In 1898, Elizabth Bisland wrote a brilliant essay on the advance of what is now known as feminism. Woman is not by nature egalitarian, she argued. At heart, she is an aristocrat, prone to selfless loyalty to the hero who fires her romantic yearnings. Men were forcing egalitarianism on women. With the advance of radical democracy, they suddenly refused to play the role women’s loyalty demanded of them.

“He is relentlessly forcing a democracy of sex upon woman; industrially, mentally and sentimentally,” Bisland wrote. “He refuses to gratify her imagination; he insists upon her development of that logical selfishness which underlies all democracy, and which is foreign to her nature.”

She went on:

“Now, nature has inexorably laid upon woman a certain share of the work that must be done in the world. In the course of ages humanity adjusted itself to its shared labors by developing the relation of master and defender, of dependent and loyal vassal. Sentiment has adorned it with a thousand graces and robbed the feudal relation of most of its hardships. Mutual responsibilites and mutual duties were cheerfully accepted.

Woman was obliged to perform certain duties, and these could only be made agreeable by sentiment, by unselfishness. Man needed her ministrations as much as she needed his.  He realized that sentiment was necessary to her happiness and he accepted the duty of preserving that sentiment of loyalty and admiration for himself which made her hard tasks seem easy when performed for a beloved master. He took upon himself that difficult task of being a hero to a person even more intimate than his valet. He took the trouble to please woman’s imagination.”

Bisland would be appalled at today’s male, dressed in his play clothes, fighting wars alongside girls, changing diapers, submitting to women at work and home. He is no longer lord or hero, but erstwhile playmate. Such a being can be loved, but he does not feed a woman’s imagination or give her reason to submit.

                                                                                         —- Comments —

Lydia Sherman writes:

I first saw this when I began to meet men who had been to college. They came home no longer admiring the women of the hearth, but insisting that women be modern and educated in sophistication. It was a great disappointment that these men, sent away to college to become better men and better care for their families, came home with a high opinion of themselves and a low opinion of traditional mothers and wives. Something happened in college. I remember a teacher talking to me about how staying at home was a “cop-out” for women and that only the uneducated woman, the one with no other talents, would be the ones that stayed home. I supposed his college education included a sufficient study in Marxism. If you ever want to read about the failed life of Karl Marx, see what this author had to say in 1991.

 Marx himself was too argumentive to keep a job. His nature was so quarrelsome that if anyone were to say ‘Good Morning’ to him, he would argue about it. As Karl Marx was an arguer, everyone that follows his philosophy is naturally an argumentive, war-like person. The feminists who challenge me are never able to reason, or see a point, or concede a point, but they are very good at arguing.

Hannon writes:

Here are some observations that provide insight into Marx’s views of the societal role of women:

“It would be interesting to learn more about Marx’s feelings towards women as to their status in society. In the Manifesto, it’s clear that Marx saw the labor of the bourgeoisie as reducing values of age and sex. Maybe this means he doesn’t want women to be able to work. Or at least not as much. He also portrays communism as advocating a “community of women,” the women of society being shared by the men.Apparently, this was part of the abolition of the family, since wives were exploited for labor at the time. After Marx’s contention that the bourgeoisie “take the greatest pleasure in seducing each others wives,” making bourgeois marriage “in reality a system of wives in common,” he claims that a community of women would be no different than the situation with the bourgeoisie, just less hypocritical (72).A “community of men,” however, is not considered.”

It sounds as if he viewed women with regard mainly to his political theories rather than as essential beings. Not much differently than he regarded anyone. The depths of his contempt for his fellow man must have been profound.

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