womankind for over one hundred fifty years, and its program of reforms has been almost entirely realized in every detail.
What did this movement want to achieve? Let me quote to you what two profound students of feminism, Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Farnham, had to say about it in their book Modern Women, The Lost Sex: "Far from being a movement," they wrote, "for the greater self-realization of women, as it professed to be, feminism was the very negation of femaleness. Although hostile to men and hostile to children, it was at bottom most hostile to women. It bade women commit suicide as women and attempt to live as men. . . . Psychologically, feminism had a single objective: the achievement of maleness by the female, or the nearest possible approach to it. In so far as it was attained, it spelled only vast individual suffering for men as well as women, and much public disorder."
What was the program of the feminists? Actually Mary Wollstonecraft had enunciated it in its entirety in her book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and the movement never deviated from her original demands. She had stated that men and women were, in all fundamental characteristics, identical, and that therefore women should receive the same education as men, be governed by the same moral standards, do the same work, and have identical political rights and duties. Women were to be treated exactly as men in every detail of living, and the same demands were to be made on them.
The appeal of this program was enormous. Nineteenth-*century woman felt: "Ah, if we could only achieve this, then we would be happy once again." The fact—and it's a dreadfully simple one—is that now, indeed, the entire program has been realized and modern woman, having reaped the benefits of it in full, is more confused, perhaps even unhappier, than ever.
