The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 1/1. An Address to an Unknown Lady Reader
THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS.
AN ADDRESS TO AN UNKNOWN LADY READER.
Notwithstanding all reactionary precautions, there is a spirit of liberty breathing through the world that lifts the veil from all lies and the roofs from all dungeons in order to show mankind how much truth it has failed to grasp, and how much justice it has crushed. It is a sad task to accompany this spirit on its flight and to note the countless aberrations of mankind; but it is an imperative duty to report what has been observed, and to participate in the reformation of this degenerate world.
Not only from the dungeons of famous martyred men, also from the chambers of nameless martyred women time has removed the covering roof. More than one-half of your sex consists of martyrs, aye, the history of your sex is one continuous story of martyrs. And while the oppressed of the stronger sex can read their sufferings in the fugitive history of states and nations, the sufferings of women find a place only in the long history of mankind.
This is beginning to be recognized, and among women themselves champions have at last arisen who demand that the age of slavery and suffering shall give place to an age of liberty and rights. Especially in America, the new Amazons who seek to humanize men, as those of history sought to slay them, form a very respectable phalanx.
And here, too, it is where a suitable battle-field is open to them, and where it is also possible to unite this battle-field with the arena of men. Especially in America, where so many questions are already solved which in Europe still call for the exertion of all forces, it is the part of men to occupy themselves with the important question of woman's emancipation; here more. than elsewhere men of truly democratic spirit ought to make it their task to bring the discussion on this interesting and much-derided theme to a conclusion. It is a glaring anomaly to rejoice over the emancipation of the slaves and to treat the emancipation of woman with ridicule.
I venture the attempt of contributing my mite to the proposed work. In so doing I shall strive to be as clear, as radical, as brief, as. just, but also as frank, as possible. In any case, dear reader, I am convinced that I have some new points of view to offer which deserve your attention.
But whoever you may be, in giving your attention to these pages may you be prevailed upon to publicly express your opinion on a common and important matter! But frankly, truthfully, and without reserve, as will be done here. False modesty is not only a weakness; it is also a fault, because it throws a suspicion on what it attempts to conceal. So long as we still shrink from speaking about human matters in a human manner we have not yet developed into true men and women; so long as we still play the hypocrite out of sheer "morality" we have not yet a conception of true morality; so long as we still seek for culture in the perversion of human nature we have no reason to boast of our culture. But in regard to the question of rights now under consideration, a radical straightforward examination of the relations of the two sexes to each other is an essential requisite for its solution.
There are three rocks upon which the truthfulness of the world, especially of the masculine world, is wont to come to grief and to change into the most intolerable and contemptible hypocrisy: the Revolution, Religion, and Love. Thousands-want the revolution and. feign legality; thousands are without religion and go to church; thousands seek the clandestine satisfaction of their sexual desires, while outwardly they manifest the most studied indifference towards the feminine sex. You will not have to accuse the author of these pages of hypocrisy. He has given complete expression to his opinions regarding the revolution; he has done so regarding religion; and he is now doing so regarding the two sexes. Give him your support by reciprocating his frankness, help him to examine the nature and the needs of both sexes, in order thereby to establish the claims which your sex has to make. You will share with me the satisfaction that he who speaks his convictions openly and completely before all the world, and in spite of all the world, not only acts more nobly, but also more successfully, than all the reserve of prudence and all the hypocrisy of cowardice are able to act.
The object to be gained here is not only to purify humanity and the sense of justice from the dross of a false morality and vulgar prejudice; nor is our task limited to the rescue of love and marriage, which are in danger of perishing entirely in this venal and pious world; it is at the same time also necessary to open up to your sex a perspective view of the position which the era of liberty, towards which our development is tending, will assign to it in society. It will be seen that the right, the happiness, and the lot of woman is still more dependent on the attainment of complete liberty than that of man, who at least finds a partial compensation for liberty in the struggle for it, and that the relation of the two sexes to each other can reach its true form only at the summit of political development from which we are still far enough removed, even in North America.