Chapter 13 - Page 2

that, the essential point remains
the same. She is, she remains, an object of sensual desire, and
she knows it. It is slavery, for slavery is nothing else than the
utilization of the labor of some for the enjoyment of others. That
slavery may not exist people must refuse to enjoy the labor of others,
and look upon it as a shameful act and as a sin.

*A suburb of Moscow.

"Actually, this is what happens. They abolish the external form, they
suppress the formal sales of slaves, and then they imagine and assure
others that slavery is abolished. They are unwilling to see that it
still exists, since people, as before, like to profit by the labor of
others, and think it good and just. This being given, there will always
be found beings stronger or more cunning than others to profit thereby.
The same thing happens in the emancipation of woman. At bottom feminine
servitude consists entirely in her assimilation with a means of
pleasure. They excite woman, they give her all sorts of rights equal to
those of men, but they continue to look upon her as an object of sensual
desire, and thus they bring her up from infancy and in public opinion.

"She is always the humiliated and corrupt serf, and man remains always
the debauched Master. Yes, to abolish slavery, public opinion must admit
that it is shameful to exploit one's neighbor, and, to make woman free,
public opinion must admit that it is shameful to consider woman as an
instrument of pleasure.

"The emancipation of woman is not to be effected in the public courts or
in the chamber of deputies, but in the sleeping chamber. Prostitution is
to be combated, not in the houses of ill-fame, but in the family. They
free woman in the public courts and in the chamber of deputies, but she
remains an instrument. Teach her, as she is taught among us, to look
upon herself as such, and she will always remain an inferior being.
Either, with the aid of the rascally doctors, she will try to prevent
conception, and descend, not to the level of an animal, but to the
level of a thing; or she will be what she is in the great majority of
cases,--sick, hysterical, wretched, without hope of spiritual progress."
. . .

"But why that?" I asked.

"Oh! the most astonishing thing is that no one is willing to see this
thing, evident as it is, which the doctors must understand, but which
they take good care not to do. Man does not wish to know the law of
nature,--children. But children are born and become an embarrassment.
Then man devises means of avoiding this embarrassment. We have not
yet reached the low level of Europe, nor Paris, nor the 'system of two
children,' nor Mahomet. We have discovered nothing, because we have
given