eading anything which tended to free woman. But he would
manifestly not have been justified in asserting, that woman's increased
freedom of choice, or the fact that the other men would share his
advantage in the matter of obtaining female companionship, would in any
way lessen the amount of sexual emotion or the tenderness of relation
between the two halves of humanity. He would not by brute force possess
himself of so many females, nor have so large a circle of choice,
under the new conditions; but what he lost, others would gain; and
the intensity of the sex emotions and the nearness and passion of the
relation between the sexes be in no way touched.

In our more civilised societies, as they exist today, woman possesses
(more often perhaps in appearance than reality!) a somewhat greater
freedom of sexual selection; she is no longer captured by muscular
force, but there are still conditions entirely unconnected with
sex attractions and affections, which yet largely dominate the sex
relations.

It is not the man of the strong arm, but the man of the long purse,
who unduly and artificially dominates in the sexual world today.
Practically, wherever in the modern world woman is wholly or partially
dependent for her means of support on the exercise of her sexual
functions, she is dependent more or less on the male's power to support
her in their exercise, and her freedom of choice is practically so far
absolutely limited. Probably three-fourths of the sexual unions in our
modern European societies, whether in the illegal or recognised legal
forms, are dominated by or largely influenced by the sex purchasing
power of the male. With regard to the large and savage institution of
prostitution, which still lies as the cancer embedded in the heart of
all our modern civilised societies, this is obviously and nakedly the
case; the wealth of the male as compared to the female being, with
hideous obtrusiveness, its foundation and source of life. But the
purchasing power of the male as compared with the poverty of the female
is not less painfully, if a little less obtrusively, displayed in those
layers of society lying nearer the surface. From the fair, effete young
girl of the wealthier classes in her city boudoir, who weeps copiously
as she tells you she cannot marry the man she loves, because he says he
has only two hundred a year and cannot afford to keep her; to the father
who demands frankly of his daughter's suitor how much he