236 SEX 



Whereas the British phase of the woman's 

 movement has been most marked by the cry 

 for political justice to one half of mankind, 

 the German, or wider Teutonic and Scandi- 

 navian movement may be described " as 

 based on the demands of woman the mother, 

 and as directed to the end of securing for her 

 the right to control and regulate the personal 

 and social relations which spring from her 

 nature as mother or possible mother." In 

 fact instead of " Votes for Women " the cry 

 is " Muttersehutz," for the mothering of 

 mothers. Of course, as Havelock Ellis says, 

 " these German women fully recognise that 

 women are entitled to the same human 

 rights as men, and that until such rights are 

 attained ' feminism ' has still a task to 

 achieve." 



It rests with women, in increasing measure, 

 to control reproduction, spacing out the child- 

 births, or even avoiding the production of 

 undesirable children. It rests with women, 

 in increasing measure, to secure that the 

 mother is no longer exhausted by too con- 

 tinuous maternity an alleviation of which 

 would also yield a better quality of babies. 



It rests with women also to use the powerful 

 lever of sexual selection, by giving the pre- 

 ference to mates who are more likely to 

 beget " super-men " (of either sex, of course). 

 Woman should not be too hard on the tyrants 

 of the patriarchate, for they probably helped 

 to evolve her beauty, but only a partisan will 

 deny that sexual selection has been one-sided 

 for many centuries. As women attain to 



