man is required to support his wife's progeny. The law of _bastardy
[illegitimate childbirth]_ is what it is because of the dangers of
blackmail. The law which fixes the age of consent discriminates
against man, laying him open to a criminal charge in situations where
woman--and it is not certain that she is not a more frequent
offender--escapes scot-free.

The _second_ point in which the law differentiates is in the matter of
exacting personal service for the State. If it had not been that man
is more prone to discriminate in favour of woman than against her,
every military State, when exacting personal military service from
men, would have demanded from women some such equivalent personal
service as would be represented by a similar period of work in an army
clothing establishment, or ordnance factory, or army laundry; or would
at any rate have levied upon woman a ransom in lieu of such service.

The _third_ point in which the law distinguishes between man and woman
is with reference to the suffrage. The object of this book is to show
that this is equitable and in the interests of both.

The suffragist further misapprehends when she regards it as an
indignity to obey laws which she has not herself framed, or
specifically sanctioned. (The whole male electorate, be it remarked,
would here lie under the same dignity as woman.)

But in reality, whether it is a question of the rules of a game, or of
the reciprocal rights and duties of members of a community, it is, and
ought to be, to every reasonable human being not a grievance, but a
matter of felicitation, that an expert or a body of experts should
have evolved a set of rules under which order and harmony are