French Feminism

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A further consequence of the Revolution is that, for the first time, sex was introduced as a constitutional condition for the possession of political rights, even as rights were proclaimed to be universal and inalienable. In contrast to such hypocrisy, Condorcet affirmed woman's equal humanity on the grounds of reason and justice.

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A watershed event in modern European history, the French Revolution began in 1789 and ended in the late 1790s with the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte.

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An aspect of third phase feminism that mystifies the mothers of the earlier feminist movement is the readoption by young feminists of the very lip-stick, high-heals, and cleavage proudly exposed by low cut necklines that the first two phases of the movement identified with male oppression.

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Aristocrats resented monarchical inroads on freedom

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As Steinbrügge (1995, 4) proposes, the eighteenth-century "is the age that saw the emergence of an image of female nature that allowed precisely these exclusions to be considered 'natural.'" Thus, the defenders of women's rights during the 'Age of Enlightenment' were faced with the problem that the denial of women's equality was couched in secular not religious considerations and buttressed by pseudo-scientific claims.

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Condorcet was born on 17 September 1743 in the town of Ribemont-sur-Aisne, in Picardy

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Condorcet's most extensive arguments on women's rights appear in two essays. The first was authored in 1787, prior to the Revolution; the second, published in 1790 in the Journal of the Society of 1789, was composed in the context of a debate over the appropriate constitutional arrangements for the new French nation. In addition, commitment to women's rights informs his Testament to his daughter, and is not forgotten in the section of the Esquisse known as the Fragment sur l'Atlantide [Fragment on the New Atlantis], where he restates his objection to using allegations about physical or intellectual inferiority to justify political exclusion

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De Gouges continually created a new identity and image for herself. She was constantly "in a process of self-construction." Once in Paris, Marie Gouze "took her mother's middle name, Olympe, added a 'de' and changed her father's surname to Gouges." De Gouges also claimed "that she was the illegitimate offspring of a romance between her mother and a local notable"

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De Gouges dreamt of becoming a playwright and moved to Paris to follow her dream. However, a playwright was not an acceptable profession for a woman of her time and she was constantly working for recognition

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De Gouges is one example of a woman who challenged eighteenth-century gender limitations through writing

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De Gouges started out in humble beginnings; she was born Marie Gouze in the south of France. She married at a young age and produced one son, however, the marriage abruptly ended after her husband's death.

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De Gouges went to the guillotine in 1793, condemned as a counterrevolutionary and denounced as an "unnatural" woman.

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Form for a Social Contract between Man and Woman We, ________ and ________, moved by our own will, unite for the length of our lives and for the duration of our mutual inclinations under the following conditions: We intend and wish to make our wealth communal property, while reserving the right to divide it in favor of our children and of those for whom we might have a special inclination, mutually recognizing that our goods belong directly to our children, from whatever bed they come [legitimate or not], and that all of them without distinction have the right to bear the name of the fathers and mothers who have acknowledged them, and we impose on ourselves the obligation of subscribing to the law that punishes any rejection of one's own blood [refusing to acknowledge an illegitimate child].

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Gender equality was not the only controversial cause espoused by Condorcet: Even before publicly addressing the woman question, he argued vociferously for the humanity and rights of enslaved Africans, and proposed the abolition of slavery in France's overseas colonies

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His views on female education were especially progressive for his time, as he proposed that girls be educated alongside boys within universal, co-educational institutions; and he would have provided for women's admission to all professions for which they showed talent.

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In 1786 at age forty-two, Condorcet married the twenty-two year old Sophie de Grouchy (1764-1822), with whom he forged a loving relationship, similar political convictions, and a solid intellectual partnership.

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In France, the 'storming of the Bastille' is still celebrated each year by a national holiday.

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In her postscript she denounced the customary treatment of women as objects easily abandoned. She appended to the declaration a sample form for a marriage contract that called for communal sharing of property.

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In its early stages, feminism was interrelated with the temperance and abolitionist movements,

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In one of his last writings, Condorcet addressed a testament to his infant daughter (b. 1790), which shows the enormous respect he held for his wife's intellect and moral character. "When the moment of justice has come," he writes, "she will find help in my writings. The advice I have written for her, and her mother's letters on friendship, will provide a moral education. Other writings by her mother give very useful viewpoints on the same subject"

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Initially, women reformers addressed social and institutional barriers that limited women's rights; including family responsibilities, a lack of educational and economic opportunities, and the absence of a voice in political debates.

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Like the American Revolution before it, the French Revolution was influenced by Enlightenment ideals, particularly the concepts of popular sovereignty and inalienable rights.

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Marie Gouze (1748-93) was a self-educated butcher's daughter from the south of France who, under the name Olympe de Gouges, wrote pamphlets and plays on a variety of issues, including slavery, which she attacked as being founded on greed and blind prejudice.

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Middle class resented a society of privilege that was outmoded

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Mme de Condorcet was an accomplished translator and author, in her own right; and she shared her husband's liberal and republican views, especially on matters of criminal justice, political reform, and minority and women's rights. For her attendance at the lycée where Condorcet taught mathematics and others gave lessons in history and the sciences, Mme de Condorcet became known as the Vénus Lycéenne.[13] She learned English expressly in order to read in the original and translate the seventh edition of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, appearing in 1792 in London, despairing like many of her contemporaries of the inadequacy of the existing French translation.

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Mothers, daughters, sisters, female representatives of the nation ask to be constituted as a national assembly. Considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt for the rights of woman are the sole causes of public misfortunes and governmental corruption, they have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of woman: so that by being constantly present to all the members of the social body this declaration may always remind them of their rights and duties; so that by being liable at every moment to comparison with the aim of any and all political institutions the acts of women's and men's powers may be the more fully respected; and so that by being founded henceforward on simple and incontestable principles the demands of the citizenesses may always tend toward maintaining the constitution, good morals, and the general welfare.

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On 14 July 1789, a state prison on the east side of Paris, known as the Bastille, was attacked by an angry and aggressive mob.

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Peasants resented the increasing demands of the central government

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Pinkfloor expressed this new position when she said; "It's possible to have a push-up bra and a brain at the same time."

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She addressed the pamphlet to the Queen, Marie Antoinette, though she also warned the Queen that she must work for the Revolution or risk destroying the monarchy altogether.

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Somewhat later, Olympe de Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen as a "wake-up" call to women. Declaring that "woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights," her document is an early statement that women ought to share the same political rights that men possessed.

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Stanton drafted a "Declaration of Sentiments, Grievances, and Resolutions," that echoed the preamble of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal."

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The "grrls" of the third wave have stepped onto the stage as strong and empowered, eschewing victimization and defining feminine beauty for themselves as subjects, not as objects of a sexist patriarchy. They have developed a rhetoric of mimicry, which reappropriates derogatory terms like "slut" and "bitch" in order subvert sexist culture and deprive it of verbal weapons

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The first gathering devoted to women's rights in the United States was held July 19-20, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York.

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The first wave of feminism took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emerging out of an environment of urban industrialism and liberal, socialist politics. The goal of this wave was to open up opportunities for women, with a focus on suffrage.

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The principal organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention were Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a mother of four from upstate New York, and the Quaker abolitionist Lucretia Mott

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The prison had become a symbol of the monarchy's dictatorial rule, and the event became one of the defining moments in the Revolution that followed. This article reporting the events of 14 July was published in an English newspaper called The World, a few days after the event took place.

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The salon was attended by many foreign visitors—including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin's grandson, Thomas Paine, Charles Stanhope, 3rd earl of Stanhope, and the Marquis de Beccaria (author of the treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764), which opposed torture and the death penalty)—along with the writer Pierre-Auguste Caron de Beaumarchais, the playwright and pamphleteer Olympe de Gouges (author of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen), and the writer and hostess Madame de Staël.

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The second wave began in the 1960s and continued into the 90's. This wave unfolded in the context of the anti-war and civil rights movements and the growing self-consciousness of a variety of minority groups around the world.

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The third phase of feminism began in the mid-90's and is informed by post-colonial and post-modern thinking. In this phase many constructs have been destabilized, including the notions of "universal womanhood," body, gender, sexuality and hetreronormativity.

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This is in keeping with the third-wave's celebration of ambiguity and refusal to think in terms of "us-them" or in some cases their refusal to identify themselves as "feminists" at all.

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Though men were reluctant to share their political rights with women, many women activists and anonymous women shaped the course of the revolution during its earliest years. Among the most dramatic events of the revolution occurred on October 5 and 6, 1789, when women of the Parisian lower classes forced many women from all social classes to march with them to Versailles to seize the King. They succeeded in bringing the King and his family back to Paris, where he agreed to accept his position as an executive in a constitutional monarchy. Immediately, women as revolutionaries became a potent symbol of the power of the Revolution

Philosophy

What Condorcet termed, in a 1790 essay by that name, "the admission of women to the rights of citizenship" was widely opposed on the grounds that women possessed distinctive natures, which perfectly suited them to the fulfillment of their domestic duties.

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While never entirely dismissing the influential case for women's difference, Condorcet refused to accept this as an impediment to their equal enjoyment of civil and political rights. He attributed women's limitations, to the extent they existed, not to their sex but rather to their inferior education and circumstances.

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Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility.

Philosophy

Women did not get the vote during the French Revolution, but they did benefit from many of the changes that occurred in matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance, and the legal status of unwed mothers and their children. However, they ultimately suffered setbacks as many of these reforms were withdrawn or curtailed during Napoleon's reign.

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Women, wake up; the tocsin of reason sounds throughout the universe; recognize your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies. The torch of truth has dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation. Enslaved man has multiplied his force and needs yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust toward his companion.

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he fled Paris but was arrested on March 27, 1794, and imprisoned in Bourgla-Reine, where he was found dead in his prison cell on March 29—the cause of his death remains unknown.

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"Do not limit it to the suffering of men, but extend your humanity even to animals. Do not make any which belong to you unhappy; do not neglect their welfare; do not be insensitive to their naïve and sincere gratitude; cause them no unnecessary pain. Anything of the sort would be a true injustice and an insult to nature, who would punish you by the hardness of heart which habitual cruelty must produce. Lack of foresight in animals is the only excuse for the barbarous law which condemns them to serve as food for one another. Let us remain faithful to nature, and go no further than this excuse permits"

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"I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns." — Elizabeth Cady Stanton