The Sexual Question Part 27

When we consider a being of high mentality and deeply rooted individualism such as man, in whom the instinct of love and family are so strong, led by the inevitable force of circ.u.mstances to live in the society of his fellows, we can easily understand that certain individuals of a higher mentality than the others will endeavor to dominate the weaker and less intelligent, and exploit them for their own profit and that of their family.

a.n.a.logous tendencies are seen in certain animals. Among the bees the old workers appropriate the produce of the work of others. Certain ants practice a form of slavery, based, it is true on instinct, in stealing the pupae of weaker species which, after hatching, become the servants of the idle robbers.

In incomplete animal societies, such as those of the ruminants, certain monkeys, etc., the old males, sometimes also the more courageous females (cows, for example) direct the herd and become recognized as chiefs by the others. But in these cases the personal property of objects or even living beings takes no part, because the animals have not yet learned its value.

Other animals living isolated show the first tendencies toward personal property; for example, the nest where they h.o.a.rd their provisions, while others, such as the ants, bees, wasps, etc., have the sentiment of collective property well developed. For instance, a swarm of ants regards plants with grubs as its property, and defends them in consequence.

As soon as he has attained a primitive degree of culture, man comprehends that the possession, not only of land and the produce of work, but also the persons of other men, may profit him; and this leads to slavery. The male being the stronger soon combines the satisfaction of his s.e.xual appet.i.te with the advantage of property, by placing the woman more and more under his dependence and exploiting her. In this way woman becomes an object for sale and exchange, which will procure the purchaser, besides satisfaction for his s.e.xual appet.i.te, a docile slave and worker and a procreator of children, a source of other workers.

This motive, so clearly revealed by ethnography and history, sufficiently explains the ign.o.ble traffic that man has made of love, or rather of s.e.xual appet.i.te. We have seen in Chapter VI the profit made by polygamous barbarians by the possession of many wives and children, which led more and more to the buying and selling of the latter. These customs are instinctively related to the traffic of slaves. Our modern civilization has happily abolished these taints, but money still influences our s.e.xual life by measures which are hardly any better. The complication and refinement of civilized life have made women and children objects of luxury, and not a source of wealth as in former times. This is due to two causes. On the one hand, a wider and more humane conception of the social position of women and children has extended their rights. Man cannot now exploit them to the same extent as in the time of patriarchism, while the father of the family has, on the contrary, the duty of maintaining his wife and family, and of giving the latter a proper education. Among the poor, the exploitation of the wife and children still exists; but in the case of the rich and cultured the inverse phenomenon is produced. With the intention of making his family happy and distinguished, the father brings it up in luxury and idleness, and this produces a very harmful result. The increasing refinement of modern life and its pleasures leads to effeminacy. It bears upon the whole of society and degenerates into an artificial desire for brilliancy and show, which makes it increasingly difficult to obtain a simple and sober education for the family. Men and women, especially the latter, do their best to eclipse each other in their table, their toilet, the comfort and luxury of their apartments, their pleasures and distractions, their banquets and _fetes_. An enormous ma.s.s of the produce of human labor is thus dissipated in futilities, for the benefit of unbridled frivolity and luxury. It is owing to this that a civilization which, thanks to science and progress, far surpa.s.ses all those which have preceded it in the richness of its means of production for the wants of humanity, not only shows more and more rich with superfluous wealth, but also more and more poor who vegetate from the want of it.

What is still more grave is that, for reasons of economy, the intelligent, educated and cultured marry less often and procreate fewer children. Again, our descendants degenerate more and more, owing to the consumption of alcohol or other narcotics, and the unhealthy life they lead. This degeneration is dissimulated by their well-nourished appearance, but is revealed in their increasing neuropathic tendency. They become accustomed to a number of artificial wants, which make them increasingly difficult to satisfy. This results in their exacting from society much more than they give to it by their work; whereas each ought to give to society more than he receives from it. As evil omens, I must mention the idleness of many women with regard to household and manual work. What are the effects of this state of things on the s.e.xual life of modern society? They are of three kinds:

(1) _Marriage for money_; (2) _prost.i.tution_, exploited by proxenetism, and between the two (3) _venal concubinage_.

MARRIAGE FOR MONEY

Marriage for money is the modern form or derivative of marriage by purchase. Formerly one bought a wife and sold a daughter; to-day one is sold to a wife and buys a son-in-law. The improvement consists in the fact that the buyer and the bought are no longer in the positions of proprietor and object possessed, respectively. Nevertheless, marriage at the present day gives rise to much traffic, speculation and exploitation of an evil nature.

These things are so well known that I need not dwell upon them. In place of love, force of character, capacity, harmony of sentiments, intellectual and bodily health, money is the _alpha et omega_ of marriage. Money dazzles most men so that they are blind to everything else. They no longer understand that the health and the physical and moral worth of a woman const.i.tute a capital which is far preferable to all the t.i.tle-deeds deposited in the coffers of the future father-in-law, which are rapidly squandered by children tainted with bad physical or mental heredity. In this way ignorance of the laws of heredity and the rapacity of pecuniary interests perpetually tend toward the antisocial procreation of a degenerate posterity.

Inversely, a number of capable and healthy men and women remain celibate and sterile for want of money. Capital exploits them as workers and prevents them from reproducing their race; or else their own foresight induces them to avoid procreation.

A characteristic sign is observed in military circles, especially in the German army where officers who are not well-to-do are forbidden to marry a woman unless she has a certain income. The officer must bring up his family in accordance with his position. This system, which it is sought to justify by all kinds of reasons, shows how the wors.h.i.+p of the golden calf and cla.s.s prejudices may degenerate our manners and customs. Without fortune one cannot serve the country as an officer, or marry, except by selling oneself to a rich woman. In other terms, an officer cannot marry according to his own inclination unless he possesses a certain fortune. No doubt there are officers who marry for love; nevertheless, they are not only obliged to have a certain fortune, but the woman they marry must have a certain social position and have been well educated. The wife of an officer has to take part in b.a.l.l.s and official gatherings. She is forbidden to carry on openly any business, and her parents must not even be shopkeepers! In a German town, one of my relatives heard a rich mother say to her daughter, who could not make up her mind to marry a gentleman who proposed to her: "If you do not want him, let him go; we do not wish to persuade you. We have plenty of money, and if you want to marry later on we can easily buy you an officer!"

In the tyranny of cla.s.s marriages, it is money which almost always decides the question. Formerly birth and n.o.bility were everything, and it was these which brought power and fortune; nowadays money has replaced them, and has monopolized universal power. If an energetic and intelligent man revolts, by returning to modest and primitive customs, if he dresses simply, performs manual labor, takes his meals at the same table as his servants, etc., he is despised and is not received into what is called good society.

It is only up to a certain point, and with the exercise of great prudence, that any attempt can be made to react against the whirlwind of our unbridled luxury, and it is in marriage that this becomes most delicate and most difficult. A well-brought-up and well-educated man with no money, who wishes to marry while he is a student, so as to avoid prost.i.tution or other evils; who is content to live in humble quarters with his wife, each doing their own work, will have great difficulty in finding a well-nurtured girl to consent to such an arrangement. Everything has to be regulated according to the fas.h.i.+on, customs and prejudices of the cla.s.s in which he lives, and this usually renders marriage impossible, as long as he has not what is called a position. But no one will blame the same student for living in concubinage with a grisette. Why cannot the same means of existence which allow concubinage suffice for marriage? With this question I only touch on a problem to which we shall return, at the same time pointing out the canker which corrupts our modern s.e.xual life.

By marriage for money we understand marriage which is based on interest and not on love. It is not always a question of money; for position, name, t.i.tles and convenience often complicate the question.

Sometimes a ruined aristocrat marries a rich tradesman's daughter, in order to repair his fortune, while the vanity of his _fiancee_ makes a t.i.tle a desirable acquisition. Sometimes a coquette, by clever flirtation, will simulate a love which she does not feel, to catch a rich man in her net. But more commonly there is calculation on both sides and both are duped.

Marriage for money is not confined to the rich but also occurs among peasants and working people. Everywhere it const.i.tutes one of the princ.i.p.al corrupting elements of s.e.xual intercourse and procreation.

Hard-working servants who have succeeded in saving a few hundred dollars are often married for the sake of this small sum, and then abandoned as soon as the husband has squandered it. I do not pretend that a marriage for money can never be happy; it may happen that the contract is an honest one and that love follows it more or less haltingly, especially when the calculators have taken into account character and health, etc., as well as money.

There is no need for me to continue this theme any further, and I shall conclude by stating that this system opens the door to hypocrisy, deceit and abuse of all kinds. It is not without reason that marriage for money has been branded with the name of _fas.h.i.+onable prost.i.tution_.

PROSt.i.tUTION AND PROXENETISM

Prost.i.tution is a very ancient inst.i.tution and a sign of degeneration which is found more or less among all nations. When woman is an article for sale it is not surprising that those whose moral worth is weak take the traffic into their own hands when they can, and sell themselves to men to satisfy their s.e.xual appet.i.tes, instead of allowing themselves to be pa.s.sively exploited as articles of commerce.

Man being the stronger finds it advantageous in the lower and barbarous states of civilization to monopolize this traffic for his own profit, and deliver the women under his domination to prost.i.tution. We have seen that fathers give their daughters, and husbands their wives to prost.i.tution.

For the same reason, the woman who prost.i.tutes herself in our modern civilization, always runs the risk of being abused without payment; which is not to be wondered at considering the doubtful quality of the usual clients of the prost.i.tute. It is therefore natural that she should seek for a means of protection. She thus takes a male protector, or "bully," whom she pays; or else she joins the service of those who make a business of prost.i.tution--or _proxenetism_.

Proxenetism and protectors are thus the parasites of prost.i.tution.

Prost.i.tution flourished amongst the ancients and also in the Middle Ages, especially after the Crusades (Chapter VI). I do not propose to write the history of prost.i.tution; it is sufficient to be acquainted with that of the present day. I may, however, remark that among a number of primitive races, and in young and progressive nations, whose s.e.xual life is still comparatively pure, prost.i.tution is only feebly developed. It is especially to Napoleon I that we owe the present form of regulation and organization of prost.i.tutes. Like all his legislation on marriage and s.e.xual intercourse, this regulation is the living expression of his sentiments toward woman; oppression of the female s.e.x, contempt of its rights, and degradation of its individuals to the state of articles of pleasure for men, and machines for reproduction.

=Organization and Regulation of Prost.i.tution.=--We have just seen the social conditions under which prost.i.tution becomes quite naturally organized, with its protectors and its proxenetism. There is another factor to be added--that of venereal disease. The infectious germs of syphilis and gonorrhea are usually met with in the genital organs of man and woman; so that every coitus between a healthy and an infected individual may infect the former. Hence the danger of the spread of infection increases with the number of mutations in s.e.xual intercourse. If a woman offers herself systematically to all the men who wish for her, the probability that she will be infected by one of them increases in proportion to the number of clients.

In the second place, as soon as she is infected, the danger is increased by the number of men who have connection with her, for she will probably infect a large proportion of them.

While paying much attention to venereal diseases and their consequences, medicine has shown itself inconceivably blind in not comprehending the bearing of this elementary arithmetic. We must take into account the fact that the complete cure of syphilis is very difficult, if not impossible, to prove; that this disease is extremely infectious, at least during the first two years of its course; and that it extends to the blood and the whole organism, so that it may be communicated, not only by large visible sores, but by small excoriations hidden in the mucous membrane of the v.a.g.i.n.a or the mouth, etc.

We must also remember that gonorrhea is less painful in woman than in man, and that, even in the latter, it ceases to be painful when it becomes chronic. We may add that the microbes (the gonococci) are very difficult to reach in all the recesses of the mucous membrane of the s.e.xual organs in which they are hidden, and that in women they penetrate as far as the womb, when a cure becomes almost impossible.

If we consider that the s.e.xual organs of woman form deep and hidden cavities which it is very difficult to examine thoroughly, in spite of all the apparatus of modern surgery, and that the mouth in prost.i.tutes is also frequently contaminated by unnatural manipulations; lastly, that no part of their body is absolutely indemnified, it is easy to understand the great danger of infection in public prost.i.tution.

Recognizing the danger of venereal disease, the regulation of prost.i.tution was inst.i.tuted by medical men with the good intention of eliminating or of diminis.h.i.+ng its danger, since they regarded its suppression as impossible. This system consists in the official supervision and inscription of every woman who prost.i.tutes herself.

She is given an official form which obliges her to submit to medical examination once a week or once a fortnight, under the penalty of being arrested and punished.

To facilitate medical control, regulation generally endeavors to lodge prost.i.tutes in brothels or _lupanars_, under the direction of a proxenet. In theory, the brothel is not exactly considered as a State inst.i.tution of public health; the word _toleration_ being used in this connection, signifying that it is regarded as a tolerated evil.

Nevertheless, this distinction only rests on uncertain and subtle characters. To tolerate, to license, to organize, to recognize and favor, to protect and recommend are notions which merge into one another insensibly. As soon as the State tolerates prost.i.tution and brothels, it is obliged to enter into official contracts with prost.i.tutes and proxenetism; therefore, it recognizes them. Moreover, the services which it renders must be paid for. It is therefore necessary that prost.i.tutes and proxenets should pay their tribute to the State and to the doctors: but "the one who pays commands."

No doubt this proverb must not be taken to the letter, nevertheless the one who pays always exerts a certain pressure on the one who receives, and for this reason proxenets and inscribed prost.i.tutes have some idea that they form part of an official inst.i.tution, which raises their position not only in their own eyes but in those of the irreflective ma.s.ses. I will cite two examples which show how effectively the public organization of a vicious social anomaly confuses ideas in persons of limited intelligence.

One of my friends was engaged in combating the official regulation of prost.i.tution. A woman, who misunderstood his object, came to him complaining bitterly of the loose life her daughter was leading, and asked him if he could not help her by placing her in a brothel licensed by the State; she would then be under the care of a paternal government!

An old proxenet in Paris requested the authorities to transfer the management of her brothel to her daughter, aged nineteen. Her house, she said, was honest and managed in a loyal and religious spirit; her daughter was capable and initiated into the business and would carry it on in the same irreproachable manner as. .h.i.therto.

These two examples of ingenuousness are sufficiently characteristic of the morality of the system. In _La Maison Tellier_ Guy de Maupa.s.sant has depicted with his masterly pen the psychology of the prost.i.tute, the proxenet, and their clients.

For reasons previously mentioned no real confidence can be placed in periodical medical examination of prost.i.tutes; on the contrary it gives the male public a false security. The object of these medical visits is to eliminate diseased women from circulation and compel them to submit to hospital treatment. But any one acquainted with the facts knows that the treatment is illusory. In a short time every woman in a brothel is infected, with very few exceptions. But, on the one hand, the proxenets and the prost.i.tutes have every interest in shortening the time in hospital; and, on the other hand, the visiting doctor, who often lives partly by their fees, is obliged to treat them with respect. [In Paris, the doctors in charge of the inspection of prost.i.tutes are paid by the State, and do not depend on fees from the women.] The treatment of venereal disease being of long duration and very uncertain in its effects, a vicious circle is formed.

A conscientious Dutch doctor, Chanfleury van Issjelstein, who attempted to eliminate all infected prost.i.tutes from the brothels, succeeded in almost emptying them, by subjecting the infected women to prolonged treatment in hospital. This led to a revolt which endangered his life, and he had to abandon his scheme.

In ordinary hospital practice only visible sores are treated, and gonorrheal discharges as long as they are apparent; the prost.i.tutes are then allowed to return to their brothels. Moreover, inspection is made too rapidly; for, if every woman was examined carefully from head to foot every week, neither the brothels, the prost.i.tutes nor the doctors could exist.

Certain persons have made the proposition, as ridiculous as it is radical, of submitting every man who visits a prost.i.tute to medical inspection! This would indeed be the only means of preventing the infection of prost.i.tutes. But I ask my readers to imagine such a measure put in practice. Is it likely that the _habitues_ of brothels, some of whom visit prost.i.tutes nearly every day or oftener, would make this known to a doctor in their town, and submit, before each coitus, to a medical examination which would cost them more time and money than their pleasure! Can one imagine doctors examining whole _queues_ of clients waiting their turn in brothels when business is brisk!

Whilst an independent prost.i.tute still possesses some human sentiment and a vestige of modesty which cause her to choose as far as possible a limited number of clients, the police certificate of regulation officially places the woman who receives it in the cla.s.s of the pariahs of society, and this leads to her losing the little that remains of her womanly nature. In brothels, the last vestige of her human nature is trampled under foot.

=Degrees of Prost.i.tution. Protectors.=--Several degrees can be recognized in private prost.i.tution. A variety of prost.i.tute rather less low than others, looks for clients at public b.a.l.l.s, certain cafes and other doubtful localities, and hires herself to a certain number of temporary acquaintances. The lowest and most common form of private prost.i.tution is that of the streets. Generally at night, but sometimes in the daytime, these prost.i.tutes, dressed so as to attract attention, promenade in certain well-known and frequented streets, and solicit pa.s.sers-by. This is the common method employed in nearly all towns.

This solicitation is supervised by the police in countries where prost.i.tution is regulated, and is only permitted to women who possess their certificate of inscription.

Here the "protector" (bully) intervenes, and keeps an eye on the clients at the prost.i.tute's house, or sometimes in the street. If they do not pay up, or pay too little, or if they threaten or ill-treat the woman, the protector administers a drubbing, and sometimes relieves them of their purse or clothes.

At the same time the protector spies on the police for the benefit of the prost.i.tute. Sometimes he a.s.sumes the position of legitimate husband, so as to facilitate taking rooms. A "husband" of this kind, with a citizen's rights, is very useful to foreign prost.i.tutes, for without him they would risk expulsion. The protector is generally a scamp of the worst kind, an absolutely depraved and idle vagabond who is entirely maintained by his "wife."

Some protectors s.h.i.+ne by their s.e.xual power, and are at the same time the real lovers of the prost.i.tutes, who keep them, and are plundered by them. While they submit to coitus with their clients without any pleasure, and only simulate voluptuous sensations, they abandon themselves to their protectors or lovers with ardor. It is needless to add that the protectors are often criminals, or of the criminal type.

Those who are well acquainted with prost.i.tution declare that it would be impossible without the protector, who is at the same time the friend, protector and exploiter of the prost.i.tute, while the brothel keeper is only concerned with her wholesale systematic exploitation.

=Brothels and Proxenets.=--Under the pretext of avoiding the dangers of prost.i.tution in the streets, brothels were organized. These are generally managed by an elderly female profligate, often in partners.h.i.+p with a "husband," who is only a superior kind of protector. Officially, the prost.i.tutes are free lodgers in the brothel, but in reality they are often prisoners or slaves. They are well fed and dressed in a way to attract the clients as much as possible. Clothes, food, etc., are placed to their account and the crafty brothel keeper generally manages to get them into debt so as to always remain their creditor. In this way these miserable outcasts of society, who are generally incapable of claiming their legal rights, are more or less reduced to slavery. Apparently they are free, but in reality they can hardly leave the house without paying their debts, and the brothel keeper who wishes to keep them arranges so that they cannot pay it.

It is not always easy to distinguish between the different cla.s.ses of prost.i.tutes: the prost.i.tute of the brothel, the street prost.i.tute under inscription or not, the private prost.i.tute and lorette or grisette. Sometimes a woman may rise from one cla.s.s to another; but more often she falls lower and lower.

We may mention here one of the dangers of brothels. Their good organization, their medical supervision, etc., are extolled; but the great danger of the arithmetical progression of mutations in s.e.xual intercourse is ignored. While a private prost.i.tute rarely receives more than one client in an evening, and is not absolutely obliged to receive more, every prost.i.tute in a brothel is forced to receive as many as present themselves. A girl may thus have connection with men twenty or thirty times in the same night.