In the following excerpt, Taylor writes about why feminists, from Wollstonecraft's time to today, have feared romantic love. While noting some startling dangers that have not changed much over time, she repeats Wollstonecraft's words: "Suppressing the demands of the heart … is no liberation."
Loving men, feminists have argued, women become bound to the oppressor by the ties of their own hearts; refusing that love, heterosexual feminists have often disavowed desire tout court—a repudiation whose costs are felt in both their lives and politics. The conundrum is as old as feminism itself.
In 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the founding text of modern western feminism.
If one reads Wollstonecraft's Rights of Woman on its own, the impression is of a dour puritanism reminiscent of today's moral conservatives. Sexual feelings, she.....
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