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Show i Woman's Page ' i DOROTHY DIX SAYS I ! j Xhe much discussed feminist movement is nothing but a i; struggle that women are making to be recognized as just i j plain, ordinary human beings. By Dorothy Dix j The world's highest paid woman writer ' Oo you hear that sound of things rending:, crashing, smashing? Be not alarmed, oh, timid soul. It li not the final cataclysm of the end I of the world, as some suppose. It Is f merely the noise that women are making mak-ing in their effort to become human ' beings-Women beings-Women have been many thin? dur- jjjg the history ot tne worm. iney have been beasts of burden- and toys. They havp been slaves and queens ! Tbey have been martyrs and saint. I jjjey have been devils and pin feath- pred angel? But they have never once been just plain, ordinary human be inps. with an ordinary human being's rights and privileges and perquisites And that's what women desire more than anvihing else on earth. That's what they aspire to that's what they are determined to have that's what they are fighting for. Hence this rum- I Pus- VVoman doesn't want to be bound down by shackles any longer. She's weary of being nothing but a drc-" id-up id-up do"- She doesn't want to percli up on a pedestal. Neither does she de-sirp de-sirp to wear a halo about her head or! to sprout wines. She Just wants to! I jo? along in the middle of the road of life side b fide with man, neither his ! interior nor his superior, suffering and njoinjT, working and playing as he doe just being a human being such as he is. ' That's all that this much discussed feminist movement means when you et down to the real essence of it. It's I Just the strupplf that women are making mak-ing for human beinghood. It's tragic when. you look at it in one way. It's ! grotesquely humorous when you view it from another angle, for all that the most advanced woman asks for her sex is what is accorded the male sex as us alienable birth right, A boy is born a human beine, but bis sister has to achieve this blessing with tears and blood, if she is ever luckv enough to win it at all The mere accident of sex B ta b r apart in a parish class where she baa DO rights is a human being, and only such prlv- ; ileges as she can gain by finding favor fa-vor in man's eyes. The most curious and pathetic thing about the whole feminist revolution, that fills so many worthy people with terror and despair, is that women are asking tor nothing that men have not 2lways had, and that they are reprehended repre-hended for doing exactly the Bame things for which men have been can-nonized can-nonized for doing. Between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, fighting against taxation without representation, rep-resentation, and Susan B Anthony and 'Lueretia Mott. there is no difference in principle or patriotism. It is merely mere-ly the difference of sex that gave one tie right, in public opinion, to glori- , oualy resist tyranny, and mad' th- other the laughing stock oi cneap wus because she presumed to suppose that : woman was a human being and had rights Let us consider some of these anarchistic an-archistic doctrines of 'lie new woman party which are sending the cold shivers shiv-ers up and down so many spines If jou do, you will be surprised at two things. First, that women ask just plain common human rights, and sec-ittdly, sec-ittdly, that anybody has the arrogance lo dispute with them their right to tow rights. For, be k r 1 . that &o woman, in asserting her heirship to all the ages, has ever once even tipresscd the desire to curtail her trotier's inheritance. She only wishes to share his liberties with him. The first thing that women asked ia their efforts to become human beings be-ings was a right to an education. It ftemed to a woman that the good Lord must have known what He was about when He endowed a female with Intelligence Also, it seemed probable felt He would not have wasted a per-lectly per-lectly good set of brains on a girl baby oaJess He had meant her to cultivate them and use them. Nevertheless, for centuries It was held that it was a wickd and a sacre-ligious sacre-ligious thing for a woman to even aspire as-pire to knowledge, or to use her gray natter for any more worthy purpose than Vrt t ,- rr t-. ,rsA , r, I V, n I.IitoI tiflft c! some man and cajoling more silks ud eatins and Jewels out of him than 'be was entitled to have. Since the kwu of civilization there has never tan any argument about the advances advan-ces that an education was to a man. 11 has always been admitted that knowledge is power, and that (x&lned ktelllgence is not only a sword in a ed's hand to fight the batile of life, It a garden in his soul that enriches linence Itself and makes it fragrant d beautiful. But this human right was denied wnan, and it la only within the last years, and after a terrific fight, 'wt she has succeeded in winning the iltnple rights of a human being to all fe education and culture she is capa-B capa-B of taking. Ii'b funny, now, to think of all the r that has been made about send- u eirle t0 school. How they have JO derided as "strong minded" when jJ2 banted to learn anything beyond j0 ro read the "Duchess!" How they ve been caricatured as "blue stock- i "f when they wanted to think and about anything deeper than the ?8 hborhood gossip. What doleful Phe&ies were made about women 1 jfexilg themselves and becoming Inland horrid and mannish it they we permitted to go to college! How ' ikr60118 wafe considered woman's k-aand for an education! tahe was only asking for her right ktn 3 human being something with "'gence that raised her above the animal She was only asking for her I hereditary right, for it was our first mother and not our first father who I had such a passion for knowledge that i she risked Paradise to gain it. j 1 oo |