Secondary Males, New Orleans Crescent (Article, 1869)
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The investigations of physiology leave no doubt that, in some cases at least, the germs of masculine nature lie enveloped in female organizations and, conversely, the germs of female nature in male organizations; and that under given circumstances, these rudimentary characters are susceptible of exterior development in the individuals bearing them. Mr. Darwin, indeed, believes that without exception there is this envelopment of the female within the form of the male, and of the male within the form of the female. After citing numerous examples in support of this conclusion, this profound and indefatigable searcher into the secrets of the organic world remarks: "We thus see that in many, probably in all cases, the secondary characters of each sex lie dormant or latent in the opposite sex, ready to be evolved under peculiar circumstances. We can thus understand how, for instance, it is possible for a good milking cow to transmit her good qualities through her male offspring to future generations; for we may confidently believe that these qualities are present, though latent, in the males of each generation. So it is with the game cock, who can transmit his superiority in courage and vigor through his female to his male offspring; and with man it is known that diseases necessarily confined to the male sex can be transmitted through the female to the grandson." It is impossible to account intelligently for such a reversion of the peculiarities of distant ancestors without accepting the assumption upon which Mr. Darwin explains it. How far the characters of both sexes may be successively unfolded, in form, quality, and function, in the same individual, is a question which opens a vast field of curious speculation and almost startling and amazing suggestion. The boundary of this field Mr. Darwin barely crosses, and then retires, as if he dreaded to challenge the phantom of elemental and primordial truth perpetually fitting before those who undertake to explore the limitless realms of nature. But that one sex may, in a partial degree, supervene upon the other in the same individual, he does not doubt, and he illustrates the fact by a variety of instances, some of which we will quote. "Now," he says, "it is well known that a large number of female birds, such as fowls, various pheasants, partridges, peahens, ducks, etc., when old or disabled, or when operated on, partly assume the secondary male characters of their species. * * * A duck ten years old has been known to assume both the perfect winter and summer plumage of the drake. Waterton gives a curious case of a hen which had ceased laying, and had assumed the plumage, voice, spurs and warlike disposition of the cock; when opposed to an enemy she would erect her hackles and show fight. Thus every character, even to the instinct and manner of fighting must have lain dormant in this hen."
Thus it would seem that bisexuality, as a latent fact, may be affirmed of every individual organization, and that the exclusive development of one sex simply means the suppression of the other which it overlies. Whether parthenogenesis is possible in the human race, as well as among certain vegetable and animal species of a low order, speculative physiology neither affirms nor denies, though it leans to the negative of the proposition from the fact that science records no instance of the kind among the higher orders of organic beings.
And now we come to consider the manifestations of secondary sexual character which are brought out by some of the artificial and extremely complex conditions of modern civilization; and we think that in following this train of reflection much light may be thrown on certain social and political phenomena which would be otherwise inexplicable. More especially do we regard it as conducive to the explication of what is known as the women's rights movement, which involves one of the most profound and distinctive problems of the day. We charge the Cady Stantons, the Susan Anthonys, the Lucy Stones, the Dr. Walkers, and the rest nothing for this application of an abstruse physiological theory, although its effect is to place their cause on the only natural, logical and consistent basis. The rights which they demand could never be conceded to them in the character of women. As women, they would have no use for them. As women, they would shrink with horror from their possession, because of the hard, heavy, unwomanly responsibilities and duties, and the uncongenial and revolting associations, which their possession would imply and necessitate. Those rights could only be conceded to them in the character of secondary males. If, like the hen spoken of by Mr. Darwin, which had taken on the character of the cock and had launched into a career of crowing and fighting, they have somehow sunk their original sex, why, by all means, let them be invested with all that socially or politically appertains to the other sex, and let them be free to enter upon all the avocations and all the enterprises of men, asking no favors and braving all dangers and hardships. The creation of this order of secondary males would seem to be, indeed, one of the inevitable incidents of the social evolution now going on.
Yet it is not the first time in history that complexities, and refinements, and perversities of civilization produced in a notable measure confusion of sexes. The most terrible social catastrophe of this kind marked the Augustan era of Rome. There was, it is true, no canting then about the rights of women, as there was none about the rights of men. The unsexing process did not manifest itself in fanatical cries for woman suffrage, or for the enlargement of woman's sphere. It found expression in horrid and unnatural forms of voluptuousness, luxury, and dissipation, that arrested the grown and emasculated the essence of the old Roman stock and sapped the foundations of the Roman empire. A like species of profligacy will not necessarily attend the confusion of sexes which is boded by the woman's rights movement. But in so far as the accomplishment of such a revolution would enlarge, as in some degree it certainly would, the circle of celibacy, it would, of course, in the same measure, tend to arrest the growth of the population. These two things then, it is of serious importance to consider-- that the absolute equalization of sexes which is aimed at means confusion of sexes, and that confusion of sexes means nothing less than ultimate depopulation.
And yes the unsexed women, the secondary males, that is to say, who are urging on this so-called reform, would hardly be blameworthy if they claimed for themselves alone absolute equalization with congenital manhood. The development in them of the rudiments of the male character would seem to leave them no other resource. They must stand on the footing of women, or on the footing of men, or they must stand nowhere. And a like allowance may be made with respect to those soft emasculated creatures in male form who cultivate long hair and idolize the fierce masculinity of the Anna Dickinsons and the Lucy Stones. Something unwholesome and morbid without or within has caused them to assume as far as may be the female nature, and as far as may be they ought to be admitted to the sphere and clothed with the rights of women. There are secondary females as well as secondary males; and the more the ranks of both orders are reinforced, the more original sexhood will be merged in sexual chaod, and the more the human race will decline towards the catastrophe of depopulation.
