So runs not mine. I have hearkened to the voice of modern science, which tells me that woman is an inferior being, with a weak body, a stunted mind, poor in creative power, poor in imagination, poor in critical capacity--a being who does not know how to work, nor how to talk, nor how to play! I hope no one will imagine that I am making these charges up maliciously out of my own head: such a notion would indicate that a century of pamphleteering on the woman question had made no impression on a mind saturated in the ideology of popular fiction.
But--I have hearkened even more eagerly to the voice of sociology, which tells me of woman's wonderful possibilities. It is with these possibilities that this book is, in the main, concerned.
But first the explanation of why I, a man, write these articles on feminism. It involves the betrayal of a secret: the secret, that is, of the apparent indifference or even hostility of men toward the woman's movement. The fact is, as has been bitterly recited by the rebellious leaders of their sex, that women have always been what man wanted them to be--have changed to suit his changing ideals. The fact is, furthermore, that the woman's movement of today is but another example of that readiness of women to adapt themselves to a masculine demand.
Men are tired of subservient women; or, to speak more exactly, of the seemingly subservient woman who effects her will by stealth--the pretty slave with all the slave's subtlety and cleverness. So long as it was possible for men to imagine themselves masters, they were satisfied. But when they found out that they were dupes, they wanted a change. If only for self-protection, they desired to find in woman a comrade and an equal. In reality they desired it because it promised to be more fun.
So that we have as the motive behind the rebellion of women an obscure rebellion of men. Why, then, have men appeared hostile to the woman's rebellion? Because what men desire are real individuals who have achieved their own freedom. It will not do to pluck freedom like a flower and give it to the lady with a polite bow. She must fight for it.
We are, to tell the truth, a little afraid that unless the struggle is one which will call upon all her powers, which will try her to the utmost, she will fall short of becoming that self-sufficient, able, broadly imaginative and healthy-minded creature upon whom we have set our masculine desire.