The Fraud of Feminism

by Ernest Belfort Bax

One of the most infamous enactments indicative of Feminist sex bias is the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1886. The Act itself was led up to with the usual effect by an unscrupulous newspaper agitation in the Feminist and Puritan interest, designed to create a panic in the public mind,

under the influence of which legislation of this description can generally be rushed through Parliament. The reckless disregard of the commonest principles of justice and common-sense of this abominable statute may be seen in the shameless sex privilege it accords the female in the matter of seduction. Under its provisions a boy of fourteen years can be prosecuted and sent to gaol for an offence to which he has been instigated by a girl just under sixteen years, whom the law, of course, on the basis of the aforesaid sex privilege, holds guiltless. The outrageous infamy of this provision is especially apparent when we consider the greater precocity of the average girl as compared with the average boy of this age.

We come now to the latest piece of Anti-man legislation, the so-called White Slave Trade Act of 1912 (Criminal Law Amendment Act 1912, 2 & 3 Geo. V. c. 20). This statute was, as usual, rushed through the legislature on the wave of factitious public excitement organised for the purpose, and backed up by the usual faked statements and exaggerated allegations, the whole matter being three parts bogus and deliberate lying. The alleged dangers of the unprotected female were, for the object of the agitation, purposely exaggerated in the proverbial proportion of the mountain to the molehill. But as regards many of those most eager in promoting this piece of

Anti-man legislation, there were probably special psychological reasons to account for their attitude. The special features of the Bill, the Act in question, are (1) increased powers given to the police in the matter of arrest on suspicion, and (2) the flogging clauses.

Up till now the flogging of garrotters was justified against opponents, by its upholders, on the ground of the peculiarly brutal nature of the offence of highway robbery with violence. It should be noted that in the Act in question no such excuse can apply, for it is appointed to be inflicted for offences which, whatever else they may be, do not in their nature involve violence, and hence which cannot be described as brutal in the ordinary sense of the term. The Anti-man nature of the whole measure, as of the agitation itself which preceded it, is conclusively evidenced by the fact that while it is well known that the number of women gaining a living by “procuration” is much greater than the number of men engaged therein, comparatively little vituperation was heard against the female delinquents in the matter, and certainly none of the vitriolic ferocity that was poured out upon the men alleged to participate in the traffic. A corresponding distinction was represented in the measure itself by the allocation of the torture of the lash to men alone. It is clear, therefore, that the zeal for the

suppression of the traffic in question was not the sole motive in the ardour of the flogging fraternity. Even the Anti-manism at the back of the whole of this class of legislation seems insufficient to account for the outbreak of bestial blood-lust, for the tigerish ferocity, of which the flogging clauses in the Act are the outcome. There is, I take it, no doubt that psychical sexual aberration plays a not inconsiderable part in many of those persons—in a word, that they are labouring under some degree of homo-sexual Sadism. The lustful glee on the part of the aforesaid persons which greets the notion of the partial flaying alive, for that is what the “cat” means, of some poor wretch who has succumbed to the temptation of getting his livelihood by an improper method, is hardly to be explained on any other hypothesis. Experts allege that traces of psycho-sexual aberration are latent in many persons where it would be least expected, and it is, prima facie, likely enough that these latent tendencies in both men and women should become active under the cover of an agitation in favour of purity and anti-sexuality, to the point of gratifying itself with the thought of torture inflicted upon men. A psycho-sexual element of another kind doubtless also plays a not unimportant rôle in the agitation of “ladies” in favour of that abomination, “social purity,” which, being interpreted, generally means lubricity turned upside

down. The fiery zeal manifested by many of those ladies for the suppression of the male sex is assuredly not without its pathological significance.

The monstrosity of the recent White Slave Traffic enactment and its savage anti-male vindictiveness is shown not merely, as already observed, in the agitation which preceded it, with its exaggerated vilification of the male offenders in the matter of procuration and its passing over with comparative slight censure the more numerous female offenders, or in the general spirit animating the Act itself, but it is noticeable in the very preposterous exaggeration of its provisions. For example, in the section dealing with the souteneur, the framers of this Act, and the previous Criminal Law Amendment Acts to which this latest one is merely supplementary, are not satisfied with penalising the man who has no other means of subsistence beyond what he derives from the wages of some female friend’s prostitution, but they strike with impartial rigour the man who knowingly lives wholly or in part from such a source. If, therefore, the clause were taken in its strict sense, any poor out-at-elbow man who accepted the hospitality of a woman of doubtful virtue in the matter of a drink, or a dinner, would put himself within the pale of this clause in the Act, and might be duly flayed by the “cat” in consequence. The most flagrant case occurred in a London police court in March 1913, in which

a youth of eighteen years, against whose general character nothing was alleged and who was known to be in employment as a carman, was sentenced to a month’s hard labour under the following circumstances:—It was reported that he had been living with a woman apparently considerably older than himself, whom admittedly he had supported by his own exertions and, when this was insufficient, even by the pawning of his clothes, and whom as soon as he discovered she was earning money by prostitution he had left. Would it be believed that a prosecution was instituted by the police against this young man under the iniquitous White Slave Traffic Act? But what seems still more incredible is that the magistrate, presumably a sane gentleman, after admitting that the poor fellow was “more sinned against than sinning,” did not hesitate to pass on him a sentence of one month’s hard labour!!! Of course the woman, who was the head and front of the offending, if offending there was, remained untouched. The above is a mild specimen of “justice” as meted out in our police courts, “for men only”! Quite recently there was a case in the north of England of a carter, who admittedly worked at his calling but who, it was alleged, was assisted by women with whom he had lived. Now this unfortunate man was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment plus flogging. For

the judges, of course, any extension of their power over the prisoner in the dock is a godsend. It is quite evident that they are revelling in their new privilege to inflict torture. One of them had the shamelessness recently to boast of the satisfaction it gave him and to sneer at those of his colleagues who did not make full use of their judicial powers in this direction.