1922, December 16: Joplin Globe (Joplin, Mississippi), "homosexual"/"heterosexual"

In the following selection, OutHistory has bolded the most salient words. An editorial in the Joplin Globe (Joplin, Mississippi), headed "As To The Women," begins:

Because the women of Great Britain did not vote as a sex in the last election, did not mass their strength behind one or more definite issue, [writer] Hall Caine thinks they are asleep. He thinks they might, if they wished, do as the Amazon women did, and dominate men as the queen bee dominates the hive.

Similar sentiements have been expressed in American since women were given the ballot, yet therre is no ground for believing the Amazonia idea wil ever get far. It simply isn't nature. Edith Johnson, a woman, writing in the Oklahoman, explains the problem in a sensible sort of way.

Miss Johnson says that only a small percentage of women are so constituted temperamentaly that they have the impulse to group themselves with other women and work and vote separately and apart from men. She says the spirit of a woman's party, when traced to its origin, is homosexual. That is, the spuirit that would have women feel, act and think as women rather than as whole and complete human beings. They are women who want to dominate, rather than be dominated.

But the perfectly normal woman is heterosexual, and lacking an instinctive antagonism toward men. Instead, she likes men spontaneously. She rears her children and sacrifices her life for them and finds her happiness that way. She finds pleasure in being dominated within reason. She wants to look up to, not down upon, the man who plays an important part in her life. She has no desire to organize against the man in her own home, nor against men in the world.

Following this sort of reasoning, Miss Johnston concludes women never will vote as a sex, and she is right. THe women who would have it otherwise are acting and believing in conformity with their instincts, but their instincts are not the same as those of the great majority of their sex. Happiness for the world does not lie along any [torn page, missing words]. Man alone is not the unit of society. No more [missing words] alone. The real unity is a man and a woman and the[missing word] work together and for each other.

Note
"As To The Woman." Joplin Globe (Joplin, Missouri) December 16, 1922, p. 12. Accessed April 6, 2016 from Newspapers.com.