Skip to content
quotesby

That is adultery where woman submits herself sexually to man, without desire on her part, for the sake of 'keeping him virtuous,' 'keeping him at home,' the women say. (Well, if a man did not love me and respect himself enough to be 'virtuous' without prostituting me, - he might go, and welcome. He has no virtue to keep.) And that is rape, where a man forces himself sexually upon a woman whether he is licensed by the marriage law to do it or not. And that is the vilest of all tyranny where a man compels the woman he says he loves, to endure the agony of bearing children that she does not want, and for whom, as is the rule rather than the exception, they cannot properly provide. It is worse than any other human oppression; it is fairly God-like! To the sexual tyrant there is no parallel upon earth; one must go to the skies to find a fiend who thrusts life upon his children only to starve and curse and outcast and damn them!

Voltairine de Cleyre#13

ConsentMarriage

About this quote

What does it mean?
De Cleyre defines non-consensual sex within marriage as rape and criticizes forced reproduction as tyranny.
In plain terms
Married sex without desire is rape, and forced pregnancy is tyranny.
What can you take from it?
Consent matters in marriage as much as outside it.

Where it applies

  • discussing marital rights
  • advocating for reproductive freedom

Putting it to work

  • promoting consent education
  • fighting reproductive coercion

Questions to consider

  • What makes sex consensual?
  • Who controls reproductive choices?

Another view

The framing of marriage as inherently tyrannical may not reflect all relationships.

More from Voltairine de Cleyre

  1. Why, when murder now is stalking in your streets, when dens of infamy are so thick within your city that competition has forced down the price of prostitution …

    Permalink to quote #12
  2. O height and depth of purity, which fears so much that the children will not know who their fathers are, because, forsooth, they must rely upon their mother's …

    Permalink to quote #14
  3. 'For it must needs that offences come, but woe to him through whom the offence cometh.' The crimes of the future are the harvests sown of the ruling classes of…

    Permalink to quote #11

Related quotes

  1. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life:. [P]eople have or…

    Anthony KennedyAnthony Kennedy quote #6
  2. Is it possible to conceive of anything more immoral than for a husband to insist on living with a wife who has no love for him? Is not this a perpetual crime? …

    Robert G. IngersollRobert G. Ingersoll quote #151
  3. And if we don't we'll have a race of babies/That will hate the ladies, that make the babies/And since a man can't make one/He has no right to tell a woman when…

    Tupac ShakurTupac Shakur quote #272