AMERICAN WOMEN.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 42, 24 November 1871, Page 3

AMERICAN WOMEN.

In an American paper, the Nation , we find the following paragaph, which may be read with some advantage by some of own social philosophers “ The Tribune seems to be beset with complaints from women of the way they are ogled and insulted in public places by men of various ao-Qs, either when following lawful callings, such as soliciting advertisements for newspapers, or when simply passing to and fro in the streets or in public conveyances. One woman asks impatiently whether ‘ they must be condemned to pass through the streets with their eyes cast down, instead of the free gaze winch belongs to American women ?’ At tho bottom of all this trouble is undoubtedly the desire which a largo number of women feel, not only to engage in all tho occupations in which men engage, but, as a natural consequence of this, to be freed from all the conventional restraints which immemorial usage has imposed on female speech and behaviour. These restraints have all been put in force under the influence of the theory that there is such a thing as sexual passion, which powerfully influences the conduct both of men and women, but particularly of men, and which therefore, in the interest of purity, imposes on one sex a certain guardedness of manner when in the presence of the other sex, whether in the parlor, workshop, or street. One of the beautiful discoveries of the new school of social philosophers is, however, we have repeatedly pointed out, that there is no such thing as a natural'sexual passion; that the feeling which passes by that name is simply a bad habit, somewhat like smoking and drinking, which men can drop if they please, and which, for the convenience of women, they ought to drop so as to enable the two sexes to stand towards each other ou a -exactly equal footing, and without other dangers than such as result from quarrelsomeness or cupidity. Women could then stare at anybody they pleased in the street as they have a natural right to do, and go abou with men just as if they were men. inc working of the new doctrine into practice is, of course, attended with inconvenience ; but it is making its way. Before long, man will gaze at woman with the same emotion with which he gazes at a land scape or a field of wheat; while woman will look on man as she looks on a gra elevator or a locomotive.