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 however independent, self-reliant, indulged, or admired, who was not in some way affected by that tradition—consciously or unconsciously. Even those of us who have never known what it was to have a man to lean on, who have had to fight our way through the world as the average male fights his, and (since things are made infinitely easier for him) under disadvantages unknown to the average man—even we find ourselves, unaccountably and at unexpected moments, acting in accordance with the belief in which we were reared, and deferring to the established tradition of inherent masculine superiority; deferring to it after a fashion that, being realized, is amusing to ourselves.

The effect of this attitude of the two sexes towards each other—an attitude of inherent and essential superiority on the one side, of inherent and essential inferiority on the other—is nearly always apparent when men and women work together at the same trade. (Apparent, at least, to the women; the men, one concludes, do not really grasp the system by which they benefit.) What I refer to is the ordered, tacit, but usually quite conscious endeavour on the part of women