What does that mean, to be a woman?
It means having a different physical composition than a man. The difference concerning the mental capacities of the two sexes remains indeterminable for the time being, and men, the proprietors of creation, would do well to hold back a bit in their attempts to evict the political thoughts that a woman may be harboring in her brain. They would do well to hold off with their charges until scientific substantiation becomes the measure of scientific truth, taking the place of vociferous attachment to subjective inspiration, metaphysical prattle by old philosophers, poetic witticisms and traditions that spring from fantasy, all of which constantly appear on the agenda whenever the nature and peculiarities of woman are discussed. For the time being, we have to assume that a sex which, as Fourier emphasizes, boasts more great queens, proportionally speaking, than men do great kings is not at all without political sense.
If one allows the principle that a different physical composition necessarily causes different moral and mental capacities, then where should one draw the line? – We might just as well accept the superstition that all humpbacks, as individuals marked by God, should withdraw into the obscurity of private life; that all lame persons are relatives of Beelzebub; that all redheads are traitors; and that all blacks are slaves. And, indeed, in the dark centuries of the Middle Ages people inferred moral characteristics from physical peculiarities. In early medieval France, women who gave birth to twins were found guilty of adultery and sentenced to death. Old women were burnt as witches in droves – on account of red-rimmed eyes.
The claim was: The woman who bears twins is guilty of adultery.
The claim was: Woman, because she bears children at all, is tainted with political impotence.
The principle at the root of both conceptions is the same:
A physical process is arbitrarily given a moral or mental basis. Since women bear children, they are not supposed have any political rights.
I maintain that because men do not bear children, they ought not to have any political rights, and I consider one assertion as profound as the other.
You have no political rights because you are a woman!
You have no political rights because you are a Jew!
That is what human society has called out to Jews for centuries. You have no political rights because you are a Shudra (a man of the people, of the lowest caste), decrees the Indian civil code, and if you concern yourself with politics, you will be punished severely.
You have no political rights because you are black and a Negro, says the slaveholder to the slave, and because you are black you are my slave and your children belong to me and I may sell them.
Why? Because you are black.
What is a Negro? What is a Jew? What is a woman? What is a Shudra?
They are oppressed people.
Oppressed by whom? – By their brothers who are stronger than they are.
Cain and Abel!
Abel was the first victim to fall in the struggle for survival. – Could it be perhaps that the last Cain and the last Abel will die only when the last pair of humans have died as well? [ . . . ]
Because she is a woman. This means because she is mother and caregiver of the child and no other activity can possibly exist in conjunction with this sacred duty.
A profound view.
print version
return to list
previous document