I have in my mind a case of a
well-known writer, a man of the highest type in every respect, well
worth enlisting in the army that fights for womanhood to-day, whose
organic repugnance to the defeminized woman is so intense, and whose
perception of the distinctive characters of real womanhood and of their
supreme excellence is so acute that, so far from aiding the cause of,
for instance, woman's suffrage, he is one of its most bitter and
unremitting enemies. There must be many such--to whom the doctrine of
sex-identity, involving the repudiation of the excellences, distinctive
and precious, of women, is an offence which they can never forgive.
One may be permitted a little longer to delay the discussion of the
distinctive purpose and character of womanhood, because the foregoing
has already stated in outline the teaching which biology and physiology
so abundantly warrant. For here we must briefly refer to the work of a
very remarkable woman, scarcely known at all to the reading public,
either in Great Britain or in America, and never alluded to by the
feminist leaders in those countries, though her works are very widely
known on the Continent of Europe, and, with the whole weight of
biological fact behind them, are bound to become more widely known and
more effective as the years go on. I refer to the Swedish writer, Ellen
Key, one of whose works, though by no means her best, has at last been
translated into English.
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