Page:The world set free.djvu/299

 "Need you remain thinking of yourselves as women?"

"It is forced upon us," said Edith Haydon.

"I do not think a woman becomes less of a woman because she dresses and works like a man," said Edwards. "You women here, I mean you scientific women, wear white clothing like the men, twist up your hair in the simplest fashion, go about your work as though there was only one sex in the world. You are just as much women, even if you are not so feminine, as the fine ladies down below there in the plains who dress for excitement and display, whose only thoughts are of lovers, who exaggerate every difference Indeed we love you more"

"But we go about our work," said Edith Haydon.

"So does it matter?" asked Rachel.

"If you go about your work and if the men go about their work then for Heaven's sake be as much woman as you wish," said Karenin. "When I ask you to unspecialise, I am thinking not of the abolition of sex, but the abolition of the irksome, restricting, obstructive obsession with sex. It may be true that sex made society, that the first society was the sex-cemented family, the first state a confederacy of blood relations, the first laws sexual taboos. Until a few years ago