The story of Jahn and the Turners—The enthusiasm which this movement generated in Germany—The ideal of bringing out latent powers—The concept of more perfect voluntary control—Swedish gymnastics—Doing everything possible for the body as a machine—Liberal physical culture—Ling’s orthogenic scheme of economic postures and movements and correcting defects—The ideal of symmetry and prescribing exercises to bring […]
Nothing could be plainer than the effect that the increasing economic security of women is having upon their whole habit of life and mind. The diminishing marriage rate and the even more rapidly diminishing birth rates show which way the wind is blowing. It is common for male statisticians, with characteristic imbecility, to ascribe the fall in the marriage rate to a growing disinclination on the male side. This growing disinclination is actually on the female side. Even though no considerable body of women has yet reached the definite doctrine that marriage is less desirable than freedom, it must be plain that large numbers of them now approach the business with far greater fastidiousness than their grandmothers or even their mothers exhibited. They are harder to please, and hence pleased less often. The woman of a century ago could imagine nothing more favourable to her than marriag
Women in the New Age Read More »
It is my sincere hope that nothing I have here exhibited will be mistaken by the nobility and gentry for moral indignation. No such feeling, in truth, is in my heart. Moral judgments, as old Friedrich used to say, are foreign to my nature. Setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all, it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what is commonly regarded as an excess of sin is very much more admirable than the minority distinguished by an excess of virtue. My experience of the world has taught me that the average wine-bibber is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist, and that the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge, and that the wors
How successful such a concealment may be is well displayed by the general acceptance of the notion that women are reluctant to enter into marriage—that they have to be persuaded to it by eloquence and pertinacity, and even by a sort of intimidation. The truth is that, in a world almost divested of intelligible idealism, and hence dominated by a senseless worship of the practical, marriage offers the best career that the average woman can reasonably aspire to, and, in the case of very many women, the only one that actually offers a livelihood. What
I have said that women are not sentimental, i.e., not prone to permit mere emotion and illusion to corrupt their estimation of a situation. The doctrine, perhaps, will raise a protest. The theory that they are is itself a favourite sentimentality; one sentimentality will be brought up to substantiate another; dog will eat dog. But an appeal to a few obvious facts will be enough to sustain my contention, despite the vast accumulation of romantic rubbish to the contrary.
Men, as each one is aware of, are disposed to query this superior intelligence of ladies; their egoism calls for the denial, and they’re seldom reflective sufficient to get rid of it by logical and evidential evaluation. Moreover, as we will see a bit afterward, there’s a sure specious look of soundness of their place; they’ve pressured upon ladies a synthetic character which nicely conceals their actual character, and girls have discovered it worthwhile to encourage the deception. But although each regular man thus cherishes the soothing unction that he’s the mental superior of all ladies, and notably of his spouse, he always provides the mislead his pretension by consulting and deferring to what he calls her instinct.
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The trigger thereof, as I say, will not be exterior, however inner. It lies in the identical disconcerting apprehension of the bigger realities, the identical impatience with the paltry and meretricious, the identical disqualification for mechanical routine and empty technic which one finds within the greater styles of males. Even within the pursuits which, by
What males, of their egoism, consistently mistake for a deficiency of intelligence in girl is merely an incapacity for mastering that mass of small mental tips, that advanced of petty knowledges, that assortment of cerebral rubber stamps, which constitutes the chief psychological tools of the typical male. A person thinks that he’s extra clever than his spouse as a result of he can add up a column of figures extra precisely, and since he understands the imbecile jargon of the inventory market, and since he is ready to distinguish between the concepts of rival politicians, and since he’s aware about the trivialities of some sordid and degrading enterprise or occupation, say soap-selling or the legislation.
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That it should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable prejudice, and general imbecility of their lords and masters. One finds very few professors of the subject, even among admitted feminists, approaching the fact as obvious;
Women’s Intelligence Read More »
The proverb that no man is a hero to his valet is clearly of masculine manufacture. It is each insincere and unfaithful: insincere as a result of it merely masks the egotistic doctrine that he’s doubtlessly a hero to everybody else, and unfaithful as a result of a valet, being a fourth-rate man himself, is prone to be the final particular person on this planet to penetrate his grasp’s charlatanry. Who ever heard of valet who did not envy his grasp wholeheartedly? who would not willingly change locations together with his grasp? who did not secretly want that he was his grasp?
The Maternal Instinct Read More »