The Right to Think

I wrote forty pages arguing for the intellectual rights of women in a world that did not believe women had them. I am sometimes asked what I would write today.

The answer is: the same argument, for a wider range of people.

The right to think is not something that has been secured once and for all. It is re-litigated in every generation, in every institution, in every family. It is re-litigated every time someone is told — explicitly or by implication — that their mind is not for them: that their background, their gender, their age, their education makes their thinking less legitimate.

I am interested in the people who have received that message and are still deciding whether to believe it. To all of them I want to say: the right to think is not something they gave you. It is something you already have.

Exercising it requires only this: the willingness to form your own view, in your own terms, and say it out loud. First to yourself. Then to one person you trust. Then, when you are ready, to whoever needs to hear it.