Women -- Economic conditions; Women -- Employment; Women -- Social and moral questions
But there are points, comparatively small, even very small, in number,
yet of vital importance to human life, in which sex does play a part.
It is not a matter of indifference whether the body called to adjudicate
upon the questions, whether the temporary sale of the female body for
sexual purposes shall or shall not be a form of traffic encouraged
and recognised by the state; or whether one law shall exist for the
licentious human female and another for the licentious human male;
whether the claim of the female to the offspring she bears shall or
shall not equal that of the male who begets it; whether an act of
infidelity on the part of the male shall or shall not terminate the
contract which binds his female companion to him, as completely as an
act of infidelity on her part would terminate her claim on him; it is
not a matter of indifference whether a body elected to adjudicate on
such points as these consists of males solely, or females solely, or of
both combined. As it consists of one, or the other, or of both, so not
only will the answers vary, but, in some cases, will they be completely
diverse. Here we come into that very narrow, but important, region,
where sex as sex manifestly plays its part; where the male as male
and the female as female have each their body of perceptions and
experiences, which they do not hold in common; here one sex cannot
adequately represent the other. It is here that each sexual part has
something radically distinct to contribute to the wisdom of the race.
We, today, take all labour for our province! We seek to enter the
non-sexual fields of intellectual or physical toil, because we are
unable to see today, with regard to them, any dividing wall raised by
sex which excludes us from them. We are yet equally determined to enter
those in which sex difference does play its part, because it is here
that woman, the bearer of the race, must stand side by side with man,
the begetter; if a completed human wisdom, an insight that misses no
aspect of human life, and an activity that is in harmony with the entire
knowledge and the entire instinct of the entire human race, is to exist.
It is here that the man cannot act for the woman nor the woman for the
man; but both must interact. It is here that each sexual half of the
race, so closely and indistinguishably blended elsewhere, has its own
distinct contribution to make to the sum total of human knowledge and
human wisdom. Neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without
the woman, the completed human intelligence.
Therefore;--We claim, today, all labour for our province! Those large
fields in which it would appear sex plays no part, and equally those
smaller in which it plays a part.
Chapter VI. Certain Objections.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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