FROM THE ARCHIVES:This column, on what was effectively the women's page of The Irish Timesin 1923 was written by someone using the pen-name Lumex and could be seen, perhaps, as an early plea for political correctness as well as illustrating some of the constant features of all progress in women's rights.
EVERYONE ENJOYS a joke, and no one more than woman – even at her own expense. When one comes to think of it, has not woman herself been an unfailing subject for funny stories in every pantomime, every comic paper, and most after-dinner speeches? The fund of jokes has not by any means reached the point of exhaustion yet.
Many of them are well-merited, many true to life, and others again are redeemed by their inherent wit; but a host are still going the rounds about which something should be said in a quiet way, for they are both unjust and unmerited, so far-fetched in their exaggerations that they are a travesty of the feminine character.
And women themselves are, perhaps, too ready to pass these latters over with a generous smile.
You know what has been said about giving a dog a bad name. Is it wise, think you, dear womenfolk, to allow this type of unworthy joke against yourselves to always pass unheeded? It hurts sometimes, and not because it is turned against yourselves, but because of something in it that is really an injustice.
Even in wit there should be a margin left for an element of fair play and a certain kindliness of spirit. For ridicule can be as deadly in effect as a serpent’s sting; it can spread wrong ideas in a more potent and telling way than any precept couched in direct and forceful terms could convey.
If a simple case in point is needed – the first woman to ride a bicycle in the public street was stoned; she was ostracised by society, denounced from the pulpit, the theme of ribald song, the butt of the ignorant.
And yet, what more harmless than the poor bicycle; what more essential to every-day needs, and what has contributed more largely to her present-day freedom? For it was the happy thought of the bicycle that released her once and for all from the thralldom of the trailing skirt, the tight waist, the embroidery frame, and their natural concomitant – the never-ending doctor’s bill!
Each stretching of the wings has brought with it the same list of persecutions in a greater or less degree; university education, political freedom, the entrée to the professions – all alike had to be won in the teeth of the bitterest opposition from the unthinking masses.
So public opinion is a force to be reckoned with – and of very much greater concern to women than to men. Every little counts, and no opportunity should be lost for educating the popular mind to a healthier idea, a truer conception of the feminine.
A cheap jibe at her sex no woman should allow to pass without a protest, in some form or other, to the perpetrator. In recent years, the low-water level has undoubtedly been raised, but all would benefit by the raising of it a little higher still.
But there are jokes and jokes, and some of the best are those centering around woman.
Human failings can quite well be made the subject of merriment without hurting if presented in the right way. For example, the old pantomime rhyme –
“Put two old women to two cups of tea,
And they will talk of more scandal than ever could be.
Put two old men to two glasses of beer,
And they will talk of more work than they could do in a year.”
Another instance in which the sharpness of a thrust was robbed of its hurt by a sheath of wit was provided by the following story:- A man called upon to propose a toast to the first and newly-admitted lady members of his club expressed his pent-up feelings in the words –
“To the ladies! Once our superiors, now our equals.”
Fun, frolic, laughter – this work-a-day world needs as much as it can get; but the milk of human kindness should be dispensed at the same time with a generous hand.
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