other men would share his advantage in the matter of obtaining female
companionship, would in any way lessen the amount of sexual emotion or the
tenderness of relation between the two halves of humanity. He would not by
brute force possess himself of so many females, nor have so large a circle
of choice, under the new conditions; but what he lost, others would gain;
and the intensity of the sex emotions and the nearness and passion of the
relation between the sexes be in no way touched.

In our more civilised societies, as they exist today, woman possesses (more
often perhaps in appearance than reality!) a somewhat greater freedom of
sexual selection; she is no longer captured by muscular force, but there
are still conditions entirely unconnected with sex attractions and
affections, which yet largely dominate the sex relations.

It is not the man of the strong arm, but the man of the long purse, who
unduly and artificially dominates in the sexual world today. Practically,
wherever in the modern world woman is wholly or partially dependent for her
means of support on the exercise of her sexual functions, she is dependent
more or less on the male's power to support her in their exercise, and her
freedom of choice is practically so far absolutely limited. Probably
three-fourths of the sexual unions in our modern European societies,
whether in the illegal or recognised legal forms, are dominated by or
largely influenced by the sex purchasing power of the male. With regard to
the large and savage institution of prostitution, which still lies as the
cancer embedded in the heart of all our modern civilised societies, this is
obviously and nakedly the case; the wealth of the male as compared to the
female being, with hideous obtrusiveness, its foundation and source of
life. But the purchasing power of the male as compared with the poverty of
the female is not less painfully, if a little less obtrusively, displayed
in those layers of society lying nearer the surface. From the fair, effete