None of these demands, however, affected
directly the most vital factors of her existence. Whether she won her
point or failed to win it, she remained a dominated weakling in a
society controlled by men.
Woman's acceptance of her inferior status was the more real because it
was unconscious. She had chained herself to her place in society and
the family through the maternal functions of her nature, and only
chains thus strong could have bound her to her lot as a brood animal
for the masculine civilizations of the world. In accepting her role as
the "weaker and gentler half," she accepted that function. In turn,
the acceptance of that function fixed the more firmly her rank as an
inferior.
Caught in this "vicious circle," woman has, through her reproductive
ability, founded and perpetuated the tyrannies of the Earth. Whether
it was the tyranny of a monarchy, an oligarchy or a republic, the one
indispensable factor of its existence was, as it is now, hordes of
human beings--human beings so plentiful as to be cheap, and so cheap
that ignorance was their natural lot. Upon the rock of an
unenlightened, submissive maternity have these been founded; upon the
product of such a maternity have they flourished.
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