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18. THE PENDULUM MOVEMENT OF MONOSEXUAL DOMINANCE

THE current views and theories concerning matriarchy and masculine dominance may be grouped under three heads. A few investigators, those whose Men's-State ideology is absolutely imperturbable, are still convinced that among all peoples since the human race first came into existence men have been dominant and women subordinate.[1] A larger number have come to recognise, since Bachofen's writings were published, that in the primal age women were dominant among many or most peoples, but that with the advance of civilisation men became dominant. They regard the dominance of men as definitive and inalterable. Nietzsche may be mentioned as one who took this view. He wrote: "There are historical as well as ethnological grounds for denying that woman is per se the weaker sex. Almost universally there are, or have been, types of civilisation in which women are dominant. The definitive subjugation of women may be regarded as an incidental occurrence, or, if you prefer the phrase, as a climax in the destiny of the nations." The third group comprises the most recent investigators, those who have noted the success of women's endeavours to shake off the dominance of men. They believe that the struggle between the sexes will end in the establishment of equality between men and women. Müller-Lyer and

[1] Breysig, Ziegler, etc.

von Kemnitz may be mentioned among the champions of this opinion.

All three theories bear the impress of the time spirit that gave them birth. Absolute masculine dominance is parent of the view that the hegemony of men is established from all eternity as an immutable law of God and nature. The theory persists to-day as a vestige from a past epoch—much as, according to Gray, there is still to be found in androcratic China a gynecocratic oasis where the ancient dominance of women has been preserved without change. In every period there are manifest, not only in practical life but also in the domain of scientific theory, residues from an obviously outworn epoch, preserved with pious zeal by a few investigators. They are vestigial traits. The theory that masculine dominance is immutable and eternal is a vestige of this kind.

The second outlook owes its origin to the recent endeavours of women to liberate themselves from male domination. During this phase it has been discovered that in earlier days women held sway. It was however believed that the period of feminine dominance had been restricted to the primal ages of human development. The hegemony of men was still contemplated as definitive, as henceforward immutably established, seeing that the rule of men still persisted unchanged in the world of fact, and was assailed by the champions of women's rights solely in the field of theory.

But this theory that matriarchy was restricted to primitive society, to the childhood of the nations, though general to-day, is hardly tenable in view of the immense antiquity of the human race in comparison with the brevity of the period which we are accustomed to distinguish as historical. Many hundreds of thou-

sands of years, perhaps many millions of years, have elapsed since human beings first came into existence. What are a few thousand years of recorded history beside these æons whose span seems to us almost infinite? Contemplating this eternity, how can we decide which sex ruled in the primal age of mankind? Who can venture to dogmatise concerning the influence of one sex or the other upon the growth of civilisation? In this connexion we may refer once more to Winckler's dictum, that, beyond a doubt, many civilisations have flourished and decayed before the dawning of the era known to us as the historical age. But in the case of these forgotten civilisations we shall never discover whether they blossomed under the dominance of men or under the dominance of women.

The third view, that the struggle between the sexes will come to an end with the establishment of equality between the sexes—that equality, once attained, will be the immutable form of the relationships of power between men and women—has been born out of our most recent experiences. The highest aim of women has been and to-day is the attainment of equality with men. Already in many States there is at any rate a nominal equality of rights for the sexes, and the ultimate achievement of equality would seem to be assured. Hence the tendency to regard equality of rights as the permanent phase of sex relationships.

This triple set of outlooks shows plainly that in none of the phases of monosexual dominance has there yet been secured a view which transcends that dominance. It is characteristic of every phase to look upon itself as an immutable norm, as something that is permanently valid. To this inertia may be mainly ascribed the prevalence of three outlooks all of which are

erroneous, and the failure as yet to recognise the true law controlling the relationships of power between the sexes. That relationship is not a constant, it is not a fixed magnitude, and despite our best wishes it can never become anything of the kind.

There is, indeed, a tendency towards fixity in the relationship of power between the sexes, whatever that relationship may be. But there is a still stronger countervailing tendency towards change, towards progressive modification. The relationship of power is subject to the laws of motion. The present authors' researches seem to justify the contention that the movement of the relationships of power between the sexes is undulatory, or that it resembles the swing of a pendulum. Automatically, masculine dominance is replaced by feminine, and feminine by masculine. In the swing from the prevalence of one form of sexual dominance to the other, the pendulum necessarily traverses the stage in which there is a balance of power between the sexes. This is the phase of equal rights.

The movement, however, does not seem to be a simple oscillation. We do not find that the power of one of the sexes continuously diminishes, while that of the other continuously increases. The main swing of the pendulum is complicated by minor oscillations. The subordinate sex experiences from time to time reverses in its march to power, these reverses being followed by fresh advances which bring it a stage nearer to its goal. The dominant sex, on the other hand, the one whose power is declining, will win occasional victories even during that decline, and such a victory may be so extensive that the power of the heretofore dominant sex seems thoroughly reestablished. Nevertheless these victories during the phase of declining power are

never more than apparent; they are Pyrrhic victories, inevitably followed by a further and more serious forfeiture of power. The highest point of the movement of the pendulum is that at which the reversal of the movement begins. After the dominance of one of the sexes has been pushed to the pitch of absolutism, and when power has reached a climax, the descent into the valley of equal rights begins.

Why is it that this pendulum movement in the relationships of power between the sexes has not hitherto been recognised? Probably for the following reasons. In the first place the movements are extremely slow, for they occupy enormous periods of time. To them applies what Charlotte Perkins Gilman[2] has written of great social transformations in general, that, like the flow of the tide, they take place through the movement of a thousand wavelets, and never through one great forward sweep.

In the second place we have shown that, in virtue of a psychological determinism, the dominant sex invariably tries to expunge from the record the historical vestiges of the antecedent period when it was itself subordinate and when the other sex was dominant. This is what renders so difficult the demonstration of the pendulum movement. During any stroke of the pendulum, the erasure of the evidence of the previous stroke in the opposite direction is effected as completely as possible. The dominance of one sex involves the suppression of the proof that the other sex antecedently held sway, and this is what makes it so difficult to perceive the unceasing recurrence of the oscillations in the relationships of power between the sexes. Those who are unable to see beyond the narrow horizon of

[2] Women and Economics.

contemporary history will hardly be able to grasp the historical law of this pendulum movement. We may quote from Landau a trenchant criticism of such a narrowing of outlook. He writes:[3] "The great error of all current historical outlooks is the way in which historians confine their attention to the data that are easy of access and familiar and ignore those which are unfamiliar and comparatively inaccessible. A process of historical evolution is the outcome of the totality of forces that cooperate towards it, regardless of the circumstance that some only of these forces happen to have stamped their imprint on the historical record. An observer who bases his account solely on the latter will produce a distorted if not a positively topsy-turvy picture." In this matter of monosexual dominance, owing to the nature of the details that "happen" to have stamped themselves on the historical record— owing to the fact that history is written almost exclusively from the standpoint of the dominant sex— the picture is not merely distorted, but is in many cases a topsy-turvy one. This must never be forgotten when considering the newly-discovered law of the pendulum movement.

There is a considerable amount of historical and ethnological evidence to confirm our theory of a pendulum movement, even though this evidence may not be sufficient to establish absolute proof. In the course of the present study we have seen that among diverse peoples the pendulum of power was simultaneously in the most different positions, so that while in some cases men and in some cases women were supreme, in some the powers of the sexes were approximately equal.

[3] Die Bedeutung der Phönizier im Völkerleben, in "Ex Oriente Lux," vol. i, edited by H. Winckler.

This is plain from the reports of many of the classical authors, who have frequently referred to the dominance of women among other peoples, or have described, among these, customs which were the reverse of those that obtained in the Men's States to which the writers themselves belonged. The reports of travellers in more recent times furnish additional confirmation. At the date when they were first discovered, the peoples visited by explorers from the western world were found to be in very varying phases of monosexual dominance. Sometimes men ruled, sometimes women; occasionally, the rights of the sexes were nearly equal.

Again, when we study the history of particular peoples at varying times, we find great differences in the relationships of power between the sexes. One of the earliest civilisations known to us is that of the Egyptians. If we are to credit the account given by Nymphodorus, at the outset of the historical epoch men were dominant in Egypt, for he tells us that in that land the introduction of gynecocracy was attributed to King Sesostris. This obviously implies that before the days of Sesostris androcracy must have been in force. We know that under Greek influence androcracy was revived. Thus there was an oscillation from androcracy to gynecocracy and back to androcracy again.

Lamprecht showed that matriarchy existed among the ancient Teutons. We have seen that in the days of Tacitus the sexes appear to have had equal rights, but that there were plain traces of an antecedent dominance of women. The phase of equality was gradually succeeded by one in which males were dominant; but now, under our very eyes, the absolutism of masculine dominance is passing away. Amid continuous

minor oscillations, androcracy among the Germans reached the pitch of monosexual absolutism, so that women were entirely restricted to domestic occupations, were excluded from higher education, were completely subordinate in married life, had practically no property rights, and so on. Then came the struggle of women to secure equality, and a nominal equality has now been achieved. On broad lines, then, we have among the Germans the following phases: vestiges of gynecocracy; equal rights; androcracy; commencement of equality.

There are also psychological reasons in support of the view that the relationships of power between the sexes must be the subject of continual oscillations, that the pendulum will not stop swinging unless some new force brings its movement to a standstill. Noteworthy is the way in which this discovery of the pendulum movement was foreshadowed by Cato and by Hippel. Cato, addressing men, writes: "In the moment when they [women] begin to be your equals, they will become supreme over you." Hippel says: "Beyond question, woman will catch us up some day; but then we shall never be able to overtake her."

Among the influences that inevitably lead to the overthrow of monosexual dominance, two psychological factors are conspicuous.

The main cause of the overthrow is the abuse of power. Hegemony degenerates into absolutism, and thus gives itself its own death blow. By abusing its powers, the dominant sex evokes the forces that will put an end to its dominance. Power always tends to outreach itself in this way. As Plato says: "Rarely do we find in one who possesses unrestricted power the greatness of mind which will enable him to refrain

from using it to the full." Individual wielders of power, may, by a wise self-denying ordinance, refrain from using their power to the full. But where we have to do with mass domination, as when one sex rules the other sex, or one class rules another class, such a self-denying ordinance is no longer within the domain of psychological possibilities. In the case of mass power, the tendency to abuse power will sooner or later come into operation, and the abuse of power will destroy the foundation upon which power is upbuilt. This is why the history of the human race is strewn with the wreckage of overthrown empires.

Another reason why abuse of power is so apt to occur in mass domination is that such domination is responsible to no one. Plato recognised how responsibility exercises a controlling influence upon those who wield power. He wrote: "No mortal is fit to exercise irresponsible power over his fellows." Those who wield mass dominion become the slaves of their own power. This tragedy always recurs when one sex rules the other. Hence, under the dominance of men, men too are subject to the mass dominion of their own sex. Power becomes stronger than those who wield it and brings even them under its sway. The subordinates are oppressed, not by any deliberate intention on the part of the dominants, but owing to the natural tendency of irresponsible power to increase itself to the utmost. That is why abuse of power always occurs in monosexual dominance, and it is this abuse of power which puts a term to power. Bachofen[4] recognised this in the case of the dominance of women. He said: "The material power which formed the central feature of matriarchy brought an abundance of sorrows and

[4] Verhandlungen deutscher Philologen, Stuttgart, 1856.

trials to the human race, and these may have contributed, in the end, to the subordination of power to a purer and higher law. Not until this higher law came into operation was there a joyful prospect of peace, happiness, and prosperity." Bachofen's judgment is passed in one-sided fashion solely upon the feminine form of monosexual dominance. He fails to see that the observation is equally true of the masculine form. The rule of men, likewise, has completely failed to bring peace, happiness, and prosperity. Androcracy no less than gynecocracy has graven the furrows of care on the brow of mankind. In the case of the dominion of men, just as much as in the case of the dominion of women, the abundance of sorrows and trials it has entailed has given rise to an endeavour to overthrow it. Athenæus tells us that Clearchus already recognised that the dominance of women, wherever it was found, invariably presupposed an antecedent degradation of women, their antecedent ill-treatment, and that the inevitable reaction against extremes had brought it into being.

The explanations that have hitherto been offered to account for the transition from gynecocracy to androcracy have invariably been biased by the ideology of the extant Men's State. The favourite theory is that women were subordinated by men because men are physically stronger than women. Even Kemnitz,[5] who will not admit that this was the main factor, considers it to have been contributory to the overthrow of the dominance of women. She writes: "It was, before all, owing to the comparative physical weakness of women that the dominance of women could not be se-

[5] Das Wel und seine Bestimmung, p. 120.

curely established in the initial stages of human social evolution. Even though we may not consider the difference between men and women in respect of bodily strength to have been by itself a sufficient cause for the installation of androcracy, the comparative weakness of women must certainly have imperilled gynecocracy." The present writers have already shown that this question of the comparative strength of the sexes had nothing to do with the transition from the dominance of women to the dominance of men. Those who think so are confusing cause and effect. The preponderant strength of man was the effect, not the cause, of masculine dominance. We have proved that the dominant sex excels the subordinate sex in bodily strength. If the question of bodily strength had had any influence in connexion with the change, the superior bodily strength of the dominants would have tended to retard the transformation.

Kemnitz, however, attempts to discover new explanations for the transition from the dominance of men to the dominance of women. She considers that the cause of the dominance of women was the temporary sexual dependence of men upon women. In her opinion, the dominance was dictated by sexuality. But this sexual dependence of the male was in conflict with his natural character traits. When property became established as a permanent institution, inasmuch as property could only be acquired and kept through,the superior bodily strength of the males, the masculine will-to-power asserted itself and women were subjugated. With the flourishing of science and industry, extensive claims were made on masculine energy, and there was thus provided "a sedative for sensuality." To-day, therefore, equality of the sexes can be intro-

duced without making men sexually dependent on women. Man's strong desire for independence will be able to secure free expression even though the sexes have equal rights.

Kemnitz' explanations do not transcend the outlooks of the Men's State. She believes that the will-to-power, the longing for independence, is a specifically masculine quality. But in reality we are not concerned with an inborn characteristic of males, but with a view which is simply the effect of monosexual dominance. The dominant sex is invariably supposed to be peculiarly characterised by the will-to-power and the desire for independence. Upon such an assumed natural predisposition the dominants base their claim to rule, believing it to be justified by God's will and the laws of nature.

Such outlooks are buttresses of the dominance. Moreover, the rise of property as a permanent institution, which Kemnitz believes to have been one of the decisive factors in the transition, can have hardly anything to do with the matter. For the acquisition of property and its preservation were not, as Kemnitz opines, due to the superior bodily strength of the males. Property has always been acquired and preserved by the dominant sex. It was a permanent institution among the Egyptians for thousands of years, although women held sway. The same association may be noted in the case of the Spartans, the Kamchadales, the Chamorros, the Iroquois, and the Cantabri.

The change in the relationships of power between the sexes is not brought about by external factors, but by internal. There is at work, in addition to the law of overstrain or expansion we have just been demon-

strating, a psychological law of action and reaction. These two laws, which have hitherto been overlooked, lie at the very root of the psychology of power.

When we study the psychological law of action and reaction as it manifests itself in the pendulum movement, we note the following phenomena. In the first phase of domination, the pressure exercised by the dominant sex brings about the subordination of the other sex. This subordination leads on the dominants to a continual increase in the pressure they exercise. At length the moment arrives when the pressure becomes so strong that it begins to arouse resistance instead of subordination. The pendulum of monosexual dominance has reached its highest point, and with the reversal of the movement a decline sets in. All pressure exercised by the dominant sex henceforward arouses in the members of the other sex resistance as well as subordination, incites them to a struggle against the dominants, initiates among the subordinates endeavours to secure power for themselves. As long as the pendulum of masculine dominion is still in the ascendant, the subordinate sex reacts to the growing power of the males by the display of an increasing tendency to subordination. If the bow has been overstrained, if the power has been pushed to the pitch of absolutism, the pendulum movement is reversed. In such circumstances, not only do we find that the subordinates grow insurgent and demand equal rights, but also that some of the dominants encourage them in their endeavours to secure equality.

The struggle is all the fiercer in proportion as the dominants persevere more obstinately in their attempts to enforce subordination. This rigid conservatism, this determination to defend the traditional privileges

of the dominant sex, arouses so vigorous a reaction on the part of the subordinate sex, initiates so violent a struggle for the acquirement of power, that what was at first merely a contest for equal rights gradually develops into the dominance of the previously subordinate sex. Max Hirsch is unfortunately right in saying: "The main thing that has driven the leaders of the woman's movement into extreme courses has been the hostile attitude of the masculine world and of the authorities that are under masculine control."

Power alone can make woman free. Nevertheless, the acquisition of power entails the danger that it may be pushed to an extreme, so that dominance over the other sex may be secured, this bringing in its train a recurrence of the abuses of power that seemed to have been abolished by the victory over those who were formerly dominant. That is the tragedy of every struggle of the subordinate sex against the dominant sex. It is absolutely essential that humanity should discover ways and means for the permanent realisation of the ideal of sex equality, and for the permanent prevention of either type of monosexual dominance. In default, the millenniums that lie before us will be no less wretched than those which are now drawing to a close. But to-day our knowledge is sufficiently advanced to encourage us in the attempt to nullify what has hitherto been the law of social evolution. Should it prove possible to do this, there will open for mankind a future better and happier than the past has been—the future of permanent sex equality.