The Regiment of Women: A Plea for Equal Treatment

I

THE woman’s movement in America is flowing on its natural course. There are now few occupations which are not open to women: they have entered politics; they have become legislators and administrators as well as voters; they have founded churches and cults; they practise most of the professions, and indeed monopolize some; and they are strongly organized in powerful social bodies. All that they ask is equal treatment and equal opportunity, and no doubt in a few years there will be quite as many women as men in all walks of life. Indeed, one reason why women are still in a minority in public and business life is that women themselves do not seem to desire otherwise; this appears to be quite as effective a hindrance to women’s advance as any prejudice of the men. But soon both prejudice and unwillingness will be overcome, and women will take their proper place.

It is true that early prophecies have hardly been fulfilled. Once we were assured that women freed would inaugurate an era of social reform and purity; the bad man-made laws under which women and children suffered would be swept away; honesty and earnest endeavor would reign in politics. None of these things has happened yet. Women politicians have not cleansed politics. Women as religious leaders do not seem to be more spiritually-minded than men, though no doubt very successful in this line of business. There has been no great moral or social regeneration in America since women began to exercise power — and they are exercising power, very great power indeed.

But as a question of justice this is quite beside the point. If women are entitled to equality of treatment they are entitled to it quite regardless of the result. So far as we can judge, if their fuller entrance into public life has been followed by no particularly good results, it has been followed by no particularly bad ones. The women seem to be very much the same as the men — a little more extreme, perhaps, but on the average neither better nor worse. First, of course, American life is already so much ‘woman-made’ that a few women in prominent places can make little difference; secondly, the fruits of a reform are never gathered by the reformers. The women now in power are not the enthusiastic reformers who led the women’s movement; they are practical women who know how to adapt themselves to practical conditions. The reformers are already forgotten, and their reforms with them.

Although women have very greatly increased their power during the last few years, yet it is usually assumed that they are still under serious disadvantages. The man still has opportunities for a better education and a broader, fuller life than his sister. This assertion is freely made and generally accepted both by men and by women. Some regard it as the proper state of affairs. That men should dominate women is justified both by experience and by religion. Some regard it as wrong, but few doubt its truth. But is it true to-day? Do men to-day in America have a better opportunity for the full, rich development of their lives than women? Not, be it understood, a better opportunity for earning money, but for leading a full, varied, and enjoyable life, and for cultivating those talents with which they have been born.

II

We shall consider the careers of two children, a boy and a girl, belonging to a good average American family. The father is well established in business, the mother takes her part in the social life of the community. Both have the usual ideals of the American middle class and belong to numerous societies and clubs. Their means are sufficient to provide a good education, high school and university, for both children and to start them in life as well as their parents were started. The two children are to have equal opportunities, as such things are understood to-day. Which of them, the boy or the girl, will have the better chance in life?

At birth, Nature appears to favor the male, for it is well known that more boys are born than girls. But dispassionate Nature takes with one hand while she gives with the other. Baby boys are more delicate than baby girls; more of them die, so that more girls grow up than boys. You will have a better chance of life itself if you are born a girl, for, although physically weaker, women are constitutionally stronger than men.

There was a time when this physical strength gave man the leadership. As recently as the Middle Ages we lived shorter but more active lives, so that physical strength counted for much, constitutional strength for less. But the medical science of to-day has greatly increased the span of life and the period of activity, thus giving to the strong constitution the full advantage of its strength. Most of us lead rather sedentary lives, in which a good constitution is better than powerful muscles, and so the old conditions are reversed. Woman is probably better suited to modern life than is man; the stronger sex has become the weaker. Indeed, in some cases we shall see that the man’s superior strength may act to his disadvantage.

The conventions which we call ‘chivalry’ grew up in the age of physical superiority. They were then necessary to protect the weak childbearers of society from the physical violence of the strong men. To-day they are still active to protect the strong and often celibate woman. Women maintain these standards because women are thorough realists and maintain everything that helps them. Men maintain them because to abandon them would, in the first place, outrage their consciences, and, in the second place, imply that women were really their equals, and this the average man will never acknowledge. But this combination of natural constitution and chivalrous convention gives to the woman a distinctly better chance of survival.

A couple of years ago a boat with two young men and a girl was blown adrift in a storm on Lake Ontario. Days afterward searchers found the girl wading blindly along the shore. She was almost exhausted, but eventually recovered. The boat was found. Both men were dead of exhaustion and exposure. They had, of course, done all they could to shelter the girl, and rightly so, yet in the end she was left to herself and survived even greater hardships than had killed them. Very few men can compete with the stamina of a healthy girl of seventeen. Now one would not desire to abolish the conventions of chivalry. They contain elements of beauty and nobility which we could not sacrifice, but in honesty we must face the fact that to-day they give an advantage to the woman.

Even physically the well-nurtured girl of to-day is quite as strong as many a man. Our popular fiction and our movies still maintain the tradition of the frail and shrinking maiden whom the villain masters easily with one hand. In real life the villain to-day would have no such easy task; that frail maiden would probably lay him out quite effectively if he tried on any of his games.

III

So brother and sister grow up with this advantage on the side of the girl. They go to school together, for coeducation is not only cheaper, but is now considered a necessary part of equal treatment. It is true that this coeducation is 98 per cent in the charge of women, who can understand the girl, but who cannot understand the boy. In infancy and early childhood, woman is the natural guardian. Children are then neither boys nor girls, but just babies. But by the time a boy is five or six years old he is becoming a boy. He is male, and if true equality is to be granted he should be taught by a man.

Many women — and, I imagine, most mothers — are under the impression that they can understand boys, particularly their own sons. They will tell you that they know every thought in the boy’s head. They do not, they never will, and every son knows it. Every boy requires and should get the guidance of a man. His education should be in men’s hands.

Educationalists agree that boys and girls take teaching and discipline differently. Girls are more docile, more easily taught, and more easily overworked. Boys are more independent, more difficult to teach, and more inclined to follow their own interests. But our existing system of education, mainly by instruction and conducted by women, favors the girl throughout. The weak discipline has a far worse effect upon the intractable boy than upon the docile girl. So the boy generally learns as little as possible, and comes to college with an untrained mind and convinced that intellectual effort is an affair for women.

For one branch of his education has not been in women’s hands. His athletics have been under men. Here he has experienced that life of physical contact and physical violence which is natural and pleasant to most boys. So he leaves school, having been taught that mental culture is a womanly thing, but that physical prowess is the principal manly virtue.

In college, coeducation has even worse results. The boy is now a man, and man is a more actively sexed creature than woman. A girl may be able to work well in a mixed class and to regard her classmates of both sexes simply as human beings, but this is much more difficult for a man. There can indeed be nothing better for most young men than a partial seclusion from women for the first few years of their manhood. It is good for them in these years to be thrown into intellectual and physical competition with their fellow men without the distraction of sex. It is reported that an American scholar who had been to Oxford, when asked what had struck him in the English university, replied that he had never known before that the conversation of men could be so interesting. The opportunity given to young men to sharpen their intellects against one another is one of the most valuable gifts which a university can offer. It is not very prominent in American universities, and coeducation tends to discourage it. Coeducation may or may not be good for girls, but there are reasons for believing that it is bad for men.

We may suppose that our boy is a manly young fellow with plenty of physical strength and already with some reputation as a schoolboy athlete. So he becomes a college athlete. In most colleges he will be given very little choice; he will be told very plainly that he has a ‘duty to his college’ and that that duty is football. To him, naturally, this seems a pleasant duty, and he rarely hesitates.

So he enters a world of popularity, where he shines as a hero. Endless attractive girls run after him. They ‘make dates’ with him, make him feed them and dance with them with that complete absence of modesty which is characteristic of their sex. He is fêted and he is disciplined. Provided that he does his ‘duty’ on the football field, his merely scholastic tasks will be made as easy as possible for him. Very few have the strength of character to withstand popularity, and if the exceptional boy attempts to do so, social pressure of a very severe kind soon brings him back to the right path. It is on the whole a misfortune for a boy to become a star athlete, and particularly a star football player. His strength and his pleasure in using it are turned into a trap. If he emerges uncrippled he may turn to bond selling while his popularity lasts; then, his name forgotten and his strength useless, he may make what he can of his life. It says a great deal for many athletes that they do make something of their lives, but every university teacher knows of men whose careers have been spoiled by star athletics.

His sister, meanwhile, is an active athletic girl. But she is not compelled to play any particular game for the credit (and profit) of her college. She is actually allowed to play games for pleasure. If she plays well it is counted to her credit; if not, then she is a ‘womanly’ girl, and it is certainly not to her discredit. She is not compelled to undergo rigorous training or to take the risk of dangerous accidents; girls’ games attract no ‘gate’ and provoke nothing more than a friendly rivalry. There have, it is true, been signs of more strenuous competition, particularly in lawn tennis, but these conditions have affected only a few, and even now it seems clear that women will neither wish nor be asked to enter commercialized competitive sport. They are both wise and fortunate.

Girls take their exercise under healthier conditions than do men. The football player is clad in a padded armor which in itself is sufficient to condemn the game. I am assured by those who have had experience of both that American football is an excellent training for trench fighting, but surely we have agreed to have no more trench fighting for a while. The girl plays her games in light, easy clothing that permits her to get the greatest good from the exercise. In field sports, running, and jumping, the boy exercises under better conditions, but only in these minor sports is he on an equality with the girl.

As another instance take a healthy and popular exercise in which both boys and girls take part — that is, dancing. It has many good qualities, it is not competitive, there are no intercollegiate dancing contests or dancing teams, we dance simply for pleasure. For this sport the girl dresses suitably in light, loose clothing, but the man must put on stiff starched armor and heavy, tight, black cloth clothing, utterly unsuited for the purpose. It is no wonder that at the end of a dance a girl is usually much fresher than a man.

IV

This brings us to clothes and to an interesting phenomenon. We generally recognize, if we are not professional moralists, that modern woman’s dress is healthy, comfortable, and becoming. It is indeed probably the best clothing devised since classic Greek times either for men or for women. But we do not often realize that every improvement has been made by appropriating something already originated by men. I do not mean by men dress-designers, but originated as a male fashion. Short hair, the open neck, short skirts, the loose jumper, rolled stockings, are all good features which long ago were worn by men. The other day I saw a girl who might have walked the streets of ancient Athens without attracting much notice to her clothes, but she would have been a Greek boy. A century ago the sailor found it comfortable to loosen his collar and leave his neck free, and so he developed the sailor jumper with its broad easy collar. Today in America this is so much a girl’s dress, though it has assumed commissioned rank and become a ‘middy,’ that most boys would object to wearing it on the grounds that it is girlish. The rolled stocking and the short skirt were long ago invented by the Scottish Highlander, who was certainly not a ‘sissy ’ person. To-day an American boy would object to wearing them on the grounds that his sister wears them.

Girls may and do imitate men, not only without fear of blame, but even with a good deal of approbation. To be a bit of a tomboy is all to a girl’s credit. But a boy must never, never, never imitate a girl. To do so would be effeminate, unnatural, and repulsive. So, having little creative power of their own, the women continue to appropriate the good things invented by men. As soon as the women have appropriated them they become tabu to the men. (I understand that in some parts of this continent knickerbockers are already regarded as rather sissy.) It must be granted that women show good taste in their stealings. They have not yet appropriated the starched shirt, the dress suit, or the thick cloth trousers. But it is a little hard on the men to be left only with the ugliest and least comfortable of their clothes. These they would probably have discarded or altered long ago had it not been for the influence of women. From the early days when he is thrust all protesting into an unsuitable velvet suit to the time when his wife says, ‘John, the Joneses are coming to dinner— you had better put on your tail coat,’ man is, in the matter of his clothes, in the hands of women. To her is due that monstrosity of ugliness, the modern ‘well-dressed man’ — to her and to man’s natural modesty, which forbids him ever to differ from his neighbor.

It will be asserted that man’s clothing is comfortable and that it looks ‘smart.’ It will also be objected that in any case it is not proper or suitable for a man to like to look well. As to the first, I would recommend any woman who asserts it to try one evening in a stiff shirt and a wing collar before asking her husband to do so. It will be looked upon as very ‘smart’ in her. As to the second, this is just one of the tabus which women are establishing over men. The men of Tudor days were quite fond of their clothes, and they were certainly not effeminate. Man has as much right as woman to a reasonable enjoyment of beautiful clothes.

V

But we must revert to the college career. Only a few students after all take part in the most highly organized games; most of them are left free to indulge in minor, less credit-bringing, but probably healthier sports. There is generally in every college a small group who devote themselves to study. Yet the wrong ideals are always before them; if they escape the athletic ideal, the commercial one now rears its ugly head.

At the time when practically all professional men were in the Church, the university was a place for educating ‘clerks.’ (In memory of this, university folk still wear clerical gowns.) During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this clerical learning became identified with the education of a gentleman, and the universities became seats of culture. Since then, especially in America, they have expanded to include instruction in practically all branches of knowledge, from Greek to pig culture, and so the cultural aspect has rather fallen into the background. It is still, however, possible to obtain a ‘cultural’ degree in most universities, but the popular demand is all for technical instruction which can be put to practical financial use later. The ideal of a university as a place where the student will learn to use his mind, to appreciate the past, and to value attainment with a sane and human scale, is a fine one, but it is no use disguising the fact that the majority of students desire rather to make useful friends and to learn a gainful profession with as little highbrow addition as possible.

The student who chooses to study literature or pure science and to train his mind by rigorous methods will probably enjoy it. He will probably lead a full and happy life, but he will find himself unclassed in American society. In our larger cities he will find a few friends with whom he may be on terms of intellectual understanding, but to the majority he will be highbrow, eccentric, and suspect. Public life will be practically closed to him, and he will probably become a college professor and live forever under the reproach of having an ‘academic mind.’

So the average boy takes a practical professional training whose primary end is to enable him to earn money. In the view of many ‘women’s rights’ advocates he has all the world to choose from. Practically he has no such choice. He is urged into the path where family influence will help him. He becomes a doctor or a lawyer because his father can give him a good start in that profession. In fact, he soon finds that there is only one profession really open to him — he must become a moneymaker. The average boy has very little choice indeed as to his future, and, to tell the truth, after his devastating training he rarely has any desire to choose. But if his rebellious mind should stray to the fine arts, to music, or to pure science, he is soon reminded that to gain the approbation of society he must make money. He is soon brought to understand that complicated system of tabus, of all the things a man must do and a man must not do, which rules our woman-made society. These prohibitions have a strength and a result far stronger and more far-reaching than mere laws. For a law, as Americans must surely now realize, can be effective only if it has public opinion behind it; it has almost no strength in itself; whereas a social tabu requires no law to support it. Almost all these social tabus owe their strength to the support of women. The tabus which hedge in the ordinary business man, — the church he shall attend, the clubs he shall join, the society he shall frequent, the entertainments he shall give, the clothes he shall wear, the hobbies he may indulge in, the kind of profession he may follow, even the thoughts he is expected to think, — all these things are subject to conventions and prohibitions which have been carefully taught to him by women and are enforced upon him by women.

A very nice old lady once told me of a nephew of hers who wanted to be an artist, and indeed started upon that career, ‘but he soon saw how impossible that was, so, like a sensible young man, he went on the Stock Exchange, and in five years had made enough money to live comfortably. So now he paints as much as he likes.’ The story affected me as utterly immoral, and I could not help hinting that, if the nephew were really an artist, he had wasted five precious years. But the old lady was so evidently pained that I recanted hastily. There are some opinions that one must not press.

A girl may cultivate any literary or artistic gifts which she has and only be praised for doing it, but for a boy to do the same is to run a danger of being regarded as sissy. This is true of the average middle-class boy. He must first make money, then he may indulge in any unprofitable tastes he has. As a rule he has no intellectual tastes, — they have long ago been trained out of him, — and so by the time he is twenty-five he is a money-maker. If he is a successful one he will have no difficulty in getting married.

VI

I have spoken of the middle-class boy, but in Europe it is noteworthy that many intellectual men, artists, and men of science have risen from the poorer classes. How many men of this character have risen from the ranks in America? A large public dinner was given recently in America in honor of a number of men who had risen from small beginnings to great position. A celebrated American educationalist was in the chair. He proudly announced that not one of the guests of honor had ever attended a university. He might have added that not one of them had contributed anything to the intellectual or artistic culture of his country. In America humble genius is strangled at once.

So our money-maker gets married to a nice average girl and settles down to a comfortable married life with a couple of children and an uneventful old age. Their mutual parts in life are accepted contentedly and as a matter of course, for we are dealing with average folks, not with enthusiasts or reformers.

So every day at 9 A.M. the husband goes to business and stays there until 5 P.M. He has reasonable intervals off for exercise, and possibly plays golf or goes fishing. But nothing intellectual ever sullies the simple annals of his life — nothing more intellectual than a bridge game.

During early married life both the man and his wife are probably hardworked. The man has to make his way and build up his position; the wife has her housekeeping and the care of her children. But while a man’s responsibilities have a way of increasing as he grows older, his wife’s decrease, so that for the greater part of her life she has abundant leisure. This she employs in social and cultural activities. For woman to-day is more than ever the organizer of society. The pleasure life of the uneducated rich is no doubt very vapid, but it is very highly organized and it is a woman’s world. Far greater and more important is the world of social and cultural work, a world of societies and committees and lectures. This is the American world of art and literature, and it is a woman’s world. Everyone who has ever lectured on cultural subjects knows that his audience is one of women. As for the corresponding activities of men, I would invite any open-minded observer to attend a meeting of the Kiwanians or the Rotarians and consider whether the men or the women at present are the better educated. The men’s activities are those of schoolboys; no women’s society ever descends to the intellectual standard of the business man. Women work hard and with abundant energy at social work. This may at times degenerate into interference with the lives of people less fortunate than themselves, but, whatever its results, it will be well organized. So woman to-day is moulding our organized life to her ideal, the perfect organization, and she is dragging man behind her.

American culture to-day is distinguished by the low value given to creative work and by the high value given to organization, regulation, and efficiency. It is distinguished by the predominance of material ideals and material success — and it is the work of American women. Man plays only a very secondary part in this drama; he is in the main a money-making drudge, kept to his work that his wife may be free. He may indeed have freedom in his business life, but how limited is that life, with its constant pressure for success, its everlasting competition.

The wife is probably ambitious; she wants her husband to be recognized as able and successful. For a man this means to be wealthy and to conform in every minute respect to the uneducated conventions which rule the man’s life. She wishes herself to take her place in the life of the community, and it is a life of far greater richness than is the man’s. Her life and that of her husband do not mix; he spends his in supporting hers, but he rarely enters into it. He would not be really welcome there.

Woman takes, but she never gives back, for, as we have seen, what woman takes becomes womanly and therefore forbidden to men. So we may expect in time a civilization in which any qualities peculiar to men will disappear.

It can be shown from past experience that creative imagination and abstract thought are manly qualities, while organization and administration are womanly ones. So we may expect that the former will slowly give way and the latter increase. It is a commonplace to say that this is exactly what is taking place in America to-day. Even in the fine arts the purchase of old masters and the formation of museums and collections are regarded as more important than the encouragement of creative talent. The connoisseur is rated above the creator.

Most women are convinced that women have higher artistic ability than men, yet nothing can be further from the truth. It is perfectly clear from history that women have not lacked full opportunity in the fine arts and that, in spite of this, very few women have ever shown high creative ability. Yet to-day they throng our art schools, they fill the lower steps of the artistic professions, they draw advertisements and fashion plates, teach music and become minor concert stars. So, by stamping the fine arts with the ban of effeminacy, they prevent men from having their proper opportunity. Nine tenths of these women art students have indeed no intention of ever becoming serious artists. They only seek that spice of adventure which they believe is to be found in the so-called ‘bohemianism’ of incompetent art.

VII

The position, put shortly, is this. Until about thirty years ago men and women lived under a system of conventions such as (a) that women were weaker and more delicate than men and required protection; (b) that a lady must not earn her livelihood — to do so was unladylike; (c) that women must not copy men or ape men’s habits — to do so was most unladylike; (d) that women’s place was the home. And, conversely: (a) that men must give way in all things to women; (b) that men must earn a livelihood for their dependent women; (c) that men must not copy or ape women in any way — to do so was unmanly and indeed monstrous.

Some of these conventions were no doubt good, some were bad, and some simply untrue.

Since the beginning of this century, aided by economic changes and probably by the war, women have broken and are breaking every convention which they do not like or which has in any way fettered them. But they have enforced all the old conventions which fettered men. So that to-day free woman is living in the twentieth century, while men are bound by all the conventions of the Victorian age. Today woman never hesitates to break a convention and never permits man to do so, for the unconventional woman is a brave creature, defying the lightning, whereas the unconventional man is an outcast.

Thus, if a woman enters a profession and succeeds, she is a heroine; if she fails ― well, she is a woman, and she will not be blamed for it. But if a man fails he is simply a failure, and that is all there is to say.

Some men may rebel against this woman-made civilization, may claim that they too have a right to ignore a few conventions, but they will soon be tamed, regulated, and disciplined to do what is good for themselves and agreeable to their women.

So future generations will lead peaceful, well-regulated, busy social lives, full of efficiency, of ‘service,’ of ‘citizenship,’ and all the other virtues of the hive. For in the most highly organized community life that we know the active workers are all women; the bees have put their men where they belong. It is true that the life of the hive seems to lack some spiritual values; perhaps the poor drones might have contributed something — now they can only buzz in chorus.

The world we live in to-day is a world in which the highest qualities of man have very little opportunity, while those of woman have full scope. Equal opportunities we do not possess, and it is improbable that the women will ever give them to us. They do not know what equal opportunity means.

Is there, then, any hope? None, unless — but it is a wild thought — man may exhibit a little of the virtue which was once regarded as peculiarly manly — courage.