“Feminism is going to make it possible for the first time for men to be free.
At present the ordinary man has the choice between being a slave and being a scoundrel.
For the ordinary man is prone to fall in love and marry and have children…He wants to see them all taken care of, since they are unable to care for themselves.
Yet, if he has them to think about, he is not free… The bravest things will not be done in the world until women do not have to look to men for support…[But] men don’t want the freedom that women are thrusting on them. They don’t want a chance to be brave…They want to give food and clothes and a little home with lace curtains to some woman.
Men want the sense of power more than they want the sense of freedom… They want someone dependent on them more than they want a comrade. As long as they can be lords in a thirty-dollar flat, they are willing enough to be slaves in the great world outside…
In short, they are afraid that they will cease to be sultans in little monogamic harems. But the world doesn’t want sultans. It wants men who call their souls their own. And that is what feminism is going to do for men – give them back their souls, so that they can risk them fearlessly in the adventure of life.”
-Floyd Dell, “Feminism for Men,” 1914.