Feminism - Women and Memory Forum

220 FEMINISM
Is not the footing on which they have been put (mostly by the
endowment of women's colleges by men, or from money made
by men) one of superiority for the young woman? To continue
endowing female educational institutes, to encourage girls
to go through them, to offer to women workers as much pay and
as many openings as to men — in some cases even to prefer
them because of their greater dociUty,— is not that to discriminate
in favour of the female sex above the male sex? Yet this
question must not be too hastily answered. It is to discriminate
in favour of some women — and the ones least likely (even when
married) to rear any children; while it discriminates against
the marrying and child-bearing kind of women, by discriminating
against their husbands. It thus pulls down also their capacity
to rear children and perpetuate the race. Or take a more
particular instance, from the field of diplomacy, into which
feminists desire women to press.** A man is rarely sent on an
embassy unless he has a wife :
there are already nearly as many
ambassadresses as ambassadors, arid the women share in all the
honours and emoluments. If women were to become ambassadors
too, they would probably be unmarried, or at all events
their husbands could not share in their honours : their husbands
would probably prefer to stay at home and look after the children,
if there were any. The last century exhibited the ridiculous
spectacle of a Prince Consort; but perfectly in the nature of
human relations is the position of a queen consort: her function
of queen mother is sufficiently onerous to be dignified, while
that of a king father or official impregnator is too slight to be
worthy of a man. Fortunately for the English the position of
queen absolute is exceptional. If women of royal families were
to have the same right of succession as the males, and if women
were to become prime ministers, ambassadors, bishops, and fill
other high offices equally with men, to the exclusion of men,
at the same time they share in all the honours and emoluments
of those offices as consorts to the men that fill them,*^ it is plain
48 E.g,^ Laura Aberconway in an article on The Other Side in The Nation, London,
May 31, 1913, complains of the "injustice" of men alone being admitted to such
occupations as are offered by thti state and the church, instancing diplomacy. As for
entrance to positions in the church, be it here said that for_ women to become priestesses
is entirely within the province of feminism, if new religions were founded holding
its central idea. But for women to become Christian ministers is extraordinary, seeing
that the holders of this religion profess to believe that it was founded by God
coming to earth and on his departure leaving another member of the Trinity with his
disciples, under whose instruction they forbade women to speak in the church (/. Cor.,
XIV. 34-5, /. Tim., II. 11-12, cf. Rev., II. 20). _ It only shows how in an age ready
for degeneracy people, and especially women, will play with things they pretend to
hold sacred.
'f> The Roman Catholic Church excludes women even as consorts, and if the feminists
should attack that one-sidedness, nobody but Roman Catholics would object.
Every celibate man, where monogamy holds, means a celibate woman, and every male
celibate institution requires some corresponding celibate female institution — all to the