Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/212

196 tyrants. Whether they coddled us with compliments, or pretended to hate us, whether they granted us privileges or disqualified us, whether they carried us on their hands, or trod us under their feet, they never were true, never could be true, because they always proceeded from the great fundamental lie, that we did not possess the same human rights as they, that we are subordinate beings, that we must be their tools. Complete recognition of our equality of rights — that is the first, the indispensable condition, for the possibility that men cease to be liars toward women.

It is not possible for any one to commit themselves more naively than men do, concerning their untruthful attitude toward women, when their arguments, which they oppose to our so-called emancipation, are attacked. I have always found that the chief objections behind which the more intelligent and refined among the men — of the rest I do not wish to speak at all — always entrench themselves, simply amount to this: that men in general are not sufficiently humanized to make it possible for free women to exist among them.

Well, that is at least the beginning of truth. It is a most interesting confession, even if it is a poor proof. What answer would you, as free men, give a slaveholder, who confessed to you that his brutality and egotism did not allow him to grant his slaves the right to freedom? Would you accept this as a proof against the right of the slave?