Walter M. Gallichan: Difference between revisions

'''Walter M Gallichan''' was a British journalist who recognized involuntary celibacy as a social problem in his 1915 book ''The Great Unmarried''.  

In it, he portrayed "involuntary celibacy" as a issue facing men of the professional classes in the era due to heightened competition in those fields and a high cost of living, but chiefly effecting what he describes as a "vast number of involuntarily celibate women doomed to a lonely, loveless existence and the negation of the right to motherhood". He also claims that the majority of soldiers were involuntary celibates.

 

Gallichan seems to consistently portray the circumstance as an issue primarily facing the women of the time, in his view, this being largely caused by urbanization (in particular, the immigration of male workers to the cities) and many young men refusing or being unable to [[betabux|bear the financial cost of marriage]]. He also describes changes in social attitudes such as: "Sexphobia, misogyny, misogamy, or misandry, anaesthesia and other morbid phenomena of effete civilisation [..]" as being other contributing factors to widespread celibacy.

 

He describes the social ills caused by involuntary celibacy as (among other things) an increase in crime among celibate men, involuntarily celibate men withdrawing from contributing to society ("being unsocial against their will"), falling birth rates, and he continues in this manner describing celibacy as being deleterious to social cohesion.

 

After briefly considering the legalization of polygamy as a solution to involuntary celibacy in women (soon to be exacerbated, as he warns, by the change in the gender ratio due to a decimation of an entire generation of young men in the First World War), he proposes the implementation of economic incentives to marry (such as tax breaks for the married), disincentives towards singlehood (such as bachelor taxes), increasing the minimum wage substantially, the social encouragement of marriage as a transcendent social ideal to be praised and aspired to by all, and the shaming and vituperation of what he calls "pseudo-celibacy" (promiscuity outside of marriage) as possible solutions to involuntary celibacy in both sexes.  

 

Gallichan was also a eugenicist who advocated in the book for the permanent sterilization of the "mentally degenerate".