“Divide to conquer” is the principle in dealing with trade unions;
it works equally well in the feminist struggle. Persuade the single
women that the married woman is an unfair competitor,[6] terrify them
so far as you can into believing that to succumb to sex is something
unbecoming and disgraceful and punishable with misery everlasting,
whether in marriage or outside of it, and you can prevent the women
combining against you.
[6] This scheme no longer works, as is evidenced by the attitude
of the National Union of Women Teachers this year (1925).
Intelligent women are more appreciated than they were, and
teachers know they may all want to marry some day.
But not if Aspasia will speak. If she but would, and put an end to this
lie for ever. She could tell us how, especially during the years of
war, young women took the last step towards feminine emancipation by
admitting to themselves and their lovers the mutual nature of sex-love
between man and woman. It sounds a platitude, but is, in fact, a
revolution. Strange to say, the nearness of death from enemy bombs or
enemy fire did not intensify the thought of holiness and heaven. It
made the little footrules to measure morality look absurd; it mocked
the emptiness of female virtue. While poverty and parents forbade the
certainty of marriage, with nothing but instability and death around
them, our modern Aspasias took the love of man and gave the love of
woman, and found this union, free and full on either side, the most
priceless gift the immortal gods can bestow. There is nothing new in
this, the moralist will say――it is just wickedness. Yes, there is this
that is new: that, though these younger women may be driven from fear
of starvation to the outward acceptance of old codes and conventions,
inwardly they know they have done no wrong and will not admit a
conviction of sin. Sex, even without children and without marriage,
is to them a thing of dignity, beauty, and delight. All Puritans――and
most males so long as they can remember――have tried to persuade women
that their part in sex is pregnancy and childbirth, and not momentary
delight. As well tell a man his part is the hunting and skinning of
animals for food and clothing. To enjoy and admit we enjoy, without
terror or regret, is an achievement in honesty. We will go further
and say that polygamy, proffered by the male as a solution to our
sexless lives, is no solution at all when we are polyandrous. It is
useless to go on pretending, as both sexes do, about this question.
The plain truth is that there are as many types of lover among women
of all classes as among men, and that nothing but honesty and freedom
will make instinctive satisfaction possible for all. Grant each man
and woman the right to seek his or her own solution without fear of
public censure. Moral questions of this kind cannot be decided by some
abstract rule. It would not be wrong for a man to have six wives,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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