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matically demands these rights. When it comes down to it, his
equality is, quite realistically , equality under the law:
and:
. . . on women this sentence is imposed by actual law, and by
customs equivalent to law . What, in unenlightened societies ,
colour, race , religion or, in the case of a conquered country,
nationality , are to some men , sex is to all women ; a peremptory
exclusion from almost all honourable occupations, but either such
as cannot be fulfilled by others, or such as those others do not think
worthy of their acceptance .
.. . the principle which regulates the eXlstlOg social relations
between the two sexes- the legal subordination of one sex to the
other- is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to
human improvement .
I am not arguing against Mill's position but trying to indicate a
lack that is implicit in this perspective . Mill's concept of human beings
that are freed from the artificial constraints of a false masculinity or
femininit y is somehow more abstract than that of the earlier feminists.
The seventeenth-century women thought if men and women were
equal they could gain some quality from each other ; Mary Wollstone–
craft's vision combined in one being the best of a female world with the
best of a male world . Mill correctly argues that we cannot know what
men and women will be like when released from present stereotypes,
but out of this correctness comes an elusive feeling that Mill, seeing so
accurately women's horrendous subordination, failed to see their
contribution. This turns on the question of the importance of the
reproduction and care of human life-Mill does not see , as Wollstone–
craft does, that there might be a gain in men really becoming fathers
(instead of remote, authoritarian figureheads) as well as in women
being freed to pursue the so-called"masculine" virtues. That Mill's
concept of humanity is abstract, that he did not seem to consider the
contribution of' 'femaleness" once freed of its crippling exclusiveness
to women , may have been because he was a man; it may just as easily
have been because of the different social circumstances from which he
wrote. Because he was not living at the moment when the bourgeoisie
