may alter
everything while leaving everything unaltered.

An essential difference between "Feminism" and "Suffragism" is that the
Suffrage is but part of the greater propaganda; while Suffragism desires
to remove an inequality, Feminism purports to alter radically the mental
attitudes of men and women. The sexes are to be induced to recognize
each other's status, and to bring this recognition to such a point that
equality will not even be challenged. Thus Feminists are interested
rather in ideas than in facts; if, for instance, they wish to make
accessible to women the profession of barrister, it is not because they
wish women to practice as barristers, but because they want men to view
without surprise the fact that women may be barristers. And they have no
use for knightliness and chivalry.

Therein lies the mental revolution: while the Suffragists are content to
attain immediate ends, the Feminists are aiming at ultimate ends. They
contend that it is unhealthy for the race that man should not recognize
woman as his equal; that this makes him intolerant, brutal, selfish, and
sentimentally insincere. They believe likewise that the race suffers
because women do not look upon men as their peers; that this makes them
servile, untruthful, deceitful, narrow, and in every sense inferior.
More particularly concerned with women, it is naturally upon them and
their problems that they are bringing their first attention to bear.

The word "inferior" at once arouses comment, for here the Feminist often
distinguishes himself from the Suffragist. He frequently accepts woman's
present inferiority, but he believes this inferiority to be transient,
not permanent. He considers that by removing the handicaps imposed upon
women, they will be able to win an adequate proportion of races. His
case against the treatment of women covers every form of human relation:
the arts, the home, the trades, and marriage. In every one of these
directions he proposes to make revolutionary changes.

The question of the arts need not long detain us. It is perfectly clear
that woman has had in the past neither the necessary artistic training,
nor the necessary atmosphere of encouragement; that families have been
reluctant to spend money on their daughter's music, her painting, her
literary education, with the lavishness demanded of them by their son's
professional or business career. Feminists believe that when men and
women have been leveled, this state