Forerunner — Volume 1 by Unknown
page 79 of 1199 (06%)
page 79 of 1199 (06%)
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to femininity. As one English scientist put it, in 1888, "Women are not
only not the race--they are not even half the race, but a subspecies told off for reproduction only." This mental attitude toward women is even more clearly expressed by Mr. H. B. Marriot-Watson in his article on "The American Woman" in the "Nineteenth Century" for June, 1904, where he says: "Her constitutional restlessness has caused her to abdicate those functions which alone excuse or explain her existence." This is a peculiarly happy and condensed expression of the relative position of women during our androcentric culture. The man was accepted as the race type without one dissentient voice; and the woman--a strange, diverse creature, quite disharmonious in the accepted scheme of things--was excused and explained only as a female. She has needed volumes of such excuse and explanation; also, apparently, volumes of abuse and condemnation. In any library catalogue we may find books upon books about women: physiological, sentimental, didactic, religious--all manner of books about women, as such. Even to-day in the works of Marholm--poor young Weininger, Moebius, and others, we find the same perpetual discussion of women--as such. This is a book about men--as such. It differentiates between the human nature and the sex nature. It will not go so far as to allege man's masculine traits to be all that excuse, or explain his existence: but it will point out what are masculine traits as distinct from human ones, and what has been the effect on our human life of the unbridled dominance of one sex. We can see at once, glaringly, what would have been the result of giving |
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