Judge — March 1937 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

GOD FORGIVE ME— | Despise Women BY A. D. ROTHMAN THE EFFECT of the years upon me has been to make me realize that there is nothing more to talk about. A long time ago all that could or needed to be said had been said. I joined my sympa- thies with those of the obscure philoso- her who had wearily observed that the ast common heritage of humanity was silence. How ready I felt myself for that blessed condition where no matter what the stimulus the response would always be the same: no comment! But things like silence are not bought save at a price. It behooves your most earnest seeker for that blessed state to remember the fact. It is among the hardest things in the world to have nothing to say. In my own case there are extenuating circumstances for tossing away the fine resolution to remain mute. JUDGE would have it otherwise and approached me in the fine candid manner PP the Devil. We have long been seeking one, the Editor said, whom we could safely introduce to the world as the most intolerant man in it. Here was the discreet application of an enormous magnet to the iron in me. It is to my eternal credit that I resisted— a little. You are quite right, I said to the Editor, I am probably the least tolerant creature left on earth, but, please, let me remain that in silence. Come, he said, let's be serious. Would a thousand words ¢ intolerance be enough? I could make it do, I replied. Copy on Friday, please, he said. Had I sold myself too easily? No, I reassured myself, there had been a struggle. Unsatisfactory Relationship Contrary to general belief, it is more important what men think of each other than what they do to each other. At first glance that seems preposterous, but con. sider: where men think well of each other they never try to do each other harm. That to me underlies the present unsatisfactory relationship between the sexes. I am convinced that they simply do not think very highly of each other. In my own case I am rather frank to admit that I pretty thoroughly despise the opposite sex. That's a dangerous ad- mission, because members of both sexes are going to hate me for it and, what is more regrettable, are going to shut their minds to whatever significant I may have to say. But one doesn’t break a silence of such long standing as mine to be simply ameliorative. Surgical or nothing. The Scalpel, Please I say I cope women. However, I hardly shun them. There’s a common humanity, certain common needs, that draw us together—God forgive me—but March 1937 intrinsically I find them intolerable. Mark you, I'm not fool enough to think that the traits of men-and women differ in every respect. To a very large degree both sexes are alike in their virtues and their failings. When nature is beneficent or the race clever with its hands, the material good fortune of both sexes is strikingly high and strikingly similar. Our woes and joys are so bound down to earth that the common good or evil is common to both sexes. But it is sheer Nonsense not to recognize that certain enormous differences exist between man and woman. It is a nonsense that has produced nasty ways and silly business. Intellectual Savages It is because women are intellectual savages and emotional frauds that they have vitiated the new freedom that in our lifetime they have created for them. selves or have had given them. What is one of the principal outward ways in which they imitated men as evidence of the newer equality of the sexes? In smok- ing, a trivial, inconvenient, unhygienic habit. If you kiss a woman today you find she reeks. Of course, so do most men—but for the love of Heaven, if equality of the sexes is to be sought even in supeciesalites women should have found better things to imitate. I pur- posely choose a triviality such as smok- ing, to illustrate my point. I could of course cite more important things. Take woman's participation in politics and government. She imitates man in the least attractive outward practices without being able to copy him in his occasional profundity; she is corrupt, lazy, machine- ridden and easily fooled. Go to a na. tional convention of either of the parties and convince yourself. Emotional Frauds If she were not an intellectual savage, woman wouldn't copy things from the outside only, like the African natives who imitated in wood to the last detail the white man’s rifle and then were sur- prised that it wouldn't shoot. And if she weren't an emotional fraud she wouldn't try to sustain herself with the cheap patent medicine for the ego, that in every respect she is as good as man and can do anything (Page 28, please) comicbooks.com