Women -- Employment -- United States; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women in politics -- United States
From the point of view of this book, all the efforts to open the doors
of opportunity, through which women can pass into the man's world, are
but preparations for the beginning of a journey. The sooner all such
doors are opened the better, for then a great source of dangerous sex
antagonism will pass away; and the energy of reformers will be set free
to work out the difficult problem of supplementary sex adjustments.
And meantime, sex remains the greatest mystery and the most powerful
thing in human life. Its deeper values are lost sight of when men and
women are warring over work, wages, and votes, just as the meaning of
religion has been lost when priests and laity sought to advance their
meanly selfish interests. But in the crises of life it always comes
back. When a great ship founders in midocean, and but a third of the
people can be saved, there is then no question of woman's rights. In the
darkness of early morning, eager men's hands place their women in the
life-boats and push them off. The poorest peasant woman takes
precedence over any man. Almost every woman there would prefer to stay
and die with her man; would glory in staying and dying if he might thus
be saved; but in her keeping are the generations of the future, and she
is weak, therefore the strong gladly stand back and go down to death.
The solution of woman's place in the society of the future must be based
on a recognition of the supplementary forces that send women to
undesired safety while men die.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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