A recent writer boasts that men have changed their attitude regarding
sexual problems very little and are not much concerned in the new
interest of women. This is probably true, for man has contributed
all he has to give to the subject. He has laid down his taboos and
externalized his restrictions, chiefly applicable to the other sex,
and he is finished with the subject--bored by having it thrust forward
as an unfinished problem needing reconsideration. All of his knowledge
or understanding of the sexual aspect of life--the aspect underlying
human creativeness, the faulty development of which is responsible
for a large part of his woes, “can be told in two hours to any
intelligent sixteen year old boy,” another writer recently stated. It
is this youthful ignorance and assurance that the last word has been
spoken on this subject that has awakened women, no longer dependent
economically, to the fact that they must also become independent of men
intellectually if they wish to gain expression for their knowledge
or to form their own rules of conduct based on their psychology. In
the true scientific spirit of the age they are now experimenting and
using nature’s method of trial and error to find out for themselves by
conscious living experience what feeling has vaguely told them. This is
the first step towards objectifying and clarifying woman’s intuitive
knowledge.
With the revolt of women against the old restrictions and the demand
for freedom to experience for themselves, there has appeared a most
significant phase of the changed morality--the new relation of women
toward each other. The significance of this enormous change which
has been taking place very quietly and yet very rapidly is scarcely
appreciated. However, when one realizes that only a generation ago the
newspapers were still publishing their funny paragraphs at the expense
of women (“The dear creatures; how they love one another”), the great
difference in their relations today becomes evident. The generally
accepted distinction between the personal loyalties of the sexes can be
summed up in the statement that women are loyal in love and disloyal
in friendship, while men are loyal in friendship and disloyal in love.
It is this attitude of women that is gradually disappearing with the
awakening of a new sense of themselves as individuals. Their changed
attitude towards each other--the recognition of their own values, and
the growing realization that only in solidarity can any permanent
impression be made on the old conception of woman as an inferior,
dependent creature, useful for one purpose only--constitutes the most
marked difference between their present social condition and that of
the past.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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