Suffragism

“ Quite as fatuous are the marriage projects of the militant suffragist. Every woman of the world could tell her—whispering it into her private ear—that if a sufficient number of men should come to the conclusion that it was not worth their while to marry except on the terms of fair give-and-take, the suffragist woman's demands would have to come down. ”

“ MENTAL OUTLOOK AND PROGRAMME OF THE FEMALE LEGISLATIVE REFORMER
The suffragist woman, when she is the kind of woman who piques herself upon her ethical impulses, will, even when she is intellectually very poorly equipped, and there is no imprint of altruism upon her life, assure you that nothing except the moral influence of woman, exerted through the legislation, which her practical mind would be capable of initiating, will ever avail to abate existing social evils, and to effect the moral redemption of the world. ”

“ But is not the contention of the suffragists fundamentally based upon the circumstances of the woman who is not leading this normal life,—who is unmarried, who has no children, or who is not making a home and bringing up her children herself? It is in planning for these exceptional women, as I think they do, that the suffragist leaders tend to ignore the truly representative women—the majority. ”

“ The tactics of the suffragist agitator are the same when she is dealing with a woman who is living at the charges of a husband or relative, and who recoils against the idea that she lies under a moral obligation to make to the man who works for her support some return of gratitude. The suffragist agitator will point out to her that such an obligation is slavery, and that the woman's suffrage cause is the cause of freedom. ”

“ They know our influence over you; slaves, we can only debase you; at present, we render you cowardly, selfish, and dishonest; we send you out every morning, like vultures, upon society, to provide for our foolish expenses or to endow our children; we, women of emancipation, are unwilling that our sex should longer play this odious rôle, and be, through its slavery, an instrument of demoralization and of social degradation,—and this you impute to us as a crime! ”

“ Each and all have their advocates showing that the people are awakening out of their deep lethargic sleep and are beginning to think. Not least among these reforms, is the reform in matters pertaining to sex. The thinking men and women of today no longer can close their eyes to the fact that the vices and immoralities of the masses, as well as those of the so-called better classes, are spreading in a manner truly appalling. But worst of all, and attended by the worst possible results, is the sex slavery of the married woman. ”

“ Most barbarous of all the grievances of women were the legal and conventional rules which affected the moral relations of the sexes. In nothing had the egoism of men been so remarkably displayed as in the construction of these rules, and in the care with which they had concealed the consequences from women. The progress of the movement in favour of Woman Suffrage is precisely to be measured by the growth of women's knowledge of the facts of sex, and in particular of the meaning of prostitution. ”

“ With regard to the suffragist's complaint that it is "insulting" for woman to be told that she is as a class unfit to exercise the suffrage, it is relevant to point out that one is not insulted by being told about oneself, or one's class, untruths, but only at being told about oneself, or one's class, truths which one dislikes. And it is, of course, an offence against ethics to try to dispose of an unpalatable generalisation by characterising it as "insulting." But nothing that man could do would be likely to prevent the suffragist resorting to this aggravated form of intellectual immorality. ”

“ One would have imagined that the suffering inflicted by disease and by bad social conditions—suffering which falls upon man and woman alike—deserved a first place in the thoughts of every reformer. And one might have expected it to be common knowledge that the wrongs individual men inflict upon women have a full counterpart in the wrongs which individual women inflict upon men. It may quite well be that there are mists which here "blot and fill the perspective" of the female legislative reformer. ”

“ The man who looks forward to the intellectual development of woman must be brought near to despair when he perceives that practically every woman suffragist sees in every hard case arising in connexion with a legal distinction affecting woman, an insult and example of the iniquity of man-made laws, or a logical inconsistency which could with a very little good-will be removed.
We have come now to the last item on our list, to the grievance that woman has to submit herself to "man-made laws." ”

“ It would have been too wonderful if women, in their fight for liberty, had proved themselves perfect. We have not. We have shown human foibles, like men, partisanship and violence, like men, and we have shown some faults which, though not specifically feminine, are the faults natural to subjected persons.
When all is said about the mistakes and faults and follies of suffragists, those of the Government have been far greater. They belittled the women’s movement, and treated it with the sort of sneering contempt which is more provocative than anything in the world. ”

“ But I am a suffragist, an ardent suffragist, realising that a woman is most valuable neither as an angel nor as a slave, but as a useful citizen, and I saw then that he possibly knew little about the condition of his own women, and probably absolutely nothing at all about the condition of the women of the race who swarmed around him. ”

“ Our sex, if kept out of politics, has the opportunity in these days when we prate so much about peace, to [Pg 122] set about disarming distrust and discord within our own borders. Shall we not dream of a united American womanhood? We twentieth century women may take a noble stride toward it, if we will, by working for those causes that disregard the divisions of race, religion, and politics. Is it surprising that the anti-suffragist sees a vast, unexhausted field for woman's influence outside the political? ”

“ Woman's faith, and her abstract way of looking at moral questions, prevent her from fastening her thought, as men naturally do, on any special culprit, in her severe but vague sense of wrong in this matter. The Suffragists have taken fewer steps in the direction of removing the social plague-spot than in the direction of bringing about a system of easier divorce—a thing that strikes a blow directly against, instead of for, the virtue of their sex. Social opinion is causing a change in some of the laws concerning social vice. Nearly every State legislature has raised the age of consent. ”

“ Physiological Difficulties of Woman--Intellectual
Grievances of Suffragist and Corrective.
Is there then, let us ask ourselves, if the suf-
frage with its programme of feminism is
barred as leading to social disaster, any pallia-
tive or corrective that can be applied to the
present discontents of woman?
If such is to be found, it is to be found only
by placing clearly before us the suffragist's
grievances.
These grievances are, first, the economic
difficulties of the woman who seeks to earn her
living by work other than unskilled manual
labour ”

“ Yet we find women to-day talking and writing as if none of their sex had anything at stake in the defence of their violated homes, as if they had no sacred rights bound up with the sacred rights of men. The National American Woman Suffrage Association sent an appeal to organized suffragists all over the world, urging them to "arise in protest, and show war-crazed men that between the contending armies there stand thousands of women and children who are the innocent victims of man's unbridled ambitions." ”

“ It looked as though the household gods were to be tumbled out of the home without much ado; but while some of the advocates of reform went to absurd lengths and presented extreme views and sought by all the ingenuity of sophistry to present the status of woman as a most deplorable one, there were others, more moderate in their views and expressions, who felt that there might be a clear gain for women in the affirming of her rights in the matter of conventions which held over from the eighteenth century. ”

“ The development of sick nursing since Florence Nightingale, the experience of work among prostitutes since Josephine Butler, and the study of medicine since Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake, had revealed to an increasing number of women the dreadful consequences of a moral standard which indulged men and degraded women. Prostitution appears to the Suffragist to be a direct consequence of the political supremacy of one sex over the other, to be the result of that encouragement of egoism which always follows the disposition of the political affairs of one class by another. ”

“ All these will assure you, these young girls—and what is seething in their minds is stirring also in the minds in the girls in the colleges and schools which are staffed by unmarried suffragists—that woman has suffered all manner of indignity and injustice at the hands of man. ”

“ Man the protector, woman the protected. Woman the inspiring force, man the organizing and physical power.
So the Bible, Science, and Republican government, according to Suffragist and Anti-suffragist, have planted themselves squarely on the sex issue. ”

“ The women of those trying days were sustained by their convictions on the subject of human rights, and with the suffragists the movement was started as a revolt against what they considered cruel injustice toward the supposed weaker sex, and because women had not equal rights under the laws of which men were the authors and administrators. ”

“ We have seen that the pronounced advocates and chief promoters of equal rights are probably viragints—individuals who plainly show that they are psychically abnormal; furthermore, we have seen that the abnormality is occasioned by degeneration, either acquired or inherent, in the individual. Now let us see, if the right of female suffrage were allowed, what effect it would produce on the present environment of the woman of to-day, and, if any, what effect this changed environment would have on the psychical habitudes of the woman of the future. ”

“ It doesn't matter what you say," she added consolingly, as she went towards two approaching women with outstretched hand and an ingratiating smile.
"Ah! ce sont les suffragettes!" exclaimed one of these unexpectedly. "Nous sommes des suffragistes françaises, nous aussi! Vive le féminisme!"
"Oh, how perfectly delightful!" said the English suffragist, beaming on them. "Do stop and listen. Nous allons avoir un—oh, bother! What is 'meeting'?—un rendez-vous, mesdames!" ”

“ Is there anything in the constitution of the female mind, to disqualify her for the exercise of the franchise. As long as there are fifty, thirty, ten, or even one woman who is capable of exercising this trust or holding this responsibility it demonstrates that sex, as a sex, does not disfranchise, and the whole question is granted. (Applause.) Here our laws are made by irresponsible people—people who demoralize and debauch society; people who make their living in a large measure by upholding the institutions that are inherently, forever, and always corrupt. ”

“ They see readily what, indeed, most outsiders have seen all along, that the failure of the numerical majority in certain Southern States to hold the power to which the law entitled them simply because they were unable or unwilling to fight, has a very important bearing on the fitness of women to participate in the practical work of government, and a well-known writer, "T. W. H.," in a late number of the Woman's Journal, endeavors to show that what has happened at the South is full of encouragement for the woman suffragists. ”

“ The sight of woman-baiting by a mob of her political masters; the listening to debates in the House of Commons; above all, the arguments used by anti-suffragists have made women infinitely keener and more conscious of their position than they were before. ”

“ A woman's nose will scent a defective drain where ten men pass it by, but votes get these things looked after. We want a new schoolhouse, or more brains or more fresh air in an old one. Don't you know that women will attend to such needs sooner than men? Mr. Foulke said in part:
It is said that woman suffragists are dreamers. There was a time within our memory when human flesh in this our free America was sold at auction. In those days a few earnest men dreamed of a time when our flag should no longer unfurl itself over a slave. ”

“ Some of [pg 378] these strenuous advocates for the "rights" of the sex gave themselves over to the question of dress reform, and their diverse views represented the whole range of the question, from the sensible and sane declaration for the abolishment of the tyranny of style to the adoption of male attire. Others discussed the injustice to women from the physiological viewpoint, and affirmed that motherhood was not an honorable office, but a type of feudalism to men and a subservience to their wills that was highly dishonoring to womankind. ”

“ All that is worth while saying on these points is that the suffragist is here manufacturing grievances for herself, first, by reasoning from the false premiss that every legal distinction which happens to press hardly upon a few individuals ought for that to be abrogated; and, secondly, by steady leaving out of sight that logical inconsistencies can, for the more part, be got rid of only at the price of bringing others into being. ”