les on
feminism. It involves the betrayal of a secret: the secret, that is, of
the apparent indifference or even hostility of men toward the woman's
movement. The fact is, as has been bitterly recited by the rebellious
leaders of their sex, that women have always been what man wanted them
to be--have changed to suit his changing ideals. The fact is,
furthermore, that the woman's movement of today is but another example
of that readiness of women to adapt themselves to a masculine demand.

Men are tired of subservient women; or, to speak more exactly, of the
seemingly subservient woman who effects her will by stealth--the pretty
slave with all the slave's subtlety and cleverness. So long as it was
possible for men to imagine themselves masters, they were satisfied. But
when they found out that they were dupes, they wanted a change. If only
for self-protection, they desired to find in woman a comrade and an
equal. In reality they desired it because it promised to be more fun.

So that we have as the motive behind the rebellion of women an obscure
rebellion of men. Why, then, have men appeared hostile to the woman's
rebellion? Because what men desire are real individuals who have
achieved their own freedom. It will not do to pluck freedom like a
flower and give it to the lady with a polite bow. She must fight for it.

We are, to tell the truth, a little afraid that unless the struggle is
one which will call upon all her powers, which will try her to the
utmost, she will fall short of becoming that self-sufficient, able,
broadly imaginative and healthy-minded creature upon whom we have set
our masculine desire.

It is, then, as a phase of the great human renaissance inaugurated by
men that the woman's movement deserves to be considered.

And what more fitting than that a man should sit in judgment upon the
contemporary aspects of that movement, weighing out approval or
disapproval! Such criticism is not a masculine impertinence but
a masculine right, a right properly pertaining to those who are
responsible for the movement, and whose demands it must ultimately fulfill.

CHAPTER II

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

Of the women who represent and carry on this many-sided movement today,
the first to be considered from this masculine viewpoint should, I
think, be Charlotte Perkins Gilman. For she is, to a superficial view,
the most intransigent feminist of them all, the one most exclusively
concerned with the improve