1 Rough Equality, Rougher Inequalities, and the 'Jostlings of ...

to counteract over time men's and women's adaptation to pernicious gender norms inlove, family, and society at large. Such deep, egalitarian reforms in education wouldgradually trigger a paradigm shift in the way that men and women saw and treated eachother. As lifelong friends who had roughhoused on the playground according to the samerules, adult men and women would be psychologically primed to put into practice themoral principle of equal respect. Given the political advances in the legal recognition ofthe natural rights of humans during the American and French revolutions, Wollstonecraftharbored a reasonable hope that equally educated adults could learn to work in tandem toinstitutionalize human rights in law and culture. Taking the long view, she posited equalpublic education as the means by which the principle of equal respect would become thebasis for institutionalizing the rough equality of humans, thereby remedying, over time,their rougher and arbitrary experiences of inequality.So, yes, I agree with Tomaselli that Wollstonecraft began the non-ideal dimensionof her political theory with the fact of human inequality. To paraphrase her interlocutorRousseau, she began with women as they are, to theorize what they might become. But itwas in the practical yet principled spirit of Hobbes that she did so. Humans were notequal in practice, nor would they ever fully be so. But they were equal enough: all thingsconsidered, they were roughly equal. A smart woman could outwit a dumb man, and astrong man could dominate a weak woman, any day...or night. It all evened out, whenyou looked at human capabilities from a comparative perspective.Yet, like John Stuart Mill after her, Wollstonecraft allowed the possibility thatgirls and women might, over time, through greater opportunities in physical educationand health care, develop themselves to achieve the same or greater physical strength as2