Motherhood and the future of the race were systematically belittled.

Paternity is but a mere incident, it was argued, in man's life: why should maternity be more than a mere incident in woman's life?
In England, by a curiously perverted form of sexual attraction, women were so fascinated by the glamour that surrounded men that they desired to suppress or forget all the facts of organic constitution which made them unlike men, counting their glory as their shame, and sought the same education as men, the same occupations as men, even the same sports.

As we know, there was at the origin an element of rightness in this impulse.[2] It was absolutely right in so far as it was a claim for freedom from artificial restriction, and a demand for economic independence.

But it became mischievous and absurd when it developed into a passion for doing, in all respects, the same things as men do; how mischievous and how absurd we may realize if we imagine men developing a passion to imitate the ways and avocations of women.

Freedom is only good when it is a freedom to follow the laws of one's own nature; it ceases to be freedom when it becomes a slavish attempt to imitate others, and would be disastrous if it could be successful.[3] At the present day this movement on the theoretical side has ceased to possess any representatives who exert serious influence.