I would like to meet the woman who would entrust herself, or her children, to a female physician if she believed her to be less capable of calm, reason, and energy than her male counterpart! I would not have such a female doctor cure even a cat, Mr. von Nathusius. [ . . . ]
Recently, people have become somewhat suspicious of medical specialists, and perhaps rightly so, because one may fear that their constant preoccupation with a single organ could cloud their view of the body as a whole. And you would delight us with such amateurishly trained female specialists? That practically amounts to preaching child murder! [ . . . ]
The third occupation that Mr. von Nathusius accepts is teaching, and he does
“not shrink back from the thought of female elementary teachers for boys.”
“How much less,” he muses, “would a female teacher cost the municipal or patron’s purse.”
Here again is the masterful principle, even when it comes to intellectual work, of not paying for performance, but merely paying only as much as the female teacher needs to avoid dying of starvation. Mr. Nathusius wishes that any education of women at secondary school be ruled out, just
“for the simple reason that, in his view, any collegiality between men and
women would likely prove not only corrupting but also perpetually impractical,
since it is essentially unnatural.”
Here, Mr. von Nathusius fails to justify his opinion. Why, we ask ourselves, does he deem this collegiality perverse and corrupting, even though it has existed – at least in larger cities – in elementary classes and schools for many years, and, at least to our knowledge, without prompting any unnatural manifestations?
Does he perhaps regard our solid, honorable, German male teachers and heads of families as nothing but closet Don Juans, or does he view collegiality as a campaign between the sexes in which the vanity of the male colleagues might sustain injury?
In this regard, I do not understand Mr. v. Nathusius whatsoever.
Secondly, he excludes women from secondary education
“since any learned education will and must always lie outside women’s calling.”
Mr. v. Nathusius seems to imagine learned education as something particularly wonderful and lofty.
Becoming learned, Mr. von Nathusius, is possible for anyone who, whether his or her mind be mediocre or even poor, has sufficient ability to sit on his or her derrière – if you’ll pardon the phrase; and according to my information, no one has ever denied women’s industry and perseverance.
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