Thrasymachus

by C. E. M. Joad

The first is the great and growing preponderance of women in the community. It is estimated that in Great Britain there are already two million more women than men, and the figures can no doubt be paralleled from other Western European countries. Our present moral code condemns these two million, and as many more as the number of bachelors involves, to perpetual celibacy and sterility. In other words one woman out of every ten is expected to deny herself the right to motherhood or to become an outcast from decent society.

This system is intolerable; it is manifestly breaking down in many directions, and it continues at all only because public opinion among women is still too unorganized to protest against it. It is already the subject of wholesale disregard and infringement in practice, and it will be abolished in theory as soon as the social sense of the community has progressed to the point of removing the stigma from illegitimacy and the reproach from unmarried motherhood. In other words the system is bound up with the man-made convention which insists that the right to have a child shall be saddled with the duty of looking after a man, and, since there are not enough men to go round, women will sooner or later be forced in self-defence to permit themselves to have children without husbands.

So far as the right to sexual experience, independently of the right of motherhood, is concerned, this is already safeguarded by birth-control. The growing surplus of women will tend, therefore, through the sheer pressure of virginity, to promote an increase in irregular relationships, and to reinforce the movement towards freedom already described.

Nor will religious considerations deter with their traditional force. I have already spoken of the decline of religious sentiment in connection with the growth of moral rigour in the herd. Lacking the conviction that God will punish wrong-doers, they arrogate the right to themselves. But the same scepticism which lights the fires of the heresy-hunters encourages the wickedness of the heretics. If marriages were not made by God, and torment in hell is probably not the result of adultery, there is no longer reason to think that five minutes’ bliss must be paid for in terms of eternal damnation. It is, no doubt, true, that God still loves the pure, but when earthly lovers are available, the price of God’s love may be not worth the paying. Hence the religious argument, though doubtless it will operate as a brake in a diminishing number of cases, will no longer act as a wholesale deterrent.

A more serious consideration is put forward in the name of biology. “You are,” the biologist will point out, “conducting your argument on the basis of certain assumptions with regard to the nature of women, since you predict an increase in sexual irregularity not only among men, but also, and inevitably, among women. Men, it is agreed, are regrettably promiscuous, in the sense that, even if they are monogamous in fact, they are varietist by inclination. But women are different. Their nature is not varietist but monogamous, and it will, in spite of all changes of material circumstances and moral sentiments, remain so. For this reason irregular sexual unions will not increase in the manner you predict.”

Biological arguments of this type, derived from the alleged nature of women, are in my view mere man-made superstitions. The particular argument in question was invented by the peccant male who wished to convince himself that, however flagrant his own infidelities, his wife would remain faithful because it was her nature. The superstition was also useful, because it implied that, although a life of unvarying fidelity might do violence to his natural proclivities, he need suffer no qualm of conscience in expecting and exacting conduct which he repudiated for himself from his monogamous wife. The notion too was flattering and appealed readily to male conceit.

Now as to the existence of the facts asserted by my imaginary biologist, there is, I imagine, little doubt. There are, of course, countless exceptions either way, but the general tendency is not obscure. While the cases of My Lord and the barmaid are legion, those of My Lady and the groom are notoriously few. But admitting the fact, are we to regard it as necessarily unalterable? Many, I know, are inclined to do so. Contemplating the domestic tragedies springing from the nomadic tendencies of the male, they have seen in them one more piece of evidence for the satirical plan on which they believe the Universe to have been constructed. If indeed there be design in the scheme of things, to what sort of design do the facts point? To have made man polygamous and woman monogamous they regard as God’s worst practical joke, and conclude that, whatever may have been the objects and disposition of the creator of the Universe, they were certainly not those of a gentleman.

But is the fact really unalterable? May it not be the outcome of centuries of servitude and seclusion, made absolute by the knowledge that fidelity meant bread and butter and a home, infidelity starvation or the streets? Since the beginnings of recorded history the great bulk of women have, it is true, remained monogamous, but they may have done so from fear of losing their jobs as wives if they did not. Those who have been rich enough to stand upon their own financial feet, or powerful enough to snap their fingers at public opinion, have not been remarkable for strict observance of the marriage tie. The cases of Messalina, Catherine the Great and the modern film star, not to mention a score of less notorious instances, are instructive. Significant too is the frequency of divorce among those who are sufficiently well to do to afford the enormous fees exacted by the legal profession from those who wish to change their partners. It is difficult, in the face of evidence of this kind, to avoid the conclusion that the monogamous tendencies of women are the product of training, circumstance, and environment, and will not outlast the economic disabilities which produced them.

In any event the present existence of these tendencies, if tendencies they be, affords no indication of what they may become in the future. The fact that the primitive savage could only count on the fingers of one hand does not invalidate the existence of the multiplication table, any more than the fact that most women want only one man each now proves that they will not want more in a hundred years. The use of the word ‘natural’ begs the question. We acquire those characteristics which our circumstances and environment demand, and then transmit them to our children in whom, being inherited, they are termed natural. But this does not mean that our children will not in due course develop new characteristics of their own, if a change of circumstances renders the old ones undesirable. There are signs indeed that the new characteristics are already beginning to appear. The attitude of representative up-to-date women on this subject is curious. They tend to deny the difference between males and females which my imaginary biologist alleged, and to declare that their inclinations are naturally as promiscuous as those of their husbands. The circumstance that they control them better argues, they assert, more sense; it does not imply a difference in nature.