day no. 15,435: undomesticated femininity

"Women have always been in the position of despots. They have been despotic because they ruled in an area where they had too much common sense to attempt to be constitutional. You cannot grant a constitution to a nursery; nor can babies assemble like barons and extort a Great Charter. Tommy cannot plead a Habeas Corpus against going to bed; and an infant cannot be tried by twelve other infants before he is put in the corner. And as there can be no laws or liberties in a nursery, the extension of feminism means that there shall be no more laws or liberties in a state than there are in a nursery. The woman does not really regard men as citizens but as children. She may, if she is a humanitarian, love all mankind; but she does not respect it. Still less does she respect its votes... Against this, protests are already being made, and will increasingly be made, if men retain any instinct of independence or dignity at all. But to complain of the woman interfering in the home will always sound like complaining of the oyster intruding into the oyster-shell. To object that she has too much power over education will seem like objecting to a hen having too much to do with eggs. She has already been given an almost irresponsible power over a limited region in these things; and if that power is made infinite it will be even more irresponsible." -- G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America

Chesterton prophesied here that a culture becoming more feminine will have less liberties. So if legislation that regulates your private behavior down to what and when you are able to eat begins springing up everywhere you look, you can be rest assured that it is a side effect of a heavy dose of feminism and effeminacy. The feminine has already been given nearly unilateral autonomy and sway in the domestic theater. She has unlimited power in a limited sphere. To unleash that kind of authority from its intended scope is to expand her desire to control the nursery under her own roof to the nurseries of others,and perhaps even to the degree of being primarily concerned with only the nurseries of others, abandoning her own.