Andrew's Wiki
Subjection Women

On the Subjection of Women 1869

Basic

• Seen as revolutionary (he supported women’s vote: b/c men will clearly vote to suppress women, so women need to be able to vote to protect themselves)
  • “we know what legal protection the slaves have, where the laws are made by their masters” 177
• Supports women’s emancipation on utilitarian grounds (but remember he doesn’t see human beings themselves as numbers; he doesn’t like utilitarianism’s methods but does agree w/basic values)
  • Everyone will be better off if women have moral and intellectual freedom: we will double the number of minds trying to help the world; and give the men competition which will make men try harder
    • We are robbing society of people who will do the job better than the men now doing them 176: “stimulus of competition” good for all posts, especially public functions (civil posts) b/c surely everyone will already agree that more material jobs might be filled better by certain women
    • Plus everyone needs an intelligent life partner, not a stupid one
    • Everyone deserves to have their intellectual faculty nourished, to be allowed to think for themselves
• Women’s subjection a product of “might is right” culture but inappropriate for today
  • “How much longer is one form of society and life to content itself with the morality made for another?” 168
• Housewifery
  • “she takes not only her fair share, but usually the larger share, of the bodily and mental exertion required by their joint existence.” 172
• Jobs
  • “The power of earning is essential to the dignity of a woman, if she has not independent property.” 173
  • he doesn’t think that a woman should go out and get a nine to five job, though, b/c she does need to make sure the family is alright first and foremost: but she needs the OPTION to do so
    • doesn’t rule out jobs that could be done inside the home, just the ones that would take her out of the home for too long
    • individual situations and opportunities should be judged individually: possibility is left open
  • He just means that if the marriage is terrible, she should be able to get a job so she can be independent rather than stuck in this terrible marriage (not a divorce, but just a separation)
• Equality
  • ” [T]he legal subordination of one sex to another � is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a system of perfect equality, admitting no power and privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.”
• As counterargument
  • Women aren’t as gifted as men? That’s b/c we never actually let them try
    • We need to experiment
    • “Until conditions of equality exist, no one can possibly assess the natural differences between women and men, distorted as they have been. What is natural to the two sexes can only be found out by allowing both to develop and use their faculties freely.”
    • We can’t KNOW women until they are speaking about themselves 148: anything men can come to know of women will be “wretchedly imperfect”
  • Women are blocked by Nature from being equal? Well if that’s the case why do you have to legislate it?
    • if women do have a natural propensity to the activities men have allotted them, then “there is no need of laws of social inculcation” to keep them doing them! 150
      • and in fact if you investigated, instead of women believing their “natural vocation…is that of a wife and mother,” “one might infer their opinion was the direct contrary…of all things the most repugnant to their nature” and that so many of them won’t accept that post if they’ve any other choice…
    • “What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing—the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.” 144
    • In fact, this isn’t their nature, but they’ve been “Distorted” more than any other “class of dependents”
    • “men usually see only what they already had in their minds” 145
  • If they don’t like being controlled, why don’t they speak up? Actually women are beginning to protest
  • But women are “mobile, changeable…under the influence of the moment” and have “greater nervous susceptibility?” Well that’s because their energy has NOWHERE to go, and thus they have an “overflow of nervous energy” b/c of suppression 185
    • Also, women now are cultivated to be like that “like a kind of hothouse plants, shielded from the wholesome vicissitudes of air and temperature, and untrained in any of the occupations and exercises which give stimulus and development” 186
    • Even if they’re passionate that’s good b/c “History and experience prove that the most passionate characters are the most fanatically rigid in their feelings of duty” 187
• He says that the ways men oppress women are so inconsistent that they actually reveal a sad truth about the “real opinion” of men, 150: ”’It is necessary to society that women should marry and produce children. They will not do so unless they are compelled. Therefore it is necessary to compel them.’”
  • And in this case these men are just like “the slaveholders of South Carolina and Louisiana.”
• If we have decided that people and society thrive when they look after their own interests and make their own decisions, there’s no reason to exclude women from that practice.
• Why individual choice? B/c that’s the only process that allows for the invention and adoption of the best ideas: a free market of ideas, really
• Need to change marriage laws: let women own property, have jobs outside the home; they need to have freedoms w/in marriage
• Marriage Slavery
  • Men try to control women’s minds to secure their adoration and love
• examples: think of Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria

Quotes

• “there remain no legal slaves, save the mistress of every house.”
  • Compares this to U S Slavery
• On Not Accepting Convention
  • “So true it is that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural.” 135
• “Under whatever conditions, and within whatever limits, men are admitted to the suffrage, there is not a shadow of justification for not admitting women under the same” 177