The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-02-19
DOROTMY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.
Which Sex Has the Greater Influence
Over the Other

over tnc Otner.
A correspondent asked me which
sex has the greater influence over the
other
Mans influence is general .Wom-
ans is concrete. Men haze far more
influence over women sex than
women have over men in the lump.
but the Individual woman has more
influence over the individual man than
the individual man has over the IN
dividual woman
Men have moulded woman as a sex.
They have uplifted her morally. They
have stamped their tastes and desires
upo-. her.
Women undergo the fortunes of the
InQuisition because men demand that
they shall be beautiful. Men admire
slender woman, and women fast and
starve to grow thin.
Men have sung the beauty of a lit
tie foot, and woman SQueeZes a num-
Der six foot in a snumber three shoe,
and perches herself up on French
heels that make every step an agony.
Men admire pink and white COM
p1exion, and women cheerfully submit
to being tortured and skinned, and
parboiled by masseuses and complex
ion specialists.
Men will not marry drunken and
disreputable women, or any women
who have not blameless characters,
and that has kept women, as a sex,
in the straight and narrow path.
But men take no trouble to beautify
themselves for women. You see no
fat gentleman dieting to acquire a
straight front figure to please the
feminine eye Nor is there a man
who for the sake of the abstract ideal
of beauty entertained by women en-
dure the misery of tight shoes.
Nor has the influence of woman
ever been great enough to induce men
to lead the higher life and forego their
vices.
On the other hand, while it is true
that woman en- masse is so amena BILE
to mans influence tina the whole fem
mime sex is as clay in the hands of
the potter. when it comes down to the
individu; it is the woman who does
the moulding.
1t is one of life's little ironies that
men do not boast of the overwhelming
influence which they possess with
women IN genera1-which is great But
they are forever Dragging about their
influence over some one particular
woman-which is nil. Every man be-
lieves tina. he can marry any woman
he pleases and make her over accord
ing to his own cut paper pattern, when
the truth is that he can no more alter
her than he could move the Rock Of
Gibraltar.
That the individual woman has
more Influence on the individual man
thar he has on her we see ilIustra ted
disastrously in every single match in
which a man married a woman who is
his inferior.
There never was a more fatally err
roneous idea, promulgated than that a
man can lift a woman up to his men
tai and spiritual level
A woman often drags a man up to
the high ground on which she stands.
but an inferior woman is a dead
weight that no man has the strength
to raise. =
A clever. ambitious. pushing woman.
can fairly shove a husband into sue
cess She can prod him into making
greater effort. She can make friends
for him. She can teach him how to
dress. She can polish his manners.
But none of these things can a man
do for his wife. No man can teach a
woman to dress No man can teach
her social tact No man can make
friends for his wife. because she'll be
jealous of the other woman and hate
her. and no man ever lived who was
miracle worker enough to breathe am
bition into a lazy. slouchy. indolent
woman She that is Joined to a
Mother Hubbard cannot be separated
from her gods.
OF course in countries that have a
hereditary aristocracy a man confers
on his wife the rank he enjoys. A
dukes wife is a duchess no matter If
she was bar maid. but in this coun-
try social precedence goes thru the