The White Feather Campaign began with the creation of the white feather as a symbol of cowardice and unfulfilled civic duty. With the war effort and the recruitment campaign in full swing, the women of the White Feather would present any healthy young Englishman in civilian dress with this token, in order to symbolize their scorn for him and his failure to be man. Upon receipt of a white feather, these men were being told that they weren’t “real men” and that the women around them looked upon this apparent lack of masculinity with disgust. The campaign was meant to make these men question their gender identity and hopefully drive them to enlist in the military so that they could correct this perceived imbalance.
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