THE SEX WAR

Northern Advocate, 5 September 1913, Page 3

THE SEX WAR

THE ONE-SIDEDNESS OF TEtS

MILITANT WOMAN.

(Contributed.)

Miss Nina Boyle, secretary of the Women's Militant Suffrage League, contributes a long letter to London "Everywoman," in defence of the League's tactics. Miss . Boyle displays a thorough appreciation of the legal maxim, "when you have no case, abuse the other side," ami, as might, be expected, failing to produce even one argument in support of her views, falls back on a general accusation of the male sex. Putting aside altogether the question of advisability or otherwise of extending the suffrage to the women of England as one that may, very well, be left to the Jr decision of British statesmen, it is impossible to avoid being struck by the utterly illogical reasoning and absolute one-sidedness of her discourse.

After a recapitulation of the many alleged wrongs and disbailities suffered by women through the ages she brings us to the white slave traffic and the sweating-shop as modern instances of man's injustice. King David has presumably been reduced to constituent atoms a considerable number of years, but Miss Boyle cheerfully resurrects him to be trotted out as a glaring instance of male immorality. Nor is Miss Boyle at all ' singular in respect to this want of appreciation of the eternal fxtuess of things. Miss Marie Corelli, iv an otherwise sane article appearing in '"Nash's" magazine, quotes the case of Abraham and Hagar in support of her contention. It iS this raking up v of the more than dead bones Of the past, no less than the lamentable lack of humour displayed, that renders the feminine argument so peculiraly exasperating to the average man. "Am 1 a .low, an 'Ebrew Jew" that I should be compared with a disreputable old patriarch of a never very reputable race? . The traffic in question is a blot on our civilisation that is and always has been deplored by all right-thinking men and women alike, but, and here one must join issue with Miss Boyle and. indeed, all the writers of the feminisr movement, it is not, alone, of man's making. Surely ■ women are equally to blame for its inception and continuance. It is customary for the new militant woman to write and speak as though, if the vote were given her? she could sweep away this worldold evil at one stroke; as if she held in her sleeve a panacea to destroy it <•*• once and'for all. Then, why, in Hea-, yen's name, not produce it? If it is the aim of the militant section to redress The grievances of their sex and if they are sincere in their desires, why wait for the vote? Why not I sweep away at once and forever an j evil that is at once the grayest re- j proach to womanhood and that comes peculiarly within their province?

Tlie truth seems to be that they have no such panacea and the subject presents itself merely as an excellent levei- to gain their ends. Again as to sweating. It is the custom to speak of this evil as peculiarly of man's making: to entirely disregard the whole series of economics that regulate the laws of supply, and demand ami the prices paid for certain kinds of labour. The leaders of the woman movement certainly must know that under the present system of commercialism and industry, it would be about as easy to abolish the evil of >— sweating, male and female, as to aliter the sun's course. It is an evil from which men and women suffer alike and for which, until man's, and woman's, propensity of profiting by their neighbour's misfortunes is changed to angelic altruism must continue to endure. But to blame man for its existence is, surely, nothing but wilful misrepresentation of known facts. What efforts have been made to abolish sweating, in the slums of London, New York and elsewhere, have not come from woman as a whole but have, almost without exception been set on foot by men themselves. That, in the main, these endeavours have failed of their

J object, is due, not to want of resolute 1 determination, but to the economic conditions of modern society.

In every article advocating woman's I enfranchisement there occurs the • same old pipe of "equal rights." What j rights? And equal to what? Are these women advocating a process of I retrogression? There is a certain I amount of dirty work in this world. 1 that must be done. For about 6000 years the men of the world have done it cheerfully. Are women now anxious to emerge from safe seclusion, a safety, be it admitted won for them by their men-folk, and to do it themselves? Shall a woman be robbed of the privileges, legal and social, she now enjoys? Shall she step down into the forum to jostle her way through a rude world, to receive the kick and the blow equally with man and be left to repay it or not as she is able? Shall chivlary be killed and the respect and honour that every true man accords to all true women? Go to. These lady faddists of the militant species do not desire that. Their entire procedure denies such a proposition. They clamour for equal rights, but, when put to the test, refuse to take them. They break the. law, and, trusting to man's chivalry, refuse to take their punishment and j face the music. Does any sane individual imagine for one moment that a male incendiary would be releasee l irom prison on "hunger-striking?" They stick pins into policemen and when hustled by those they have exasperated are the first to shriek "po-i lice!" In fact they are past masters in the art of using their sex as a weapon and their weakness to escape their just deserts, but would be the last to- forego any of the privileges to which their sex entitles them. They may have a grievance, these ladies of the hat-pin and the bomb, but it is more than conceivable that their cause could better be favoured than by abusing the opposite sex, who are obviously debarred from retorting in kind. The monkey-tricks they indulge in to gain their ends are at loast amusing and do no great harm. They want the vote and, personally, 1 would hasten to give it them. It is a pity that Mr Asquith refuses to see eye to eye with oneself but, for goodness sake, let the women shoulder their share of the sin and cease from fathering poor man will all the ills of this tired old planet