The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-05-16
MODERN MAN-HATE RS.


Among the many odd social phenomena of
the present day may be reckoned the class of
women who are professed despisers and con-
temneIs of men; pretty misanthropes, doubt-
full alike of the wisdom of the past and tie
distinctions of nature, but believing vigov-
ously in good time coming when wo men are
to take the lead, and men to be as docile
dogs in their wake. TO be sure, as if by way
of keeping the balance even and maintaining
the sum Of forces in the world in due equii-
brium, purely useless and absurd kind of
womanhood is more in fashion than it used to
be- but this does not affect either the accu-
racy or the strangeness of our first statement;
ard the number Of women ROW in revolt
against nature, religion, and the
supremacy of men is some-
thing unparalleled in our history.
Both before and during the first French
Revolution the eSp7ftS forts in petticoats were
agents of no small account in the work of
social reorganization going on; but hitherto
women, here in England, have been content
to believe as they have been taught, and to
trust the men to whom they belong with q
simple kind of faith in their friendliness and
good intentions, which reads now like ira
dition of the past. With the advanced class
of women, the modern man-haters, one of
the articles of their creed is to regard men as
their natural enemies from whom they must
and one of their favorite exercises is to rail
at them as both weak and wicked, both moral
towards and personal bullies, with whom the
best wisdom is to have least intercourse, and
on whom no woman who has either common
sense or self-respect would rely. To those.
who get the confidence of women
many startling revelations are made,
but one of the most startling is the
fierce kind of contempt for men, and the un-
natural revolt against anything like control
or guidance, which animates the class of
modern n-haters. That husbands, fathers,
and brothers should be thought by women to
be tyrannical, severe, selfish, or anything else
expressive of the misuse of strength, is per-
haps natural, and no doubt often deserved;
but we confess it seems an odd inversion of
relations when pretty, frail, delicate
woman, with narrow forehead, accuses her
stalwart, broad-shouldered male companions
OF the neaner and more cowardly class of
faults hitherto considered distinctly femi-
nine; and when she says with dis
dainful toss of her small head, "Men are so
weak and unjust, have no respect for them!"
we wonder where the strength and justice OF
the world can have gone, for, if we are to
trust our senses, we can scarcely credit her
with having them in her keeping. On the
other hand, the man-hater ascribes to her
own sex every good quality under heaven;
ana, not content with taking the more patient
and negative virtues which have always been
allowed to women, boldly bestows on them
the energetic and active virtues as we'll, and
robs men of their Unborn characteristics that
she may deck her own sex in their
spoils. She grants, of course, that
men are superior in physical strength and
courage; but she qualities the admission by
adding that all they are good for is to push
way for her in crowd, to protect her at night
against burglars, to take care of her on a
journey, to fight for her when occasion de-
mands, and bear the heavy end of the stick
always, to work hard that she may enjoy, and
encounter dangers that she may be safe
This role is the only use of their lives, so far
as she is concerned. And to women of this
way of thinking the earth is neither the Lords,
nor yet mans, but womans.
Apart from this mere brute strength which
has been given to men mainly for her ad-