SUFFRAGE DEMONSTRATION IN UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK




WHAT EIGHT MILLION WOMEN WANT




CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY


For the audacity of the title of this book I offer no apology. I have
had it pointed out, not altogether facetiously, that it is impossible to
determine with accuracy what one woman, much less what any number of
women, wants. I sympathize with the first half of the tradition. The
desires, that is to say, the ideals, of an individual, man or woman, are
not always easy to determine. The individual is complex and exceedingly
prone to variation. The mass alone is consistent. The ideals of the mass
of women are wrapped in mystery simply because no one has cared enough
about them to inquire what they are.

Men, ardently, eternally, interested in Woman--one woman at a time--are
almost never even faintly interested in women. Strangely, deliberately
ignorant of women, they argue that their ignorance is justified by an
innate unknowableness of the sex.