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Possession and use of a vote by a man is unmanly. This sounds absurd, because by "man" our language compels us to mean not only a male thing but a human being; whereas of the word "woman" we cannot at present make the correlative statement. In this undoubted linguistic fact lies hidden a long, sad story, the secret indeed of the whole controversy. For the present, may I summarise my position thus? I share with you the feeling that a vote is unwomanly. I add to it the feeling that it is unmanly. What I mean is that, to my mind, a vote has nothing whatever to do with either sex qua sex; it has everything to do with the humanity shared in common by two sexes.
May I illustrate this statement? We are apt to speak of certain virtues as "womanly," certain others as "manly." It is "womanly" to be meek, patient, tactful, modest. It is manly to be strong, brave, honourable. We make here, I think, an initial mistake, or at least, over-statement, apt to damage the morality of both man and woman. To be meek, patient, tactful, modest, honourable, brave, is not to be either manly or womanly; it is to be humane, to have social virtue. To be womanly is one thing and one only; it is to be sensitive to man; to be highly endowed with the sex instinct; to be manly is to be sensitive to woman. About this sex-endowment other and more complex sentiments may tend to group themselves; but, in the final resort, womanliness and manliness can have no other than this simple significance. When we exhort a woman to be "womanly," we urge her to emphasise her relation to the other sex, to enhance her sensitiveness, already, perhaps, over keen, to focus her attention on an element
