The Ego and His Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority

by Max Stirner

Man is something only as my quality191 (property),192 like masculinity or femininity. The ancients found the ideal in one’s being male in the full sense; their virtue is virtus and arete—manliness. What is one to think of a woman who should want only to be perfectly “woman?” That is not given to all, and many a one would therein be fixing for herself an unattainable goal. Feminine, on the other hand, she is anyhow, by nature; femininity is her quality, and she does not need “true femininity.” I am a man just as the earth is a star. As ridiculous as it would be to set the earth the task of being a “thorough star,” so ridiculous it is to burden me with the call to be a “thorough man.”