The More Things Change...

...the more things stay the same.  In the wake of the recent examples of male bloggers' condescension towards their female counterparts (and no, this is actually not another installment of Where Are the Female Bloggers), I appreciated reading this woman's scathing response to those who insult women as a whole by singling out one or two to praise her abilities as "exceptional."

My ears are wearied by your carping.  You brashly and publicly not merely wonder but indeed lament that I am said to possess as fine a mind as nature ever bestowed upon the most learned man.  You seem to think that so learned a woman has scarely before been seen in the world.  You are wrong on both counts, Sempronius, and have clearly strayed from the path of truth and disseminate falsehood.  I agree that you should be grieved, indeed, you should be ashamed, for you have ceased to be a living man, but have become an animated stone; having rejected the studies which make men wise, you rot in torpid leisure.  Not nature but your own soul has betrayed you, deserting virtue for the easy path of sin.

You pretend to admire me as a female prodigy, but there lurks sugared deceit in your adulation.  Yu wait perpetually in ambush to entrap my lovely sex, and overcome by your hatred seek to trample me underfoot and dash me to the earth.  It is a crafty ploy, but only a low and vulgar mind would think to halt Medusa with honey....

I would have been silent, believe me, if that savage old enmity of yours had attacked me alone.... But I cannot tolerate your having attacked my entire sex.  For this reason my thirsty soul seeks revenge, my sleeping pen is aroused to literary struggle, raging anger stirs mental passions long chained by silence.  With just cause I am moved to demonstrate how great a reputation for learning and virtue women have won by their inborn excellence, manifested in every age as knowledge, the [purveyor] of honor.  Certain, indeed, and legitimate is our possession of this inheritance, come to us from a long eternity of ages past.... [A long list of learned women and female scholars from history follows. ]  ...All of history is full of these examples.  Thus your nasty words are refuted by these arguments, which compel you to concede that nature imparts equally to all the same freedom to learn....

[But] where we [women] should be forceful we are [too often] devious; where we should be confident we are insecure.  [Even worse], we are content with our condition.  But you, a foolish and angry dog, have gone to earth as though frightened by wolves.  Victory does not come to those who take flight.  Nor does he remain safe who makes peace with the enemy; rather, when pressed, he should arm himself all the more with weapons and courage.  How nauseating to see strong men pursue a weakling at bay!  Hold on!  Does my name alone terrify you? As I am not a barbarian in intellect and do not fight like one, what fear drives you?  You flee in vain, for traps craftily-laid rout you out of every hiding place.  Do you think that by hiding, a deserter [from the field of battle], you can remain undiscovered?  A penitent, do you seek the only path of salvation in flight?  [If you do] you should be ashamed.

I have been praised too much; showing your contempt for women, you pretend that I alone am admirable because of the good fortune of my intellect.  But I, compared to other women who have won splendid renown, am but a little mousling.  You disguise your envy in dissimulation, but cloak yourself in apologetic words in vain.  The lie buried, the truth, dear to God, always emerges.  You stumble half-blind with envy on a wrongful path that leads you from your manhood, from your duty, from God. Who, do you think, will be surprised, Bibulus, if the stricken heart of an angry girl, whom your mindless scorn has painfully wounded, will after this more violently assault your bitter words?  Do you suppose, O most contemptible man on earth, that I think myself sprung from the head of Jove? I am a school girl, possessed of the sleeping embers of an ordinary mind.  Indeed I am too hurt, and my mind, offended, too swayed by passions, sighs, tormenting itself, conscious of the obligation to defend my self.  For absolutely everything - that which is within us and that which is without - is made weak by association with my sex.

I, therefore, who have always prized virtue, having put my private concerns aside, will polish and weary my pen against chatterboxes swelled with false glory.  Trained in the arts, I shall block the paths of ambush.  And I shall endeavor, by avenging arms, to sweep away the abusive infamies of noisemakers with which some disreputable and impudent men furiously, violently, and nastily rave against a woman and a republic worthy of reverence.

Laura Cereta,
Letter to Bibulus Sempronius: A Defense of the Liberal Education of Women,
January 13, 1488