A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions.Hecker, Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur)
History
A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions.
Hecker, Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur)
Women's rights -- History
attention 'until, you stand on your head to talk to him.' They regretted
to do this, but in doing it they secured the attention and interest of
all England. They then followed a relentless policy of opposing the
election of any candidate of the party in power. The Liberal men had
been playing with the Liberal women, promising support and then laughing
the matter off. But they are now reduced to an appeal to the maternal
instinct of the women. They say it is unloving of them to oppose their
own kind. Politics is a poor game, but this is politics."
V. The last objection I would call the _moral_. It embraces such
arguments as, that woman is too impulsive, too easily swayed by her
emotions to hold responsible positions, that the world is very evil and
slippery, and that she must therefore constantly have man to protect
her--a pious duty, which he avows solemnly it has ever been his special
delight to perform. The preceding pages are a commentary on the manner
in which man has discharged this duty. In Delaware, for instance, the
age of legal consent was until 1889 seven years. The institution of
Chivalry, to take another example, is usually praised for the high
estimation and protection it secured for women; yet any one who has read
its literature knows that, in practice, it did nothing of the sort. The
noble lord who was so gallant to his lady love--who, by the way, was
frequently the wife of another man--had very little scruple about
seducing a maid of low degree. The same gallantry is conspicuous in the
Letters of Lord Chesterfield, beneath whose unctuous courtesy the beast
of sensuality is always leering.
In the past the main function of woman outside of the rearing of
children has been to satisfy the carnal appetite of man, to prepare his
food, to minister to his physical comfort; she was barred from
participation in the intellectual. In order to hold her to these bonds a
Divine Sanction was sought. The Mohammedan found it in the Koran; the
Christian, in the Bible--just as slavery was justified repeatedly from
the story of Ham, just as the Stuarts and the Bourbons believed firmly
that they were the special favourites of God.
Strangely enough, men who are so sensitive about the moral welfare of
women will visit a dance hall where women are degraded nightly, and will
allow their daughters to marry "reformed" rakes. Men will not permit any
mention of sexual matters in their homes, and will let their children
get their information on the street; and all for the very simple reason
that they are afraid the truth will hurt, will make people think. Men
have been remarkably sensitive about having women speak in public for
their rights; but they watch with zest a woman screaming nonsense on the
stage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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