The Future of the Women's MovementSwanwick, Helena M. (Helena Maria)
General
The Future of the Women's Movement
Swanwick, Helena M. (Helena Maria)
Women -- Social and moral questions; Women's rights
Besides the difference in relative values which men and women place upon
things, and the vast gulf that there is between actually experiencing
and only listening to an experience, there is the fact that even when
people know what is right, they do not always do it without some external
pressure, whether of public opinion, legal rights or political power. In
truth, the reactionaries are too thin-skinned when they wail about the
sex-antagonism of women who frankly declare this weakness in men. If we
asserted it of men only they would have some right to complain. But we
do not. The very existence of customs and laws and governments proves
that men believe humanity needs these motives in addition to moral ones,
and, unless you are an anarchist, you must agree that they do. When
men get altogether away from women they forget women. It is natural.
Therefore women, who suffer from being forgotten when their lives are at
stake, require that men shall not in future be able to get altogether
away from them when they are employed in governing them, as they do
now in Parliament. Mr. Harrison gives us an interesting and touching
little bit of information when he says, “To speak the truth, I only know
one woman whom I would always trust to come to a right decision”; but
this fact has really no general interest or value, and even if women
did not, on the whole, represent the views of Mr. Harrison, this would
not prevent them from representing their own, which is what matters in
representative government. Mr. Harrison becomes appealing when he says,
“Now I say frankly that I do not trust the average woman to decide these
complex issues”; because that is just how _we_ feel! _We_ do not trust
the average man to decide these complex issues. A fellow feeling makes us
wondrous kind, and perhaps when Mr. Harrison has grasped this feeling of
ours, he will see that the proper thing is for neither man nor woman to
attempt to decide these complex issues alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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