October 15, 2026

The Enslavement of Women

It is a historical mistake to think that, in the past and/or in any culture, women were the property of men, that is, their slaves. Slavery consists in treating a person as an animate object, as Aristotle put it; I would say, as an animal: someone who can be bought, sold, rented out, or lent. Yet no legal system allows anything of this kind to be done with a wife. In no civilization do women exist as slaves simply because they are women, but female slaves do exist: that is, slaves (like their male counterparts) who are used as women (that is, sexually).

Let us always remember that women are our wives, our daughters, and above all our mothers, the people dearest to and most loved by men.

We must not confuse hierarchy with ownership: schoolchildren obey their teacher, but this does not mean that the teacher is their master. On the contrary, the teacher is at the service of the pupils (though not their slave).