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

by Eliza Burt Gamble

It is quite true that it is not observed “in history” that women assert their rights. It has been shown, however, that prior to the historic age, through capture and the individual ownership of land, women had become dependent upon men and wholly subject to their control. After thousands of years of subjection to male influence, the movements of women, who are still dependent upon men, furnish little satisfactory information regarding the character of free women at a time before they had succumbed to the exigencies of brute force, and the unbridled appetites of their male masters. Slaves seldom assert their rights, or, if they do, of what avail is it?

Were we in possession of no other facts in support of the theory of an early age of female supremacy than that all relationships to which rights of succession were attached were formerly traced through women, the evidence in its favour would be sufficient to prove it true, but this manner of reckoning descent represents only one of the many indications of such an age which Lubbock himself has been constrained to record; yet, because—during the historic age—an age throughout which the masculine element has ruled supreme, women have not asserted their rights, this writer feels inclined to ignore all the evidence bearing upon the subject, at the same time declaring that women could not have “upheld their dignity in the manner supposed”; that the female, on gaining human conditions, could not have exercised the instincts inherited by her from her dumb progenitors.

If the females among insects, birds, and many species of mammals are able to control the relations between themselves and their male mates, why should it not be inferred that the female of the human species would still be able to uphold the natural dignity of the female sex?

As an argument in support of his theory that the influence of women was never supreme, Sir John Lubbock alludes to the position of Australian women as being one of “complete subjection,” and as the native Australians represent perhaps the lowest existing stage of human society, he doubtless thinks his argument unassailable. However, that the position of Australian women cannot be taken as a reliable guide in estimating primitive womanhood is shown by the writer’s own reasoning when he says:

It must not be assumed, however, that the condition of primitive man is correctly represented by even the lowest of existing races. The very fact that the latter have remained stationary, that their manners, habits, and mode of life have continued almost unaltered for generations, has created a strict, and often complicated, system of customs, from which the former was necessarily free, but which has in some cases gradually acquired even more than the force of law.[145]

Yet we find him comparing primitive women with this race which for thousands upon thousands of years, because of its environment, or through some cause which is not understood, has been unable to advance.

While this writer perceives clearly that foreign women were much more desirable for wives than those belonging to a man’s own tribe, he has not been able to discover the reason why this was so, but, continuing to babble about the “rights” of the men of the group, overlooks the fact that native-born women were free, and as only those women who had first been torn from their friends and shorn of their independence could at this stage of human existence be forced into the position of wife, it became necessary to secure them by violence from surrounding tribes. He is not blind to the fact that it was a desire to extend the limit of conjugal liberties on the part of males which prompted wife-capture; yet he would have us believe that although women were absolutely independent of men, and although they were the recognized heads of families, and the source whence originated all the privileges of the gens, it was in no degree owing to their influence that the conjugal liberties of males were restricted within the tribe, but, on the contrary, that this restriction was enforced out of regard for the “proprietary rights” of the men of the group. He says: “We must remember that under the communal system the women of the tribe were all common property. No one could appropriate one of them to himself without infringing on the general rights of the tribe.”

As well might we say of the female bird for whose favours the male fights until overcome by exhaustion and loss of blood, that she belongs to him, or that he may appropriate her, as to say that the men of early groups could “appropriate” women. From all the facts relative to the condition of early society, it is plain that if either sex could with propriety be designated as property it must have been the male. It is evident that women were stolen from distant tribes for the express purpose of sexual slavery, a position to which free, native-born women could not be dragged; therefore, when Lubbock assures us that these foreign women naturally “became wives in our own sense of the term,” we may be sure that he is neither unmindful of the origin of our present social system, nor of the true significance attached to the position of wife. Indeed, he informs us that the “origin of marriage was independent of all sacred and social conditions,” and proves the same by actually producing the evidence. He has no hesitancy in declaring that marriage is a masculine institution, established in the interest (or supposed interest) of males; that it was “founded not on the rights of the woman, but of the man,” and that there was not on the woman’s part even the semblance of consent. In fact he declares that he regards it as an illustration of the good old plan that “he should take who has the power, and he should keep who can.” He says also that it had nothing to do with mutual affection or sympathy, that it was invalidated by no appearance of consent, and that it was symbolized not by any demonstration of warm affection on the one side and tender devotion on the other, but by brutal violence and unwilling submission. To prove that the connection between force and marriage is deeply rooted, Sir John Lubbock, like Mr. McLennan, has furnished numerous examples of peoples among whom marriage by actual capture still prevails, as well as many among which the system has passed into a mere symbol. He is quite certain that the complete subjection of the woman in marriage furnishes an explanation to those examples in barbarous life in which women are looked upon as being too great to marry—and cites the case of Sebituane, chief of the Bechuanas, who told his daughter, Mamochisáne, that all the men were at her disposal—“she might take any one, but ought to keep none.”

This instance, together with numberless others which might be cited, proves that long after the practice of appropriating solitary women for sexual purposes had become general, the position of wife was considered too degrading to be occupied by women of rank.

Attention has been called to Lubbock’s idea concerning the “rights” of the males of the group. We have seen that it is his opinion that the exclusive possession of a woman could only be legally acquired by a temporary recognition of the pre-existing communal rights, and that the account in Herodotus of the debasement of Babylonian women was cited by him as evidence to prove his position. He seems, however, to forget that this custom, which was practised in various nations, is a religious rite, and was inaugurated at a time when the adoration of the sun, as the source of all life and light, had degenerated into the most degrading phallic worship. To those who have given attention to the growth of the god-idea, the supposed cases of “expiation for marriage,” cited by Lubbock, are to be explained by the peculiar practices inaugurated under fire and passion worship at a time long subsequent to the establishment of ba’al marriages.