Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/218

. It is not anti-man: no movement for the liberation of woman can do man anything but good; for modern men to try to keep women in the old ways, while they go ahead, is a ridiculous attempt to produce an anachronism which is foredoomed. It is not anti-social: when people bring this accusation against it, they generally mean that it is anti-maternal; but the progressive women desire that motherhood should be as free and beneficent and instructed as human effort can make it, and they desire, too, that it shall be possible for far more women to have the opportunity of motherhood. It is not anti-democratic; for the extension of liberty and representation to the masses of women will diminish the privileges of the few. It is the anti-suffragists who are anti- democratic. They tell us that the opposition of women to their own enfranchisement is unprecedented and proves that there must be some great harm in liberty, which women feel, while men have never resisted their own enfranchisement. This is not true. Slaves, even male slaves, have been known to object to manumission. But, as a matter of fact, if you will inquire, you will find that nearly all the opposition of women is directed against the enfranchisement of other women, not themselves. Most anti-suffragists will agree that some women are fit for the vote. Scarcely any woman thinks that she herself is unfit; it is the other women who are unfit. When Mrs. Humphry Ward speaks of the incurable political ignorance