so
libel and insult humanity as to say, that she is not included in
that declaration; and if she is, then what right has man, except
that of might, to deprive woman of the rights and privileges he
claims for himself? And why, in the name of reason and justice,
why should she not have the same rights? Because she is woman?
Humanity recognizes no sex; virtue recognizes no sex; mind
recognizes no sex; life and death, pleasure and pain, happiness
and misery, recognize no sex. Like man, woman comes involuntarily
into existence; like him, she possesses physical and mental and
moral powers, on the proper cultivation of which depends her
happiness; like him she is subject to all the vicissitudes of
life; like him she has to pay the penalty for disobeying nature's
laws, and far greater penalties has she to suffer from ignorance
of her more complicated nature; like him she enjoys or suffers
with her country. Yet she is not recognized as his equal!

In the laws of the land she has no rights; in government she has
no voice. And in spite of another principle, recognized in this
Republic, namely, that "taxation without representation is
tyranny," she is taxed without being represented. Her property
may be consumed by taxes to defray the expenses of that unholy,
unrighteous custom called war, yet she has no power to give her
vote against it. From the cradle to the grave she is subject to
the power and control of man. Father, guardian, or husband, one
conveys her like some piece of merchandise over to the other.

At marriage she loses her entire identity, and her being is said
to have become merged in her husband. Has nature thus merged it?
Has she ceased to exist and feel pleasure and pain? When she
violates the laws of her being, does her husband pay the penalty?
When she breaks the moral laws, does he suffer the punishment?
When he supplies his wants, is it enough to satisfy her nature?
And when at his nightly orgies, in the grog-shop and the
oyster-cellar, or at the gaming-table, he squanders the means she
helped, by her co-operation and economy, to accumulate, and she
awakens to penury and destitution, will it supply the wants of
her children to tell them that, owing to the superiority of man
she had no redress by law, and that as her being was merged i