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Why We Oppose Pockets for Women
From the book Are Women People? by Alice Duer Miller, 1915

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Why We Oppose Pockets for Women

1. BECAUSE pockets are not a natural right.

2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did they would have them.

3. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them.

4. Because women are required to carry enough things as it is, without the additional burden of pockets.

5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to whose pockets were to be filled.

6. Because it would destroy man's chivalry toward woman, if he did not have to carry all her things in his pockets.

7. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature.

8. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco, pipes, whiskey flasks, chewing gum and compromising letters. We see no reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely.


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About this book: In 1915, the state-by-state battle for suffrage had won a few battles. Supporters of woman suffrage had multiplied, which also brought anti-suffrage sentiments to the surface to counter the suffrage arguments.

The author of this volume of feminist humor and satire, Alice Duer Miller, wrote many of the pieces for her column in the New York Tribune, "Are Women People?" She also wrote a sequel, published in 1917, Women Are People!

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Part of a collection of etexts on women's history produced by Jone Johnson Lewis. Editing and formatting © 1999-2003 Jone Johnson Lewis.

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