Modern misogyny is certainly an inheritance of Christian doctrine, and a tradition handed down from much earlier times, but still it has its own characteristic peculiarities. Misogyny is, however, now much more an affair of satiety or disillusion than of belief or conviction; whereas in the days of medieval Christianity belief and conviction were the effective causal factors of misogyny. In addition, among our neo-misogynists we have the factor of the spiritual pride of a man who, from the standpoint of academic theoretical culture (which to men of this kind appears the highest summit of existence), looks down upon women, whom he regards as mentally insignificant, while he sympathizes with her “physiological weak-mindedness.” He smiles on her with pity, and completely overlooks the profound life of emotion and feeling characteristic of every true woman, which forms a counterpoise to any amount of purely theoretical knowledge—quite apart from the fact that women of intellectual cultivation are by no means rare.
If, in fact, we regard the lives of those who have reduced modern misogyny to a system, we shall be able to detect the above-mentioned causes in their personal experiences and impressions. The first important modern advocate of misogyny, the Marquis de Sade, lived an extremely unhappy married life, was deceived also in a love relationship, and nourished his hatred of women by a dissolute life and a consequent state of satiety.
And as regards Schopenhauer, who does not recall his unhappy relations with his mother? For he who has really loved his mother, he who has experienced the unutterable tenderness and self-sacrifice of maternal love, can never become a genuine, thoroughgoing woman-hater. But the mutual relationship of Schopenhauer and his mother was rather hatred than love. Beyond question, also, his infection with syphilis, to which I was the first to draw attention, played a part in his subsequent hatred of women.
Strindberg, in his “Confessions of a Fool,” has himself offered us the proof of the causal connexion between his misogyny and his personal experiences and disillusions; and in Weininger’s book we can read only too clearly that he had had no good fortune with women, or had had disagreeable experiences in his relations with them.
De Sade, who, perhaps, was not unknown to Schopenhauer,[498] was the first advocate of consistent misogyny on principle. It is an interesting fact, to which I have alluded in an earlier work (“Recent Researches regarding the Marquis de Sade,” p. 433), that de Sade’s and Schopenhauer’s opinions on the physical characteristics of women are to some extent verbally identical. While Schopenhauer, in his essay “On Women” (“Works,” ed. Grisebach, vol. v., p. 654), speaks of the “stunted, narrow-shouldered, wide-hipped and short-legged sex,” which only a masculine intellect when clouded by sexual desire could possibly call “beautiful,” we find in the “Juliette” (vol. iii., pp. 187, 188) of the Marquis de Sade the following very similar remarks on the feminine body: “Take the clothes off one of these idols of yours! Is it these two short and crooked legs which have turned your head like this?” This physical hatefulness of women corresponds to the mental hatefulness of which de Sade gives a similar repellent picture (“Juliette,” vol iii., pp. 188, 189). In all his works we find the same fanatical hatred of women. Sarmiento, in “Aline et Valcour” (vol. ii., p. 115), would like to annihilate all women, and calls that man happy who has learned to renounce completely intercourse with this “debased, false, and noxious sex.”
Quite in the spirit of de Sade, to whom the misogynists of the Second Empire referred as an authority, Schopenhauer, in the previously quoted essay “On Women,” Strindberg, in the “Confessions of a Fool,” and Weininger, in “Sex and Character,” preached contempt for the feminine nature;[499] and this seed has fallen upon fruitful soil in modern youth. Every young blockhead inflates himself with his “masculine pride,” and feels himself to be the “knight of the spirit” in relation to the inferior sex; every disillusioned and satiated debauchee cultivates (as a rule, indeed, transiently) the fashion of misogyny, which strengthens his sentiment of self-esteem. If we wish to speak at all of “physiological weak-mindedness,” let us apply the term to this disagreeable type of men. As Georg Hirth truly remarks (“Ways to Freedom,” p. 281), such masculine arrogance is merely a variety of “mental defect.”
Unfortunately, this misogyny has intruded itself also into science. The work of P. J. Möbius,[500] notwithstanding the esteem I feel for the valuable services of the celebrated neurologist in other departments, can only be termed an aberration, a lapsus calami.[501] But he does not stand alone. The admirable work of Heinrich Schurtz, also, upon “Age Classes and Associations of Men” (Berlin, 1902), is permeated by this misogynist aura; not less so is the equally stimulating work, “The Vital Laws of Civilization” (Halle, 1904), by Eduard von Mayer. This book, in association with the equally thoughtful and compendious work “The Renascence of Eros Uranios” (Berlin, 1904), by Benedikt Friedländer, and in conjunction with the efforts of Adolf Brand, the editor of the homosexual newspaper Der Eigene, and Edwin Bab (cf. this writer’s “The Woman’s Movement and the Love of Friends”; Berlin, 1904), to found a special homosexual group demanding the “emancipation of men,” have been the principal causes of the belief that the male homosexuals are the true “repudiators of woman,” and that from them has proceeded the increasing diffusion of modern misogyny. I repeat that this connexion is true only for the above-named group; that, on the contrary, genuine misogyny has been taught us by the world’s typically heterosexual men, such as Schopenhauer and Strindberg. Benedikt Friedländer and Eduard von Mayer preached, above all, a “masculine civilization,” a deepening of the spiritual relationships between men; whereas Strindberg and Schopenhauer, and even Weininger, really leave us in uncertainty as to what they imagine is to take woman’s place. All five agree in this, that the “intercourse” of man with woman is to be limited as much as possible; but only the two first-named openly and freely advocate homosexual relationships, or at least a “physiological friendship” (B. Friedländer), between men. Schopenhauer, Strindberg, and Weininger did not venture to deduce these consequences. Yet this is the necessary consequence of misogyny based on principle.
To the heterosexual men—and such men form an enormous majority—the noble, ideal, asexual friendship of man for man appears in quite another light from that in which it appears to the misogynist, to whom it is to serve to replace sexual love, whereas for heterosexual men friendship for other men is a valuable treasure additional to the love of woman.
Is there, then, any reason for this contempt and hatred for woman? Do not the signs increase on all hands to show us that new relationships are forming between the sexes, that a number of new points of contact of the spiritual nature are making their appearance—in a word, that an entirely new, nobler, most promising amatory life is developing? I will not fall into the contrary error to misogyny and inscribe a dithyramb of praise to feminine nature, as Wedde, Daumer, Quensel, Groddeck, and others, have done; but I merely indicate the signs of the times when I say that woman also is awakening! Woman is awakening to the entirely new existence of a free personality, conscious of her rights and of her duties. Woman, also, will have her share in the content and in the tasks of life; she will not enslave us, as the misogynists clamour, for she wishes to see free men by her side. What would become of woman if men became slaves? How could slaves give love?
Life has to-day become a difficult task both for man and for woman. Man and woman alike must endeavour to perform that task with confidence in their respective powers; but each, also, must have confidence in the powers of the other—a confidence which becomes palpable in the form of love or friendship, so that those who feel it have their own powers strengthened.