The Gay Rebellion

This weekend, I found in a secondhand bookstore a 1911 novel by Robert W. Chambers called The Gay Rebellion, a bosom-heaver about the Suffragettes, the opening paragraph of which is:

The year had been, as everybody knows, a momentous and sinister year for the masculine sex; marriages and births in the United States alone had fallen off nearly eighty per cent.; the establishment of Suffragette Unions in every city, town, and village of the country, their obedience to the dictation of the Central National Female Franchise Federation; the financial distress of the florists, caterers, milliners and modistes incident to the almost total suspension of social functions throughout the great cities of the land, threatened eventually to paralyse the nation's business.

Flipping through the book, I also noticed this passage on page 191:

"[The law you're proposing] is reactionary—a miserable subterfuge—a treacherous attempt to return to the old order of things! A conspiracy to re-shackle, re-enslave American womanhood with the sordid chains of domestic cares! To drive her back into the kitchen, the laundry, the nursery—back into the dark ages of dependence and acquiescence and non-resistance—back into the degraded epochs of sentimental relations with the tyrant man!"

She leaned forward in her excitement and her sable boa slid back as she made a gesture with her expensive muff.

And this, from page 218:

Thousands and thousands of marriageable young men were hiding in their clubs or in the shrubbery of Central Park, waiting for a chance to make their escape to the country and remain incognito in hay lofts until the eugenic revolution had ended itself in a dazzling display of divorce.

Obviously, I had to have it.

I'd also like to note that when I found and purchased it, I was wearing my very favorite shirt of all time, which says, simply, across the chest: "REBEL." I find this shirt hugely amusing not only because of the sheer absurdity of labeling oneself a rebel with an emblazoned, mass-produced t-shirt, but also because anytime some total douche sees me wearing the shirt and goes, "You think you're some kind of rebel, huh?" I like to reply, "No, it's not a statement; it's an exhortation. Rebel, dude!" and then watch his glaikit face droop with confusion. But I digress.

Bring on the Gay Rebellion!