xxviii INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION xxix be suspect,for the men are at once judge and party to the lawsuit." and strife abound."But he did not go so far as to champion their Everywhere,at all times,the males have displayed their satisfaction in cause. feeling that they are the lords of creation."Blessed be God...that It was only later,in the eighteenth century,that genuinely demo- He did not make me a woman,"say the Jews in their morning prayers, cratic men began to view the matter objectively.Diderot,among while their wives pray on a note of resignation:"Blessed be the Lord, others,strove to show that woman is,like man,a human being.Later who created me according to His will."The first among the blessings John Stuart Mill came fervently to her defense.But these philoso- for which Piato thanked the gods was that he had been created free, phers displayed unusual impartiality.In the nineteenth century the not enslaved;the second,a man,not a woman.But the males could feminist quarrel became again a quarrel of partisans.One of the con- not enjoy this privilege fully unless they believed it to be founded on sequences of the industrial revolution was the entrance of women into the absolute and the cternal;they sought to make the fact of their productive labor,and it was just here that the claims of the feminists supremacy into a right."Being men,those who have made and com- emerged from the realm of theory and acquired an economic basis, piled the laws have favored their own sex,and jurists have ele while their opponents became the more aggressive.Although landed vated these laws into principles,"to quote Poulain de la Barre once property lost power to some extent,the bourgeoisie clung to the old more. morality that found the guarantee of private property in the solidity Legislators,priests,philosophers,writers,and scientists have striven of the family.Woman was ordered back into the home the more to show that the subordinate position of woman is willed in heaven harshly as her emancipation became a real menace.Even within the and advantageous on earth.The religions invented by men reflect this working class the men endeavored to restrain woman's liberation,be- wish for domination.In the legends of Eve and Pandora men have cause they began to see the women as dangerous competitors-the taken up arms against women.They have made use of philosophy and more so because they were accustomed to work for lower wages. 总 theology,as the quotations from Aristotle and St.Thomas have In proving woman's inferiority,the antifeminists then began to shown.Since ancient times satirists and moralists have delighted in draw not only upon religion,philosophy,and theology,as before,but showing up the weaknesses of women.We are familiar with the savage indictments hurled against women throughout French literature. also upon science-biology,experimental psychology,etc.At most Montherlant,for example,follows the tradition of Jean de Meung, they were willing to grant "equality in difference"to the other sex. That profitable formula is most significant;it is precisely like the though with less gusto.This hostility may at times be well founded, "equal but separate"formula of the jim Crow laws aimed at the often it is gratuitous;but in truth it more or less successfully conceals North American Negroes.As is well known,this so-called equalitarian a desire for self-justification.As Montaigne says,"It is easier to accuse segregation has resulted only in the most extreme discrimination.The one sex than to excuse the other."Sometimes what is going on is clear similarity just noted is in no way due to chance,for whether it is a enough.For instance,the Roman law limiting the rights of woman race,a caste,a class,or a sex that is reduced to a position of inferiority, cited"the imbecility,the instability of the sex"just when the weaken- the methods of justification are the same."The eternal feminine" ing of family ties seemed to threaten the interests of male heirs.And corresponds to“the black soul'”and to“the Jewish character."True, in the effort to keep the married woman under guardianship,appeal the Jewish problem is on the whole very different from the other two was made in the sixteenth century to the authority of St.Augustine, -to the anti-Semite the Jew is not so much an inferior as he is an who declared that "woman is a creature neither decisive nor con- enemy for whom there is to be granted no place on earth,for whom stant,"at a time when the single woman was thought capable of annihilation is the fate desired.But there are deep similarities between managing her property.Montaigne understood clearly how arbitrary the situation of woman and that of the Negro.Both are being eman- and unjust was woman's appointed lot:"Women are not in the wrong when they decline to accept the rules laid down for them,since the cipated today from a like paternalism,and the former master class wishes to "keep them.in their place"-that is,the place chosen for men make these rules without consulting them.No wonder intrigue See Part II,pp.115-17