Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for GirlsClarke, Edward H. (Edward Hammond)
Science
Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for Girls
Clarke, Edward H. (Edward Hammond)
Women -- Education; Women -- Health and hygiene
Neither is there any such thing as inferiority or superiority in this
matter. Man is not superior to woman, nor woman to man. The relation
of the sexes is one of equality, not of better and worse, or of higher
and lower. By this it is not intended to say that the sexes are the
same. They are different, widely different from each other, and so
different that each can do, in certain directions, what the other
cannot; and in other directions, where both can do the same things,
one sex, as a rule, can do them better than the other; and in still
other matters they seem to be so nearly alike, that they can
interchange labor without perceptible difference. All this is so well
known, that it would be useless to refer to it, were it not that much
of the discussion of the irrepressible woman-question, and many of the
efforts for bettering her education and widening her sphere, seem to
ignore any difference of the sexes; seem to treat her as if she were
identical with man, and to be trained in precisely the same way; as if
her organization, and consequently her function, were masculine, not
feminine. There are those who write and act as if their object were to
assimilate woman as much as possible to man, by dropping all that is
distinctively feminine out of her, and putting into her as large an
amount of masculineness as possible. These persons tacitly admit the
error just alluded to, that woman is inferior to man, and strive to
get rid of the inferiority by making her a man. There may be some
subtle physiological basis for such views--some strange quality of
brain; for some who hold and advocate them are of those, who, having
missed the symmetry and organic balance that harmonious development
yields, have drifted into an hermaphroditic condition. One of this
class, who was glad to have escaped the chains of matrimony, but knew
the value and lamented the loss of maternity, wished she had been born
a widow with two children. These misconceptions arise from mistaking
difference of organization and function for difference of position in
the scale of being, which is equivalent to saying that man is rated
higher in the divine order because he has more muscle, and woman lower
because she has more fat. The loftiest ideal of humanity, rejecting
all comparisons of inferiority and superiority between the sexes,
demands that each shall be perfect in its kind, and not be hindered in
its best work. The lily is not inferior to the rose, nor the oak
superior to the clover: yet the glory of the lily is one, and the
glory of the oak is another; and the use of the oak is not the use of
the clover. That is poor horticulture which would train them all
alike.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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