A Woman's Philosophy of Woman

"To emancipate woman is not to acknowledge her right to use and abuse love; such an emancipation is only the slavery of the passions; the use of the beauty and youth of woman by man; the use of man by woman for his fortune or credit. To emancipate woman is to acknowledge and declare her free, the equal of man in the social and the moral law, and in labor. At present, over the whole surface of the globe, woman, in certain respects, is not subjected to the same moral law as man; her chastity is given over almost without restriction to the brutal passions of the other sex, and she often endures alone the consequences of a fault committed by both.

Readers, male and female, several of the adversaries of the cause which I defend, have carried the discussion into the domain of science, and have not shrunk before the nudity of biological laws and anatomical details. I praise them for it; the body being respectable, there is no indecency in speaking of the laws which govern it; but as it would be an inconsistency on my part to believe that blamable in myself which I approve in them, you will not be surprised that I follow them on the ground which they have chosen, persuaded that Science, the chaste daughter of Thought, can no more lose her chastity under the pen of a pure woman than under that of a pure man." The Author