The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage | Page 9

of other people's services), which the possession
of money confers and more freedom from sexual restraints.
The suffragist agitator makes profit out of this ambiguity. In addressing
the woman worker who does not, at the rate which her labour
commands on the market, earn enough to give her any reasonable
measure of financial freedom, the agitator will assure her that the
suffrage would bring her more money, describing the woman suffrage
cause to her as the cause of liberty. By juggling in this way with the
two meanings of "liberty" she will draw her into her toils.
The vote, however, would not raise wages of the woman worker and
bring to her the financial, nor yet the physiological freedom she is
seeking.
The tactics of the suffragist agitator are the same when she is dealing
with a woman who is living at the charges of a husband or relative, and
who recoils against the idea that she lies under a moral obligation to
make to the man who works for her support some return of gratitude.
The suffragist agitator will point out to her that such an obligation is
slavery, and that the woman's suffrage cause is the cause of freedom.
And so we find the women who want to have everything for nothing,
and the wives who do not see that they are beholden to man for
anything, and those who consider that they have not made a sufficiently
good bargain for themselves--in short, all the ungrateful women--flock
to the banner of Women's Freedom--the banner of financial freedom for
woman at the expense of financial servitude for man.
The grateful woman will practically always be an anti-suffragist.
It will be well, before passing on to another class of arguments, to
summarise what has been said in the three foregoing sections.

We have recognised that woman has not been defrauded of elementary
natural rights; that Justice, as distinguished from egalitarian equity,
does not prescribe that she should be admitted to the suffrage; and that
her status is not, as is dishonestly alleged, a status of serfdom or
slavery.
With this the whole case for recrimination against man, and _a fortiori
[for greater reason]_ the case for [a] resort to violence, collapses.
And if it does collapse, this is one of those things that carries
consequences. It would beseem man to bethink himself that to give in
to an unjustified and doubtfully honest claim is to minister to the
demoralisation of the claimant.
II
ARGUMENTS FROM INTELLECTUAL GRIEVANCES OF
WOMAN
Complaint of Want of Chivalry--Complaint of "Insults"--Complaint of
"Illogicalities"--Complaint of "Prejudices"--The Familiar Suffragist
Grievance of the Drunkard Voter and the Woman of Property Who is a
Non-Voter--The Grievance of Woman being Required to Obey
Man-Made Laws.
We pass from the argument from elementary natural rights to a
different class of arguments--intellectual grievances. The suffragist tells
us that it is unchivalrous to oppose woman's suffrage; that it is insulting
to tell woman that she is unfit to exercise the fran- chise; that it is
"illogical" to make in her case an exception to a general rule; that it is
mere "prejudice" to withhold the vote from her; that it is indignity that
the virtuous and highly intelligent woman has no vote, while the
drunkard has; and that the woman of property has no vote, while her
male underlings have; and, lastly, that it is an affront that a woman
should be required to obey "man-made" laws.
We may take these in their order.

Let us consider chivalry, first, from the standpoint of the woman
suffragist. Her notion of chivalry is that man should accept every
disadvantageous offer which may be made to him by woman.
That, of course, is to make chivalry the principle of egalitarian equity
limited in its application to the case between man and woman.
It follows that she who holds that the suffrage ought, in obedience to
that principle of justice, to be granted to her by man, might quite
logically hold that everything else in man's gift ought also to be
conceded.
But to do the woman suffragist justice, she does not press the argument
from chivalry. Inasmuch as life has brought home to her that the
ordinary man has quite other conceptions of that virtue, she declares
that "she has no use for it."
Let us now turn to the anti-suffragist view. The anti-suffragist (man or
woman) holds that chivalry is a principle which enters into every
reputable relation between the sexes, and that of all the civilising
agencies at work in the world it is the most important.
But I think I hear the reader interpose, "What, then, is chivalry if it is
not a question of serving woman without reward?"
A moment's thought will make the matter clear.
When a man makes this compact with a