Feminism - Women and Memory Forum

FEMINIST DEMANDS 137
are not so already, still their actions can be, and must be. But
women are to be made so. Women's entrance into industry will
make them economically equal. Contracepltional methods will
make them physiologically equal.''^ Consequently their morality
will be as free as men's ; wherein a great gain is found," notwithstanding
the descent to man's level. The adoption by women
of men's custom of having only one title for the married and
unmarried will, as we have seen, aid the assimilation.'* There is
to be a single standard of morals as there is a single standard of
money,— and it is to be man's silver rather than woman's gold.
And even worse, it will be the baser primitive copper; for, on
account of blessed equality, men are to be freed from the rules
of chivalrous conduct which are peculiar to them. A eugenic
mandate has, in some of our States, been enacted into law, that
the groom before marrying shall get a doctor's certificate of his
health, inversely as in several African tribes a jury of matrons
was called in to pass upon the virginity of the bride. The latter's
virtue is now taken for granted, or is regarded as a matter
of equally small importance; but with perfect equality the
law of health certification must be applied to the female also.
The spirit of the socialists we have seen to be one of indifference
to the welfare of the upper classes : if the lower classes can be elevated,
good ; if not, there is no reason why the others should
longer be allowed to float over them. So the spirit of the feminists
seems, while avowedly aiming at bringing men up to the
moral elevation they prescribe for women, to be one of indifference
in case this aim cannot be reached : at least therfe is no reason why
the women's level should continue above the men's.'* Women,
71 Thus Dr. L. Jacobi, an advocate of *' prophylaxis of conception,'' writes of it:
" By conferring upon the woman immunity from the most dreaded sequel of illicit indulgence,
it will undoubtedly tend to equalise the conduct of both sexes when confronted
by temptation," quoted in Robinson's Limitation of Offspring, 243.
72 Thus Clara G. Stillman welcomes the change. " Undoubtedly," she says, '* absolute
chastity in women will not be reckoned as high in the future as in the past.
The ideal will be increasingly that of temperance rather than that of complete abstinence.
But this change,_ which is already beginning to be noticeable, will not depend
[only] on the prevention of conception, but mainly on women's changed economic
status, and our increased understanding of sexual problems. Furthermore, a chastity
that depends for its existence on fear alone is hardly a valuable asset," quoted ib.
185-6. Similarly, in speaking of preventive arts that make woman's indulgence almost
as safe as man's, Mrs. Hale says; " The result is that in future we shall have for
women not an enforced but a spontaneous morality, which cannot fail to be of special
benefit to the race," What Women Want, 271.
73 " The separate title custom," says Katherine Anthony, " is intimately bound up
with the double standard of morals," Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia, no.
Name women like men, and their morals may be like men's!
74 So Elsie Clews Parsons, in her book on The Family, 348-9, says we should have
either monogamy with chastity of men as well as of women outside marriage, or
promiscuity as allowable in women as in men. Of course she recommends the former,
but in default of it is willing to put up with the latter. And Vance Thompson simply
declares that woman " is not going to stand up there [qn the high, cold code of sex
fidelity] alone any longer," Woman, 198.