Note 831 — Chapter XVIII · PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY (continued 2)

This fact is seized upon in one of the most powerful books produced in recent sociological discussion. According to Mrs. Stetson "we are the only animal species in which the female depends on the male for food, the only animal species in which the sex-relation is also an economic relation. With us an entire sex lives in a relation of economic dependence upon the other sex." The wife may toil unceasingly; but the labor which she "performs in the household is given as a part of her functional duty, not as employment." She is therefore not her husband's "business partner;" for as an intended equivalent for what she gets she contributes neither labor nor capital nor experience nor even motherhood. She contributes her sex-attractions. Sex-distinctions are therefore excessively developed; and the "sexuo-economic relation" becomes inevitable. "By the economic dependence of the human female upon the male, the balance of forces is altered. Natural selection no longer checks the action of sexual selection, but coöperates with it;" for "man, in supporting woman, has become her economic environment." Under "sexual selection the human creature is of course modified to its mate, as with all creatures. When the mate becomes also the master, when economic necessity is added to sex-attraction, we have the two great evolutionary forces acting together to the same end; namely, to develop sex-distinction in the human female. For, in her position of economic dependence in the sexual relation, sex-distinction is with her not only a means of attracting a mate, as with all creatures, but a means of getting a livelihood, as is the case with no other creature under heaven. Because of the economic dependence of the human female on her mate she is modified to sex to an excessive degree. This excessive modification she transmits to her children; and so is steadily implanted in the human constitution the morbid tendency to excess in this relation, which has acted so universally upon us in all ages, in spite of our best efforts to restrain it." While in man the immediate dominating force of sexual passion may be more conspicuous, in woman it holds more universal sway. "For the man has other powers and faculties in full use, whereby to break loose from the force of this; and the woman, specially modified to sex and denied racial activity, pours her whole life into love." Useful to the race as was this evolution originally, its influence for good has long since reached its limit. Excessive sex-energy has threatened to "destroy both individual and race." Hence woman is declining longer to be confined to her highly specialized sexual function and is demanding an equal place in the social organization. She is gaining a social consciousness: Stetson, Women and Economics, 5, 12 ff., 37 ff., 48, 122-45. Cf. Schreiner, "The Woman Question," Cosmopolitan, XXVIII, 183 ff., on "sex-parasitism."