The Relations of the Sexes (Duffey)/Chapter 6

AN intelligent woman of my acquaintance not long since said to me, while we were discussing the social problem which seems just now forced upon public consideration:

"I cannot agree with the doctrines of the advocates of free-love; they are all repugnant to me, and I feel rather than know that they are not right. But I want some argument with which I can meet them on their own ground of individual independence, and refute them."

It is just this argument that we all stand in need of, if we feel obliged to trouble ourselves about the matter at all. Certain of their principles we need not hesitate to accept. Even the words "free-love" have a basis of truth, since all love to be of any value must be free—in fact since love cannot exist without freedom. Moreover, their fundamental principle, the freedom of the individual, is one that is true within certain bounds, and must be accepted in course of time by all earnest thinkers and well-wishers of humanity. This truth which they have adopted, as though it belonged especially to themselves, ​and the fine-sounding title which they have given their doctrines, have attracted many people whom I sincerely believe to be pure in heart and intent, and who do not realize the depths to which they are committed; and many more, thoughtless and incapable of thinking deeply, and who are consequently equally oblivious of the tendencies of the free-love movement.

The first step towards the successful refutation of a doctrine is the making sure that we perfectly understand it. For that reason I have not hesitated to give the subject my attention and earnest study for some time past, not pausing at the consideration of any idea, however revolting, which should serve to give me a clearer insight into the matter I proposed to discuss. From beginning with the impression that its advocates were semi-insane enthusiasts, whose lives were really better than their creed, I have become fully convinced that the worst features of their teachings are but an outgrowth of their inner natures, and the audible evidence of their conduct. As one of their leaders (a woman) makes the boast that she "is not such a coward that she dare not live the doctrines that she advocates," so they are all—its leaders, not its blind followers, I hope—only publishing to the world the blackness of their own lives. Bitterness, scorn, and hatred of humanity, breathe forth in every sentence they utter. Vindictiveness is their motive power. Their utterances sound like the ravings of a lost soul, in which is sometimes heard a pathetic wail.

​Nevertheless let me do the promulgators of these doctrines due justice. Good does sometimes come out of evil, and it is coming, I believe, in this case; though I am not far-sighted enough to see whether the evil or good results predominate. Their loud speech is reaching all ears, and setting all people thinking—people who never dared to think before. They are being awakened to the crime and misery which exists throughout society—not in its lower strata merely, but from top to bottom. When they are fully aroused to the extent and magnitude of this crime and misery, then, perhaps, will be a more energetic effort made than ever before for the suppression of the one and the amelioration of the other. These fanatics are only, after all, asking the practical and very common-sense question: "If profligacy is right, or at least excusable, in one sex, why is it not also in the other?" And I seriously hope they will keep on asking the question until the whole country is ready to give its answer, by meting out the same measure of excuse or contempt to the sinning members of both sexes. I want to see all earnest men and women join in asking the same question, though it is unnecessary that they should arrive at the same conclusions as those arrived at by the advocates of free-love.

But what is the doctrine of "free-love," whose spread we are watching with such dismay? A close analysis of the teachings and the example of its advocates, has enabled me to make the following statement of it, without ​any circumlocution of language or perversion of ideas I think they will recognize and acknowledge its truth in every particular:

First: Their fundamental principle is that "sexual love is a requirement of our being so essential that it should be included among the necessaries of life."

These exact words I quote from one of the apostles of "natural religion," who wrote before the more modern "socialistic reformers" were heard of by the world at large. The tenor of their teachings goes even farther than this, and exalts "sexual love" above every other feeling. Duty, honor, responsibility, home and family, must all go down before its requirements.

Second: Marriage, as placing a bar to and a restraint upon extensive sexual intercourse, and as requiring a permanency to sexual unions which otherwise might prove only temporary, is contrary to "natural law," and therefore to be done away with.

A man may gather the strength and flower of a woman's life, and then, becoming satiated with her, or being attracted by a younger or fairer face, is justified—nay, compelled by the demands of "natural religion"—to leave her, even though her affections may be as true to him as ever. He loves her no longer, therefore, there can be no affinity or reciprocity between them.

Or a woman, living, perhaps, contented and happy with a husband who loves her, may be approached with impunity by one who covets her possession, and wiled ​away; only to be left again, perhaps, when some other woman takes her place in her lover's regards. Heartbreaks, deserted hearths, and helpless children, count for nothing.

Third: Even our children must pass through the fire to this Moloch of "free-love." We are told, that when sexual desires begin to develop themselves in the young, there must be no check thrown in the way of their gratification, or dire consequences will ensue. Thus, the chastity of youth is spoken of in opprobrious terms by one of the English apostles, as the "celled-up dishonor of boyhood." We are told in an American publication a harrowing tale of a young girl who fell in love with a married man; (bear in mind, that love, when spoken of by these people, always means a sensual feeling;) her parents exercised that control over her which parents naturally would in such circumstances; and so she pined away and died, a victim to her restrained sexual impulses. I feel tempted to echo the remark of a mother who read this story: "The best thing she could do if the story is really true." I think the most of us would prefer to see our daughters buried, than to know they were languishing for the sexual love of another woman's husband. These "sexual philosophers" do not state what is to become of people who are overcome by desires which are not reciprocated by their object. If the gratification of this sexual desire is a life-and-death matter to the person subject to it, would not a man in such a case be justi​fied in the commission of rape? or, if the indifferent party yields to importunities, where is the "reciprocity" which is one of the boasted corner-stones of the free-love edifice?

Fourth: The children are—are—well, it is not definitely settled what to do with them yet. I believe it is suggested to have an immense foundling hospital, or something of the kind, managed by the state, in which all children should be placed, and so rid the parents of their care and responsibility, and leave them to the pursuance of affinities. It has been practically demonstrated that the apostles of free-love, in the practice of their doctrines, do leave their discarded wives and children to be provided for by the public, if they prove incompetent to earn their own living. Some facts of this character have come to my knowledge, which it would give me sincere pleasure to make known to the world, but which I cannot properly narrate here.

Their great stumbling-block is the children. With them, I think, they would, if they dared, do away altogether.

Interspersed with their doctrines, they have a certain cant about "individual liberty," which, if they fully understood themselves, I would not object to at all. They, moreover, talk about the rights of mothers, and antenatal influences upon children; saying many excellent things, we must admit. Indeed, it is hard to find any error so gross that it shall not have some grains of truth ​in it. I cannot see, though, why they lay such stress upon children's rights before birth, and so little upon them afterwards. These are doctrines, however, not necessarily connected with "free-love" proper, and held by a far more conservative class of people.

I think I have stated all their peculiar doctrines, which, stated in as few words as possible, show us that free love means free lust, simple and pure.

Many men gratify their animal passions without check or stint. Therefore, all men and women are justified in doing the same thing,—and this state of society is proposed as a remedy for prostitution. The significant fact that the Messalinas among women are few in number compared to the class of men who would take advantage of their freedom in this respect, is not taken into account; and it also seems to be forgotten that, recognizing this "physical necessity," and permitting no restraint to be put upon it, the women who are by nature chaste, would be liable to suffer far more than they do now, in order that the uncontrolled passions of men might be gratified; or else the few women who are willing to supply these demands, would be taxed even beyond their willingness; and prostitution in a more violent and open form than we see it now would be the result.

If free love meant fidelity between two lovers while the love lasted, one might have some shadow of respect for it. There would seem to be something ennobling in it, and it would not be entirely devoid of a moral phase. ​But, alas! from the lives, no less than from the teachings of its advocates, we learn that free love means freedom to sexual impulses in its broadest sense. Husbands are at liberty to gratify their sexual desires whenever and wherever they will, outside the marriage bond. Nay, are even commended for so doing, because it keeps them from being "brutal" to their wives. Wives are encouraged and recommended by their husbands to indulge a like liberty, and boast of "daring" to practice it. There is no longer any meaning to the word virtue, as applied to men, nor chastity as applied to women. Society, on its new basis, is to afford one grand revel to the senses, in which home is to be demolished, and each member of it stand on his or her individual freedom. Husband and wife are to be not. Fatherhood is no longer to be an honor and a privilege, nor motherhood a blessing. The advocates of "free love" do not say these exact words, but such is the logical carrying-out of their doctrines.

In discussing these points, I am for the present going to omit the physical aspects of the case, and confine myself, in this chapter, to the social and moral ones alone.

As in considering polygamy, let me ask what will be the result of this promiscuity of sexual relations upon men and women and the world at large? First of all, we will look at its effect upon man. The impulses of passion are already sufficiently strong, and the responsibilities which should follow these impulses are already too often and too much disregarded, for men to require, or ​even to be benefitted by any further training in this direction. But this is the exact tendency of free love—to strengthen desires, and to weaken the comprehension of duties. It reduces man to the exact level of the cat, the dog, or the bull, which gratifies its animal propensities whenever or wherever it finds a willing female of its own race, and then goes away utterly oblivious of consequences.

The dangers to women are not quite so great in this direction as might at first appear. As I have said, the Messalinas of the sex are comparatively few, and though the tendency would be to develop woman's sensual nature, in order that she might become more pleasing to, and have a stronger hold upon, man, still her probable motherhood would come in as a redeeming fact, and with its emotions and impulses would raise her above the general sensual level of men. A woman living in a free-love society would have this advantage over a woman in a polygamous society, that her right to herself would be recognized, and she would not have to submit blindly in mind and body, to the caprices of a master. She would be a free woman and not a slave, and as such, she would not probably sink into the imbecility, frivolity and sensuality of the wedded and unwedded slaves of the harem.

As man dropped the mantle of responsibility in the matter of offspring, it would unavoidably fall upon the shoulders of woman. Her children having no father, she would have to be father and mother both. Any widow ​can tell what that means. She would be compelled to bear, rear, feed, clothe and educate her children, all with the efforts of her own feeble hands. She would have no certain home, and no sure stay in her declining years.

Let women battle against the injustices which are yet to be found in the legal forms of the marriage relation; yet wise women will hold on to permanent marriage as their only sure hope. Marriage really consists in the union of a man and woman in a close companionship for the purpose of personal happiness, and secondarily for the sake of propagating the race. The legal form is not the marriage, but only a recognition of the marriage, intended to place such safeguards around it that those who enter it may be protected against injustice and treachery. Its very permanency gives a sense of freedom and security. What man or what woman could feel the same content with a conjugal partner—the same community of interest, the same unselfish promptings—if he or she knew that their union might be severed at the caprice of the other: that the first oily tongue or attractive face might wile the other away and leave him or her desolate and sorrowing? What woman would dare to pour out the whole of her affections on her husband, feeling certain that she would some day find herself bankrupt; when, having worn her beauty and her youth out in his service, he would probably tire of her, and seek other fields and pastures new? What man would strive, with unselfish impulses, to lay all that is desirable in the world at the feet of his wife, if ​she was only certainly his for the day, and any acquaintance might, before another day had elapsed, lure her away from him? How many men would stand by and watch with perfect indifference, their friends making love to their wives before their very faces? And how often would we have a McFarland, a Stokes, or a Fair tragedy?

The affections of men and women may sometimes wander, as it is; but the certainty that they themselves cannot follow them, is a great check upon their fugitive love. It will return to the ark of marriage again, when it finds no place to set its foot, and, may be, bear the olive-branch of peace in its mouth. If the check imposed by marriage was removed, who would think it necessary to keep their affections within control?

I know that my opponents will be jubilant over this seeming admission, and say, as they have often said before: "Then your good men and women are not so much better after all than we are. They are only restrained by the law from exercising the same license that we claim as a right, while they inwardly chafe at the restraint!"

I admit nothing of the kind. I believe that there are plenty of married pairs who rise superior to the law, and who are held together by mutual affection; whom all the repeal of marriage laws in the world could never separate. These people need no law, and the law is not for them. Then there are other people who are sufficiently happy and contented together, but to whom the novelty of free​dom would be a strong incentive to its exercise. These people would probably soon see the folly of their course, and come back to self-imposed bonds. Still others, are naturally fickle, and, if you will, bad in their natures, but the law places a wholesome restraint upon them, for the good of themselves and society. These people, if the restraint were removed, would forget all duties and run wild in excesses. For such the law was made, and it serves an excellent purpose, that it preserves society in some recognized form, and keeps such individuals from a headlong course of vice. I have nothing now to say of the class to whom the law is a rope of sand, to be broken whenever inclination prompts. We cannot tell how much greater would be their sins, if it were not for this brittle bond.

The marriage laws, although bearing heavily on woman, as they do in some particulars, were, after all, instituted for her protection. Women are not half so inclined to wander in their affections as men, and these laws bind their husbands to them in chains of duty and obligation.

Even suppose that love does die out on the part of husband or wife. Is there no gratitude, no pity, no honor, no sense of obligation remaining? Love is not everything in this world. Sensual love, which is so extolled, might occupy a far less important place in the regards of men and women, and still the world would go on quite as smoothly. I believe men and women can be happily and ​even truly married with scarcely an atom of it, and I furthermore believe that as a man and a woman continue in the conjugal relation, this passionate feeling should be refined away and die out by degrees, and another feeling just as strong, and a great deal more to be depended upon, take its place. I know women may be true ana affectionate wives, with exalted ideas of their wifely duties, who would gladly dispense with it altogether. As for any married pair who find they can not conscientiously approach each other in the conjugal union, because their passion for one another has died away, they should remember that there is no law either human or divine, that compels or requires them to enter into such connection, and that perfect abstinence on their part is compatible with all the interests of society; and therefore no one will be wronged by its practice. A severance of the marriage relation cannot, however, take place without disturbing, more or less, others besides themselves, and seriously affecting the interests of their children, if they have any. It does not follow because a man has no sensual inclination towards his wife, that he is justified in leaving her and taking up with his neighbor's wife. Too ridiculous stress is, I think, laid upon this point. Instead of citing him as an object of sympathy and commiseration, I should feel more inclined to hold him up for mirth. The discipline of sexual abstinence will certainly never kill him, and may, all things considered, be wholesome. I have taken notice, however, in my personal ac​quaintance among "free lovers," that those only make a boast of their celibate habits who are notoriously past the exercise of the sexual functions by reason of venereal abuse.

It has been suggested that in the case of "free love" unions, each father shall provide for his own particular children. But, in the promiscuous sexual conjugations which are tolerated, if not recommended, how is any father to be able to identify his own child? General repudiation is a thing more likely to occur. Or, throwing promiscuity out of the consideration, even if one child of a single mother has an easily identified father, the second another father, and the third still another, and these several fathers are differently situated as to pecuniary means, how is the mother to distribute among her several children the resources with which we suppose her to be supplied for their maintenance? Shall one child live in luxury, another be clad and fed plainly and economically, and still a third be poverty stricken in appearance, and dine on crusts? Or suppose the mother makes a common fund of the united donations of her temporary husbands, will not the wealthiest one among them have cause to complain that his own child is not properly cared for, and that its rightful share goes toward the support of the offspring of a beggar?

I would like to be told how any obligation of paternity is to be forced upon men at all, out of lawful wedlock? They do not seem so ready to assume it of their ​own free will and accord, if we may judge by the manner in which fathers regard their illegitimate offspring now. They are, in this case, no better than,—no, nor half so good as,—the law compels them to be, when its requirements are enforced. And besides, in the reign of free love, we are to have no laws whatever to regulate the sexual relations. As soon as legislation commences, why then a natural marriage becomes a legal one, in spite of ourselves, whether it be temporary or permanent.

But I think one of the planks of the free-love platform, if I may decide by the example of some of the most prominent of its adherents, is that women should not only be self-supporting, but be also responsible for the maintenance of their children. Otherwise, it would not and could not, they argue, be free-love, since any pecuniary transactions for any purpose whatever between the "lovers" would seem to make that which should be free and spontaneous a matter of bargain and sale, and would be consequently prostitution. Thus women are, by these self-styled reformers, not only destined to fulfil all the natural requirements of motherhood, but are to have also deliberately imposed upon them the duties and responsibilities of fatherhood as well. The unreasonableness, not to say outrageousness of this, surely needs no showing. The world is, in fact, to become a sensual paradise for man, in which his passions are to be satisfied without hindrance, and unchecked by any thought of contingent duties. It seems to me that every right-minded man will ​revolt against this proposed state of things, and enter a protest, in the name of his manhood, against such an assumption of the selfishness and sensuality of the sex.

In brief, free love is not only free lust, as regards its moral aspects, but it is chaos as regards its social ones.

Having considered free love in its effects upon the individual and society, I do not feel justified in leaving it until I have reasoned upon it abstractly, and proved deductively, as well as inductively, the fallacy of the whole doctrine.

The two predominant instincts of man are those of self-preservation, and of the perpetuation of his species. As in these two instincts he is fighting against death to himself and to his race, it is not only natural and right, but necessary, that they should be as strong as death. They underlie the whole basis of society. All the labor and the endeavor of the world may be traced back directly to one or the other of these two instincts. The starving man will steal, and sometimes even murder, in order to obtain food. Unrestrained sexual passion will also commit the greatest outrages to satisfy itself. All the laws which govern us are based upon the principle that man should be properly protected in these two instincts; that is, that he should be secured in their free exercise undisturbed by others, and be prevented, in his turn, from infringing on the like rights of others. They are likewise based upon the certain knowledge that these instincts need restraining, in order to prevent them from ​working damage to society. Do away with the laws of the land as they relate to property, and what atrocities would not be committed in the name of the instinct demanding food? The ravening wolves of the wilderness would not be more cruel or more destructive. These laws have been found absolutely necessary to preserve the security of all men in their peacefully obtaining a maintenance for themselves and their families. The instinct for food, rightly exercised and rightly controlled, means law, order, a recognition of the rights of others, and the protection of the weaker against the stronger. The instinct for food, uncontrolled, and left to the widest freedom in its exercise, means anarchy, destruction of society and nations, rapine and murder.

If the one instinct requires such a complicated legal machinery to keep it within proper bounds, why should the other instinct implanted within man's animal nature, equally strong, and equally unmanageable when freed from control, be given the largest liberty? Hedged about by certain limits, made subject to certain restraints and conditions, and compelled to assume the consequences of its action as legitimate responsibilities, it becomes the bond of society, the blessing of the world, and the security for the perpetuity of the race. Left unrestricted, lawlessness takes the place of law, self-interest that of duty, and the weaker sex must inevitably become the prey of the stronger. The ravening wolf of sexual desire is as fierce and as destructive as the ravening wolf ​of hunger. As long as law is found necessary to restrain the one, it legitimately follows that law is equally required for the other—that impulse and desire cannot be· given the reins in guiding either.^[1]

And now let me see whether it is possible to find the argument based upon individual rights, which my friend is so vainly looking for, in order to successfully combat the free love doctrines. Admitted, that men and women have certain inalienable rights, among which, in addition to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is that of self-ownership in all that that term conveys, we must also admit that when the rights of one individual interfere with the rights of another, then there is a limit, and they are no longer rights. Another qualification to our rights is, that we have no right to do wrong. I do not ask for a definition of the word wrong, in a religious or even a moral sense. I will simply interpret a wrong as something which injures ourselves or others. Now, I think it is conclusive, that in our self-asserted rights to love, (that is, the gratification of sensual passion,) whenever and wherever our desires lead us, we are infringing on the rights of other individuals, in robbing them of affection which they have first secured, and in which they repose implicit confidence. In a word, we are being treacher​ous. Again, if we prove unfaithful to a conjugal partner who trusts in us, we are being ungrateful and dishonorable. Treachery, ingratitude and dishonor, are none of them very commendable acts, and, in being guilty of them, we are doing others unmistakeable wrong.

Free love, in its accepted interpretation, results in deserted women, sensual or heartbroken men, forsaken homes, unprotected and unloved children, unchecked licentiousness, ruined health, misery, jealousy and murder. Is there nothing wrong implied in these things? If there is, let us modify our ideas of individual independence and personal rights, so that they shall not work such ruin in other individuals, and in society at large.