The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 2/1. The Rights and Condition of Women
LUISE MEYEN ON MEN AND WOMEN.
(From “Der Pionier" of July 15, 1855.)
THE RIGHTS AND CONDITION OF WOMEN.
open letter to dr. A. ruge, london.
In No. 25 of “Der Pionier" I have read a correspondence in which you express yourself in such a peculiar manner, on the legitimate sphere of my sex, that I take the liberty to ask you for further elucidation of your views on this point. I beg you to pardon my audacity as due to the special interest that every liberal minded member of the feminine sex takes in hearing thoughtful men express themselves exhaustively and frankly, on a question that is still conceived of in such different ways. While one man would have every difference in the rights of the male and female sex abolished, and have all treated as human beings, on a footing of perfect equality, others, who likewise lay claim to a correct judgment, leave the human being out of consideration entirely, and consider only sex, and would endow each with different rights, according to its weakness, or the mission ascribed to it. You must not be surprised, after your remarks in “Der Pionier," if I count you among the latter — that is, among those men who, ascribing certain occupations and duties to women, would mete out rights to them according to man's estimate of these duties. Yes, permit me to say, you treat women as beings of such inferiority that you deal out our rights to us with the soup ladle, as it were. For the chief objection, which you seem inclined to oppose to equal rights, is contained in the remark that the domestic affairs, especially the kitchen, would have to suffer if women were to take part in public life. Do you really wish to be taken seriously? Granted that the household could not be so promptly attended to as it is now; granted that men's gallantry would not also improve with their improved sense of justice toward us, so that they would not be willing to prepare their own coffee occasionally, while we attended a meeting, I ask only this: Do you place the kitchen above human rights? I do not begrudge men anything that they desire, but I must openly declare, if they want their kitchen run at the expense of our human rights they are welcome to a thorough fast, now and then, that they may learn to take care of themselves. Rather than teach men that the weaker sex has fewer rights than they, because it must cook for them, they ought themselves to be taught to cook, instead of Greek and Latin.
That the kitchen will have to suffer when men spend half of each day in the saloon, and half of their income for drink, tobacco, etc., and that this is a real calamity for the household, and the family, no one seems to take into account, in considering the theory of human rights; but if women were granted the liberty to devote a few hours weekly or monthly to attending meetings and deliberations on their human rights, this would, according to your opinion, be as great a misfortune for the household and the family as "if the husband should fall on the battlefield." How little men's ideas of rights have yet been developed or purified is proved by nothing so much as by the fact that they would sooner deny the rights of women than find any fault with their abuse of their own rights.
I must confess that remarks which apply the standard of kitchen interests to the human rights of women struck me as rather strange in the mouth of a man whom I class among our acutest thinkers and most humane politicians. According to your theory, we women would have some prospects of attaining our rights if there were no cooking to be done. You thus make us wish that humanity might return to a state of nature in which the men would not even be the masters of the house, because there would be no houses, and would be glad to eat their food raw.
As a man of principle you must admit that, in ascertaining rights, the difficulties that existing conditions of disqualification place in the way of their practical realization can not be taken into account. In practice, this point will receive due attention of its own accord; in theory we have only to establish the principle, pure and simple, and I am sorry to say, we are still occupied with the mere theory. The question then is simply this: are we women human beings, as well as the men, and have we, accordingly, the same human rights, or no? Do we exist for our own sake, or do we exist only as the slaves of men? Are we therefore entitled to participate in the making of the laws, which we are to obey in human society, or must we allow men to dictate these laws to us? Have we a right to assert our wishes and interests in the social institutions, or must we, without choice, be content with the institutions which men alone have created? Is our intelligence, our opposition, our voice, to direct our fate, or are we, in blind submission, to recognize and acknowledge men as our providence and our gods?
Only after these questions, whose consequences will then present themselves as a matter of course, have been answered, a consideration of the practical difficulties, which never yet have killed a correct principle, will be in order.
You are in favor of the emancipation of the negro slaves, and will not deny them a hair's breadth of the rights which you claim for yourself. But is there any question which presents greater practical difficulties than this? You can change a monarchy into a republic over night, but it will take a whole lifetime to change negro slaves into beings who will know how to use their human rights, and, moreover, the "households" of their present "owners" would receive quite a different shock by the emancipation of the slave than would that of a republican or socialist, if his wife were to take part in a deliberation, on, let us say, the reformation of the marriage laws. Yet these difficulties are nothing to you, in the discussion of the question, whether negroes are human beings and have human rights.
But while you are liberal and just toward the negroes, do you want to place women below the negro? The interests of the slave-owner are none of your concern, in the emancipation of the negro; but will you let the privilege of the frying-pan concern you in the emancipation of women?
Do not think that I am cruelly indifferent to the dreadful suffering that men would be subjected to if their emancipated wives would occasionally allow the roast to scorch, or if the coffee should be served five minutes later than usual, or if a missing button could not be instantly replaced. No, indeed, I appreciate this suffering thoroughly, and I sympathize beforehand with all men who may meet with such a fate. But I take comfort in the thought that development is never onesided, that inventions for the common good will go hand in hand with the progress in human rights, and that when once we shall have progressed as far as "the emancipation of woman," we shall also have learned the art of securing the roast against scorching, of always keeping the coffee in readiness, and of fastening buttons, without the aid of a needle. It is only necessary for us women to fully realize wherein the obstacle against our emancipation really consists, and when men have called our attention to the fact, that we must look for it in the defective cooking appliances, etc., we shall certainly give all our thought and energy to perfecting them.