Conditions, rather than theories, facts, rather than dreams, govern
the problem. They place it squarely upon the shoulders of woman. She
has learned that whatever the moral responsibility of the man in this
direction may be, he does not discharge it. She has learned that,
lovable and considerate as the individual husband may be, she has
nothing to expect from men in the mass, when they make laws and decree
customs. She knows that regardless of what ought to be, the brutal,
unavoidable fact is that she will never receive her freedom until she
takes it for herself.
Having learned this much, she has yet something more to learn. Women
are too much inclined to follow in the footsteps of men, to try to
think as men think, to try to solve the general problems of life as
men solve them. If after attaining their freedom, women accept
conditions in the spheres of government, industry, art, morals and
religion as they find them, they will be but taking a leaf out of
man's book. The woman is not needed to do man's work. She is not
needed to think man's thoughts. She need not fear that the masculine
mind, almost universally dominant, will fail to take care of its own.
Her mission is not to enhance the masculine spirit, but to express the
feminine; hers is not to preserve a man-made world, but to create a
human world by the infusion of the feminine element into all of its
activities.
Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by
that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that
within her which struggles for expression. Her eyes must be less upon
what is and more clearly upon what should be. She must listen only
with a frankly questioning attitude to the dogmatized opinions of
man-made society. When she chooses her new, free course of action, it must
be in the light of her own opinion--of her own intuition. Only so can
she give play to the feminine spirit. Only thus can she free her mate
from the bondage which he wrought for himself when he wrought hers.
Only thus can she restore to him that of which he robbed himself in
restricting her. Only thus can she remake the world.
The world is, indeed, hers to remake, it is hers to build and to
recreate. Even as she has permitted the suppression of her own
feminine element and the consequent impoverishment of industry, art,
letters, science, morals, religions and social intercourse, so it is
hers to enrich all these.
Woman must have her freedom--the fundamental freedom of choosing
whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will
have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers--and
before it can be his, it is hers alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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