Ernest Belfort Bax

The Legal Subjection of men (Dodo Press) Ernest Belfort Bax

Ernest Belfort Bax (1854-1926) was a British socialist journalist and philosopher, associated with the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). Born into a nonconformist religious family in Leamington, he was first introduced to Marxism while studying philosophy in Germany. There, he worked as a journalist on the Evening Standard. On his return to England in 1882, he joined the SDF, but grew disillusioned and in 1885 left to form the Socialist League with William Morris. After anarchists gained control of the League, he rejoined the SDF, and became the chief theoretician, and editor of the party paper Justice. He opposed the party's participation in the Labour Representation Committee, and eventually persuaded them to leave. Bax was an ardent antifeminist, and wrote many articles in The New Age and elsewhere opposing women's suffrage. In 1908 he wrote The Legal Subjection of Men as a response to John Stuart Mill's 1869 essay The Subjection of Women. In 1913 he published an essay, The Fraud of Feminism, detailing feminism's adverse effects. Section titles included The Anti-Man Crusade, The 'Chivalry' Fake and Always the 'Injured Innocent'.