Eugenics; Sexual ethics; Women -- Social and moral questions
The education of women is an essential part of the great movement we are
considering. Women will shortly be voters, and women, at all events in
England, are in a majority. We have to educate our mistresses as we once
had to educate our masters. And the word "education" is here used by no
means in the narrow sense. A woman may be acquainted with Greek and the
higher mathematics, and be as uneducated in the wider relationships of
life as a man in the like case. How much women suffer from this lack of
education may be seen to-day even among those who are counted as
leaders.
There are extravagances in every period of transition. Undoubtedly a
potent factor in bringing about a saner attitude will be the education
of boys and girls together. The lack of early fellowship fosters an
unnatural divergence of aims and ideals, and a consequent lack of
sympathy. It makes possible those abundant foolish generalizations by
men concerning "women," by women concerning "men." St. Augustine, at an
early period of his ardent career, conceived with certain friends the
notion of forming a community having goods in common; the scheme was
almost effected when it was discovered that "those little wives, which
some already had, and others would shortly have," objected, and so it
fell through. Perhaps the _mulierculae_ were right. It is simply a rather
remote instance of a fundamental divergence amply illustrated before our
eyes. If men and women are to understand each other, to enter into each
other's natures with mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine
comradeship, the foundation must be laid in youth. Another wholesome
reform, promoted by co-education, is the physical education of women. In
the case of boys special attention has generally been given to physical
education, and the lack of it is one among several artificial causes of
that chronic ill-health which so often handicaps women. Women must have
the same education as men, Miss Faithfull shrewdly observes, because
that is sure to be the best. The present education of boys cannot,
however, be counted a model, and the gradual introduction of
co-education will produce many wholesome reforms. If the intimate
association of the sexes destroys what remnant may linger of the
unhealthy ideal of chivalry--according to which a woman was treated as a
cross between an angel and an idiot--that is matter for rejoicing.
Wherever men and women stand in each other's presence the sexual
instinct will always ensure an adequate ideal halo.
III
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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