The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-11-27
DOROTMY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.
watch Your Tongue, Ladies.

why OOnC you write SOmeLnlnS
about the loose way in which women
talk nowadays? It's gotten so that
there doesn't seem to be any more re-
serve in conversation, and the things
that perfect ladies say would have
made a fish wife of twenty years ago
blush.
why, the other day 1 was reading
in my library and I couldn't help
overhearing the talk of two or three
women who were having tea with my
wife, and the subjects they discussed,
the stories they told and the jokes they
shrieked over made me feel like call
ing out. Remember, ladies, there's
gentleman PRESENT. And these
women were good. refined, educated
women, leaders in the church, shining
members of women's clubs, pillars of
society in general. I tell you 1 was
never more Mortified in my life.
And these women aren't the only
ones. Honestly, a modest man doesn't
conversational lead. He's afraid that
she'll begin on eugenics, or birth con-
troll, or some sort of sex problem, or
the nude in art, or some other topic
that will raise the goose-flesh on him
and make the very bald spot on his
Believe me, women can't have any
idea of how shocking such talk is to
men or they wouldn't be guilty of it.
''All men, even those who have dirty
minds and foul tongues. cherish the
tradition that a woman's mind is full
of pure and beautiful thoughts and
that her words turn into pearls as they
fall from her lips, as did those of the
Good Little Girl in the old fairy tale.
"Once or twice 1 have heard a
drunken woman cursing and swear
ing and it seemed the very measure of
the depths of the degradation to which
she had Sunk. I felt I could forgive
her for anything she might have done
but not for the things she said.
"Only the other day I was talking
to a beautiful, delicate and refined
girl-a girl who looked a lily. she was
so pure and fragile-but at something
that 1 said to her she exclaimed,
'Gosh!' 1 shouldn't have been a bit
more disenchanted if she had slapped
me in the face.
There's a word out west they call
the fighting word. When it is said to
man he draws his gun. 1 am sure
that Gosh on a young girls lips is
the spell-breaking word that disillu-
sions the most ardent sutton, and that
when it is said to him he folds his tent
like the Arab and as silently steals
away.
ct used to be that only the kind
of women that we didn't introduce to
our mothers and wives INDUCED in
telling risque stories and perpetrated
double-faced jokes, but now some of
the Faciest anecdotes we ever hear
are told us by mother and wife. And
as for our daughters-well, it's
| the parlor carpet problems that ia
Their wouldn't have mentioned to her
for the world.
'I'n declare" said the exasperated
man in conclusion, 81 sometimes think
that women have lost all sense of mod
h 1f1eaxr n oil 1f
their seven wells of conceaIment of
body and mind. They've got no more
reticence in clothes or speech, and
their conversation is as >decollette as
their gowns. What's the matter with
women, anyway? 2"
They are in the throes of a re-
action from old condition and GUS
toms and the pendulum always swings
as far one way as it did the other"
replied. Because women for CEN
turtles have been swaddled and ham,
pered by garments that cribbed, cab
ined and confined, they have stripped
off all the garments that they could.
Because they have been hampered by
long skirts and trains that they had
to hold up as they walked, they have
chopped off their skirts to the knees,
and because a perfect lady was sup
posed to only say 'prunes' and 'prisms',
women, are shouting damn at the
| top of their voices.
1
mistake license for liberty, nor if they
think that the right of free speech
gives them the privilege to indulge in
the wrong sort of talk. That's where
women are making their mistake. For
so long women have had to pretend
that they didn't know the things that
they did know, and to keep silent
concerning every subject that wasn't
utterly fnnocuous, it isn't surprising
that now, when the ban has been
nd q n
ject they please they have run con-
versa tionally amuck.
It's been a little tedious, you know.
for a woman to have to belle her
sense of humor and look Mortified in
stead of amused if the point of a Joke
was trifle broad. 1t has been wear
ing on the nerves to have to be prop
erly shocked, because you were a
lady, if anyone dared to refer in your
presence to some of the big vital prob
lens of life. And women have been
bored to extinction by having to pratt
tie about the beautiful sunshine, and
the birds and flowers, and soulful
subjects in general, because they were
the only topics that q refined lady
could converse upon with a member
of the male sex.
$50 it isn't much wonder that now
when women are being recognized for
the first time as human beings. they've
gone on a sort of converse tiOnal de-
bauch, a talk-fest in which they are
talking too much and too loosely and
saying things that would be far bet
ter left unsaid.
II deprecate this just as much as
you do. 1t Is just as shocking to me
as il is to you, because when a woman
throws away her reserve she not only
casts away her chief charm but her
chief means of defence.
Women are judged by what they
say far more than by what they do.
A woman who is loud talking and
slangy. who rips out a pet oath occa-
sionally and who tells off colored stor-
les, may be in reality as chaste as
Caesars wife, but she will have the
reputation of being fast and she will
be subjected to insults from men,.
ION the other hand, a woman who
is delicate and refined in conversa-
ton, and who frowns upon all sala-