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
The movement, now already strongly on the way, for further knowledge
is one of the most hopeful of all. Most thinking people are now agreed
that children should be taught the nature of their bodies, and respect
and care for them, and the only questions are how to give the teaching,
by whom and at what age. Adult women, as well as men, should also know
something of the pathology of sex, so that they can guard themselves, and
so that men may realise more than they do now the fearful suffering which
their excesses entail on the innocent. Purity has been preached to boys
and men far too much as a vague ideal. If the results of lust appeared
to them in their true form of hideous cruelty and cowardice, it would
make the most thoughtless pause. Girls must no longer be taught that
subservience and sacrifice to men is woman’s virtue; boys must be taught
to take a pride in a woman’s pride, achievement and independence. The
incredibly mean jealousy of these which we frequently see, has its roots
far back in childish days when “only a girl” was a phrase that passed
unrebuked by the mother. If a girl has not learned to value herself,
to respect her own body and soul, and dedicate them to some worthy
purpose, what wonder if she sells for cash that for which she herself
has so little value? The cult of the “womanly” woman is for much in the
venality of women. Besides this property of whispering humbleness, she is
to be all softness and weakness and yielding grace, and she is to be so
unlettered and inexperienced that the veriest scoundrel can impose upon
her. The law does much to encourage this low status of women, and until
women have attained full citizenship, it is not to be wondered at if
young men grow up with a slight contempt for them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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