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

by Eliza Burt Gamble

Another reason why female infanticide could not have prevailed to any considerable extent is seen in the fact that any diminution in the number of females, would have involved a scarcity of warriors, thus weakening their means of defence. From available facts it is quite evident that the practice of female infanticide throws no light on wife-capture.

Mr. McLennan declares that women among rude tribes are usually depraved and inured to scenes of depravity from their earliest infancy; hence when property began to amass in the hands of men, in order to assure paternity, it became necessary, that women be brought under subjection.

As the female, when free, is unwilling to pair with individuals for whom she feels no affection, and as under earlier conditions of human society women chose their mates, and so long as they remained together were true to them, it is reasonable to suppose that paternity was known, or at least that it might have been readily determined.

Mr. Morgan informs us that the “Turanian, Ganowánian, and Malayan systems of consanguinity show conclusively that kinship through males was recognized as constantly as kinship through females,” that a man had brothers and sisters, grandfathers and grandmothers traced through males as well as through females. Although under gentile institutions descent and all rights of succession were traced through mothers, kinship through fathers was easily ascertained.

Hence it is plain that Mr. McLennan’s assumption that women were enslaved in order to assure paternity, that they became subject to the dominion and control of men so that fathers might not be compelled to support children not their own, is not supported by the evidence at hand.

That it was through capture, the forcible carrying away of women at first singly and later in groups to foreign tribes, in which as aliens and dependents they were shorn of their right to the soil, that males were first enabled to arrogate to themselves the individual right to property is a fact which has been overlooked by Mr. McLennan.

From the facts at hand relative to the earliest social regulation of mankind, that into classes on the basis of sex, it is evident that it was inaugurated for no other purpose than the restriction of the marital relation—a restriction to prevent the pairing of near relations. Yet Mr. McLennan would have us believe that “the law compelling marriage outside the recognized limit of near relationship originated in no innate or primary feeling against marriage with kinsfolk.”

The repugnance of females among the lower orders of life to pairing with those individuals which were distasteful to them, or for which they felt no genuine affection, has already been referred to in these pages. At the earliest dawn of human life there probably existed within woman a naturally acquired aversion to pairing with near relations, yet doubtless many ages elapsed before an idea of kinship sufficiently definite to be incorporated into an arbitrary law for the government of the group was formulated; but in due course of time, with the further development of the higher characters, the idea of relationship began to take shape, whereupon was inaugurated a movement which doubtless represents one of the most important steps ever taken toward human advancement.

As the female among all the orders of life, when free, is unwilling to pair with individuals for which she feels no affection, and as the sex-instinct has ever been restricted or held in abeyance by her, and as according to the savants, it was through the efforts of women that from time to time during the earlier ages of human existence the range of conjugal rights was abridged, it is reasonable to suppose that it was woman who first objected to the pairing with near relations.

The statement of Mr. McLennan that the women of primitive races were depraved, that they were inured to scenes of depravity from their earliest infancy is not borne out by facts. It has been shown in another portion of this work that the most trustworthy writers, those who have personally investigated tribes and races in the various stages of development, agree that chastity was an unvarying rule among them, that before they were corrupted by civilization, a condition of morals existed nowhere to be found among the so-called higher races.