Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/75

Rh hardships of their profession among the degraded feminine sex, and the degraded feminine sex is sufficiently grateful to recognize the blessing of having fops instead of men, dancing partners instead of friends, whore-hunters instead of husbands, educated for them by raving about the resplendent soldiery. In Switzerland and North America women must be very unhappy, because men must dispense with the chief school of training for married life, namely, the standing armies! But they are compensated here by the moneyed men, who can buy everything, and by the friends of the slave-holders, who see to it that the doctrine of the despoliation of the weak does not suffer.

But marriage also, as it now exists, is a school for the dissemination of conjugal infelicity for men no less than for women. More of this later. It appears on all sides that most men also are the victims of existing conditions, that is, of the present want of freedom and of economic injustice, whereupon the women become the victims of the victims.

A special point which comparatively admits of an excuse for men in the discussion of sexual rights and duties is, finally, "adultery." The condition for equal claims is equal needs. Now if it can be shown that the woman has the same sexual needs as the man, then adultery on her part is of no greater significance than on the part of man. But whether we find the reason for it in