The Trend Of The Sexes

by Rith

When we observe the relationship of the sexes in the past, we find woman solely of the ménage, a menial, subjective, subjected. The male holding the centre of the human drama. From this point to the next point -the present- can be traced the line  following an upward trend, economically, intellectually, and politically, which forecasts the eventual future point, where men and women will be equal and complimentary to each other — a real factual equality.

The conception of equality at the moment is false. The female has gained a large measure of economic freedom, and will obtain more and more. But as she advances, these advances imply just adjustments in her relationship with the male. To take new freedoms and selfishly retain the oppressions over the male, is not only to arouse male resentment, but it is an abomination indeed, which even males who have a desire to free women, must fight in self-preservation.

Those women who have progressed farther than their fellows, who are conscious of the responsibilities the new situation brings, as well as its rights, have a duty towards their opposite sex, who after all, and their brothers, fathers, and sons. To give freedom with the same zeal as they demand it for themselves, that along the road of human progress, we may work in harmony to make life a thing of happiness for both.

Chattels

by Avertir

In 1935 the Bishop of Salisbury was reported as saying 16,000 women obtain Separation Orders a year. In the same year, 50,000 Orders were in operation. In that same year 6,000 Committal Orders were made for non-payment in respect of wives and illegitimate children. In one year alone 4,000 husbands were imprisoned for disobedience of the Order of the Court.

With time and the war condition, the number of men ordered to make payments for the whole length of their lives to women (many able-bodied), has increased to the proportions of a large army. Particularly bad and unjust is the case where the man has children to rear, and is compelled to make payments for life to a stepmother who had not an elementary knowledge of hygiene.

The abolition of these life pensions is long overdue. It is both degrading to the woman and the man. It is an anti-incentive to work for the man, and an anti-incentive to work for the woman. It is gross immorality that a being should be subject to a weekly charge for the duration of life, and further it is immoral that a woman can make this demand upon a fellow creature for the absolute length of life, a condition of parasitism.

The matrimonial position to-day is that the man is now the chattel of the woman. Either he obeys her or she is able to bring ruin upon him. The wage economics of to-day are not founded on the keeping of two homes. Wage equality with men, plus a real or potential “maintenance” payment, is the equality of a perverse mind.

By what process of logic is it right for a widow to receive child allowance and not the widower (man)? Is not his need as great, or even greater than hers? Even a widower’s children need care. While the national Press has given much of its space over the last six years to the hard lot of the mothers who have to work, shop, and do housework, I have not yet read of men that have done all these duties, AND paid a Court Order.  That is one burden no woman has borne.

MAN’S SUBJECTION

It cannot be emphasised sufficiently that men have to awaken from their totally false notions of social strength, and realise that their liberties have gradually and surreptitiously leaked away, and that they stand to-day in an alarmingly handicapped and bonded position.

It is pointed out that their social and economic power has passed in a great measure to women; their voting and numerical strength is greater and could be decisive where interests are opposed. They are a force of cheap labour jeopardising the standards of the male. By sometimes virtue, sometimes by vice, private wealth is passing to their control by Wills. Their power ranges from the cradle to the shadow behind the personal decisions of public leaders, and last but not least women have captured practically intact the secretarial sphere — the communicating gateway through which all letters must pass to reach those that control, whose actions can make or mar their fellow creatures’ lives. The possibilities with which this situation is pregnant requires but little imagination.

Defining One’s Terms

by C. Lea

THERE is a type of propagandist who finds it convenient to avoid defining his terms. He can thus vary the sense when and how it best suits him. He is not tied down to any particular interpretation.

The phrase “sex equality” is often used in this convenient and undefined way. On the one hand they denounce sex discrimination and deny sex difference favourable to men as contrary to the doctrine of sex equality. On the other hand, they regard sex discrimination or sex difference favourable to women as perfectly consistent with that doctrine.

Special rights, privileges and exemptions in favour of women are taken as a matter of course by people who hotly resent the least sex discrimination in favour of men.

Feminine superiorities, real or imaginary, are pushed down our throats by those who would indignantly deny the possibility in favour of men. These partisans readily discover arguments or evidence in support of their claims advantageous to women. They may justify special rights for women on the score of their special functions AS women, however they would, on the other hand, refuse to accept special rights for men on the same grounds.

Logically it is obvious that a series of one-sided feminine advantages cannot possibly give sex equality. Only a balance of masculine and feminine advantages can give real equality. The upholders of the system of one-sided feminine advantage continue to label it “equality,” while stigmatising as “inequality” any compensatory masculine advantage.

The time is come for us to challenge the offenders of this intellectual dishonesty to give clear, logical definition of exactly what they mean by “sex equality.”

SEX EQUALITY IN MARRIAGE

It is believed by many that in some mysterious and unexplained way the law favours the husband in marriage.  It is difficult to fathom how anyone can have this view, since the man is under compulsion to perform most of his duties, while the woman can repudiate many of hers with impunity.

A husband must support his wife or be dealt with by a maintenance or separation order. A man cannot escape a distasteful marriage without heavy financial burdens. A woman who finds marriage distasteful can leave it, earn her own living and extract a maintenance from her husband.

It may be argued that while the husband of a bad wife has far less legal remedy than the wife of a bad husband, the wife who fulfils her side of the bargain has a harder position than her husband, but this does not mean that the law presses more hardy on the wife in such a case, it means that, to her credit, the wife concerned does her duty, and more than her duty without legal compulsion.

The following article appeared in the 1948 edition of the ‘Men’s Review’ – a pro men’s rights initiative that was active in Britain during the 1940s.   – PW

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A Convention Condemned

by “Woman’s View”

MANY features of modern society have struck me as extremely odd. Among these, perhaps that which seems to me the oddest is the curious convention whereby a gentleman who goes to a place of entertainment, or to a place of refreshment, with a lady, is expected to pay the bill without any help from her.

After deep reflection I have decided that this convention (nine out of ten observed only when people of the opposite sex are together) annoys me intensely. I will try to summarise my main objections to this convention with utmost brevity.

First, I think the convention unfair. Unfair because it puts upon the shoulders of men the financial burden which, according to logic, should be shared by women. For generally speaking our participation in the benefits paid for is at least equal to the man’s. In modern times we women are, with a diminishing number of exceptions, as well off as our male counterparts.

Secondly, it leads to a greater extravagance than would exist under a “fifty-fifty” system, since the man is placed in the position in which he is not able to suggest economising on the expenses, while where he able to regard the woman as a share-and-share-alike partner, he could suggest economy without embarrassment at all.

Thirdly, the convention tends in many cases to put inter-sex relationships upon a commercial footing. The woman tends to prefer the man who takes her to the half-a-crown seats to the otherwise equally attractive man who takes her in the one-and-sixpenny seats. I happen to believe in equality of opportunity, and it is psychologically bad for women since it tends to make for an unnatural suppression of our real affections beneath the gold-digging smartness.

I AM REVOLTED

The man is tempted to wonder what return he is going to have for the money he has paid out and to arrive at what appears to be a reasonable explanation, mainly that his return will be in terms of kisses and caresses. Hereupon he, and for that matter the woman too, may begin to regard kisses and caresses as something for sale, and idea which, in my opinion, is revolting.

Much could be said in discussion of this convention, which, as I hope to have shown, links up with our modern social outlook in an enormous number of ways.

The success of such an attempt would mean that we have changed the course of social history, and changed it, I believe, for the better. I do not deny that the thrill of this thought is as much of an inspiration as a mere desire to profit ourselves from the more convenient and fair system which I have advocated.

To those scoffers who say “You can’t change human nature,” “Every woman has her price,” or whatever expression you may use, I have only to point out the vast changes in inter-sex relationships that have taken place in our lifetime and those changes for which the Society (for men’s rights) will most surely bring about.

The following article from Men’s Review (1948) discusses some of the unbalanced legal, financial and parental burdens placed on fathers. – PW

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The Man Always Pays

About a hundred thousand men are sentenced for life to the bondage of maintenance orders. Try to imagine the welter of misery this factor means. Here in 1948, when there is a clamour for equality in every sphere, it is farcical that laws agreeable to the chattel era should still be enforced in a feminine-emancipated age.

Widowers (men) who marry again often find that stepmothers have not the consciousness of a decent woman’s duty toward the dead woman’s children. She spurns the children, and unlike the male, there is no legal compulsion to hold her to the care of them.

The only road that lays before the man is to stand aside and see his children treated shamefully or the woman can alarmingly easily go to court and say she left because of the man’s cruelty, and obtain a life pension. As soon as a woman obtains a court order the father is faced with the problem of being a father and “mother” too. The order seldom leaves enough to pay for the children’s care. He has the same strain of shopping, housekeeping, occasional sickness, etc., as a working woman with children, but, he doesn’t get the State allowances such as the woman is allowed. He gets the strong impression that he is ostracised completely and that he and his children have no rights. What he does manage to obtain is purely concessionary.

The marriage contract is the only contract that is entered into without the conditions being made out, and is signed by the man who places himself utterly and absolutely in the woman’s power. If the woman is of the twenty per cent that are decent he is more fortunate than he will ever know.

Does the community realise the festering sore caused by this large army of rotting men who are forced to pay maintenance while the woman pays nothing? This army of self-degraded parasitical women? Some men rot in silence. Others rot in prison rather than submit. Some spend years in hopeful writing to have their grievances righted, only to finish frustrated, and embittered, for there will be no echo in their vacuum. Can the nation afford this canker? This damnation of a fellow-creature?