“It is a popular delusion that American women have as many, if not the same privileges as men. The conservative man exclaims, ‘We worship them as angels,’ and thoughtless women of affluence, and less favored women in humbler position bidding for masculine applause, respond, ‘We have all the rights we want.’ I tell you we men have no rights to give woman, she possesses naturally the same rights that we do, [and] if she does not enjoy them some one [sic] is in the wrong.”
— Asa Bearss, nineteenth-century Brethren in Christ minister, in a December 1895 edition of the Evangelical Visitor
That blesses me. Thanks.
Glad to hear it, Dorothy. Even more incredible is that it came from Bearss, a Canadian! Curiously, he doesn’t mention whether or not Canadian women have as many rights as Canadian men… 🙂