How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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modesty, gracefulness, sensitivity, intuition, and the like which are palpably designed to set off the virtues of the dominant male to the highest degree. A woman should be chaste so that her male may appear as a deliverer and saviour ; she must be modest so that his courage may stand out to better advantage ; she must be home-loving so that his occupational exploits may appear the nobler, and so on. Furthermore, such traits as gossip, irresponsibility, dependency, impracticality, nagging, treachery, infidelity, and the like are con¬ sidered in many circles the prerogatives and constant characteristics of the female sex. The adjective “ masculine ” has a universally good connotation, whereas the adjective “ feminine ” as it is usually applied implies weakness and inferiority. When a man fails, it is because he has unfortunately acquired womanly attributes, but when a woman makes a signal success it is because of the existence of “ masculine ” or “ virile ” qualities, i.e. she is no proper woman, but a man in woman’s body. The extent to which the female sex has been maligned throughout history by the dominant male can be conceived only when we recall the Biblical legend that the fall of man, and his expulsion from the Garden of Eden were due to the wickedness and weakness of woman. The age- old depreciation of woman is to be found, moreover, in the fact that woman was supposed to have been created secondarily, to ease Adam’s loneliness (as if she were an afterthought of God), out of an unimportant part of Adam’s anatomy. St. Paul, with his famous dictum that “ it is better to marry than to burn ”, expresses the typical patriarchal view that woman is a necessary evil. The Church has been the worst enemy of womankind throughout the ages. Women who rose above the universal slavery of their sex, and developed any wit or sagacity, were immediately branded as witches and persecuted as if they were possessed of devils. The philosophy underlying the centuries of witch-hunting and witch-burning was manifestly : how can a woman show