The Sexes in Science and History / An inquiry into the dogma of woman's inferiority to man

by Eliza Burt Gamble

The basic principle underlying our present economic system is profits. To secure large profits labour must be cheap and plentiful, and that labour may be cheap and plentiful an enormous population must be produced. In order to produce this enormous population women must be enslaved. Although existing conditions are such as to make life a curse instead of a blessing, the cry for “babies, more babies” is heard on every hand, and this notwithstanding the fact that a large proportion of the children born die before the age of five because this environment is unfavourable to life.

The clamour for an ever increasing birth-rate never ceases. It is believed that Providence alone is responsible for human ills. Poverty and disease are accepted as natural and unavoidable evils.

The fears expressed lest the human race fail to perpetuate itself would be pathetic were the reason for these fears less obvious. When we reflect that the labour market must be constantly supplied with cheap labour, and that millions of soldiers must be produced to protect the commercial and territorial interests of the ruling class the true inwardness of this insatiate cry for constantly increasing numbers is revealed.

Ecclesiasticism, the faithful ally of Plutocracy, mindful of the fact that its strength lies in an excess of numbers, has ever jealously guarded the injunction to increase and multiply. No doctrine of the so-called Christian church has been so fondly cherished and so faithfully preserved as has that of the subjection of women. Woman’s glorification under the Christian system has been exactly commensurate with her obedience to man. No offering from her to the Almighty is so acceptable as unrestrained reproductive energy.

The report of a declining birth-rate in any country of the globe is a signal for instant alarm, but although publicists and politicians have attempted to control the birth-rate not only by threats and promises but by legal enactments regulating marriage, still it is observed that in all countries of Europe, with the exception of Ireland, Bulgaria, and Roumania, the birth-rate during the last twenty-five years has steadily declined. Although numberless causes have been suggested to account for this phenomenon, and although various remedies have been proposed to lessen this “evil,” the actual cause underlying the declining birth-rate of our time remains unrecognized. Politicians, publicists, and ecclesiastics all refuse to acknowledge the obvious fact that the increasing economic independence of women is alone responsible for this phenomenon.

Notwithstanding the fact that during the last twenty-five years marked progress is observed in the social and economic conditions of women, still the sexual position of the great mass of women has steadily declined. The fact that so far as her sex relations are concerned civilized woman occupies a lower position than that occupied by the female animal has already been noted in these pages. The traffic in women is carried on in every country on the earth.

The existing sexual conditions are the direct result of the overstimulation of the disruptive characters inherited by man from his male progenitors among the lower orders of life, characters which among animals have been checked by the constructive forces developed in the female. Our sexual conditions and our present economic and industrial situation loudly proclaim the degeneracy of our time.

When the principles of equality and liberty, which were established by early organized society, gave place to a system founded on force and the control of the many by the few, and when through the subjection of women the natural checks to the disruptive tendencies developed in the male were withdrawn, the conditions now existing in so-called civilized society were foreshadowed.

A crisis has been reached in human affairs. The old regime has run its course and is about to disappear. A new era is about to dawn on the human race. The war which is now devastating Europe, and which will doubtless spread over the entire earth, is the beginning of the end. The effects of the causes which were set up in prehistoric times have reached their full measure of development and can no more be postponed or averted than can the thunderbolt which follows an electrical explosion. A thoroughly material civilization founded on selfishness and sensuality must be destroyed root and branch before the higher planes of activity for which humanity is destined may be reached. The present conflict therefore should not be regarded simply as a horrible calamity but as a necessary preliminary to these higher conditions. If the birth of the new regime can come only through blood and tears, if only through the throes of war is deliverance possible, then it is not only unwise but useless to bewail the present crisis.

Through the cleansing process involved in the present revolution, humanity will doubtless return to the legitimate path of evolutionary development. Either liberty and justice, the cardinal principles underlying early organized society will be re-established or the processes of disruption will complete the work of degeneration now so well under way. In the transformation which is to take place it is not likely that a vestige of the institutions which have produced the present regime will remain. The conflict now going on between the higher and lower forces developed in human life represents the struggle of Omnipotent Life for higher expression in matter.