Moral and sexual balance in civilization will only be established by the
assertion and expression of power on the part of women. This power will
not be found in any futile seeking for economic independence or in the
aping of men in industrial and business pursuits, nor by joining battle
for the so-called "single standard." Woman's power can only be expressed
and make itself felt when she refuses the task of bringing unwanted
children into the world to be exploited in industry and slaughtered in
wars. When we refuse to produce battalions of babies to be exploited;
when we declare to the nation; "Show us that the best possible chance in
life is given to every child now brought into the world, before you cry
for more! At present our children are a glut on the market. You hold
infant life cheap. Help us to make the world a fit place for children.
When you have done this, we will bear you children,--then we shall be
true women." The new morality will express this power and responsibility
on the part of women.
"With the realization of the moral responsibility of women," writes
Havelock Ellis, "the natural relations of life spring back to their due
biological adjustment. Motherhood is restored to its natural sacredness.
It becomes the concern of the woman herself, and not of society nor any
individual, to determine the conditions under which the child shall be
conceived...."
Moreover, woman shall further assert her power by refusing to remain
the passive instrument of sensual self-gratification on the part of
men. Birth Control, in philosophy and practice, is the destroyer of
that dualism of the old sexual code. It denies that the sole purpose
of sexual activity is procreation; it also denies that sex should
be reduced to the level of sensual lust, or that woman should permit
herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction. In increasing and
differentiating her love demands, woman must elevate sex into another
sphere, whereby it may subserve and enhance the possibility of
individual and human expression. Man will gain in this no less than
woman; for in the age-old enslavement of woman he has enslaved himself;
and in the liberation of womankind, all of humanity will experience the
joys of a new and fuller freedom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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