It might serve some turn for a time, as many another
error has done, were it not so palpably and egregiously false. Advocated
as it is mainly by either masculine women or unmanly men, its advocates,
though in their own persons offering some sort of evidence for it, are
of a kind which is highly repugnant to less abnormal individuals of both
sexes. Hosts of women of the highest type, who are doing the silent work
of the world, which is nothing less than the creation of the life of the
world to come, are not merely dissuaded from any support of the women's
cause by the spectacle of these palpably aberrant and unfeminine women,
but are further dissuaded by the profound conviction arising out of
their woman's nature, that the doctrine of sex-identity is absurd. Many
of them would rather accept their existing status of social inferiority,
with its thousand disabilities and injustices, than have anything to do
with women who preach "Rouse yourselves, women, and be men!" and who
themselves illustrate only too fearsomely the consequences of this
doctrine.
Certainly not less disastrous, as a consequence of this most unfortunate
error of fact and of logic, is the alienation from the woman's cause of
not a few men whose support is exceptionally worth having. There are men
who desire nothing in the world so much as the exaltation of womanhood,
and who would devote their lives to this cause, but would vastly rather
have things as they are than aid the movement of "Woman in
Transition"--if it be transition from womanhood to something which is
certainly not womanhood and at best a very poor parody of manhood except
in cases almost infinitely rare.
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