The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage | Page 9

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 woman, "I will do you reverence, and protect you, and yield you service; and you, for your part, will hold fast to an ideal of gentleness, of personal refinement, of modesty, of joyous maternity, and to who shall say what other graces and virtues that endear woman to man," that is chivalry.
It is not a question of a purely one-sided bargain, as in the suffragist conception. Nor yet is it a bargain about purely material things.
It is a bargain in which man gives both material things, and also things which pertain perhaps somewhat to the spirit; and in which woman gives back of these last.
But none the less it is of the nature of a contract. There is in it the inexorable _do ut des; facio ut facias [give me this, and I will give you that; do this for me, and I will do that for you]._
And the contract is infringed when woman breaks out into violence, when she jettisons her personal refinement, when she is ungrateful, and, possibly, when she places a quite extravagantly high estimate upon