This United Press report appeared in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune:

Women Not Really Better,
Just Act So, Says Editor

Their Moral Superiority Is Laid
To Double Standard of Morals.

San Francisco, Cal., Aug. 1. – Did God make women to be morally superior to men? Prof. Thomas W. Shannon, president of the Single Standard Eugenic movement and editor of “Practical Eugenics,” thinks not. And, he says, unless men rise to the higher plane of morality which obtains among women, then women will soon sink to the lower plane of morality prevalent among men, or both sexes will meet on a compromise plane of morality, threatening the vitality of the human race.

Prof. Shannon, who had come on from the headquarters of the Movement, Delaware, Ohio, to attend the recent International Purity congress, remained in the city a few days to see the fair.

“In every land, in all ages, among all races,” he said, “barbarous and civilized peoples have held a higher standard of morals for women than men. In our penal institutions seven times as many men as women are found. Men drink a barrel of whiskey where women drink a pint; they then sow their wild oats, where women sow purity and love. Are these social and moral differences conclusive evidence that men are more inherently more depraved than women? For ages men’s selfish interests have led him to affirm this. Women’s acquiescent nature and fondness for compliments have led her to accept the opinion.

“That women have been and are better by practice than men I cheerfully admit; that they are inherently better, I positively deny.

“A perverted public sentiment tolerates and fosters the inconsistencies of profanity, tobacco alcohol and vice in men and condemns these habits as unpardonable sins when indulged in by women. By practice men are less consistent than women for no other reason than that public sentiment permits them to be; women are better than men for no other reason than that public sentiment compels it.

“If the double standard of morals is responsible for nine-tenths of the inconsistencies practiced by men, and these habits are responsible for nine-tenths of race degeneracy then the teaching of a consistent standard of morals is the only practical and rational solution of these problems.”

A switchboard operator at the Minneapolis Journal lived up to societal expectations, appearancewise, back in 1915. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

Men weren’t afraid to get their hands — or faces — dirty in 1915. Here a crew worked a mine near Eveleth. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Main, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.