Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 197, All Men are Created Equal.

As we near the end of the pause in our narrative, I want to turn our attention to two groups

who have been largely out of the narrative so far, women and enslaved peoples. This week we'll focus on women. Throughout the revolutionary era,

there was an unspoken understanding that when people refers to rights, they meant the rights of

men. Not everybody felt this way, and a few started to assert that women had rights to. The tipping point was

1792, with the publication of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, by Mary Wollstonecraft,

an English writer and philosopher. I'll give you a few quotes to give you a sense of the work,

and for Wollstonecraft to speak in her own words.

Quote, My own sex, I hope, will excuse me if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, envying them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood,

unable to stand alone.

It is time to affect a revolution in female manners, time to restore to them their lost dignity,

and make them, as parts of the human species, labor by reforming themselves to reform the world.

I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.

But women are very differently situated with respect to each other, for they are all rivals.

Is it then surprising that when the sole ambition of women centres in beauty and interest

gives vanity additional force, perpetual rival ships should ensue?

They are all running the same race and would rise above the virtue of morals if they did not view each other with a suspicious and even envious eye.

Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so, for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of men will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet.

In this style, argue tyrants of every denomination, from the weak king to the weak father of a

family.

They are all eager to crush reason, yet always assert that they usurp its throne only to be

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