The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 2/2. Open Letter to Dr. Arnold Ruge, London
OPEN LETTER TO DR. ARNOLD RUGE, LONDON.
(From "Der Pionier" of Oct. 7, 1855.)
Your answer to my provocation, as you call it, has, in spite of all your protestations to the contrary, only strengthened my suspicion that in your heart you have a poor opinion of women, and do not concede them equal rights with men. Or, indeed, if I am to spare you this suspicion, I can do it only by taking recourse to a supposition which is equally far from being flattering, namely, that you have not yet comprehended, or are not able to comprehend, what a woman's purpose really is, when she desires to become a free human being.
First, I wish to set you at ease with regard to my personal position, as it seems to be of importance to you in the treatment of the question at issue, whether I am Mrs. or a Miss. I am neither, and do not want to be either of the two, but I place some value upon being a "woman," to the use of which term in the essay of Mr. Heinzen you do object. I have not looked for, or addressed, either the husband or the bachelor in you, but the man, or the male human being; why do you not content yourself with the woman, or the female human being? The subject of our controversy is human rights, but neither Mrs.' nor Misses' rights.
But least of all are we concerned with the rights of "beauty." You address me as "fair lady" and "beautiful Luise." How do you know that I am beautiful, and what has beauty to do with our question? Do you share the belief of the officers of the guards who have such a high opinion of women that they expect their stock compliments to be effective in every case, whether they are appropriate or not? I have long since outgrown the folly of considering beauty as of chief importance, or of feeling flattered on being admired; but if I had not yet outgrown it, beauty would lose greatly in my estimation, by seeing it degraded to serve as a stock compliment to a philosopher who has never seen me. As little as it is to the credit of friendship to have everybody address the next one as "dear friend," so little is it to the advantage of beauty, to call an unknown person beautiful, at random, who may possibly be very homely. What would you say if I were to address you as "pretty sir" or "beautiful Arnold?" I do not know whether you deserve such an appellation. But even if I knew you to be an Apollo, I would not call you so, in an open letter, in order not to wrong your beauty by an appearance of mere flattery; and if I were in doubt about it, I would all the more refrain from speaking, in order not to offend you with what might possibly be irony. But why, I ask, do you not observe the same attitude toward me? Because you — you yourself have asked not to be spared — with the contemptuous air of an officer of the guards, regard women as inferior beings, or toys, whom you think to amuse with the most trivial flatteries, or with compliments which sound doubly shallow, coming from such as you; or whom you think to silence with a bit of irony. It is an apparently trivial matter to which I am here giving so much space, but you will have to admit that there is more in it than most men think, and, I add, most women, too. That the majority of my sex take these shallow compliments, which at bottom are nothing but insults, as signs of respect, has often made me indignant, and I could only excuse them on the ground that their education by men has left their minds so empty that they cannot attain to any consciousness of their position and dignity.
I shall now take up the important points. The emancipation of woman seems to me to be an expression not well chosen, and easily misunderstood. What is necessary is not to emancipate the woman, but rather the human being in the woman. If we speak of the emancipation of woman, men at once assume that woman is to be introduced into an unwomanly sphere; but the emancipation of the human being in woman signifies that she is to come into possession of the common human rights, of which she is still for the most part dispossessed, and which nobody can deny her upon any tenable grounds. Self-determination, the preservation of our human rights, without let or hindrance in every direction, the possibility of educating ourselves for everything for which we have any inclination or calling, the pursuit of our happiness according to our own judgment and our own will, that is what the female human being must be able to claim for herself, as well as the male, but that is what is still everywhere, directly or indirectly, denied her, and withheld from her.
I would not have thought it possible that even you would have resource to the untenable objections which I have hundreds of times been obliged to refute in conversation, but which are almost sure to be brought up again, as often as the rights of the female being are discussed with a male being. You, too, persuade yourself, or try to persuade your readers, that we women demanded — how absolutely crazy — with this emancipation of ours, the liberty to shoulder a musket, to be pressed into a regiment of soldiers, to go to sea as sailors, in short, to do just those very.things which are quite as contrary to our wishes as to our nature. What would you say, if I should keep my canary bird caged lest he fall upon and devour my doves and hens? Men treat us just as idiotically as I would in such a case treat my canary bird. Of a canary bird you expect that in a state of liberty he would follow his nature, and use his faculties, but of a woman you expect that in a state of liberty she would change her nature, and force herself to do things for which she has as little ability as inclination. How you come to such assumptions is absolutely incomprehensible to me. Do we fear, perhaps, that emancipated men would seize our knitting, or sit down by the embroidery frame? Or do you, too, want to frighten us with that bugbear of public duty, and deny us the use of our rights, because we are not able to undertake everything that the present condition of society imposes on its members, as a duty? Should we be slaves, because we are not able, for instance, to become instruments for the preservation of slavery — that is, soldiers — like the men? But even men, among themselves, do not measure their rights, according to their respective abilities, to fulfill public duties. The weak, the cripples, are absolved from military service, without, therefore, being deprived of the least of their human and civil rights; but women are to be disfranchised, because they have not the nature or the limbs of a grenadier. Whence this contradiction?
I think you may just as well lay aside your anxiety that we would crowd upon the battlefields and ships, if the right were granted us to do that which our ability and inclination leads us to do, as you might have spared us the lesson that we — women — are not men. You may take offense or not, but I must tell you frankly that at first, of course only at first, I laughed aloud when I learned from your answer that it was the destiny of women to become mothers. In order to learn that, Mr. Ruge, no one need study philosophy; nor need a philosopher fear that we might unlearn this destiny, or be tempted to become fathers. You will, indeed, have to admit that we have never extended such compliments to the masculine intellect as you have to the feminine. It has. never occurred to a woman to teach man that it is their destiny to become fathers. I am almost tempted to interpret your words as the most bitter irony. That men have denied us the right to become mothers, that complaint, Mr. Ruge, we surely never had any occasion to make.[1]
If they had always been as solicitous about everything else as they have been about maternity, we women would never have had any cause of complaint. No, they do not hinder us from becoming mothers, any more than from becoming cooks, and it is always either the hearth or the cradle, to which they refer us when we speak of our human rights. Has a woman ever objected on the ground of paternity, when a man claimed his human rights? No more than it ever occurred to a woman to deny a man the right of suffrage because he was by profession a tailor, a baker, etc. But how is it with the rights of those women who have never been mothers, or who have met with the fate of Niobe? According to your logic, they have no destiny as human beings, and whoever has no destiny, why should he have rights?
But I want to examine your information concerning maternity from another point of view. Just because she is a mother, woman has double claims upon the exercise of rights which man assumes for himself alone. Just because of maternity she must demand that she shall not, on account of social conditions, which she cannot change without being fully qualified as a human being and a citizen, be driven perhaps from want, into the arms of a man, through whom she would never have become a mother, could she have acted independently; just because she is a mother, she must demand such an education as will fit her to become the educator of her child; just because she is a mother, she has the deepest interest in exerting an influence upon those state institutions in which the fate of her child is hereafter decided; just because she is a mother, she must be able to exert an influence in the passing of laws, through which she, to her own and her childrens' ruin, may be held in hateful bondage; just because she is a mother, she must demand the possibility of occupying an independent position, in order to be still a mother, after the father has ceased to be a father; just because she is a mother, she must strive to assist in changing conditions, which are daily cursed by infanticides; just because she is a mother, she must have a right to her child, which the man can now take from her by force, if his company has become unbearable to her; just because she is a mother, she must wish to have a right to influence conditions, which compel her to be a helpless spectator, when her children are led out to be slaughtered, to be sacrificed to the whim of a despot, or the savage taste of the rabble.
Thus you see that instead of avoiding public life, on account of our maternity, we have, just on account of our maternity, the very deepest interest in gaining an influence upon public life.
But I am surprised at my own fervor when I had made up my mind to answer you in the calmest manner. Perhaps it has annoyed me to hear you express opinions that I had expected of you, least of all, and this is the only way I can return your compliments.
- ↑ Just after I had read your admonitions upon our destiny to become mothers, I accidentally came across a statistical notice, from which I gathered the following. The number of the known criminal assaults against women, for the year 1854, in this "free country," is no less than three thousand five hundred. In forty-eight of these cases the violated woman was likewise murdered, or died in consequence of the injuries she had received. One hundred and eighty-nine women committed suicide, and of these one hundred and twenty-seven did so in consequence of seduction or rape.
Whoever is acquainted with local conditions will not accuse me of exaggeration if 1 double these known cases, by way of adding those that have not become known.
We would thus have before us, for a single year, at least ten thousand men who, as criminals, professed the doctrine of the destiny of women to become mothers.
Do not think that I intend this statistical information as a complement to yours. But you can surely not blame me if I call upon the friends of humanity, who lecture women on motherhood, to first help make them free, fully qualified human beings, in humane conditions.
If women had the right to humanize these conditions, surely the time would soon be past when men could become beasts with impunity.