Part 31 (1/2)

A woman by the river's brim, A wife and servant is to him-- And she is nothing more.

We have made mistakes, as old as humanity, about the world, and about women.

First, as to the world:

This we have a.s.sumed to be a general battlefield for men to struggle in; a place for free compet.i.tion; full of innumerable persons whose natural mode of life was to struggle, for existence, with one another.

This is the individualist view, and is distinctly masculine.

Males are essentially individualistic--born to vary and compete; and an exclusively masculine world must be individualistic and compet.i.tive.

We have been wrong. The new Social Philosophy recognizes Society as an orderly life-form, having its own laws of growth; and that we, as individuals, live only as active parts of Society. Instead of accepting this world of warfare, disease, and crime, of shameful, unnecessary poverty and pain, as natural and right, we now see that all these evils may be removed, and we propose to remove them. Humanity is waking up, is beginning to understand its own nature, is beginning to face a new and a possible problem, instead of the dark enigma of the past.

Second, as to the woman:

Our mistake about her was a very strange one. No one knows yet how or why it was made; yet there it stands; one of the most colossal blunders ever made by mankind. In the face of all creation, where the female is sometimes found quite self-sufficient, often superior, and always equal to the male, our human race set up the ”andro-centric theory,” holding that man alone is the race type; and that woman was ”his female.” In what ”Mr. Venus” described as ”the vicious pride of his youth,” our budding humanity distinguished itself by discrediting its mother. ”You are a female,” said Ancient Man, ”and that's all. We are the People!”

This is the alpha and omega of the old idea about woman. It saw in her only s.e.x--not Humanity.

The New Woman is Human first, last and always. Incidentally she is female; as man is male. As a male he has done his small share in the old physical process of reproduction; but as a Human Creature he has done practically all in the new Social processes which make civilization.

He has been Male--and Human:--She has been Female--and nothing else;--that is, in our old idea.

Holding this idea; absurd, erroneous, and mischievous to a terrible degree; we strove to carry it out in our behavior; and human history so far is the history of a wholly masculine world, competing and fighting as males must, forever seeking and serving the female as males must, yet building this our world as best they could alone.

Theirs is the credit--and the shame--of the world behind us, the world around us; but the world before us has a new element--the Humanness of Woman.

For a little over a century we have become increasingly conscious of a stir, an uprising, and protest among women. The long-suppressed ”better half” of humanity has begun to move and push and lift herself. This Woman's movement is as natural, as beneficial, as irresistible as the coming of spring; but it has been misunderstood and opposed from the first by the glacial moraine of old ideas, the inert force of sheer blank ignorance, and prejudice as old as Adam.

At first the women strove for a little liberty, for education; then for some equality before the law, for common justice; then, with larger insight, for full equal rights with men in every human field; and as essential base of these, for the right of suffrage.

Woman suffrage is but one feature of the movement, but it is a most important one. The opposition to it is wholly one of s.e.x-prejudice, of feeling, not of reason; the opposition of a masculine world; and of an individualism also masculine. The male is physiologically an individualist. It is his place in nature to vary, to introduce new characteristics, and to strive mightily with his rivals for the favor of the females. A world of males must fight.

With the whole of history of this combative sort; with masculinity and humanity identical, in the average mind; there is something alien, unnatural, even revolting, in the claim of woman to her share in the work and management of the world. Against it he brings up one constant cry--that woman's progress will injure womanhood. All that he sees in woman is her s.e.x; and he opposes her advance on the ground that ”as a woman” she is unfit to take part in ”a man's world”--and that if she did, it would mysteriously but inevitably injure her ”as a woman.”

Suggest that she might be able to take part in ”a woman's world,”--and has as much right to a world made her way as he has to his man-made world! Suggest that without any such extreme reversal, she has a right to half the world; half the work, half the pay, half the care, half the glory!

To all this replies the Male-individualist:

”The World has to be as it is. It is a place to fight in; fight for life, fight for money. Work is for slaves and poor people generally.

n.o.body would work unless they had to. You are females and no part of the world at all. Your place is at home: to bear and rear children--and to cook.”

Now what is the position toward women of this new philosophy that sees Society as one thing, and the main thing to be considered; that sees the world as a place open to ceaseless change and improvement; that sees the way so to change and improve it that the major part of our poor silly sins and sorrows will disappear utterly for lack of cause?

From this viewpoint male and female fall into two lower positions, both right and proper; useful, beautiful, essential for the replenishment of the race on earth. From this viewpoint men and women rise, together, from that lower relation, to the far higher one of Humanness, that common Humanness which is hers as much as his. Seeing Society as the real life-form; and our individual lives as growing in glory and power as we serve and develop Society; the movement of women becomes of majestic importance. It is the advance of an entire half the race, from a position of arrested development, into full humanness.

The world is no longer seen as a battlefield, where it is true, women do not belong; but as a garden--a school--a church--a home, where they visibly do belong. In the great task of cultivating the earth they have an equal interest and an equal power. Equality is not ident.i.ty. There is work of all kinds and sizes--and half of it is woman's.