Even the wisest legislators found no interesting role for women when they founded their republics. All laws seem to have been made to keep men in their present position of power. Men we regard as fonts of wisdom have never said anything good about women. In fact, men’s behavior towards women in all places and at all times is so uniform that it seems to be part of an organized movement. Some people have even thought that men are impelled to behave this way through some hidden instinct ordained universally by the Creator of nature.
This view is all the more easily justifiable when we consider the way women themselves tolerate their situation. They see it as being their natural place. Either because they do not think at all about what they are, or because they are born and raised in a state of dependency, they share the male point of view. In all these things, both men and women tend to believe that their minds are as different as their bodies and that the distinctions that necessarily exist between them should be extended to all aspects of life. This opinion, however, like most of the ones we hold about custom and usage, is pure prejudice, and is dictated by superficial appearance rather than close analysis. We would certainly reject it if we took the trouble to go back to its origin. We could find many examples of things that were done formerly that we could compare with the things we do now, and we could weigh ancient customs against present-day ones. If we had followed this rule more often, we would have avoided a lot of mistakes. As far as women’s present situation is concerned, we would have realized that it is simply the rule of the stronger that has put them in such a subservient position, and we would understand that it is not through any natural deficiencies that they have been denied the advantages enjoyed by our sex.
Indeed, when we think honestly about human history, both past and present, we realize that there is one common denominator: reason has always been the weakest element in our decisions, and all stories seem to have been made up for the sole purpose of demonstrating what we see in any lifetime, that from man’s very origins might has always prevailed. The greatest empires of Asia owe their beginnings to usurpers and brigands, and the inheritors of the ruins of Greece and Rome were upstarts who thought they could resist their masters and dominate their equals. All societies exhibit the same kind of conduct. If men behave in this way towards their equals, then it is most likely that they behaved in the same way first of all towards women. Here, more or less, is how it came about.
Men, realizing they were the stronger and physically superior sex, imagined they were superior in all respects. This was of no great consequence for women at the beginning of the world, when a very different state of affairs prevailed from today. There was no government, no learning, no employment, no established religion; dependence was not considered irksome. I imagine that people lived like children, and winning or losing was part of the game. Both men and women, who were naive and innocent, contributed equally to the tasks of tilling and hunting as savages do today. A man went about his business and a woman hers; the person who made the greatest contribution was the most respected.--François Poullain de la Barre (1673) On the Equality of the Two Sexes Translation by Vivien Bosley, Part 1.**
I tend to ignore Poullain de la Barre because he lacks the biting satire I enjoy so much in Gournay or Mandeville, and because I find many of his arguments a bit cringe-worthy, especially because he is so sincere . But re-reading the passage -- made famous by Simone de Beauvoir (see also Marina Reuter here) -- above reminded me that it is quite amazing that Poullain de la Barre died of natural causes. Beauvoir uses the passage in her argument that men "sought to make the fact of their supremacy a right." I don't disagree with Beauvoir, but there is more here worth noting.
First, the whole paragraph is structured around a contrast between what "some people" think and the truth (according to Poullain de la Barre). What most people think is that the male instinct to dominate, and to dominate in solidarity with each other, is part of human nature. And that this is part of God's providence. This view has a complex relationship to original sin.
By contrast, according to Poullain people, are naturally cooperative, naturally embrace the division of labor, and more or less accurately track in their praise and blame people's contribution to group welfare. This natural sociability view comes very close to denying original sin altogether by suggesting that an original golden age was actually possible.
Second, as it happens, our natural sociability is a bit like Locke's pre-political state of nature because there does exist some property. I mention Locke because Poullain de la Barre also associates this child-like friendly state of nature with really existing 'savages.' But, and this indeed anticipates Rousseau (as Reuter notes), it's when states are originated that (great) inequality and permanent gendered structures of hierarchy come into being. And, in fact, according to Poullain de la Barre all polities (I am avoiding the confusing use of 'societies') originate in acts of theft and overthrowing of basically pacific social orders. This is not just true of all the great empires of the past, but "All...exhibit the same kind of conduct." He is essentially saying that all polities have illegitimate origins that they perpetuate in present conduct.
Third, this last point is a feature and not a bog of his argument because he thinks all (socially significant) gender inequality is grounded, ultimately, in a social order that is inherently violent (see also Reuter) and devalues reason and peace. So, rather than seeing political society as a solution to the problem of violent or Hobbesian state of nature, it just is the Hobbesian state of nature. To be sure, Poullain is not an anarchist. He ultimately wishes to reform/re-order society on rational grounds in which peace and our true intellectual contributions (not just by women, but also women) are valued--but that is a normative ideal nowhere reality.*
Fourth, political dominance founded in violence and hierarchy always generates an ideology in which the superiority is projected onto other features of the dominant group. He associates the workings of such ideological projection with imagination. (For Poullain de la Barre reason seems both pacific and truth-apt in ways the imagination is.)
Fifth, and most striking organized religion is itself one of the institutions that facilitate domination and is an exercise of such imaginative ideological projections.+ It only comes into being after polities come into being and then it is inevitably tainted by, if not a tool of, the violence of male hierarchy.
Let me close with a modest moral. It is a recurring feature to situate Poullain in the Cartesianism of his age (see this excellent piece by Schmitter) That's not all false, and I will return to that link some time. But it also raises expectations about the philosophical nature of his work. In many ways, his evidential and conceptual arguments do not really make one think one is dealing with an especially promising Cartesian (natural philosopher or metaphysician). But unlike most of the Cartesians of his age (and here I am relying on Alex Douglas' wonderful book on Spinoza), who preferred to focus on medicine and science, Poullain did not shy away from very important political and theological issues and consequences of the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. And in so doing he landed in a place that is as radical and far-reaching as, say, Hobbes and Spinoza, and in some ways closer to enduring significance.
*I call these true intellectual contributions because thinks much of what passes for learning is just rank prejudice.
+In 1688 he converted from Catholicism to Calvinism and moved to Geneva. Perhaps he thought that religion could be less awful in more republican and egalitarian environment.
**I am indebted to Katharine Gillespie and her students for prompting this post.
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