伊麗莎白‧凱蒂‧斯坦頓
(ELIZABETH CALM STANTON)

在紐約立法機關作的關於女權的講話
Address to the Legislature of New York on Women's Rights

我們要求的權利，僅僅是與你們為你們自己制定的相同的權利。……理由很簡單──每個人的權利都是相同的、彼此一樣的。

伊麗莎白‧凱蒂‧斯坦頓(1815－1902)是美國爭取婦女平等權利運動的戰略制定者、演說家、哲學家和宣傳家。她是紐約州北部地區一個富有而且保守的家族的女兒。她丈夫亨利‧比‧斯坦頓是一位廢奴主義者和律師。她有七個孩子，(最小的孩子出生於1859年)。1848年，由於她的努力，紐約州通過了一項劃時代的法案，賦予已婚婦女以財產權；同時，她又是 於同年召開的塞尼卡福爾斯女權大會的主要發起者。1851年，她與蘇珊‧比‧安東尼聯手。從那以後，她們倆成了十九世紀美國女權運動的領袖。

1854年2月，斯坦頓代表女權倡導者大會出席了在奧爾巴舉行的紐約州立法會議。斯坦頓與安東尼在每位議員的桌上放了一份講話稿，並且還印發了五萬份小冊子。在發言前，斯坦頓(時年38歲)先將講話讀給父親聽。她父親是位受人尊敬的法學家，他起初曾威脅要取消她的繼承權，結果卻幫助她從法律的角度進行分析。

……先生們，在共和制的美國，在十九世紀，我們作為一七七六年革命英雄的女兒，要求你們洗雪我們的冤屈──修定你們的州憲法──制定一部新的法典。請允許我們盡可能簡要地提請你們注意使我們吃盡苦頭的所謂法律上的無資格。

第一點，請看看婦女作為女人的地位。依照法律，我們可以生存、呼吸，有權從我們法律上的保護人處索取生活必需品──為我們所犯的罪過受罰；但是，僅僅如此是不夠的。我們是人，是本地人，生來就是自由民，是財產持有者，是付稅人；可是，人們卻拒不允許我們享有選舉權，我們養活我們自己，而且還部分地負擔了學校、大學、教會的費用，部分地負擔了你們的貧民院、監獄、陸軍、海軍和整個國家機器的費用。但是，我們在你們的議會裏卻沒有發言權。除了性別之外，我們完全符合憲法規定的合法投票人所必備的條件，我們講道德，守貞節，聰明理智，在各個方面都與驕傲的白人男子不相上下。可是，你們的法律卻把我們同白癡、瘋子和黑人劃歸一類。儘管我們覺得這樣一種地位並不會給我們帶來任何榮耀，但是實際上，我們的法律地位比他們還要低。因為，如果黑人擁有二百五十美元，便有權成為投票人；瘋子可以在他理智清醒的瞬間投票；白癡，只要是男性，只要不是徹頭徹尾的傻瓜，就也能投票。可是我們呢?我們領導了偉大的慈善運動，設立了慈善機構，編輯雜誌，出版論述歷史、經濟和數理統計的著作；我們領導了國家、軍隊，出任教授，給當代的學者講授哲學與數學；我們發現星球，駕駛船舶漂洋過海。可是，人們卻拒不給予我們公民的最神聖的權利，其原因，就因為，天哪，我們來到這個共和國時未被賦予男人的尊嚴！……難道說，在這個我們認為沒有皇家血統，沒有使徒後裔的地方，在這個宣稱人人生而平等的地方，在這個宣稱政府的正當權力來自被治理的人民的同意的地方，你們卻一心要建立這樣一種貴族制度，它將無知、粗俗的人置於有教養的、高雅的人士之上，將外人和苦力置於當代作家、詩人之上，將兒子置於生養了他們的母親之上嗎?……

第二點，請看看婦女作為妻子的地位。婚姻事實上是建立在英國的古老習慣法之上的，是一個僅僅由於文明進步才得到一點改善的種種野蠻習俗的混合體。你們有關婚姻的法律公開違背了我們關於正義、關於我們本性中最神聖的感情的開明觀念。如果你們對婚姻持最神聖的看法，視其為神聖的關係，是唯有愛情才能建立和滿足的關係，那麼。人類立法所能做的當然僅僅是承認這種關係。人既不能人為地繫上也不能鬆開婚姻的約束，因為這個特權僅屬於上帝，是上帝創造了男人與女人，以及將他們結合在一起的吸引法則。但是，如果你們視婚姻為民間契約，那麼就讓它服從制約所有其他契約的同樣法則。不要把婚姻弄成一種半人半神的機制，一種你能建立但卻不能管理的機制。你們不要為這種契約制定特殊的法令，從而將自己捲入最荒唐、最嚴重的矛盾之中。根據你們的法律，凡是不滿21歲的人不得簽約購買馬匹或土地，而且，如果簽約中有欺騙行為，或簽約人未完全履約，那麼他還可以不受該契約的束縛。根據你們法律，所有民事契約的簽約方，只要仍保留他們簽約前的身份、能力和獨立性，便有充分的權利以任何理由按他們自己的意願和選擇來解除合作關係和契約。那麼，你們是根據什麼民事法律原則，允許14歲的男孩與12歲的女孩違背一切自然法則地訂立比任何其他契約都更具有巨大重要性的契約，並且，不論發生什麼情況，即使他們感到失望，感到受騙上當，感到痛苦，他們也必須終生格守這個契約呢?而且，簽署這種契約意味著簽約的一方立刻喪失其公民權利。僅僅在昨天還傲視跪地求婚者的女子，昨天在人類天平上的讀數還高到足以與一位驕傲的撤克遜男子以同等條件簽定契約的女子，今天便全無公民的權利，全無社會自由了。妻子不能繼承財產，其法律地位與南方種植園裏的奴隸毫無兩樣。她什麼也不能佔有，什麼也不能出售。她甚至連支配自己賺來的工資的權利都沒有。她的身子，她的時間，她的勞動都是另一個人的財產。…

第三點，請看看婦女作為寡婦的地位。每當我們試圖指出法律對妻子的不公正時，那些總要我們相信法律已無法改善了的人便向我們指出寡婦的特權、權力和要求權。讓我們稍微看看這些吧。……瞧瞧法律的寬宏大量吧：它允許寡婦終生保留、享有地產的三分之一利息，享有丈夫個人財產的二分之一，而法律自己卻佔有了大部分的財富!如果妻子先 於丈夫去世，那麼房產和土地卻仍將全部屬於丈夫。沒人膽敢干擾他家的清靜，或騷擾他神聖的憂傷避難所。請問，如此區別對待男人與婦女，能叫作正義嗎?……

人們多次而且常常一本正經地問我們，「你們女人缺什麼呢?你們的目的是什麼呢?」許多人表現出一種值得稱頌的好奇心。他們想知道，在共和制的美國，妻子和女兒有什麼可抱怨的。她們的先生和兒子曾經那麼英勇地為了自由而戰，並且光榮地贏得了獨立，將所有的暴政、偏執和等級制度統統踩在腳下，向啟盼著的世界宣佈了一條神聖的真理──人人生而平等。在這樣的政府下，婦女能缺少什麼呢？承認在性別上的根本差異，那麼你就得要求獲得不同的地位──有如水之於魚，空氣之於鳥雀一樣。

人們無法使南方的種植園主相信他的奴隸同他一樣有感覺，能思維。人們無法使他相信，對於他的奴隸來說，非正義與壓迫就像對他一樣痛苦。人們無法使他相信：他的奴隸也能像主人一樣強烈地感受到按照他人意志生活的屈辱，感受到聽憑他人癖性的支配，任憑他人情慾的擺佈的奴役性。如果你能強迫他違心地看一幅黑人蒙受冤苦的寫照。使他的靈魂一時受到震動，那麼他的邏輯會立刻使他得到安慰。他會說，奴隸感覺不到我所感覺到的。先生，這就是我們困難之所在。當我們面對共和國的議員和學者，為我們的事業辯護隊他們無法接受男人和女人是相像的觀點。只要這些人都處於這種錯覺之中，那麼公共輿論對於所揭示出的婦女地位的不公正和低下所表示的驚訝，將比不上對婦女終於覺醒、並且意識到這一不公正事實所表示出的驚訝。……

但是，先生們，如果你們以男人與女人相像為由，進而認為你們是我們忠實的代表的話，那麼，你們為什麼要為婦女制定出這些特殊的法律呢?難道同一部法典不能滿足所有類似的需要嗎?基督的金科玉律勝過所有凡人才子能夠設想出的特殊法令，「己所不欲，勿施於人。」先生兄弟們，這就是我們對你們要求。我們要求的權利，僅僅是與你們為你們自己制定的相同的權利。我們需要的保障，僅僅是現行法律為你們提供的保障。

最後，讓我們代表全州的婦女聲明，我們所要求的，正是你們自從「五月花」號在普利茅斯港拋錨以來，在開發過程中你們為自己所要求得到的。理由很簡單──每個人的權利都是相同的，彼此一樣的。你們可能會說，本州的大部分婦女並末提出這個要求，提出要求的只是一些失望的、令人討厭的老處女和沒有子女的女人。

你們錯了。廣大婦女是通過我們來發言的。本州絕大部分婦女自食其力，而且還供養孩子，許多人還供養她們的丈夫。...

那麼，你們真的認為這些婦女不希望掌握她們掙來的工資，不希望擁有自己購買的土地和自己建起的房子嗎?你們真的認為她們不希望將自己的孩子置於自己的支配之下，而不必遭受一位一錢不值、花天酒地的懶漢的沒完沒了的干涉和蹂躪呢?你們以為任何女人都是如此虔誠、馴服，以至於心甘情願地終日縫紉，卻僅僅掙得可憐的50美分嗎?你們以為她們希望遵照你們的法律，享受那個為丈夫支付煙錢和灑錢的無法言喻的特權嗎?試想想，一個十足畜生一樣的酒鬼，他的妻子會同意與他分享她的家和她的床嗎，如果法律和公共輿論允許她解除這種粗野的伴侶關係的話?很明顯，她絕對不會同意！…

我們為所有的這些婦女說話，如果在這長長的單子上，你們再加上那些大聲疾呼要求賠償她們沒完沒了的勞動的婦女；再加上那些在我們的私立女子學校、高等學府和公立學校任教，卻僅僅換來微薄收入的女子；再加上那些被無情課以稅款的寡婦；再加上那些被關在感化院、貧民院和監獄裏的不幸的婦女；那麼，我們還有什麼人不能代表呢?我們不能代表的只不過是一些時髦的輕浮女子，她們像蝴蝶一樣，在短暫的夏日裏，追逐陽光和花朵，但是秋季的涼風和冬天的白霜很快便會驅走陽光和花朵，那時，她們也將需要、也將尋求保護。到那時，將輪到她們通過別人的嘴向你們提出爭取正義與平等的要求。 　

Address to the Legislature of New York on Women's Rights

. . . . Gentlemen, in republican America, in the nineteenth century, we, the daughters of the revolutionary heroes of '76, demand at your hands the redress of our grievances--a revision of your State Constitution--a new code of laws. Permit us then, as briefly as possible, to call your attention to the legal disabilities under which we labor.

    1st. Look at the position of woman as woman. It is not enough for us that by your laws we are permitted to live and breathe, to claim the necessaries of life from our legal protectors--to pay the penalty of our crimes; we demand the full recognition of all our rights as citizens of the Empire State. We are persons; native, freeborn citizens; property-holders, tax-payers; yet are we denied the exercise of our right to the elective franchise. We support ourselves, and, in part, your schools, colleges, churches, your poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the navy, the whole machinery of government, and yet we have no voice in your councils. We have every qualification required by the Constitution, necessary to the legal voter, but the one of sex. We are moral, virtuous, and intelligent, and in all respects quite equal to the proud white man himself, and yet by your laws we are classed with idiots, lunatics, and negroes; and though we do not feel honored by the place assigned us, yet, in fact, our legal position is lower than that of either; for the negro can be raised to the dignity of a voter if he possess himself of $250; the lunatic can vote in his moments of sanity, and the idiot, too, if he be a male one, and not more than nine-tenths a fool; but we, who have guided great movements of charity, established missions, edited journals, published works on history, economy, and statistics; who have governed nations, led armies, filled the professor's chair, taught philosophy and mathematics to the savants of our age, discovered planets, piloted ships across the sea, are denied the most sacred rights of citizens, because, forsooth, we came not into this republic crowned with the dignity of manhood! . . . Can it be that here, where we acknowledge no royal blood, no apostolic descent, that you, who have declared that all men were created equal--that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, would willingly build up an aristocracy that places the ignorant and vulgar above the educated and refined--the alien and the ditch digger above the authors and poets of the day--an aristocracy that would raise the sons above the mothers that bore them? . . .

    2d. Look at the position of woman as wife. Your laws relating to marriage--founded as they are on the old common law of England, a compound of barbarous usages, but partially modified by progressive civilization--are in open violation of our enlightened ideas of justice, and of the holiest feelings of our nature. If you take the highest view of marriage, as a Divine relation, which love alone can constitute and sanctify, then of course human legislation can only recognize it. Men can neither bind nor loose its ties, for that prerogative belongs to God alone, who makes man and woman, and the laws of attraction by which they are united. But if you regard marriage as a civil contract, then let it be subject to the same laws which control all other contracts. Do not make it a kind of half human, half-divine institution, which you may build up, but can not regulate. Do not, by your special legislation for this one kind of contract, involve yourselves in the grossest absurdities and contradictions.
So long as by your laws no man can make a contract for a horse or piece of land until he is twenty-one years of age, and by which contract he is not bound if any deception has been practiced, or if the party contracting has not fulfilled his part of the agreement--so long as the parties in all mere civil contracts retain their identity and all the power and independence they had before contracting, with the full right to dissolve all partnerships and contracts for any reason, at the will and option of the parties themselves, upon what principle of civil jurisprudence do you permit the boy of fourteen and the girl of twelve, in violation of every natural law, to make a contract more momentous in importance than any other, and then hold them to it come what may, the whole of their natural lives, in spite of disappointment, deception, and misery? Then, too, the signing of this contract is instant civil death to one of the parties. The woman who but yesterday was sued on bended knee, who stood so high in the scale of being as to make an agreement on equal terms with a proud Saxon man, to-day has no civil existence, no social freedom. The wife who inherits no property holds about the same legal position that does the slave of the Southern plantation. She can own nothing, sell nothing. She has no right even to the wages she earns; her person, her time, her services are the property of another. . . .

    3d. Look at the position of woman as widow. Whenever we attempt to point out the wrongs of the wife, those who would have us believe that the laws can not be improved, point us to the privileges, powers, and claims of the widow. Let us look into these a little. . . . Behold the magnanimity of the law in allowing the widow to retain a life interest in one-third the landed estate, and one-half the personal property of her husband, and taking the lion's share to itself! Had she died first, the house and land would all have been the husband's still. No one would have dared to intrude upon the privacy of his home, or to molest him in his sacred retreat of sorrow. How, I ask you, can that be called justice, which makes such a distinction as this between man and woman? . . .

    Many times and oft it has been asked us, with unaffected seriousness, "What do you women want? What are you aiming at?" Many have manifested a laudable curiosity to know what the wives and daughters could complain of in republican America, where their sires and sons have so bravely fought for freedom and gloriously secured their independence, trampling all tyranny, bigotry, and caste in the dust, and declaring to a waiting world the divine truth that all men are created equal. What can woman want under such a government? Admit a radical difference in sex, and you demand different spheres--water for fish, and air for birds.

    It is impossible to make the Southern planter believe that his slave feels and reasons just as he does--that injustice and subjection are as galling as to him--that the degradation of living by the will of another, the mere dependent on his caprice, at the mercy of his passions, is as keenly felt by him as his master. If you can force on his unwilling vision a vivid picture of the negro's wrongs, and for a moment touch his soul, his logic brings him instant consolation. He says, the slave does not feel this as I would. Here, gentlemen, is our difficulty: When we plead our cause before the law-makers and savants of the republic, they can not take in the idea that men and women are alike; and so long as the mass rest in this delusion, the public mind will not be so much startled by the revelations made of the injustice and degradation of woman's position as by the fact that she should at length wake up to a sense of it. . . .

    But if, gentlemen, you take the ground that the sexes are alike, and, therefore, you are our faithful representatives--then why all these special laws for woman? Would not one code answer for all of like needs and wants? Christ's golden rule is better than all the special legislation that the ingenuity of man can devise: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." This, men and brethren, is all we ask at your hands. We ask no better laws than those you have made for yourselves. We need no other protection than that which your present laws secure to you.
In conclusion, then, let us say, in behalf of the women of this State, we ask for all that you have asked for yourselves in the progress of your development, since the Mayflower cast anchor beside Plymouth rock; and simply on the ground that the rights of every human being are the same and identical. You may say that the mass of the women of this State do not make the demand; it comes from a few sour, disappointed old maids and childless women.
You are mistaken; the mass speak through us. A very large majority of the women of this State support themselves and their children, and many their husbands too. . . .

    Now, do you candidly think these wives do not. wish to control the wages they earn--to own the land they buy--the houses they build? to have at their disposal their own children, without being subject to the constant interference and tyranny of an idle, worthless profligate? Do you suppose that any woman is such a pattern of devotion and submission that she willingly stitches all day for the small sum of fifty cents, that she may enjoy the unspeakable privilege, in obedience to your laws, of paying for her husband's tobacco and rum? Think you the wife of the confirmed, beastly drunkard would consent to share with him her home and bed, if law and public sentiment would release her from such gross companionship? Verily, no!...

    For all these, then, we speak. If to this long list you add the laboring women who are loudly demanding remuneration for their unending toil; those women who teach in our seminaries, academies, and public schools for a miserable pittance; the widows who are taxed without mercy; the unfortunate ones in our workhouses, poor-houses, and prisons; who are they that we do not now represent? But a small class of the fashionable butterflies, who, through the short summer days, seek the sunshine and the flowers; but the cool breezes of autumn and the hoary frosts of winter will soon chase all these away; then they too, will need and seek protection, and through other lips demand in their turn justice and equity at your hands.