At a recent Feminist Meeting, one of the leaders of Militancy detailed to an audience of fierce-eyed, sombre-visaged members of her own sex, and sundry meek-browed persons of the other, her latest exploits in the matters of arranging Labour disputes and averting strikes of working-men; of sending Governmental male officials to the right-about, and of disposing, in general, of masculine concerns.
The main issue of her story was lost sight of, alike by herself and by her audience. This was—or so it seemed to one among the latter: What manner of men were these who required or tolerated it that a woman should take them thus in hand, and, as though they had been whipped children, dispose of them and their men's affairs—between worker and employer, between man and man? What order of creature will be the sons and the grandsons of men ever further emasculated by every further generation of subjection by such masterful persons; female-Dominants who arrogate the virile rights and prerogatives of their menkind; their initiative and enterprise; their capacity to think, to speak, to plan and to act for themselves?
The Subjection of woman by man—What was that evil compared with this other enormity: the Subjection of man by woman, which is fast replacing it?
Men who—saving under stress of War—permit women to usurp the functions and prerogatives of their natural domain, in capacities of Mayor, of Chairman of Companies and so forth, are, frankly speaking—Muffs!
Not of such sires were our great Anglo-Saxon Races gotten. Not such was it who have made England what she is! And the England we look to will never be the England we look to—until such effeminate blood shall have been bred out of her sons.
The male becomes emasculate when women invade his domain. And with the increasing Hugger-mugger of the sexes, it grows, every day, more and more difficult for men to escape into the bracing, invigorating environment and moral of their own sex—a moral untempered by amenities due to the other, and one indispensable to string them to the pitch of virile thought and action. Our sailors and soldiers and aviators are still men, because woman has not so far invaded the Navy, the Army, or the Air.
Feminine invasion everywhere else—in schools and colleges, in the arts, in politics, in commerce and in sports—is undoubtedly enfeebling the fibre of our manhood and the quality of masculine achievements. Man is a pioneer; aggressive, progressive, ever breaking new ground; conquering new territory and new forces of Nature. And this alike in politics, in commerce, and in other material affairs. When he fails to pioneer, reaching out to new horizons of thought and activity, engineering new enterprises, while at the same time strengthening and consolidating all he had already acquired—then the world, in place of progressing, regresses. And for pioneering, whether in political or in geographical regions, woman's presence hampers him.
The less men are in a position to escape from the other sex, the more they lose the impetus and characteristics of their own.
The like applies to women. Women who mix too much and too freely with men deteriorate signally in womanly values and quality.
Both sexes benefit by segregation from the other, in order to adapt—each to its own characteristic morale and moral. Neither sex is wholly unconstrained and candid when in company of the other—unless both are demoralised.