FEMINISM, from the French feminism, Latin /mina, woman: a word coined by the younger Dumas in a pamphlet entitled (L'Homme-femme' (1872) to designate the so called °rights of women) movement. An advo cate of this movement is termed a though it must be pointed out that the definition, whether applied to a man or woman, by no means carries the somewhat derogatory sense of "effeminate) or "unmanly?) Indeed, many of the finest intellects among men have been and are to-day—ardent feminists. Briefly stated, the tenets of the creed consist in a de mand that women are entitled to absolute eco nomic and social equality with men; that women have the right to participate in govern ment as' responsible citizens, and especially, in framing such laws as affect their own lives. Hence, feminism includes woman suffrage, a stepping-stone to unlimited possibilities. Its foremost interpreters contend that woman has too long been regarded and treated as a mere adjunct of man; "a kind of subordinate beings, and not as a part of the human species.) This was the argument of Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneer of the modern movement, in her cele brated 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman,' published in 1792. Although marred by numer ous internal defects the 'Vindication' remains as one of the most powerful and truly prophetic statements of the woman's case against °man made laws* and a "man-made world.) With merciless logic she flayed the miseducation of girls, ridiculed the generally accepted theories of "chivalry,' and mordantly attacked the double standard of morality. Yet she recog nized, in true womanly fashion, that love and the attraction between the sexes was a cardinal fact in human nature, and "marriage as the foundation of almost every social virtue.° While she claimed that women should be treated as the friends and equals of men, and not as their toys and slaves, she did not demand for women intellectual, physical or moral equality with men. She did not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves. In her
time a sickly delicacy was supposed to be an essential part of feminine charm, and cowardice, as well as physical weakness, was regarded as part of what every woman ought to aim at. How far Mary Wollstonecraft was ahead of her time may be judged from the fact that she advocated woman's representation in Parlia ment nearly 70 years before woman suffrage was heard of in the House of Commons, and she proclaimed that the practice of medicine was particularly suited to women 50 years be fore the first English woman doctor was qual ified.
Plato, Aristotle, Euripides and Sir Thomas More propounded arguments and theories on the rights of women that are to-day being car ried into effect in America, Europe and Aus tralasia. We have traveled far since that Council of Macon, quoted by Bescherelle and Larcher, where some 300 ecclesiastics gravely discussed the question of whether women could or should be classified as human beings. In ages past theologians and learned men have wrangled about the etymology of word sig nifying "woman" in their respective languages, and whether the particular word was derived from God or invented by man.. The object of these erudite disquisitions appears to have been to fix the definite status of woman as compared with man. Sympathetic French writers have proved to their own satisfaction that Nature, in her thousand-fold activity, is feminine in essence and that woman, not man, is the "lord of creation.° Basing his argument on biolog ical theory, Mr. George Bernard Shaw makes one of his characters say, "She [woman] knows by instinct that far back in the evolutionary process she invented him [man], differentiated him, created him in order to produce something better than the single-sexed process can pro duce," and that "he is welcome to his dreams, his follies, his ideals, his heroisms, provided that the keystone of them all is the worship of woman, of motherhood, of the family, of the heyth° and Superman' ).