The Future of the Women's MovementSwanwick, Helena M. (Helena Maria)
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The Future of the Women's Movement
Swanwick, Helena M. (Helena Maria)
Women -- Social and moral questions; Women's rights
“And then, forsooth, ’tis they that face the call
Of war, while we sit sheltered, hid from all
Peril!—False mocking! Sooner would I stand
Three times to face their battles, shield in hand,
Than bear one child.”
While civilisation is young, and human beings still scarcely conscious,
it is natural for the stronger to have the illusion that he will be the
gainer by using his strength, even tyrannically, against the creature
with whom his life is inextricably entwined. It is human to be selfish;
women as well as men feel the temptation; but men, by their greater
strength, have more often had the power to follow their impulses, even if
they were injurious to women.
There is a queer kind of apologist for brutality, who suggests that
“men are so,” and that nothing better need ever be expected of them,
thereby showing himself blind to all the improvements which knowledge
and intelligence have already made in men’s treatment of women. Does
it not matter to men that women should be injured? To read a recent
volume, entitled _Sex Antagonism_, by Walter Heape, F.R.S., one would
indeed suppose that it did not. Seven chapters of this book are devoted
to a criticism of Dr. Frazer’s theories on totemism and exogamy. These
are matters for experts, and I do not propose to express an opinion
upon them, further than to say that Mr. Heape has made out a very good
case for his views on the origin of these two institutions of primitive
man. He does not, however, make one wish to hand over the relations of
the sexes in the world we live in to even the most expert of expert
biologists, for his very concentration on particular points makes him
unfit for a wide view. It is to Mr. Heape’s eighth and last chapter, on
“Primitive and Modern Sex Antagonism,” that I wish to take exception, and
this can be done without calling into question the greater part of the
book, with which it has scarcely any necessary connection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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