Feminism

“ We have seen that Feminism is not only the outcome of the modern world’s main characteristics, but also that it embodies these characteristics as elements in its general attitude. Truth to tell, if we take our values as given, together with all the results they were sure to bring about, then Feminism was a foregone conclusion from the start. ”

“ Again, one may inquire why, since I have not blinked the fact that the feminist movement is making for a revolution of values in sex—why I have not included any woman who has distinguished herself by defying antiquated conventions which are supposed to rule the relations of the sexes. This requires a serious answer. The adjustment of one's social and personal relations, so far as may be, to accord with one's own convictions—that is not feminism, in my opinion: it is only common sense. ”

“ Now his paralysis would defeat not only the purposes of feminism, but also the sole purpose of woman’s conduct toward man from Eve’s time to ours, a course of which feminism is only a modern and consistent example.
It is for man’s reassurance that I shall endeavor gradually to unfold this age-old purpose, showing that while the privileges which through slow evolution we have amassed are so enjoyable as to preclude our envying any man his dusty difficulties, still our attitude toward these our toys is that of a friend of mine, a woman, aged four. ”

“ Ultimate ends of Feminism will be attained only when socialization shall have been so complete that the human being will no longer require the law, but will be able to obey some obscure but noble categorical imperative; when men and women can associate voluntarily, without thrall of the State, for the production and enjoyment of the goods of life. How this will be achieved, by what propaganda, by what struggles and by what battles, is difficult to say; but in common with many Feminists I incline to place a good deal of reliance on the ennobling of the nature of the male. ”

“ And it sets to work with a conscience so clean, with such a profound conviction of its rectitude, and above all with such a great display of moral indignation, that the more guileless sections of the modern world, always taken in by moral indignation, are almost led to believe that Feminism is a natural and desirable evolutionary development, on which all hope for the future depends. ”

“ Even in this day when people like my friend Mamie Magen think that feminism has won everything, I suppose there must still be a majority of men like you—men who’ve never even heard of feminism, who think that their women are breed cattle. ”

“ Modern Feminism, tacking itself on to an older tradition which it travesties beyond all recognition, has succeeded in affecting modern public opinion with an overpowering sense of the sacrosanctity of human femality as such. ”

“ But now, what if this book did express a new revolt against the woman's new point of view, against "feminism"? It is plainly not a new revolt, but what if it were? Just as certain intellectuals have, in the speed of their progress, again reached a taste for monarchy, so other intellectuals, young and scornful of aspiration, may prick along through their flair for freedom in life and love, and arrive at this identical Victorian conclusion, that the sole self expression for women is love. ”

“ In the following pages it is not intended to furnish a treatise on the evolution of woman generally or of her place in society, but simply to offer a criticism on the theory and practice of what is known as Modern Feminism. ”

“ The justification for the whole movement of Modern Feminism in one of its main practical aspects—namely, the placing of the female sex in the position of privilege, advantage and immunity—is concentrated in the current conception of “chivalry.” ”

“ By Modern Feminism I understand a certain attitude of mind towards the female sex. This attitude of mind is often self-contradictory and illogical. While on the one hand it will claim, on the ground of the intellectual and moral equality of women with men, the concession of female suffrage, and commonly, in addition thereto, the admission of women to all professions, offices and functions of public life ”

“ I have no wish to go back on the great achievements of feminism, or to drive women from the professions in which they have a just right to be employed. I want to break down the last barriers. Artemis is slim and bold ”

“ In this strange phenomenon, therefore, in which the indignation of the bourgeois at the wanton and wilful violation of the sacredness of his idol, is reduced to mild remonstrance and its punitive action to a playful pretence, we have a crucial instance of the extraordinary influence of Feminism over the modern mind. ”

“ The Early Struggles of Feminism
When the feminist struggle began during the last century, ignorance and beauty were the two qualities most admired in women. It is necessary to remind our masculine critics what was the soil from which the feminist movement sprang and what the current morality which influenced its direction. It was customary in those days to make fun of old or ugly women and to scorn those who showed any signs of intelligence. ”

“ Let anyone attempt to write a novel or any kind of popular work that does not pander to their sentimentality and their distorted views of life, and see how much success he will have. They have established their ascendancy in England by such steady and insidious means, that three-quarters of our population, including our leading critics and publicists, are not even aware that Feminism is their ruling creed. They reveal it, however, in every word they write on the sex question. ”

“ Let us now turn to the question of the psychology of Political Feminism. Political Feminism, as regards its immediate demand of female suffrage, is based directly on the modern conception of democracy. ”

“ Was it because he had just been reading an article in a new number of the Quarterly, on "Contemporary Feminism," with mingled amazement and revolt, roused by some of the strange facts collected by the writer? So women everywhere—many women at any rate—were turning indiscriminately against the old bonds, the old yokes, affections, servitudes, demanding "self-realisation," freedom for the individuality and the personal will; rebelling against motherhood, and life-long marriage ”

“ Logically, as we shall have occasion to insist upon later on, the principles professedly at the root of Political Feminism are in flagrant contradiction with any that can justify Sentimental Feminism. ”

“ The ten women whom I have chosen are representative: they give the quality of the woman's movement of today. Charlotte Perkins Gilman—Jane Addams—Emmeline Pankhurst—Olive Schreiner—Isadora Duncan—Beatrice Webb—Emma Goldman—Margaret Dreier Robins—Ellen Key: surely in these women, [see also the chapter "Freewomen and Dora Marsden."] if anywhere, is to be found the soul of modern feminism! ”

“ Then there comes a distinct decadence of the feminist movement, because of the gradual diminution in number of women who are interested in such things, and then, while there are always certain women who develop great intellectual abilities which require a larger stage than the home for their display, and while there are always some who find an intellectual career or rather make it, very little is heard of feminism and women's claims. ”

“ The claims of women and their apologists for entering upon the functions of men, political, social or otherwise, although put forward from time to time by isolated individuals, received little countenance from public opinion, and still less from the law. What I have called, however, the sentimental aspect of Modern Feminism undoubtedly did make some headway in public opinion by the end of the eighteenth century, and grew in volume during the early years of the nineteenth century. ”

“ It remains to consider the existing facts more in detail, and the psychological bearings of that large number of persons who have been in the recent past, and are being at the present time, influenced to accept the dogmas of Modern Feminism and the statements of alleged facts made by its votaries. ”

“ It may be true of men but it says nothing in regard to women,” droned a woman’s voice from the next table.... “Your feminism rises into an insuperable barrier,” trailed a man’s husky meticulous tones. “What if I am an egoist? ”

“ The feminist movement can be dealt with in two ways: it can be treated as a sociological abstraction, and discussed at length in heavy monographs; or it can be taken as the sum of the action of a lot of women, and taken account of in the lives of individual women. ”

“ For many years he has protested vigorously against the encroachment of Feminism, and pointed out the various privileges, social and legal, which are possessed by women to the disadvantage of men. But although he is a distinguished student of philosophy, it can scarcely be said that Mr. ”

“ It has been pointed out that the peculiar idealism of women is one that works itself out through the materials of workaday life, and which seeks to break or remake those materials by way of fulfilling that idealism ”

“ Woman as reconstructor of domestic economics, woman as a destructive political agent of enormous potency, woman as worker, woman as dancer, woman as statistician, woman as organizer of the forces of labor—in these it has been the intent to show the real woman of today and of tomorrow. ”

“ They [Pg 96] have never known women to formulate imperious wants, this in itself implying lack of wants, and this in turn implying lack of ideals. Women as a whole have shown nothing save 'servant' attributes. All those activities which presuppose the master qualities, the standard-making, the law-giving, the moral-framing, belong to men. Religions, philosophies, legal codes, standards in morals, canons in art, have all issued from men, while women have been the 'followers,' 'believers,' the 'law-abiding,' the 'moral,' the conventionally admiring. ”

“ The aforesaid peculiarities of women, as women, are, I contend, matters of common observation and are only disputed by those persons—to wit Feminists—to whose theoretical views and practical demands their admission would be inconvenient if not fatal. ”

“ This view, based as it is on the unanimous experience of mankind and confirmed by the observation of all independent persons, has, I repeat, not been challenged before the appearance of the present Feminist Movement and hardly by anyone outside the ranks of that movement. ”

“ In dealing with the psychological aspects of the Feminist Movement, the intellectual conditions which paved the way for its acceptance, it is worth while recalling two or three typical instances of the class of “argument” to be heard on occasion from the female advocates for the suffrage. ”

“ In these chapters a sincere attempt has been made not so much to show what a few exceptional women have accomplished as to exhibit through a few prominent figures the essential nature of women, and to show what may be expected from a future in which women will have a larger freedom and a larger influence. ”

“ Such is the present position of the Woman question in this country, which we take as typical, in the sense that in Great Britain, to which we may also add the United States of America and the British Colonies, where—if possible, the movement is stronger than in the mother country itself—we see the logical outcome of Feminist theory and sentiment. ”

“ That such a suggestion should be so much as entertained by otherwise sane persons is indeed significant of the degeneracy of mental and moral fibre induced by the Feminist movement, for it may be taken as typical. ”

“ So in the wise, virtuous, self-supporting, common-sense women we propose as the mothers of the future republic, the reverend gentleman may see a lack of what he considers the feminine element. In the development of sufficient moral force to entrench herself on principle, need a woman necessarily lose any grace, dignity, or perfection of character? Are not those who have advocated the rights of women in this country for the last twenty years as delicate and refined, as moral, high-toned, educated, just, and generous as any women in the land? ”

“ We must thank the general enlightenment and independence of woman (which we may now regard as a fait accompli) that both these forces are now at work in the world, and it is fair to demand from them for the twentieth century a higher type of civilization than any attained in the nineteenth. Religion, science, art, economics, have all needed the feminine flavor; and literature, the expression of what is permanent and best in all of these, may be gauged at any time to measure the strength of the feminine ingredient. ”

“ In this century, in which women have so much wider scope, when they may paint, carve, act, sing, write, enter professional life, or do whatever talent and inclination dictate, without loss of dignity or prestige, unless they do it ill,—and perhaps even this exception is a trifle superfluous,—it is difficult to understand fully, or estimate correctly, a society in which the best feminine intellect was centered upon the art of entertaining and of wielding an indirect power through the minds of men. ”

“ In the industrial section, especially, we have already had an indication of the main line of the Feminist attitude, a claim to a right to choose. This right is indeed the only one for which the Feminists are struggling, and they struggle for those obscure reasons which lie at the root of our wish to live and to perpetuate the race. It is no wonder, then, that the Feminists should have designs upon the most fundamental of human institutions, marriage and motherhood. ”

“ Against these time-honoured ideas the new spirit of womanhood struggles in shame, astonishment, bitterness, and tears....
I confess myself altogether feminist. I have no doubts in the matter. I want this coddling and browbeating of women to cease. I want to see women come in, free and fearless, to a full participation in the collective purpose of mankind. Women, I am convinced, are as fine as men; they can be as wise as men; they are capable of far greater devotion than men. ”