How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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The patriarchal system of considering women as the inferiors of men naturally wreaks its worst effects on the growing girl. There are many homes where the birth of a girl is still heralded with the damning “ It’s only a girl ! ” The growing girl is not yet allowed to play certain games, go to certain places unattended, nor is she permitted to study certain subjects or choose certain professions. If you are a girl the feeling that you are doomed from the very beginning to an inferior r6le in life is not calculated to develop a courageous spirit in you. The woman is still rare who refuses to be downed at some time or another in her life by the prejudices against her sex. It is the rarest of women who does not at some time or another find her normal development blocked by the misconceptions of a barbarous patriarchal system. We should not be astonished, therefore, that the majority of women suffer from some form of inferiority feelings just because they are women. It is still a man’s world, run by men, and for men. It might seem at first glance that the prevailing prejudices in favour of men constitute a stimulus to masculine success, and make a man’s path toward happiness a paved highway. This is by no means always true. The burden of proving his complete masculinity is not easy for every boy to bear. Where other factors, such as physical weakness, play a subsidiary rdle, it becomes practically impossible for the boy to sense any¬ thing but a feeling of inferiority when he compares himself with other, better equipped boys. The torturing doubt, “ I may not be a complete man ! ” drives many a boy into the by-paths of neurosis, suicide, or homo¬ sexuality. Wherever one sex dominates the other, the dominant sex always arrogates the best virtues to itself, relegating subsidiary virtues, which tend to set off the dominant sex’s virtues by contrast, to the inferior sex. The “ masculine ” virtues of to-day, for example, were “ feminine ” virtues in matriarchal Egypt only a few' thousand years ago. The tendency to link superiority and masculinity, inferiority and femininity, is a typical