Women As Sex Vendors: Or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic Status of Woman)Tobias, R. B. (Roscoe Burdette)
General
Women As Sex Vendors: Or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic Status of Woman)
Tobias, R. B. (Roscoe Burdette)
Family; Sexual ethics; Women -- Social and moral questions
We are not inclined to believe this was due to the prevalence of any
so-called =paternal= instinct. Paternal instinct is, we suspect, a minus,
rather than a plus, quantity. It seems to us that fathers more often
learn to love their children through following the conduct prescribed by
good form and pretending to love them, or through love of display, pride
or by =association=, than through any "natural tendency."
The almost universality of the maternal instinct is proven by the
peoples in the world today, for scarcely anybody would have a chance
for existence if it were not for the care of the mothers.
Generally the coming of children is a handicap to a woman in the market
in which Nature and the present system have placed her. Where this is
the case, it is here that society, customs and laws speak for the
family, in ways built up, sometimes blindly, sometimes consciously, to
preserve the species, and upon the old biological and economic
foundations.
It is generally granted that women with children are more conservative
than women without children. We believe this is true only when they and
their children are provided for. When a mother is left with no one to
support her children, she becomes more predatory than other women in the
pursuit of a new provider. Our jails and workhouses are full of
unsuccessful mothers of this class, convicted of crimes against
property.
Mothers are conservative when their children are secure; more predatory
when they are in want. Mothers often compete successfully in making
their wares attractive and in binding the male by habits and
associations that hold him and induce him to continue to pay.
Among men, the possession of, and ability to support a woman in
perpetuity, whom no other may touch, is honorific, a high sign of
display. It announces to the world that such a man is able to hold a
trophy in the struggle for existence. A monogamous wife is, in fact, an
emblem of well-off-ness, and greatly to be desired.
A man does not wish to be one among a corporation of men owning a woman
any more than he desires to be owner of a sixth part of an automobile.
Not because there is anything more intrinsically wrong in purchasing
one-sixth than six-sixths, but because, in a world where the ownership
of private property is the greatest of all good things, individual
ownership denotes respectability, comfort, ability to buy outright.
Hence we have monogamy for wives and mistresses in general, and polygamy
for men.
For if it is honorific to possess one woman, it is still more proof of
one's buying power to support half a dozen different establishments.
Besides, biologically, a man may require many women for the satisfaction
of his desires.
CHASTITY
Why do young girls remain chaste before the importunities of their
lovers and, perhaps, against their own desires, if not for the purpose
of forcing or inducing them to offer the sure and permanent price of
matrimony?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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