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Hedwig Dohm, "Women’s Right to Vote" (1876)

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Those women who do not want the right to vote thus relinquish the highest levels of human development and declare themselves a subordinated category of the human species. They may continue to live on the crumbs that fall from the tables of their lords; they may continue to kiss the hand that beats them, and identify with and take pride in the medals and offices of their lords and masters. And if the heavens bestow new titles upon their husbands, let them turn up their noses and raise their souls up high and impress their sisters with that delightful uttering: I, too, am privy councilor now! There have always been subservient characters, and there always will be.

[ . . . ]

It is a matter of rescuing all of you women from the sad and dull tedium, from the monotony of your miserable existence. [ . . . ] Shake off the character that convention has forced upon you and break through this state of subservience that used to be synonymous with womanhood.

Rise up and demand the right to vote!

[ . . . ]

Wake up, women of Germany, if you have a heart to feel the sufferings of your fellow sisters and tears to weep over them, even though you yourself might rest in the bosom of happiness.

Wake up, if you have enough fury to feel your degradation, and enough sense to recognize the sources of your misery.

Demand the right to vote, for the right to vote is the only path toward independence and equality, toward freedom and happiness for women. Without political rights, you are powerless in the face of the most incredible crimes committed against your sex, even if your souls might overflow with compassion, kindness, and magnanimity.

Pull yourselves together! Organize yourselves!
Show the world that you are capable of enthusiastic dedication, and rouse the conscience of people, stir their hearts, and convince their minds through your deeds and words!

Do not rely on the assistance of German men! We have only few friends and supporters among them. [ . . . ]

Be brave, for God helps those who help themselves.
Think of the brave words of the American Emerson:

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”

All you poor women and victims of gender despotism, thus far you have been traveling on the sea of life without rudder and sail, and therefore you have rarely reached the shore; and most of the time, the ship of your happiness has foundered due to calm or storm.

Let the right to vote be your rudder henceforth,
Your power be your sail,
and then confidently entrust yourself to the sea, its storm, and its cliffs, and sooner or later you will catch sight of land, the land you have been “looking for with your souls” for centuries, millennia even, the land where women do not belong to men but to themselves.

When the Englishman Somerset brought along a slave from Africa to England, Lord Mansfield declared, despite the prejudice of the times, that the slave was free for the simple reason that no human in England could be a slave.

Therefore, women are free as well,
because within a state of free humans no serfs can exist.

Human rights have no
gender.




Source: Hedwig Dohm, “Das Stimmrecht der Frauen” [“Women’s Right to Vote”] in Hedwig Dohm, Der Frauen Natur und Recht. Zur Frauenfrage zwei Abhandlungen über Eigenschaften und Stimmrecht der Frauen [Women’s Nature and Rights. Concerning the Women’s Question, Two Treatises on the Character and Suffrage of Women]. Berlin, 1876, pp. 57ff, 159ff.

Original German texts reprinted in Margrit Twellmann, Die Deutsche Frauenbewegung im Spiegel repräsentativer Frauenzeitschriften. Ihre Anfänge und erste Entwicklung [The German Women’s Movement as Reflected in Representative Women's Journals: Its Beginnings and Initial Development], 2 vols., vol. 2, Quellen 1843-1889 [Sources, 1843-1889]. Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain, 1972, pp. 535-56.

Translation: Erwin Fink

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