If we may survey the questions occupying Lebanese public opinion, and women's circles in particular, the question of woman's political rights stands out at the head of them. It is the question of this very day, occupying the highest place in the thinking of the Lebanese woman — for woman has learned on good authority that this great disparity between her and man is the party chiefly responsible for the crushing failure that pervades the various departments of our life: national and social in general, and familial in the narrow sense..
I shall not speak to you, ladies and gentlemen, of the manifestations of man's bankruptcy in government, nor of the calamities to which he has dragged the country. Nor shall I claim that woman is broader in understanding or farther-seeing in wisdom, for that inquiry is not my province. Nor shall I recite in your ears the glorious silent works to which woman's consoling, tender hand has reached out with love and sacrifice, for that is a topic your ears have wearied of until the hearing of it has become a trite and tiresome thing...... Likewise I shall avoid entering into the debate over whether woman, upon obtaining her political rights, will desert her family nest and take up residence in Parliament, or crowd man out of the state posts that remain to this day his exclusive preserve...
These are matters that have become self-evident and familiar, so much has been written of
them and so much have they been debated.
Yet as one woman of this country, and with my woman's turn of mind, I should like to pause here a moment, to assure man, and to set his mind at rest for the last time, that nothing of the sort will ever happen. So long as woman keeps woman's instinct, she will prefer no atmosphere in the world to the atmosphere of her own little house, and nothing will distract her from tending her cell and preserving the sanctity of her first mission...
As for those whose fancies whisper otherwise to them, so that they build castles and towers out of illusions — these wander blindly in their error; they do not understand woman's nature and do not wish to understand it. They meet every word contrary to their theory with a measure of mockery, a questioning look, and always the same single question: "How strange woman is! What has she to do with political rights? By nature she is unpolitical, and can well spare herself the trouble of them; better she content herself with her domestic comfort. What does she want with all that headache!!"
This is talk we hear at every turn — in the salons, in the cafés, in the open street. For it speaks the mind of most of our men; indeed, many of those who champion woman outwardly show their true colors, "when it comes to the pinch," on this very opinion. The painful truth that must be faced is that this opinion prevails throughout our various circles, and few indeed are the enlightened, sincere company who acknowledge that woman must be given her political right and her equality with man in all rights.
I bear no grudge against this man who fights my idea and obstructs its progress with all the power and influence at his command, nor do I blame him for this crookedness in his thinking.. For this crookedness is the fruit of ten centuries during which man exercised absolute power: he laid down the laws and statutes, favoring himself and cheating woman of her right. He removed her from government and narrowed her outlets to light and knowledge.... He set her in his own scales, and behold, her weight equaled but half his own: his testimony whole, hers deficient and rejected...
And man addressed woman from his ivory tower, and she bowed her disheveled head to him with the abjection of the weak; and humiliation marched in the processions of her days and nights across time, dragging her downward and keeping her from every great work.
Man exercised his legal supremacy throughout these centuries; woman was denied her natural rights, and her work was confined to managing her house and bearing children. The natural result of this division of labor was the practical, unintellectual direction which woman's life took: she found herself facing a society, and facing a man, who asked of her nothing but to secure offspring and to secure amusement and pleasure. She complied with their demand contentedly, and set about concentrating her attention on beautifying her body, interrogating her mirror with every art of that sensual allure which raises her in man's eye — a bodily raising and nothing more. Hence her gradual decline, and her pursuit of