Is it not because the advocates of emancipation are impure women whom sin has rendered mad, beings incapable of comprehending Justice and conscientious works?
III.
Gentlemen, we will conclude.
Though that were true which I deny; that woman is inferior to you; though that were true which facts prove false; that she can perform none of the functions which you perform, that she is fit only for maternity and the household, she would be none the less your equal in right, because right is based neither on superiority of faculties nor on that of the functions which proceed from them, but on identity of species.
A human being, like you, having, like you, intellect, will, free will and various aptitudes, woman has the right, like you, to be free and autonomous, to develop her faculties freely, to exercise her activity freely; to mark out her path, to reduce her to subjection, as you do, is therefore a violation of Human Right in the person of woman—an odious abuse of force.
From the stand point of facts, this violation of right takes the form of grievous inconsistency; for we find many women far superior to the majority of men; whence it follows that right is granted to those who ought not to have it, according to your doctrine, and refused to those who ought to possess it, according to the same doctrine, since they make good their claim to the qualities requisite.
We find that you accord right to qualities and functions, because the individual is a man, and that you cease to recognize it in the same case, because the individual is a woman.
Yet you boast of your lofty reason,—yet you boast of possessing the sense of justice!
Take care, gentlemen! Our rights have the same foundation as yours: in denying the former, you deny the latter in principle.
A word more to you, pretended disciples of the doctrines of '89, and we have done. Do you know why so many women took part with our Revolution, armed the men, and rocked their children to the song of the Marseillaise! It was because they thought they saw under the Declaration of the rights of men and citizens, the declaration of the rights of women and female citizens.