The Double Standard of the 'Siren' Argument
An editorial critique of contemporary social norms and gendered double standards following the high-profile Breckinridge scandal.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A deal of rancid nonsense is talked to the effect that universal woman suffrage would 'humanize' man in politics. In our judgment, there is a nearer, wider and more practicable field for 'humanizing' men by women than through full woman suffrage, and that consists in women setting men an example of humanity to women by refusing to plead 'the baby act' for a man when he wrongs a woman. Mrs. Cuthbert Bullitt, 'the richest woman in Kentucky,' printed a letter exhorting the women of that state 'not to be too hard on Col. Breckinridge.' Mrs. Bullitt insists that something induced Col. Breckinridge. He was the victim of a smooth-tongued siren, and with man's passion, he could not tear himself from her. Mrs. Bullitt calls Miss Pollard 'a brazen brute,' and visits condemnation on Miss Pollard alone. This cowardly plea of 'the baby act' for men is an old Adam's whimpering defense that 'the woman tempted me; she gave to me and I did eat.' No man or woman of sound moral sense will accept the plea of 'the baby act' for either man or woman who has reached years of discretion. Let us have no sentimental, discriminating leniency for one sex over the other. Let us at least be as manly as Jesus, who rebuked the brutality of his time by his treatment of the Magdalen.
“Let us have no sentimental, discriminating leniency for one sex over the other.”
This 1894 editorial dismantles the 'siren' trope used to excuse powerful men from moral accountability. The language of 'pleading the baby act' highlights a persistent civic argument about who receives the benefit of the doubt and who is condemned by moral policing, a theme that remains central to modern discourse on power and accountability.
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