“Go round the shops in any big town. There are goods worth millions and you cannot estimate the human labor expended on them, and look whether in nine-tenths of these shops there is anything for the use of men. All the luxuries of life are demanded and maintained by women.
“Count all the factories. An enormous proportion of them produce useless ornaments, carriages, furniture, and trinkets, for women. Millions of people, generations of slaves, perish at hard labor in factories merely to satisfy women’s caprice. Women, like queens, keep nine-tenths of mankind in bondage to heavy labor. And all because they have been debased and deprived of equal rights with men. And they revenge themselves by acting on our sensuality and catch us in their nets. Yes, it all comes of that.
“Women have made of themselves such an instrument for acting upon our sensuality that a man cannot quietly consort with a woman. As soon as a man approaches a woman he succumbs to her stupefying influence and becomes intoxicated and crazy. I used formerly to feel uncomfortable and uneasy when I saw a lady dressed up for a ball, but now I am simply frightened and plainly see her as something dangerous and illicit. I want to call a policeman and ask for protection from the peril, and demand that the dangerous object be removed and put away.”
From The Kreutzer Sonata. It’s a work of fiction, of course, but no one can write with the kind of passionate hatred this man can. This goes on for nearly 80 pages, with stops to cast loathing upon marriage, infidelity, music (especially Beethoven), doctors, children, sex, birth control, and meateating.
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