Mitchell on the "Sex" and Other "Problems"
"I agree with `T' in last week's `Bulletin'," said Mitchell,
after cogitating some time over the last drop of tea in his pannikin,
held at various angles, "about what they call the `Sex Problem'.
There's no problem, really, except Creation, and that's not our affair;
we can't solve it, and we've no right to make a problem out of it
for ourselves to puzzle over, and waste the little time
that is given us about. It's we that make the problems, not Creation.
We make 'em, and they only smother us; they'll smother the world in the end
if we don't look out. Anything that can be argued, for and against,
from half a dozen different points of view -- and most things
that men argue over can be -- and anything that has been argued about
for thousands of years (as most things have) is worse than profitless;
it wastes the world's time and ours, and often wrecks old mateships.
Seems to me the deeper you read, think, talk, or write about things
that end in ism, the less satisfactory the result; the more likely you are
to get bushed and dissatisfied with the world. And the more you keep
on the surface of plain things, the plainer the sailing --
the more comfortable for you and everybody else. We've always got
to come to the surface to breathe, in the end, in any case;
we're meant to live on the surface, and we might as well
stay there and look after it and ourselves for all the good we do
diving down after fish that aren't there, except in our imagination.
And some of 'em are very dead fish, too -- the `Sex Problem', for instance.
When we fall off the surface of the earth it will be time enough
to make a problem out of the fact that we couldn't stick on.
I'm a Federal Pro-trader in this country; I'm a Federalist because
I think Federation is the plain and natural course for Australia,
and I'm a Free-tectionist because I'm in favour of sinking any question,
or any two things, that enlightened people can argue and fight over,
and try, one after the other, for fifty years without being able to come
to a decision about, or prove which is best for the welfare of the country.
It only wastes a young country's time, and keeps it off the right track.
Federation isn't a problem -- it's a plain fact -- but they make a problem
out of every panel they have to push down in the rotten old boundary fences."
"Personal interests," suggested Joe.
"Of course. It's personal interest of the wrong sort
that makes all the problems. You can trace the sex problem
to people who trade in unhealthy personal interests.
I believe in personal interests of the right sort -- true individualism.
If we all looked after ourselves, and our wives and families
-- if we have any -- in the proper way, the world would be all right.
We waste too much time looking after each other.
"Now, supposing we're travelling and have to get a shed and make a cheque
so's to be able to send a few quid home, as soon as we can,
to the missus, or the old folks, and the next water is twenty miles ahead.
If we sat down and argued over a social problem till doomsday,
we wouldn't get to the tank; we'd die of thirst, and the missus and kids,
or the old folks, would be sold up and turned out into the streets,
and have to fall back on a `home of hope', or wait their turn
at the Benevolent Asylum with bags for broken victuals. I've seen that,
and I don't want anybody belonging to me to have to do it.
"Reminds me that when a poor, deserted girl goes to a `home' they don't make
a problem of her -- they do their best for her and try to get her righted.
And the priests, too: if there's anything in the sex or any other problem
-- anything that hasn't been threshed out -- they're the men that'll know it.
I'm not a Catholic, but I know this: that if a girl that's been left by one
-- no matter what Church she belongs to -- goes to the priest, they'll work
all the points they know (and they know 'em all) to get her righted,
and, if the chap, or his people, won't come up to the scratch,
Father Ryan'll frighten hell out of 'em. I can't say as much
for our own Churches."
"But you're in favour of socialism and democracy?" asked Joe.
"Of course I am. But the world won't do any good arguing over it.
The people will have to get up and walk, and, what's more, stick together
-- and I don't think they'll ever do that -- it ain't in human nature.
Socialism, or democracy, was all right in this country
till it got fashionable and was made a fad or a problem of.
Then it got smothered pretty quick. And a fad or a problem
always breeds a host of parasites or hangers-on. Why, as soon as I saw
the advanced idealist fools -- they're generally the middle-class,
shabby-genteel families that catch Spiritualism and Theosophy
and those sort of complaints, at the end of the epidemic
-- that catch on at the tail-end of things and think they've caught
something brand, shining, new; -- as soon as I saw them,
and the problem spielers and notoriety-hunters of both sexes,
beginning to hang round Australian Unionism, I knew it was doomed.
And so it was. The straight men were disgusted, or driven out.
There are women who hang on for the same reason that a girl
will sometimes go into the dock and swear an innocent man's life away.
But as soon as they see that the cause is dying, they drop it at once,
and wait for another. They come like bloody dingoes round a calf,
and only leave the bones. They're about as democratic as the crows.
And the rotten `sex-problem' sort of thing is the cause of it all;
it poisons weak minds -- and strong ones too sometimes.
"Why, you could make a problem out of Epsom salts. You might argue
as to why human beings want Epsom salts, and try to trace the causes
that led up to it. I don't like the taste of Epsom salts
-- it's nasty in the mouth -- but when I feel that way I take 'em,
and I feel better afterwards; and that's good enough for me.
We might argue that black is white, and white is black,
and neither of 'em is anything, and nothing is everything;
and a woman's a man and a man's a woman, and it's really the man
that has the youngsters, only we imagine it's the woman
because she imagines that she has all the pain and trouble,
and the doctor is under the impression that he's attending to her,
not the man, and the man thinks so too because he imagines he's walking
up and down outside, and slipping into the corner pub now and then
for a nip to keep his courage up, waiting, when it's his wife
that's doing that all the time; we might argue that it's all
force of imagination, and that imagination is an unknown force,
and that the unknown is nothing. But, when we've settled all that
to our own satisfaction, how much further ahead are we?
In the end we'll come to the conclusion that we ain't alive,
and never existed, and then we'll leave off bothering,
and the world will go on just the same."
"What about science?" asked Joe.
"Science ain't `sex problems'; it's facts. . . . Now, I don't mind
Spiritualism and those sort of things; they might help
to break the monotony, and can't do much harm. But the `sex problem',
as it's written about to-day, does; it's dangerous and dirty,
and it's time to settle it with a club. Science and education, if left alone,
will look after sex facts.
"You can't get anything out of the `sex problem', no matter how you argue.
In the old Bible times they had half a dozen wives each,
but we don't know for certain how THEY got on. The Mormons tried it again,
and seemed to get on all right till we interfered. We don't seem to be able
to get on with one wife now -- at least, according to the `sex problem'.
The `sex problem' troubled the Turks so much that they tried three.
Lots of us try to settle it by knocking round promiscuously,
and that leads to actions for maintenance and breach of promise cases,
and all sorts of trouble. Our blacks settle the `sex problem' with a club,
and so far I haven't heard any complaints from them.
. . . . .
"Take hereditary causes and surrounding circumstances, for instance.
In order to understand or judge a man right, you would need to live
under the same roof with him from childhood, and under the same roofs,
or tents, with his parents, right back to Adam, and then you'd be blocked
for want of more ancestors through which to trace the causes
that led to Abel -- I mean Cain -- going on as he did.
What's the use or sense of it? You might argue away in any direction
for a million miles and a million years back into the past,
but you've got to come back to where you are if you wish to do
any good for yourself, or anyone else.
"Sometimes it takes you a long while to get back to where you are --
sometimes you never do it. Why, when those controversies were started
in the `Bulletin' about the kangaroos and other things, I thought I knew
something about the bush. Now I'm damned if I'm sure I could tell
a kangaroo from a wombat.
"Trying to find out things is the cause of all the work and trouble
in this world. It was Eve's fault in the first place -- or Adam's, rather,
because it might be argued that he should have been master.
Some men are too lazy to be masters in their own homes,
and run the show properly; some are too careless, and some too drunk
most of their time, and some too weak. If Adam and Eve
hadn't tried to find out things there'd have been no toil and trouble
in the world to-day; there'd have been no bloated capitalists,
and no horny-handed working men, and no politics, no freetrade and protection
-- and no clothes. The woman next door wouldn't be able to pick holes
in your wife's washing on the line. We'd have been all running about
in a big Garden of Eden with nothing on, and nothing to do except loaf,
and make love, and lark, and laugh, and play practical jokes on each other."
Joe grinned.
"That would have been glorious. Wouldn't it, Joe? There'd have been
no `sex problem' then."
-THE END-
Henry Lawson's short story: Mitchell on the "Sex" and Other "Problems"
An Australian story from Over the Sliprails collection
A glossary of Australian terms and concepts
which may prove helpful to understanding this story:
Billy: Any container used to boil water, especially for tea;
a special container designed for this purpose.
Bunyip: [pronounced bun-yup] A large mythological creature,
said by the Aborigines to inhabit watery places. There may be
some relation to an actual creature that is now extinct.
Lawson uses an obsolete sense of the term, meaning "imposter".
Gin: An aboriginal woman; use of the term is analogous to "squaw"
in N. America. May be considered derogatory in modern usage.
Goanna: Any of various lizards of the genus Varanus (monitor lizards)
native to Australia.
Graft: Work; hard work.
Gunyah: (Aboriginal) A rough or temporary hut or shelter in the bush,
especially one built from bark, branches, and the like.
A humpy, wurley, or mia-mia. Variant: Gunya.
Jackeroo/Jackaroo: At the time Lawson wrote, a Jackaroo was a "new chum"
or newcomer to Australia, who sought work on a station to gain experience.
The term now applies to any young man working as a station hand.
A female station hand is a Jillaroo.
Jimmy Woodser: A person who drinks alone; a drink drunk alone.
Larrikin: A hoodlum.
Lorry: A large, low wagon without sides, used for heavy loads.
Mia-mia: (Aboriginal) A rough or temporary hut or shelter in the bush,
especially one built from bark, branches, and the like.
A humpy, wurley, or gunyah.
Native bear: A koala.
Pa: A Maori village.
'Possum/Possum: In Australia, a class of marsupials that were
originally mistaken for the American animal of the same name.
They are not especially related to the possums of North and South America,
other than being marsupials.
Public/Pub.: The traditional pub. in Australia was a hotel
with a "public" bar -- hence the name. The modern pub has often
(not always) dispensed with the lodging, and concentrated on the bar.
Push: A group of people sharing something in common; Lawson uses the word
in an older and more particular sense, as a gang of violent city hoodlums.
Ratty: Shabby, dilapidated; somewhat eccentric, perhaps even slightly mad.
Selector: A free selector, a farmer who selected and settled land
by lease or license from the government.
Shout: To buy a round of drinks.
Skillion: A lean-to or outbuilding.
Sliprails/slip-rails: movable rails, forming a section of fence,
which can be taken down in lieu of a gate. "Over the Sliprails",
the title of this volume, might be translated as "Through the Gate".
Squatter: A person who first settled on land without government permission,
and later continued by lease or license, generally to raise stock;
a wealthy rural landowner.
Station: A farm or ranch, especially one devoted to cattle or sheep.
Stoush: Violence; to do violence to.
Tea: In addition to the regular meaning, Tea can also mean
a light snack or a meal (i.e., where Tea is served).
In particular, Morning Tea (about 10 AM) and Afternoon Tea (about 3 PM)
are nothing more than a snack, but Evening Tea (about 6 PM) is a meal.
When just "Tea" is used, it usually means the evening meal.
Variant: Tea-time.
Tucker: Food.
Whare: [pronounced war-ee] A Maori term for a hut or similar dwelling.
Also: a hint with the seasons -- remember that the seasons are reversed
from those in the northern hemisphere, hence June may be hot,
but December is even hotter. Australia is at a lower latitude
than the United States, so the winters are not harsh by US standards,
and are not even mild in the north. In fact, large parts of Australia
are governed more by "dry" versus "wet" than by Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.
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