That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute; but such of you as wish to ...be happy willingly give up the harsh title of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend.... Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your sex; regard us then as being placed by Providence under your protection, and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If woman alone had suffered under these mistaken traditions [of women's subordination], if she could have borne the evil by hersel...f, it would have been less pitiful, but her brother man, in the laws he created and ignorantly worshipped, has suffered with her. He has lost her highest help; he has crippled the intelligence he needed; he has belittled the very source of his own being and dwarfed the image of his Maker.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
She has been man's slave. He has been educated at her expense. If he bought the ice cream, she was expected to pay for all his lux...uries in reduced wages. She has done the drudgery and borne the insults of those who wronged her, assuming to be her protector.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The history of woman is the history of the continued and universal oppression of one sex by the other. The emancipation of woman i...s her restoration to equal rights and privileges with man.... Need we wonder, then, at the sad spectacle which humanity offers us? Its hideous wars, its social abominations, its foul creeds, its treacheries, vices, wants, diseases, lusts, tyrannies, and crimes are the natural outcome of the subjugation of one half of the human race by the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In civilized societies today ... clitoris envy, or womb envy, takes subtle forms. Man's constant need to disparage woman, to humbl...e her, to deny her equal rights, and to belittle her achievements--all are expressions of his innate envy and fear.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let every woman ask herself: "Why am I the slave of man? Why is my brain said not to be the equal of his brain? Why is my work not... paid equally with his? Why must my body be controlled by my husband? Why may he take my labor in the household, giving me in exchange what he deems fit? Why may he take my children from me? Will them away while yet unborn?" Let every woman ask.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet... from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »