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Boston University School of Law

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Breaking The Mold Of Citizenship: The "Natural" Person As Citizen In Nineteenth-Century America (A Fragment), Elizabeth B. Clark Dec 2001

Breaking The Mold Of Citizenship: The "Natural" Person As Citizen In Nineteenth-Century America (A Fragment), Elizabeth B. Clark

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Mary Wollstronecraft once said, probably with a sigh, "I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behavior." Two centuries later, many groups in American political life are still caught in the same dilemma: hoping that a just society will take account of an essential characteristic -- race and sex spring to mind -- in ways that will benefit the group, while eschewing the potentially harmful characterizations that lie just on the flip side of the coin.


Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth B. Clark Jan 1989

Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth B. Clark

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The emphasis on freedom or enslavement of the body, and the issues that sprang from that focus, were feminists' contribution to nineteenth-century American liberalism, as well as their link to radical thought. Elizabeth Cady Stanton drew arguments from the realm of political liberty and religious tolerance to make the case for choice in private life. But the vision of individual autonomy in sexual and domestic matters served also as the basis for her definition of citizenship and as a paradigm for relations among citizens and between citizens and the state. Self-ownership was the unifying theme that ran through Stanton's political …