Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/49

Rh Hitherto woman has only been looked upon as a supplement and appendage to man. The human being per se, the independent personality, the sovereign individual has never been recognized in woman. It seems that the Bushmen on the Cape of Good Hope are the only ones who have considered woman equal to man, for they have only one expression for both. The woman is to belong to the man; the question, why is not the man likewise to belong to the woman, occurs to no one. She is brought up for the man, and must live for the man; she receives her name from the man; she is "taken" by the man, supported by the man, put under obligation to the man, made the ward of the man, punished by the man, used by the man, and forsaken by the man.

The man is considered as a human being, the woman as only the appendix to this human being; but the woman is more a human being than the present man, and human rights know no sex. As a certain French orator said that law is an atheist, it can be said of right that it is a neuter. But hitherto right has always been of the male sex. Men have made the rights, men have made the morals, men have made the duties, men have made the laws, and they have taken good care that woman should be excluded as much as possible from everything.

But, it will be said, you have declared that the limits of womanhood must be adhered to, and yet