The Feminist makes a far more honest and reliable, sincere and helpful, mate than does the Ultra-Feminine. But men prefer the latter.
Male characteristics are to be found among their male acquaintance. And it is not a normal, nor is it a wholesome instinct in a man, to seek in sex the traits of his own.
In the cult of Mannishness, woman loses her strongest, her noblest and tenderest appeal for true men—the appeal of her womanhood. And losing it, she abandons the male to the toils of the enemy camp; to those whose womanishness partakes, at all events, of the attributes of a sex complementary and supplementary to his own.
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Unhappy wights! How Nature has handicapped them—in order to spur them to their virile part of founding and providing for the family!
VI
As innocent of misappropriating that which is Cæsar's as they are ignorant of the biological verities, some Women-leaders and Prime-movers in Feminism exact and exult in the warm young, zealous adulation and hero-worship of their followers; never suspecting that such tribute is rendered, in fact, to the male in them. Both they and their votaries believe themselves loyal and thrall to their finger-tips to Woman and The Woman-Cause. Whereas they are, in reality, hero-worshipping, on the one hand, the Male in their Cult, and on the other, the Masculine traits of its female exponents. Against man himself and the Maleness that is his by natural right, many are filled with hottest distrust and aversion. Yet while sex-antagonism is thus strong in them in fealty to their creed, Nature is strong in them too. And with gentle irony she exacts their homage for the traits of the foe—masquerading in guise of a female!
Heroes to worship, every naturally-constituted woman craves. And it is the hero—far less than it is the heroine—in the Feminist leaders, their qualities of fight and masterfulness, of virile brain and concrete enterprise, which evoke their adherents' devotion and tribute.
Some Feminist leaders bid, indeed, as strenuously for and claim as jealously the undivided loyalty and subjection of their flock as ever Tyrant-Man demanded of the sex.
In schools and colleges too, the girls make gods and heroes of those of their sex who excel in manly sports. They have never a suspicion that their gods and heroes are not goddesses and heroines. Similars being unattractive to one another, the exposition of woman-traits leaves woman more or less unmoved. As Nature destined, the woman-heart goes out to those virtues and valours which are the natural complement of her own.