would declare it to be. What I am quite sure of is that success in this
comradeship between the sexes depends upon the discovery of a right way
which lies between the coldness which is the negation of good
fellowship, and the undue familiarity which is both dangerous and
undignified. We men have in the past been accustomed to boast that we
will go just as far towards familiarity as women will allow, and have
declared that this whole matter is one which women must regulate. Male
opinion on the whole used to regard a man as something less than a
sport who would not take liberties wherever he saw they would not be
resented. To use any sort of compulsion was indeed held to be
ungentlemanly, but short of that men have recognized no compulsion of
honor bidding them refrain from familiarities. "That's the girl's
affair," they have often said. But this is really a flagrant case of
the way in which we men deceive ourselves and assume positions that are
both dishonest and cruel. I call this particular one dishonest because
it is absurd for us to pretend that our expectations and desires have
no influence on girls, and that therefore we have no responsibility for
events. Of course girls will tend to give what men in general persist
in asking. They are just as human as we are. Our conventional
assumption that they are always mistresses of the situation--models of
perfect self-mastery and understanding--is ridiculous and unkind. It is
the age-long injustice which men have practiced towards women to
pretend that they are creatures without passion and by nature always
in control of their emotions. We know it is not true, and yet we act on
the pretence that it is. And I call this position of ours cruel because
there is no reason whatever why we should try to lay on women the whole
burden of refining and controlling our mutual relations. Why should we
not take our share of the task? Since history began we have asked many
things of women, and then kept our real respect for those who refused
them--a mean and cowardly attitude. Women are not angels and it is mere