Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/211

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SEX-ANTAGONISM : WOMAN'S PART
187

themselves; who merely refuse to be governed without their consent; who have adopted the Oriental device of dying on their enemy's doorstep. Now this second policy is the very reverse of the first, and the only thing that can be said against it is, that it is an extreme measure which should on no account be undertaken, until ordinary methods of education and organisation have been fully tried. To become a martyr as soon as you can't get your own way, is a form of spiritual bullying that is extraordinarily exasperating.

But the first policy cuts away the whole ground upon which the women's demand is based; upon this ground not only would men infallibly beat women, but the great mass of women, as well as men, would feel that the militant women had invited defeat. When Mrs. Leigh adjures her women hearers to use their nails upon the eyes of men who attempt to arrest them, does she not know that this could only succeed for as long as the men disbelieved the women's intentions? As soon as the men apprehended real danger, they could effectively dispose of the women. Even if it were not wrong, it would be futile in the extreme. But it is wrong, inexcusably wrong, on the part of women, whose experience of life ought to have proved to them that for women to invite physical force against themselves is to provoke all the forces of reaction against which their movement is, in reality, directed. Long years ago, men threw stones and filth at women who asked for enfranchise-