And in the sphere of sex, the great source and
root of all human experience, it is upon the basis of Birth Control--the
voluntary direction of her own sexual expression--that woman must take
her first step in the assertion of freedom and self-respect.
(1) Folkways, p. 492.
CHAPTER XII: Woman and the Future
I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamed Life stood
before her, and held in each hand a gift--in the one Love, in
the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, "Choose!"
And the woman waited long: and she said, "Freedom!"
And Life said, "Thou has well chosen. If thou hadst said,
`Love,' I would have given thee that thou didst ask for; and
I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more.
Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I
shall bear both gifts in one hand."
I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.
Olive Schreiner
By no means is it necessary to look forward to some vague and distant
date of the future to test the benefits which the human race derives
from the program I have suggested in the preceding pages. The results to
the individual woman, to the family, and to the State, particularly in
the case of Holland, have already been investigated and recorded. Our
philosophy is no doctrine of escape from the immediate and pressing
realities of life, on the contrary, we say to men and women, and
particularly to the latter: face the realities of your own soul and
body; know thyself! And in this last admonition, we mean that this
knowledge should not consist of some vague shopworn generalities about
the nature of woman--woman as created in the minds of men, nor woman
putting herself on a romantic pedestal above the harsh facts of this
workaday world.
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