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Women Act) passed a few years ago, makes such slander of a woman actionable. But she retains her privilege of slandering a man. If this be not a statutory sex-privilege words must have lost their meaning.
The grim irony of making a man responsible for his wife's slanders, and other misdeeds—although the law has deprived him of all control over her person or property, has been already referred to.
THE ACTUAL EXERCISE OF WOMEN'S SEX PRIVILEGES.
The most curious of all concomitants of the legal subjection of men in England arise, first, that many men are not conscious of the real state of the law, and secondly, that a very loud-voiced minority of women, reinforced by sycophantic males, represent the law as being the apotheosis of unjust sex-privileges on the part of men.
The last phenomonen is, no doubt, in great part one cause of the first, but other causes for men's unconsciousness contribute.
A survival of the days when the physical force of the man was allowed by the State to play a part in his quarrels with women, survive in the public delusion that it is impossible for a man to be oppressed by women. How can men be legally oppressed by women? Are not men, if worthy of the name, able to defend themselves? This objection, once categorically stated, is seen to be ridiculous. A legal defence is not a matter of strength or courage, but of skill. Even a skilled defence is a poor protection before a biased tribunal. But lastly, the whole question of muscular strength is absurdly and outrageously irrelevant. The bravest and strongest man is as weak as a child before the overwhelming force of the State. Any woman can at will summon to her aid a power no man can resist. And behind this force of law rests the equally irresistible
