THE WEAKER VESSEL

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 162, 11 July 1928, Page 6

THE WEAKER VESSEL

REFLECTIONS ON THE NEW BRIGHTON CASE. (To the Editor.) It must be distressing to feminists to sea a distinguished one of their number, Miss Ell* Basten, putting forward the argument of "the weaker vessel" in the interesting discussion of the shocking New Brighton case. If, "speaking generally, woman is what man makes her; he is cast in stronger mould" I but repeat Miss Basten's words—then howmuch validity reposes in the feminists' arguments in favour of complete recognition of the equality of women ? As a man, I admit having felt a strong impulse to lay violent hands on the man concerned in the New Brighton case, but impulses are not arguments. To me the shocking aspect of the case is not that the man was revealed as unscrupulous and callous, but that the woman was "easßv led, trusting and ignorant." For that, the community generally, and those who had the moulding of the woman's character particularly, are to blame. I have no doubt thaimany parents of girls (and of boys, too) prevented, or attempted to prevent, their children from reading the details of this case, and that many of those youths who did read of it gained no lesson from it because they lacked a sound elementary knowledge of sex. The description "trusting and ignorant" is applicable to too many youths of both sexes when they leave school. The young men, mixin« more with their fellows, learn something after leaving school. The young women often continue ignorant. Until there are fewer women in our midst who are "easily led. trusting and ignorant" the Dominion's illegitimacy figures will remain disturbingly high, and occasionally the community will be shocked by tragedies similar to that of Xew Brighton. * ° HUSBAND AND BROTHER.