The Rights of Woman
Man, are you capable of being just? It
is a woman who poses the question; you will not deprive her of that right at
least. Tell me, what gives you sovereign empire to opress my sex? Your strength?
Your talents? Observe the Creator in his wisdom; survey in all her grandeur that
nature with whom you seem to ant to be in harmony, and give me, if you dare, an
exampl of this tyrannical empire. Go back to animals, consult the elements,
study plants, finally glance at all the modifications of organic matter, and
surrender to the evidence when I offer you the menas; search, probe, and
distinguish, if you can, the sexes in the administration of nature. Everywhere
you will find them mingled; everywhere they cooperate in harmonious tpgetherness
in this immortal masterpiece.
Man alone has raised his exceptional
circumstances to a principle. Bizarre, blind, bloated with science and
degenerated--in a century of enlightenment and wisdom--into the crassest
ignorance, he wants to command as a despot a sex which is in full possession of
its intellectual faculties; he pretends to enjoy the Revolution and to claim his
rights to equality in order to say nothing more about it.
Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
For
the National Assemby to decree in its last sessions, or in those of the next
legislature:
Preamble
Mothers, daughters, sisters [and] representatives
of the nation demand to be constituted into a national assembly. Believing that
ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of
public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, [the women] have
resolved to set forth a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred
rights of woman in order that this declaration, constantly exposed before all
members of the society, will ceaselessly remind them of their rights and duties;
in order that the authoritative acts f women and teh athoritative acts of men
may be at any moment compared with and respectful of the purpose of all
political institutions; and in order that citizens' demands, henceforth based on
simple and incontestable principles, will always support the constitution, good
morals, and the happiness of all.
Consequently, the sex that is as
superior in beauty as it is in courage during the sufferings of maternity
recognizes and declares in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme
Being, the following Rights of WOman and of Female Citizens.
Article I
Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her
rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility.
Article II
The purpose of any political association is the
conservation of the natural and impresciptible rights of woman and man; these
rights are liberty property, security, and especially resistance to oppression.
Article III
The principle of all sovereignty rests
essentially with the nation, which is nothing but the union of woman and man; no
body and no individual can exercise any authority which does not come expressly
from it (the nation).
Article IV
Liberty and justice consist of restoring all
that belongs to others; thus, the only limits on the exercise of the natural
rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny; these limits are to be reformed by
the laws of nature and reason.
Article V
Laws of nature and reason proscibe all acts
harmful to society; everything which is not prohibited by these wise and divine
laws cannot be prevented, and no one can be constrained to do what they do not
command.
Article VI
The law must be the expression of the general
will; all female and male citizens must contribute either personally or through
their representatives to its formation; it must be the same for all: male and
female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to
all honors, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and
without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents.
Article VII
No woman is an exception; she is accused,
arrested, and detained in cases determined by law. Women, like men, obey this
rigorous law.
Article VIII
The law must establish only those penalties
that are strictly and obviously necessary...
Article IX
Once any woman is declared guilty, complete
rigor is exercised by law.
Article X
No one is to be disquieted for his very basic
opinions; woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the
right to mount the rostrum, provided that her demonstrations do not disturb the
legally established public order.
Article XI
The free communication of thoughts and opinions
is one of the most precious rights of woman, since that liberty assures
recognition of children by their fathers. Any female citizen thus may say
freely, I am the mother of a child which belongs to you, without being forced by
a barbarous prejudice to hide the truth; (an exception may be made) to respond
to the abuse of this liberty in cases determined by law.
Article XII
The gaurantee of the rights of woman and the
female citizen implies a major benefit; this guarantee must be instituted for
the advantage of all, and not for the particular benefit of those to whom it is
entrusted.
Article XIII
For the support of the public force and the
expenses of administration, the contributions of woman and man are equal; she
shares all the duties and all the painful tasks; therefore, whe must have the
same share in the distribution of positions, employment, offices, honors, and
jobs.
Article XIV
Female and male citizens have the right to
verify, either by themselves of through their representatives, the necessity of
the public contribution. This can only apply to women if they are granted an
equal share, not only of wealth, but also of public administration, and in the
determination of the proportion, the base, the collection, and the duration of
the tax.
Article XV
The collectivity of women, joined for tax
purposes to the aggregate of men, has the right to demand an accounting of his
administration from any public agent.
Article XVI
No society has a constitution without the
guarantee of rights and the separation of powers; the constitution is null if
the majority of individuals comprising the nation have not cooperated in
drafting it.
Article XVII
Property belongs to both sexes whether united
or separate; for each it is an inviolable and sacred right' no one can be
deprived of it, since it is the true patrimony of natire, unless the legally
determined public need obviously dictates it, and then only with a just and
prior indemnity.
Postscript
Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard
throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. The powerful empire of
nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies.
The flame of truth has dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation.
Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and needs recourse to yours to break
his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh,
women, women! When will you cease to be blind? What advantage have you received
from the Revolution? A more pronounced scorn, a more marked disdain. In the
centuries of corruption you ruled only over the weakness of men. The reclamation
of your patrimony, based on the wise decrees of nature-what have you to dread
from such a fine undertaking? The
bon mot of the legislator of the
marriage of Cana? Do you fear that our French legislators, correctors of that
morality, long ensnared by political practices now out of date, will only say
again to you: women, what is there in common between you and us? Everything, you
will have to answer. If they persist in their weakness in putting this non
sequitur in contradiction to their principles, courageously oppose the force of
reason to the empty pretentions of superiority; unite yourselves beneath the
standards of philosophy; deploy all the energy of your character, and you will
soon see these haughty men, not groveling at your feet as servile adorers, but
proud to share with you the treasures of the Supreme Being. Regardless of what
barriers confront you, it is in your power to free yourselves; you have only to
want to....
Marriage is the tomb of trust and love. The married woman
can with impunity give bastards to her husband, and also give them the wealth
which does not belong to them. The woman who is unmarried has only one feeble
right; ancient and inhuman laws refuse to her for her children the right to the
name and the wealth of their father; no new laws have been made in this matter.
If it is considered a paradox and an impossibility on my part to try to give my
sex an honorable and just consistency, I leave it to men to attain glory for
dealing with this matter; but while we wait, the way can be prepared through
national education, the restoration of morals, and conjugal conventions.
Form for a Social Contract Between Man and Woman
We, _____
and ______, moved by our own will, unite ourselves for the duration of our
lives, and for the duration of our mutual inclinations, under the following
conditions: We intend and wish to make our wealth communal, meanwhile reserving
to ourselves the right to divide it in favor of our children and of those toward
whom we might have a particular inclination, mutually recognizing that our
property belongs directly to our children, from whatever bed they come, and that
all of them without distinction have the right to bear the name of the fathers
and mothers who have acknowledged them, and we are charged to subscribe to the
law which punishes the renunciation of one's own blood. We likewise obligate
ourselves, in case of separation, to divide our wealth and to set aside in
advance the portion the law indicates for our children, and in the event of a
perfect union, the one who dies will divest himself of half his property in his
children's favor, and if one dies childless, the survivor will inherit by right,
unless the dying person has disposed of half the common property in favor of one
whom he judged deserving.
That is approximately the formula for the marriage act I propose for
execution. Upon reading this strange document, I see rising up against me the
hypocrites, the prudes, the clergy, and the whole infernal sequence. But how it
[my proposal] offers to the wise the moral means of achieving the perfection of
a happy government! . . .
Moreover, I would like a law which would
assist widows and young girls deceived by the false promises of a man to whom
they were attached; I would like, I say, this law to force an inconstant man to
hold to his obligations or at least [to pay] an indemnity equal to his wealth.
Again, I would like this law to be rigorous against women, at least those who
have the effrontery to have reCourse to a law which they themselves had violated
by their misconduct, if proof of that were given. At the same time, as I showed
in
Le Bonheur primitit de l'homme, in 1788, that prostitutes should be
placed in designated quarters. It is not prostitutes who contribute the most to
the depravity of morals, it is the women of' society. In regenerating the
latter, the former are changed. This link of fraternal union will first bring
disorder, but in consequence it will produce at the end a perfect
harmony.
I offer a foolproof way to elevate the soul of women; it is to
join them to all the activities of man; if man persists in finding this way
impractical, let him share his fortune with woman, not at his caprice, but by
the wisdom of laws. Prejudice falls, morals are purified, and nature regains all
her rights. Add to this the marriage of priests and the strengthening of the
king on his throne, and the French government cannot fail.
