Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
The insurrections on Southern plantations were always defeated by the
doubt and duplicity of the slaves themselves. That little band of
heroes who precipitated the American Revolution in 1776 were so
ostracised that they walked the streets with bowed heads, from a sense
of loneliness and apprehension. Woman's apathy to the wrongs of her
sex, instead of being a plea for her remaining in her present
condition, is the strongest argument against it. How completely
demoralized by her subjection must she be, who does not feel her
personal dignity assailed when all women are ranked in every State
Constitution with idiots, lunatics, criminals, and minors; when in the
name of Justice, man holds one scale for woman, another for himself;
when by the spirit and letter of the laws she is made responsible for
crimes committed against her, while the male criminal goes free; when
from altars where she worships no woman may preach; when in the
courts, where girls of tender age may be arraigned for the crime of
infanticide, she may not plead for the most miserable of her sex; when
colleges she is taxed to build and endow, deny her the right to share
in their advantages; when she finds that which should be her
glory--her possible motherhood--treated everywhere by man as a
disability and a crime! A woman insensible to such indignities needs
some transformation into nobler thought, some purer atmosphere to
breathe, some higher stand-point from which to study human rights.
It is said, "the difference between the sexes indicates different
spheres." It would be nearer the truth to say the difference indicates
different duties in the same sphere, seeing that man and woman were
evidently made for each other, and have shown equal capacity in the
ordinary range of human duties. In governing nations, leading armies,
piloting ships across the sea, rowing life-boats in terrific gales; in
art, science, invention, literature, woman has proved herself the
complement of man in the world of thought and action. This difference
does not compel us to spread our tables with different food for man
and woman, nor to provide in our common schools a different course of
study for boys and girls. Sex pervades all nature, yet the male and
female tree and vine and shrub rejoice in the same sunshine and shade.
The earth and air are free to all the fruits and flowers, yet each
absorbs what best ensures its growth. But whatever it is, it requires
no special watchfulness on our part to see that it is maintained. This
plea, when closely analyzed, is generally found to mean woman's
inferiority.
The superiority of man, however, does not enter into the demand for
suffrage, for in this country all men vote; and as the lower orders of
men are not superior, either by nature or grace, to the higher orders
of women, they must hold and exercise the right of self-government on
some other ground than superiority to women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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