Are not the men who advocate and the legislators who make laws which recognize these double moral standards, and who ignore the plainest fingerboards set up by nature in hereditary conditions—are not these, in a sense, one and all sex maniacs?
When they talk of "keeping our wives and daughters" pure and ignorant they do not seem to realize that the taint of blood which flows in the veins of that very daughter, which she herself does not understand, and which an ignorant mother does not dream of, and therefore cannot stand guard over, flows as an ever present threat that she shall be one of those very outcasts whom her own father is laboring to quarantine in darkness and oblivion!
Nature has no favorites.
Heredity does not spare your daughter, and yet men who plant the seeds of sex perversion in their own families have the infinite impudence to cast from their doors the blossom of their own tillage!
They go into heroics about being "disgraced." "You are no longer child of mine!" that rings in a thousand pages of literature, in one hundred cases out of one hundred and one should be met by the reply: This act of mine proves as no other could that I am, indeed, your daughter! Blood of your blood and flesh of your flesh! Nature has told your secret through me. Let us cry quits. You put the cursed taint in my blood when I could not protect myself. I am the one to complain, not you. Do not cry out for quarter like a very coward. Face your record made in flesh and blood. This polluted life of mine is Nature's reply to your life of license and uncleanness! I am Nature's reply to your uncontrolled passions—inside of marriage and out; I, the moral or mental idiot; I, the disease polluted wreck; I, the epileptic; I, the lunatic; I, the drunkard; I, the wrecker of the lives of others—I am your lineal descendant! You sacrificed others recklessly, by act and by law, to your desires and your arbitrary sex power; you cultivated a taint in your blood.
It is true that you took the precaution to transmit it through purity and ignorance to me. That very purity and ignorance of my mother served to save your peace of mind and enable you to take advantage of her for infinite opportunity for mischief. It, alas, could not save me, for I am your child also. Her ignorance was your partner in a crime against me, her helpless infant! Do not complain. Dislike my face as you will; presented to you in whatsoever form or phase of distortion it may be, I am your direct, lineal descendant! Build better! Or go down with the structure you planned for other men's daughters and in which you locked me before I was born!
If, because of their sex, men demand privileges, rights, emoluments, honors, opportunities and freedom, which they claim as good for and necessary to them and their welfare, while they insist that all these are not to be allowed to women—would be her damnation—are not these, also, sex maniacs? Has not humanity been long enough cursed by so degrading and degraded, so ignorant and so fatally wrong a mental, moral, social and legal outlook? I am attacking no individual. I am using an individual utterance on this subject simply to the better present the side of the case which is sustained by all of our present laws, conditions and male sentiment. I am wishing to present the reverse side of this awful picture. From man's point of view it is often presented—and in many ways. But once or twice have I ever seen the other side in print where it was looked at from a rational or scientific point of view.
A short time ago a book was written which touched, to a moderate degree, woman's side as well as the general human side of this problem. It was put in the form of a novel that it might appeal to a larger reading public than would an essay or magazine article. It had a tremendous sale, and the only—or the chief—adverse criticism made upon it was, that it pictured a type of father which either did not exist or was too rare to be even taken as an illustration in fiction. Now, it is this very type of father of which the Inspector speaks thus: "Men of candid judgment, religious men, know too, that they had rather have their live, robust boys err in this indulgence than think of them in the places of those unfortunates on the island, etc., etc."
That is exactly the point made by the book referred to, and which was criticised by one man as "morbid in its imaginings about fathers." Is this Inspector "morbid?"
He said: "This is a desperately practical question with more than a theoretical or sentimental side. It ought to be talked about and better understood among fathers."