Sex versus Sex. 

(By a New Woman.)

["At the present time a girl's education is effeminate, whereas it should be feminine."—Dr. Clement Dukes on "Hygiene of Youth."]

Good gracious! Our girls' education effeminate?

This makes it most hard to be clement to Dukes. 

This is prejudice—sheer,—which is what all we women hate, 

Just as, in games, we hate cheating and flukes. 

Effeminate? Lawks! Look at togs and lawn-tennis!

At "bikes," and at fashions bifurcate in—bags!

How awfully jealous the judgement of men is!

In true up-to-dateness how slowly man lags!

What is effeminate? Mollyish? Mawkish? The girl of the period, some years ago, Was soft, sentimental, shy, blushful and squawkish;

But can Dukes imagine that now she is so?

To squeal at a mouse, or to flush at a flattery

Once was the "note" of a young English girl,

Now she fears not battle, banter, or battery, 

Hunting-field cropper, or bicycle "purl."

Ingénues, all crumpled muslin and cackle

Leech had to picture; but girls of to-day

Calculus, cricket, or cleft-skirts will tackle, 

Equally "manly" in dress, work or play.

Swift on the Wheel, or successful as Wrangler,

Woman fast stealeth a march on poor Man. 

Woman effeminate? Many a dangler 

Is left "in the cart" while she goes to the van. 

Men are effeminate, now, but too often. 

Soon though, there'll be small distinction of sex,

Unless women harden still more as men soften, 

And then interposition the grumblers may vex. 

Fancy how Mrs. Lynn Linton will flutter, 

How "Ouida" will wail, how Buchanan will skirl;

When, owing to changes too awful to utter,

The true type of manhood is found—in a girl!

This poem, published anonymously in Punch by a self-proclaimed New Woman, argues against Dr. Clement Dukes' opinion on women's education. Instead, it states that women are rising above men slowly but surely and that women possess more manhood than men, again lending to the liminal space of gender that the New Woman exists within as well as their assumption of superiority. The author alludes to Eliza Lynn Linton, a notable Victorian anti-feminist writer, and "Ouida," the pseudonym of writer Marie Louise de la Ramée, a critic of the New Woman movement. 

Author Unknown. “Sex versus Sex.” Poem. Punch Magazine. 7 August 1897. p. 58