Facts and Fictions of Life

by Helen H. Gardener

But when it comes to the human animal—the final blossom of creative thought, as religionists word it, or of universal energy, as scientists put it—the male, for the first time, becomes the whole idea.

A helpmate for him is an after-thought, and according to man's teaching up to the present time, an after-thought only half matured and very badly executed. In spite of all the practice on other pairs—one of each sex—it remained for the Almighty, or nature, to make the mistake (for the first time) of creating the human race with one of its halves a mere "annex" to the other. A subject. A subordinate. Without brains to do its own thinking, without judgment to be its own guide. This blunder is not made with any other pair. In the case of all other animals each sex has its own brain power with which it directs its own affairs, makes its own laws of conduct, and so preserves its own individuality, its personal liberty, its freedom of action and of development.

I am not ignorant of, nor do I forget, the scientific fact that in nature among ants, birds and beasts there are tribes and communities where some are slaves or are subject to others; but what I do assert is this, that this is not a sex distinction or degradation. It is not infrequently the males who are the subjects in these communities where liberty is not equal and where, therefore, the very basic principal of equality is impossible or unknown. And did it ever occur to you that a community or a people which recognizes in its fundamental laws and customs—in its very forms of expression—that it is right to preserve inequality of opportunity, of education, of emolument and of conduct has yet to learn the meaning of the words "liberty" and "justice?"

Nowhere in all nature is the mere fact of sex—and that the race-producing sex—made a reason for fixed inequality of liberty, of subjugation, of subordination and of determined inferiority of opportunity in education, in acquirement, in position—in a word, in freedom. Nowhere until we reach man!

Here, where for the first time in nature there enter artificial social conditions and needs, these artificial demands coupled with the great fact of maternity (everywhere else in nature absolutely under its own control), maternity under sex subjection, linked with financial dependence upon the one not so burdened, has fixed this subordinate status upon that part of the race which is the producer of the race. This fact alone is enough to account for the slow, the distorted, the diseased and the criminal progress of humanity.

Subordinates cannot give lofty character. Servile temperaments cannot blossom into liberty-loving, liberty-giving descendants. Many of the lower animals destroy their young if they are born in captivity. They demand that maternity shall be free. Free from man's conditions or captivity, as it always has been free from the tyranny of sex control in their own species. *

* While reading the proof for this book this corroborative
and interesting illustration appeared in the New York World
of date June 24:
The tragedy which has been expected to occur any time at the
Zoo was enacted yesterday, when Alice, the lioness who gave
birth to three whelps on Wednesday morning, ate one and
killed another. The third was only rescued by strategy.
Animals never kill their young in their wild state, except
the male lion, from whom the female hides the young. In
captivity it's a common thing.
Keeper Downey first discovered the deed, and when the
Director arrived Alice was just finishing one of her
offspring. Another lay dead in the corner and the third had
crawled away and was crying pitifully. Director Smith had
the door raised which leads into another cage and Alice was
coaxed inside. Then the door was let down and Keepers Downy
and Snyder caught the only survivor and secured the body of
the other. It was a dangerous proceeding, as Alice was
terribly angry and beat her great body against the thick
iron bars.
The dead cub was sent to the Museum of Natural History, and
after a good deal of skirmishing around by Keepers Downey
and Shannon a Newfoundland dog belonging to an employee of
Clausen's Brewery, on East Fifty-fifth street, who
yesterday morning gave birth to eight pups, was found, and
last evening the survivor of the triplets was taken to the
brewery.
The Director will pay the owner of the dog $3 per week for
the baby's board and lodging, and, to the credit of the
generous-hearted mother dog, she has taken the little
lioness to her breast without so much as a questioning look.
She licked it and snuggled it as she did her own and
caressed it into nursing. After it is a few weeks old and is
strong it can be taken away from the dog and, with little
trouble, can be brought up on a bottle.

It is the fashion in this country now-a-days to say that women are treated as equals. Some of the most progressive and best of men truly believe what they say in this regard. One of our leading daily papers, which insists that this is true, and even goes so far as to say that American gentlemen believe in and act upon the theory that their mothers and daughters are of a superior quality—and are always of the very first consideration to and by men—recently had an editorial headlined "Universal Suffrage the Birthright of the Free Born." I read it through, and if you will believe me, the writer had so large a bump of sex arrogance that he never once thought of one-half of humanity in the entire course of an elaborate and eloquent two-column article! "Universal" suffrage did not touch but one sex. There was but one sex "free born." There was but one which was born with "rights." The words "persons," "citizens," "residents of the state" and all similar terms were used quite freely, but not once did it dawn upon the mind of the writer that every one of those words, every argument for freedom, every plea for liberty and justice, equality and right, applied to the human race and not merely to one-half of that race.

Sex bias, sex arrogance, sex pride, sex assumption is so ingrained that it simply does not occur to the male logicians, scientists, philosophers and politicians that there is a humanity. They see, think of and argue for and about only a sex of man—with an annex to him—woman. They call this the race; but they do not mean the race—they mean men. They write and talk of "human beings;" of their needs, their education, their capacity and development; but they are not thinking of humanity at all. They are thinking of, planning for and executing plans which subordinate the race—the human entity—to a subdivision, the mark and sign of which is the lowest and most universal possession of male nature—the mere procreative instinct and possibility. And this has grown to be the habit of thought until in science, in philosophy, in religion, in law, in politics—one and all—we must translate all language into other terms than those used. For the word "universal" we must read "male;" for the "people," the "nation," we must read "men." The "will of the majority—majority rule"—really means the larger number of masculine citizens. And so with all our common language, it is in a false tense. It is mere democratic verbal gymnastics, clothing the same old monarchial, aristocratic mental beliefs, with man now the "divine right" ruler and with woman his subject and perquisite. Its gender is misstated and its import multiplied by two. It does not mean what it says, and it does not say what it means.

Our thoughts are adjusted to false verbal forms, and so the thoughts do not ring true. They are merely hereditary forms of speech. All masculine thought and expression up to the present time has been in the language of sex, and not in the language of race; and so it has come about that the music of humanity has been set in one key and played on one chord.