The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

The causes that have given rise to such an opinion are not far to seek. The question has been approached from the wrong end; we have looked from above downwards—from the latest stages of life back to the beginning, instead of from the beginning on to the end. We find among the higher forms of life—the animals with which we are all familiar—that the males are as a rule larger and stronger, more varied in structure, and more highly ornamented and adorned than the females. And when we rise to the human species these sex differences persist and are even emphasised, though finding their expression in a greater number of less strongly marked characters, not on the physical side alone, but on the mental and psychical. It is difficult to divest the mind of facts with which it is most familiar. Thus it is easy to understand the widely-held opinion of the superiority of the male half of life, and that the female is the sex sacrificed to the reproductive process.

Now, were this true, the question of woman's place in life would indeed be settled. There can be no upward change which is not in accord with the laws of Nature. If the female really started and had always remained secondary to the male, necessary to continue life, but otherwise unimportant, in such position she must be content to stay. Her struggles for advancement may be heroic, yet would they be doomed to failure, for no individual growth can persist which injures the growth of the race-life. Well it is for women that there need be no such fear, even among the most timid-hearted; woman's position and advancement is sure because it is founded with deepest roots in the organic scheme of life.

As once more we search backwards, tracing the differences of sex function to their earliest appearance in the humblest types of life, we find the exact opposite of this theory of the inferiority of the female to be true. The female is of more importance than the male from Nature's point of view. We have seen that life must be regarded as essentially female, since there is no choice but to look upon asexual reproduction as a female process; the single-cell being the mother-cell with the fertilising element of the father or male-cell wanting. We know further that a similar process, but much more highly developed, is possible in what is called parthenogenesis, or virgin-birth, which can only be explained as a survival of the early form. For long life continued without the assistance of the male-cell, which, when it did arise, was dependent on the ova, or female-cell, and was driven by hunger to unite with it in fatigue to continue life. We are thus forced to regard the male-cell as an auxiliary development of the female, or as Lester Ward ingenuously puts it, "an after-thought of Nature devised for the advantage of having a second sex."

Now, if we examine the simplest types of the sexes in the lower reaches of the animal kingdom,[18] below the vertebrates we find the same conditions prevailing. The male is frequently inconspicuous in size, of use only to fertilise the female, and in some cases incapable of any other function; the female, on the other hand, remains unchanged and carries on the life of the species. So marked is this difference among some species that the male must be regarded as a fallen representative of the female, having not only greatly diminished in size, but undergone thorough degeneration in structure.[19] In certain extreme cases what have been well called "pigmy males" illustrate this contrast in an almost ridiculous degree. This is well seen among the common rotifers, where the males are much smaller than the females and very degenerate. Sometimes they seem to have dwindled out of existence altogether, as only females are to be seen; in other cases, though present they fail even to accomplish their proper function of fertilisation, and as reproduction is carried on by the females, they are not only minute but useless. Nor are such cases of male degeneration confined to this group. The whole family of the Abdominalia (cirripedes) have the sexes separate; and the males, comparatively very small, are attached to the body of each female, and are entirely passive and dependent upon her.[20] Some of these male parasites are so far degenerated as to have lost their digestive organs and are incapable of any function except fertilisation: the male Sygami (menatodes), for instance, being so far effaced that it is nothing but a testicle living on the female.[21] A yet more striking instance is furnished by the curious green worm Bonellia, where the male appears like a remote ancestor of the female, on whom it lives parasitically. Somewhat similar is the cocus insect, among whom the males are very degenerate, small, blind and wingless.

This phenomenon of minute parasitic male fertilisers in connection with normally developed females was noticed by Darwin, and his observations have been confirmed by Van Beneden, by Huxley, Haeckel, Milne Edwards, Fabre, Patrick Geddes, and many other eminent entomologists.[22] A full study of these early forms of sexuality should be made by all who wish to understand the problem of woman; their life-histories furnish prophecies of many large facts. I wish it were possible for me to bring forward further examples. It is the difficulty of treating so wide a subject within narrow limits that so many things that are of interest have to be hurried over and left out. But there is one delightful case that I cannot refrain from mentioning. The facts are given in a letter from Darwin to Sir Charles Lyell, dated September 14, 1849. It is quoted by Professor Lester Ward. This instance of the sexual relationship among the cirripedes illustrates very vividly the early superiority of the female.

The letter runs thus—

"The other day I got a curious case of a unisexual, instead of hermaphrodite cirripede, in which the female had the common cirripedial character, and in two valves of her shell had two little pockets, in each of which she kept a little husband; I do not know of any other case in which the female invariably has two husbands. I have still one other fact, common to several species, namely, that though they are hermaphrodite, they have small additional, or shall I call them, complemental males, one specimen, itself hermaphrodite, had no less than seven of these complemental males attached to it. Truly the schemes and wonders of Nature are illimitable,"[23]

Here, indeed, is a knock-down blow to the theory of the natural superiority of the male. These cases we have examined are certainly extreme, the difference between the sexes is, as we shall see, less marked in many early types. But the existence of these helpless little husbands serves to show the true origin of the male. How often he lived parasitically on the female, his work to aid her in the reproductive process, useful to secure greater variation than could be had by the single-celled process. In other words, the male is of use to the life-scheme in assisting the female to produce progressively fitter forms. She, indeed, created him, his sole function being her impregnation.

Corroborative evidence appears in the contrast which persists in all the higher forms between the relatively large female-cell or germ and the microscopical male-cell or sperm, as also in the absorption of the male cellule by the female cellule. In the sexual cells there is no character in which differentiation goes so far as that of size.[24] The female cell is always much larger than the male; where the former is swollen with the reserve food, the spermatozoa may be less than a millionth of its volume. In the human species an ovum is about 3000 times as large as spermatozoa.[25] The male cellule, differentiated to enable it to reach the female, impregnates and becomes fused within her cellule, which, unlike hers, preserves its individuality and continues as the main source of life.

It is true that exceptions occur, sex-parasitism appearing in both sex forms, and in some cases it is the female who degenerates and becomes wholly passive and dependent, but this is usually under conditions which afford in themselves an explanation. Thus, in the troublesome thread-worm (Heterodera schachtii), which infests the turnip plant, the sexes are at first alike, then both become parasitic, but the adult male recovers himself, is agile and like other thread-worms, while the female remains a parasitic victim without power of function—a mere passive, distended bag of eggs. Another extreme but well-known example is that of the cochineal insect, where the female, laden with reserve products in the form of the well-known pigment, spends much of its life like a mere quiescent gall on the cactus plant; the male, on the other hand, is active, though short-lived. Among other insects—such, for example, as certain ticks—a very complete form of female parasitism prevails; and while the male remains a complex, highly active, winged creature, the female, fastening itself into the flesh of some living animal and sucking its blood, has lost wings and all activity and power of locomotion, having become a mere distended bladder, which, when filled with eggs, bursts and ends a parasitic existence that has hardly been life.[26] In many crustaceans, again, the females are parasitic, but this also is explained by their habit of seeking shelter for egg-laying purposes.[27]