Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/198

 ages restricted women's culture and cramped women's sympathies. Full of vitality and personality, women have felt the heavy hand of brute force upon them, and like all live persons, they have either fretted and rebelled (which, when it is done by a woman, is called nagging), or they have circumvented the oppressor by wiles and lies. True, women have impotently raged against men, and, true, it is a pity. If you are weak and ignorant, your rage will, half the time, be not only impotent, but directed against the wrong things and the wrong persons. True, women have lied to men and cheated them, and some of these women have been the most successful in twisting men round their little fingers, while the incurably honest women have looked on in disgust and despair. But no one can say that women have abused men more than men have abused women—all literature and history proves the reverse. No one can say that women have lied to men more than men have lied to women; the deserted girl-mothers are the witnesses.

All these mistakes are due to selfishness, and this is a human, not a sex characteristic. It is always a difficult matter for each individual person to determine when self-expression and self-development merge into selfishness, and there is no short way and no simple rule by which it can be determined. One must allow that men have greater natural temptations to be selfish, owing to physical differences between them and women, and the