Facts and Fictions of Life

by Helen H. Gardener

And I agree with him perfectly so far.

It is indeed, a desperately practical question for both men and women and Anthropology and Heredity teach, in all peoples and in each succeeding generation, that the question has not been solved by the adoption of the double standard of morals!

It is so desperately practical that the land is literally covered with the deplorable results, in hospitals, in prisons, in imbecile asylums and in mad houses; but when he goes on to "thank God that this vice is hidden, and that thousands of wives and daughters do not know of even its existence," it impresses me that the Inspector is, in deploring the ignorance of fathers and commending it in mothers, attempting to still farther hedge boys about with a condition which inevitably makes of them sex maniacs in more directions than one. Is not his mother as deeply interested in her boy's welfare as is his father? Is it not to her eyes and wisdom his younger days are most left and to whose watchfulness, intelligence and information he must be trusted not to develop or acquire fatal habits? or if he has them in his blood as a heritage from his father, or from his father's father, by whom vice was looked upon as "safe" if only kept from the ears and eyes of wife and daughter; is it not imperative that the trained eye and mind of a woman who is not ignorant of nor blind to the very earliest indications that Nature has sent a message that there is a blood taint, so that, in so far as it is possible she may labor to modify and control his awful inheritance before it has him in a fatal grip?

Instead of this being the case it is advocated as desirable that she be even "ignorant of the existence of such vice!" It is due more to the fact that she has been ignorant than to any other one thing that, later on, the boy's developed hereditary curse, or his acquired bad habits, have so fixed themselves upon his young mind and body that the Inspector and the boy's father find themselves in a position to choose between a straight jacket for the boy himself, or first a wrecked and outraged womanhood and later on descendants that are marked with a brand that is worse than Cain's.

The Inspector says that such disclosures as Dr. Talmage's sermon before innocent women and girls do vastly more harm than a host of sin that is compelled to hide its head.

Now what is the implication? Did he mean to imply that those places have, since the sermon, been thronged with the "wives and daughters of Brooklyn?" If not, how did he know that it "polluted their minds?" Has he not jumped at that conclusion and cast a slur upon the wrong sex? the sex that did not "squander its money in patronizing these resorts?" Was not that a rather desperate effort to sustain an argument by a non-sequitur?

Are women's minds polluted by a knowledge of vice which they avoid intelligently rather than simply escape from ignorantly? Are ignorance and innocence the same thing? Did the Inspector believe that a knowledge of the degradation into which their sons are led and pushed by just such theories as these backed by a blind hereditary impulse which has no intelligent care from a wise parentage, did he believe that such knowledge would drive or lure "wives and daughters" into polluting vice? And is it not strange to hear of a condition of things which can be spoken of as good and desirable for boys and men which is in the same breath depicted as pollution even to the ears of women? Can good women live with these same men and not be polluted? How about the children?

Man has for ages past, claimed to be the logical animal. Beasts have no logic at all, and in this regard woman has been gallantly classed, if not exactly with the beasts, certainly not with man. We may say she has been counted by him as a sort of missing link. She had logic—if she agreed with all he said. Otherwise she was an emotional, irrational, unclassified creature.

Now, when it comes to dealing with his fellows, man has—in the main—a fair amount of reason and logic; but the moment he is called upon to think of woman as simply a human being like himself, to deal with and for her as such, to give her a chance to do the same with, and by, and for herself, that moment man becomes an emotional, irrational sex maniac. He is absolutely unable to look upon woman as first of all, a free individuality, a human being on exactly the same plane as himself. She is instantly "wife," "daughter," or victim to his mind always. Never for one instant does he contemplate her as an entity entitled to life and liberty, for, and because of herself. Always it is her relation to him that he sees and deals with—and alas for his theories of justice, gallantry or right—always it is as his subordinate, for his use, abuse, or pleasure, that he thinks of and plans for her.

Why confine gilded houses to one quarter? To keep their vicious inmates away from "our wives and daughters, and the streets which they are on," says the Inspector. But that is making sex irregularity a reason for restricting liberty of residence and resort—even of promenade and pleasure. That is to say, it restricts the liberty of one party to the vice—to the irregularity of sex relations. And unfortunately it is the wrong party who is restricted to compass the object claimed! The one whose vice can and actually does injure—the wife and daughter—(the pure woman who is his victim in marriage, and the daughter who is his victim in heredity) the one who can do infinite wrong, is left to roam at large!