Below are some quotes for Buz, coming from Abigail Adams. I guess our country has been heading down the path of feminism far longer than he believed. I'd like to entertain the hope that they inspire in him the realization that intelligence, logic, and profundity does not reside in the mind of men alone.
quote:
Abigail Adams (1744-1818)
First Lady of the United States (1797-1801), Abigail Adams was married to John Adams, second U.S. President. During his many absences from home working with the Continental Congress and as a diplomat in Europe, Abigail Adams managed the farm and family finances. No wonder she expected that the new nation would "remember the ladies"!
Selected Abigail Adams Quotations
Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.
Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to... Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne.
Great necessities call out great virtues.
Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your sex.
The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex, was to be found in the families of the educated class and in occasional intercourse with the learned. (1817)
I regret the trifling narrow contracted education of the females of my own country.
These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.
I am more and more convinced that Man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or a few is ever grasping, and like the grave cries give, give. The great fish swallow up the small, and he who is most strenuous for the Rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of Government. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which Humane Nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances. (letter, 1775)
These quotes taken from
Women's History
Obviously feminism has been around longer than Buz realizes. The idea that women should be shown the same respect as men, that they should be afforded the same opportunities and education, the same rights and privlidges as men, has been a battle that women have fought for (I would dare say)for ages and ages. Occasionaly women have won their battles and have been the leaders of great nations, large and small, throughout all history. It is the ignorance of those people, like Buz, which wishes to see the erosion of basic human dignity and basic human rights, those rights that allow women a right to speak and be heard.
{Edited for clarity}
This message has been edited by DBlevins, 05-16-2004 05:38 PM
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