Montaigne is often dismissed as anti-feminist, but had he taken part in this querelle, he would probably have been on the pro-woman side. He did write, ‘Women are not wrong22 at all when they reject the rules of life that have been introduced into the world, inasmuch as it is the men who have made these without them.’ And he believed that, by nature, ‘males and females are cast in the same mould’. He was very conscious of the double standard used to judge male and female sexual behaviour. Aristotle notwithstanding, Montaigne suspected that women had the same passions and needs as men, yet they
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