  Feminist theorists’ commentary on Du Bois’s political thought has tended to concentrate on chapter 7 of Darkwater (1920),  “The Damnation of Women.”  Women are damned, Du Bois proposes, for “only at the sacrifice of intelligence and the chance to do their best work can the majority of women bear children” (1920, 78–79). While Farah Griffin interprets “Damnation” in the perspective of a still persistent “politics of protection” that threatens the autonomy of black women, arguing that Du Bois recognized the limits of that politics (2000, 34–36), Lawrie Balfour reads the essay as contributing to a “feminist theory of citizenship” (2011, 99–100). Taking issue with Balfour, Shatema Threadcraft argues that “Damnation” reprises and elaborates Souls’ masculinist treatment of manliness as an appropriate norm of citizenship (2017, 92–94).