The Subjection of Women

One cannot even make it out of the first paragraph of Mill's essay without marvelling at the revolutionary character of his thinking:

[T]he principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes -- the legal subordination of one sex to the other -- is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and... it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.

Amen, Brother Mill. And since Professor Anne Coughlin, my mentor and one of legal academia's most independent feminists, thinks Mill's 1869 [!] essay remains the best explication of the feminist ideal, I can hardly wait to finish this post and get back to it.