, in the second place, the homosexual as such are not misogynists at all, and it is only a minority of them who shout in chorus to the misogynist tirades of Strindberg and Weininger.
The misogynists form to-day a kind of “fourth sex,”[491] to belong to which appears to be the fashion, or rather has once more become the fashion, for misogyny is an old story. There have always been times in which men have cried out: “Woman, what have I to do with you? I belong to the century”;[492] times in which woman was renounced as a soulless being, and the world of men became intoxicated with itself, and was proud of its “splendid isolation.”
Of less importance is it that the Chinese since ancient times have denied to woman a soul, and therewith a justification for existence,[493] than that among the most highly developed civilized races of antiquity such men as Hesiod, Simonides,[494] and, above all, Euripides, were all fierce misogynists. In the “Ion,” the “Hippolytus,” the “Hecuba,” and the “Cyclops” we find the most incisive attacks on the female sex. The most celebrated passage is that in the “Hippolytus” (verses 602-637, 650-655):
“Wherefore, O Jove, beneath the solar beams
That evil, woman, didst thou cause to dwell?
For if it was thy will the human race
Should multiply, this ought not by such means
To be effected; better in thy fane
Each votary, on presenting brass or steel,
Or massive ingots of resplendent gold,
Proportioned to his offering, might from thee
Obtain a race of sons, and under roofs
Which genuine freedom visits, unannoyed
By women, live.”[495]
In this passage we have the entire quintessence of modern misogyny. But Euripides betrays to us also the real motive of misogyny. In a fragment of his we read “the most invincible of all things is a woman”! Hinc illæ lacrimæ! It is only the men who are not a match for woman, who do not allow woman as a free personality to influence them, who are so little sure of themselves that they are afraid of suffering at the hands of woman damage, limitation, or even annihilation of their own individuality. These only are the true misogynists.
It is indisputable that this Hellenic misogyny was closely connected with the love of boys as a popular custom. To this we shall return when we come to describe Greek pæderasty.
Among the Romans woman occupied a far higher position than among the Greeks—a fact which the institution of the vestal virgins alone suffices to prove. Among the Germans, also, woman was regarded as worthy of all honour.
The true source of modern misogyny is Christianity—the Christian doctrine of the fundamentally sinful, evil, devilish nature of woman. A Strindberg, a Weininger, even a Benedikt Friedländer, notwithstanding his hatred of priests—all are the last offshoots of a movement against the being and the value of woman—a movement which has persisted throughout the Christian period of the history of the world.
“If I were asked,” says Finck,[496] “to name the most influential, refining element of modern civilization, I should answer: ‘Woman, beauty, love, and marriage’! If I were asked, however, to name the most inward and peculiar essence of the early middle ages, my answer would be: ‘Deadly hostility to everything feminine, to beauty, to love, and to marriage.’”
The history of medieval misogyny was described by J. Michelet in his book “The Witch.” Since woman and the contact with woman were regarded as radically evil, it followed that in theory and practice asceticism was the ideal; celibacy was only the natural consequence of this hatred of woman; so also were the later witch trials the natural consequence. Therefore to this medieval misogyny, in contrast with modern misogyny, which represents only a weak imitation, we cannot deny a certain justification. The misogyny of the middle ages was earnestly meant; but it has become to-day mere phrase-making, dilettante imitation, and ostentation. In contrast with the utterances of the modern misogynist, the coarse abuse of women by such a writer as Abraham a Santa Clara has a refreshing and amusing character.[497]
Modern misogyny is certainly an inheritance of Christian doctrine, and a tradition handed down from much earlier times, but still it has its own characteristic peculiarities. Misogyny is, however, now much more an affair of satiety or disillusion than of belief or conviction; whereas in the days of medieval Christianity belief and conviction were the effective causal factors of misogyny. In addition, among our neo-misogynists we have the factor of the spiritual pride of a man who, from the standpoint of academic theoretical culture (which to men of this kind appears the highest summit of existence), looks down upon women, whom he regards as mentally insignificant, while he sympathizes with her “physiological weak-mindedness.” He smiles on her with pity, and completely overlooks the profound life of emotion and feeling characteristic of every true woman, which forms a counterpoise to any amount of purely theoretical knowledge—quite apart from the fact that women of intellectual cultivation are by no means rare.
If, in fact, we regard the lives of those who have reduced modern misogyny to a system, we shall be able to detect the above-mentioned causes in their personal experiences and impressions. The first important modern advocate of misogyny, the Marquis de Sade, lived an extremely unhappy married life, was deceived also in a love relationship, and nourished his hatred of women by a dissolute life and a consequent state of satiety.
And as regards Schopenhauer, who does not recall his unhappy relations with his mother? For he who has really loved his mother, he who has experienced the unutterable tenderness and self-sacrifice of maternal love, can never become a genuine, thoroughgoing woman-hater. But the mutual relationship of Schopenhauer and his mother was rather hatred than love. Beyond question, also, his infection with syphilis, to which I was the first to draw attention, played a part in his subsequent hatred of women.
Strindberg, in his “Confessions of a Fool,” has himself offered us the proof of the causal connexion between his misogyny and his personal experiences and disillusions; and in Weininger’s book we can read only too clearly that he had had no good fortune with women, or had had disagreeable experiences in his relations with them.
De Sade, who, perhaps, was not unknown to Schopenhauer,[498] was the first advocate of consistent misogyny on principle. It is an interesting fact, to which I have alluded in an earlier work (“Recent Researches regarding the Marquis de Sade,” p. 433), that de Sade’s and Schopenhauer’s opinions on the physical characteristics of women are to some extent verbally identical. While Schopenhauer, in his essay “On Women” (“Works,” ed. Grisebach, vol. v., p. 654), speaks of the “stunted, narrow-shouldered, wide-hipped and short-legged sex,” which only a masculine intellect when clouded by sexual desire could possibly call “beautiful,” we find in the “Juliette” (vol. iii., pp. 187, 188) of the Marquis de Sade the following very similar remarks on the feminine body: “Take the clothes off one of these idols of yours! Is it these two short and crooked legs which have turned your head like this?” This physical hatefulness of women corresponds to the mental hatefulness of which de Sade gives a similar repellent picture (“Juliette,” vol iii., pp. 188, 189). In all his works we find the same fanatical hatred of women. Sarmiento, in “Aline et Valcour” (vol. ii., p. 115), would like to annihilate all women, and calls that man happy who has learned to renounce completely intercourse with this “debased, false, and noxious sex.”
Quite in the spirit of de Sade, to whom the misogynists of the Second Empire referred as an authority, Schopenhauer, in the previously quoted essay “On Women,” Strindberg, in the “Confessions of a Fool,” and Weininger, in “Sex and Character,” preached contempt for the feminine nature;[499] and this seed has fallen upon fruitful soil in modern youth. Every young blockhead inflates himself with his “masculine pride,” and feels himself to be the “knight of the spirit” in relation to the inferior sex; every disillusioned and satiated debauchee cultivates (as a rule, indeed, transiently) the fashion of misogyny, which strengthens his sentiment of self-esteem. If we wish to speak at all of “physiological weak-mindedness,” let us apply the term to this disagreeable type of men. As Georg Hirth truly remarks (“Ways to Freedom,” p. 281), such masculine arrogance is merely a variety of “mental defect.”
Unfortunately, this misogyny has intruded itself also into science. The work of P. J. Möbius,[500] notwithstanding the esteem I feel for the valuable services of the celebrated neurologist in other departments, can only be termed an aberration, a lapsus calami.[501] But he does not stand alone. The admirable work of Heinrich Schurtz, also, upon “Age Classes and Associations of Men” (Berlin, 1902), is permeated by this misogynist aura; not less so is the equally stimulating work, “The Vital Laws of Civilization” (Halle, 1904), by Eduard von Mayer. This book, in association with the equally thoughtful and compendious work “The Renascence of Eros Uranios” (Berlin, 1904), by Benedikt Friedländer, and in conjunction with the efforts of Adolf Brand, the editor of the homosexual newspaper Der Eigene, and Edwin Bab (cf. this writer’s “The Woman’s Movement and the Love of Friends”; Berlin, 1904), to found a special homosexual group demanding the “emancipation of men,” have been the principal causes of the belief that the male homosexuals are the true “repudiators of woman,” and that from them has proceeded the increasing diffusion of modern misogyny. I repeat that this connexion is true only for the above-named group; that, on the contrary, genuine misogyny has been taught us by the world’s typically heterosexual men, such as Schopenhauer and Strindberg. Benedikt Friedländer and Eduard von Mayer preached, above all, a “masculine civilization,” a deepening of the spiritual relationships between men; whereas Strindberg and Schopenhauer, and even Weininger, really leave us in uncertainty as to what they imagine is to take woman’s place. All five agree in this, that the “intercourse” of man with woman is to be limited as much as possible; but only the two first-named openly and freely advocate homosexual relationships, or at least a “physiological friendship” (B. Friedländer), between men. Schopenhauer, Strindberg, and Weininger did not venture to deduce these consequences. Yet this is the necessary consequence of misogyny based on principle.
To the heterosexual men—and such men form an enormous majority—the noble, ideal, asexual friendship of man for man appears in quite another light from that in which it appears to the misogynist, to whom it is to serve to replace sexual love, whereas for heterosexual men friendship for other men is a valuable treasure additional to the love of woman.
Is there, then, any reason for this contempt and hatred for woman? Do not the signs increase on all hands to show us that new relationships are forming between the sexes, that a number of new points of contact of the spiritual nature are making their appearance—in a word, that an entirely new, nobler, most promising amatory life is developing? I will not fall into the contrary error to misogyny and inscribe a dithyramb of praise to feminine nature, as Wedde, Daumer, Quensel, Groddeck, and others, have done; but I merely indicate the signs of the times when I say that woman also is awakening! Woman is awakening to the entirely new existence of a free personality, conscious of her rights and of her duties. Woman, also, will have her share in the content and in the tasks of life; she will not enslave us, as the misogynists clamour, for she wishes to see free men by her side. What would become of woman if men became slaves? How could slaves give love?
Life has to-day become a difficult task both for man and for woman. Man and woman alike must endeavour to perform that task with confidence in their respective powers; but each, also, must have confidence in the powers of the other—a confidence which becomes palpable in the form of love or friendship, so that those who feel it have their own powers strengthened.
Not “Free from woman” is the watchword of the future, but “Free with woman.”
[491] V. Hoffmann, in a bad novel, “Das vierte Geschlecht” (Berlin, 1902), gives this name to the non-homosexual misogynists.
[492] Karl Gutzkow, “Säkularbilder,” vol. i., p. 55 (Frankfurt, 1846).
[493] In the Shi-king we find the following characterization of woman:
“Enough for her to avoid evil,
For what can a woman do that is good?”
Indian literature is also full of such ideas. Cf. H. Schurtz, “Altersklassen und Männerbunde” (Age Classes and Associations of Men), p. 52.
[494] Simonides considered that women were derived from various animals. W. Schubert (“From the Berlin Collection of Papyri,” published in the Vossische Zeitung, No. 23, January 15, 1907) reproduces long fragments of a Greek anthology which collates praise and blame of woman in the original words of the poets.
[495] I quote from “The Plays of Euripides in English,” in two volumes, vol. ii., p. 136 (Everyman’s Library, Dent, London).—Translator.
[496] H. T. Finck, “Romantic Love and Personal Beauty,” vol. i., pp. 186, 187 (Breslau, 1894).
[497] Equally amusing is the misogynist “Alphabet de l’Imperfection et Malice des Femmes,” by Jacques Olivier (Rouen, 1646), in which all the bad qualities of woman, observed down to the year 1646, are described with effective care and completeness.
[498] We know that Schopenhauer was a lover of erotic writings; a fuller account of this matter will be found in Grisebach’s “Conversations and Soliloquies of Schopenhauer.”
[499] That Nietzsche is wrongly accredited with misogyny is convincingly proved by Helene Stocker (“Nietzsches Frauenfeindschaft,” published in Zukunft, 1903; reprinted in “Love and Women,” pp. 65-74; Minden, 1906).
[500] P. J. Möbius, “The Physiological Weak-mindedness of Woman,” fourth edition (Halle, 1902). Näcke terms the recently deceased Möbius the “German Lombroso,” in order by this term to indicate, on the one hand, the man’s indubitable genius, and on the other hand the superficiality and purely hypothetical character of his scientific deductions.
[501] The grounds for this opinion were given in the fifth chapter.
CHAPTER XIX
THE RIDDLE OF HOMOSEXUALITY
“Through Science to Justice!”—Magnus Hirschfeld.