Woman and the Republic / A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates

by Helen Kendrick Johnson

CHAPTER X.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND SEX.

The ninth count of the Suffrage Declaration says: "He has created a false sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude woman from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in men." And the list of grievances is summed up as follows: "Because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."

The writers do not say whether the code of morals referred to is a code of law or an unwritten code of public sentiment. If they mean the former, their statement is not true; for whatever laws affect moral delinquencies visit their penalties equally upon men and women. If they mean public sentiment alone, the answer is, that both men and women are responsible for its creation. It is folly to deny that there is, in the nature of things, more excuse for men than for women. A mother realizes that her son has a natural temptation of which her daughter knows nothing. But this fact, while it accounts in part for the different standard, by no means exonerates man. One of the strangest anomalies of human experience exists in connection with this matter. Man reposes his deepest faith in the existence of goodness at its vital point, in the virtue of woman; and yet when he tramples upon that virtue he screens himself behind the excuse that her nature is as vulnerable as his own, while his temptation is greater. The main reason, as it seems to me, why women often appear more cruel to their fallen sisters than do men, lies in the fact that pure women abhor this vice as they abhor no other. Besides bestowing upon woman a loftier moral sense, her Creator has hedged about her virtue with a feeling of physical repulsion that is distinct from the moral question involved. The social life of the world is to a large extent in woman's hands. When she says to men "You cannot bring your impurity into my home," "You must be the ones to guard our sons and daughters," the reform will be begun in earnest. Woman's faith, and her abstract way of looking at moral questions, prevent her from fastening her thought, as men naturally do, on any special culprit, in her severe but vague sense of wrong in this matter. The Suffragists have taken fewer steps in the direction of removing the social plague-spot than in the direction of bringing about a system of easier divorce—a thing that strikes a blow directly against, instead of for, the virtue of their sex. Social opinion is causing a change in some of the laws concerning social vice. Nearly every State legislature has raised the age of consent. So far as Suffrage associations have assisted in this, it proves their ability and their good will; but much more is due to our educated physicians and philanthropists.

It seems at first thought as if there were no direct connection between voting and social questions of sex; but I am following the lead of my Suffrage texts. Others who attempt the discussion are led to the same themes. Dr. Jacobi, in her book, says: "The problem is, to show why, in a representative system based on the double principle that all the intelligence in the state shall be enlisted for its welfare, and all the weakness in the state represented for its own defence, women, being often intelligent, and often weak, and always persons in the community, should not also be represented." In replying to the anti-suffrage arguments of Prof. Goldwin Smith, she says: "Do sex relations depend upon acts of Parliament or constitutional amendments? Can women marry a ballot, or embrace the franchise, otherwise than by a questionable figure of speech? Must adultery and infanticide necessarily be favored by the decisions of female jurors? Is divorce legislation, as arranged by the exclusive wisdom of men, now so satisfactory that women—who must perforce be involved in every case—should always modestly refrain from attempting amendment? This entire class of considerations, however irrelevant to the issue, may be grouped together and considered together, because, to a large class of minds—the rudest, quite as much as those of Mr. Smith's cultivation—they are the considerations that do come to the front whenever equal rights are suggested." She adds that the reason they come to the front is, "that men, accustomed to think of men as possessing sex attributes and other things besides, are accustomed to think of women as having sex and nothing else."

Is there a ruder mind anywhere than one that could not only think but write a sentiment so revolting and so false? And yet the statement admits that, whatever the reason, the sex issue does underlie the whole Suffrage question.

In their "History," the leaders not only set forth all the specific charges in their Declaration of Sentiments, but of this "rebellion such as the world has never seen" they say: "Men saw that with political equality for woman, she could no longer be kept in social subjection. The fear of a social revolution thus complicated the discussion."

In the Introduction to the Suffrage Woman's Bible, the commentators say: "How can woman's position be changed from that of a subordinate to an equal, without opposition?—without the broadest discussion of all the questions involved in her present degradation? For so far-reaching and momentous a reform as her complete independence, an entire revolution in all existing institutions is inevitable."

Dr. Jacobi says: "To-day, when all men rule, and diffused self-government has abolished the old divisions between the governing classes and the governed, only one class remains over whom all men can exercise sovereignty—namely, the women. Hence a shuddering dread runs through society at the proposal to also abolish this last refuge of facile domination."

Here, then, all these Suffragists present a problem far more momentous than appears when it is proposed "to show why, in a representative system based on the double principle that all the intelligence in the state shall be enlisted for its welfare, and all the weakness in the state represented for its defence, women, being often intelligent, and often weak, and always persons, should not also be represented." It is the sex battle that has been waged from the beginning. In the Suffrage Woman's Bible Mrs. Stanton says: "The correction of this [the misinterpretation of the Bible as concerns woman] will restore her, and deprive her enemy, man, of a reason for his oppression and a weapon of attack." Disguise it as they may, to themselves and to others, the Suffrage idea is compelled to claim that man is woman's enemy, that the ballot is the engine of his power, and that therefore she must vote. The reason that "these considerations come to the front whenever equal rights is mentioned" is because the women of that movement brought them there, and keep them there, and because no one can seriously consider the matter without seeing that they belong there.