John Stuart Mill argumenterade för följande i The Subjection of Women:

That the 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 that 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.

Men han insåg ett huvudproblem – nämligen att många intog en attityd i frågan på känslomässig grund, vilket gör argument i sak oförmögna att förändra attityden. Han beskriver det här problemet i början av boken:

So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded its adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old. And there are so many causes tending to make the feelings connected with this subject the most intense and most deeply-rooted of all those which gather round and protect old institutions and customs, that we need not wonder to find them as yet less undermined and loosened than any of the rest by the progress of the great modern spiritual and social transition; nor suppose that the barbarisms to which men cling longest must be less barbarisms than those which they earlier shake off.

Vilken utmaning för den förnuftsinriktade människa som försöker förändra en allmänt spridd attityd genom argument! Men å andra sidan oerhört viktig att känna till och beakta när man ger sig in i den offentliga debatten. Utmaningen är att stå kvar på solid intellektuell grund i sina uppfattningar, att ha kvar viljan och energin att sprida dem vidare – men att också i detta använda sig av medel som talar till känslor.