Dictionaries define ‘femininity’ as: “(1) the quality or nature of the female sex; womanliness; (2) the female form; (3) the sum of all attributes that convey (or are perceived to convey) womanhood.”
So whatever happened to femininity as a social value? Perhaps that question was already answered over a century ago. It would be difficult to believe that when British writer Arabella Kenealy published her book Feminism and Sex-Extinction in 1920, she could possibly have envisaged the 2025 dystopian reality of her predictions.
“Feminism, the extremist – and of late years the predominant cult of the Woman’s Movement, is Masculinism,” she asserted.
“It makes for such training and development in woman, of male characteristics, as shall equip her to compete with the male in every department of life; academic, athletic, professional, political, industrial. And it neither recognises nor admits in her natural aptitudes differing from those of men, and fitting her, accordingly, for different functions in these. It rejects all concessions to her womanhood; even to her mother-function. It repudiates all privileges for her. Boldly it demands a fair field only and no favour; equal rights, political and social, identical education and training, identical economic opportunities and avocations, an identical morale, personal and public.
“(The Feminist Creed) calls for the elimination of sex differences and the abolition of sex distinctions in every department of life and activity. Continue reading »