Before we
criticise sex-antagonism in women, let us be honest about it in men; and
before we sneer at the type of women who most display it, let us realize
fully the worthlessness of the types of men who display it. But if this
be granted--and I have never heard it granted by the men who deplore
sex-antagonism as if only women displayed it--we must none the less
recognize that this spirit injures both sexes, and that it is
necessarily false, since none can question that Nature devised the sexes
for mutual aid to her end. By this first principle sex-antagonism is
therefore condemned. This book, written by a man in behalf of
womanhood--and therefore in behalf of manhood and childhood--is
consistently opposed to all notions of sex-antagonism, or sex-dominance,
male or female, or of competing claims between the sexes. Man and woman
are complementary halves of the highest thing we know, and just as the
men who seek to maintain male dominance are the enemies of mankind, so
the women who preach enmity to men, and refusal of wise and humane
legislation in their interests because men have framed it, are the
enemies of womankind. At the beginning of the "Suffragette" movement in
England, I had the pleasure of taking luncheon with the brilliant young
lady whose name has been so prominent in this connection; and my
lifelong enthusiasm for the "Vote" has been chastened ever since by the
recollection of the resentment which she exhibited at every suggestion
of or allusion to any legislation in favour of women--notably with
reference to infant mortality and to alcoholism--whilst the suffrage was
withheld.
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