Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/22

 populations small, and the sole duty of man the gratification of his few elementary needs, an amount of personal liberty was available for each member of the community which is not possible in crowded cities of more or less educated people, whose wants are numerous, and whose many needs can be supplied only by the most delicately complex and intricate social machinery. In matters such as these the feminist asks that men and women should be equally restricted, or equally free, as the circumstances will allow.

Then the feminist clearly understands that, in a subtle but inevitable way, what is spoken of as 'sex' limits considerably both men and women, and, in the nature of the case, women more than men. Mrs Havelock Ellis well expressed the difference between men and women in these matters when she said: 'Man's need is woman, women's need is man's need of her.' That is to say, when a man loves a woman and the impulse of fatherhood holds him, no physical barrier interposes between them and the end of their desires. When a woman loves a man but is not loved nor wanted by him, honourable motherhood is denied to her. She depends upon his love and desire for the honourable achievement of her natural ambition. And the exercise of her special function of maternity involves a sacrifice of personal freedom from which no