The Women's liberal league and the C.D. Act.

Observer, Volume XV, Issue 861, 29 June 1895, Page 2

The Women's liberal league and the C.D. Act.

Three years ago, when the fate of the female franchise proposals was trembling in the balance, the Auckland Star vehemently assailed the assertion that there were questions of politics which modest women could neither discnss nor familiarise themselves with. The Star hailed the enfranchised woman as the reformer of the age, and the Star's logic refused to admit that it would be immodest of women to grasp those social problems which peculiarly affect the sex, and endeavour to solve them. And the Star's reasoning appeared to be sound. Surely it was not immodest of women to interest themselves in questions that vitally affected women.

But, lo and behold, the Star has very suddenly changed its front. The decision of the Women's liberal League affirming the desirableness of a C. D. Act applied to both sexes, in opposition to the misguided

and even ignorant policy of the Star on this question, has compelled the evening journal in its frenzy of hysterics to kick holes in its own logic of three years ago. Now, it denounces the Women' 8 Liberal League for its ' immodesty' in discussing such a question as the ' social evil ' — an evil, be it understood, whose consequences upon the life and morals of the people are more disastrous than those of intemperance, gambling, and all the other social curses combined.

Now, surely of all questions, this is a woman's question. And yet when the Society showed an earnest determination to do something to stem the torrent of this evil, the Star offensively and coarsely denounced the Women's Liberal League for 'lugging this dirty subject from the obscurity to which it had been consigned.' The logical conclusion to be deduced from all this is that there are questions closely affecting women which women should not discuss. Is this what the Star means ? And, if women do not discuss them, who will? Men, we suppose. And, from false motives of prudishness, it will still be left to men to legislate for women on women's questions — to make laws which are unequal in their application to the two sexes — laws that are unjust and unfair to women.

This is dangerous and illogical reasoning to come from the Star. We have given the women the franchise, and it is their duty now to exercise it — not at the dictation of any newspaper or man, but as their own reason and conscience prompt. And how are they to use their power to regulate or suppress the social evil if they do not discuss the question ? Immodesty, forsooth. If the Women's Liberal League is immodest in taking up this question, what then shall be said of Mrs Josephine Butler, the Stars esteemed authority, who confesses that she has devoted twenty-five years of her life to the study of this question. Does the Star consider Mrs Josephine Butler immodest ?

This is not a question that should be discussed in the open columns of a newspaper, and we cannot claim any particular interest in it, but after reading the bitter onslaught made by the Star on Monday night upon the Woman's Liberal League, we are prompted in fairness to the conscientious women assailed to return to the nauseous subject. There can be no question m ihe mind of any reasoning man or woman that the Star is wrong and the Liberal Women right. Even the strongly emotional quotations which the Star makes from Mrs Josephine Butler and Dr. Miraur demonstrate this conclusively. The vigorous, graphic, and pathetic language of these and other anthorities quoted, paints in glaring colours the horrors of a state of things that obtains under a CD. Act applicable to women only. The Women's Liberal League admits all this. It recognises that the object aimed at in India and on the Continent of Europe is not so much sanitation as security to the man who gratifies his passions in this way. It knows that this system is an encouragement to vice, but the Liberal Women propose to give no protection, to the man. They advocate protection to the community. They would treat the man and woman alike — they would compel the man to be the sharer of all the irksome regulations and precautions against disease that he has hitherto by legislation imposed upon the woman. And if the women of Great Britain and France and Germany exercised the franchise today they would do precisely the same.