There will be great reason to suspect the Men of jealousy; and it cannot be rash to say, that their only reason for locking up from us all the avenues of knowledge, is the fear of our excelling them in it. (...) Had we the same advantages of study allowed us which the Men have, there is no room to doubt but we should at least keep pace with them in the sciences, and every useful knowledge. It can only then be a mean dastardly jealousy in them to exclude us from those advantages, in which we have so natural a right to emulate them.

~ Lady Sophia Fermor

Lady Sophia Fermor 18Th Century 18Th Century Feminism Double Standards Feminism Knowledge Male Privilege Men Threatened By Women Misogyny Patriarchy Sexism Women S Oppression

So weak are their [Men's] intellectuals, and so untuned are their organs to the voice of reason, that custom makes more absolute slaves of their senses than they can make of us. They are so accustom'd to see things as they now are, that they cannot represent to themselves how they can be otherwise. It wou'd be extremely odd they think to see a Woman at the head of an army giving battle, or at the helm of a nation giving laws; pleading causes in quality of counsel; administring justice in a court of judicature; preceded in the street with sword, mace, and other ensigns of authority; as magistrates; or teaching rhetoric, medicine, philosophy, and divinity, in quality of university professors.

~ Lady Sophia Fermor

Lady Sophia Fermor 18Th Century 18Th Century Feminism Double Standards Feminism Men Threatened By Women Misogyny Patriarchy Prejudice Sexism

What a wretched circle this poor way of reasoning among the Men draws them insensibly into. Why is learning useless to us? Because we have no share in public offices. And why have we no share in public offices? Because we have no learning. They are sensible of the injustice they do us, and therefore are reduced to the mean shift of cloaking it at the expence of their own reason. But let truth speak for once: Why are they so industrious to debar us that learning we have an equal right to with themselves, but for fear of our sharing with, and outshining them in, those public offices they fill so miserably? The same sordid selfishness which urged them to engross all power and dignity to themselves, prompted them to shut up from us that knowledge which wou'd have made us their competitors.

~ Lady Sophia Fermor

Lady Sophia Fermor 18Th Century 18Th Century Feminism Double Standards Feminism Male Privilege Men Threatened By Women Misogyny Patriarchy Sexism Women S Oppression