FROM a comment posted here in 2013 by Steve Kogan, a writer who is now deceased:

The issue of “women’s rights” was almost a century old when Nietzsche cut it to the quick with a five word response: “Feminism: the uglification of Europe.” For years, I found nothing to match its bite until I recently came across the following reminiscence in The Dostoevsky Archive: Firsthand Accounts of the Novelist from Contemporaries’ Memoirs and Rare Periodicals (1997):

    At the parties I gave, Dostoevsky showed himself to be a charming person. He told his stories, and he displayed his wit and humor, as well as his unusual and original way of thinking. As a new person entered the room, however, Dostoevsky became silent for a moment and looked like a snail retreating into its shell, or like a silent and evil-looking pagan idol. And this lasted until the newcomer produced a good impression on him…. If the stranger engaged Dostoevsky in conversation, one generally heard him make some rude remark, or saw a sour look on his face.

    Dostoevsky was opposed to the so-called “Women’s Question.” At that time, this movement took the form of eccentric behavior and attire on the part of some women, such as very short haircuts, dark blue spectacles and other fads. Among other things, these ladies did not notice that Dostoevsky disliked them, and they revered him as their teacher.

    Several times, I was present at such meetings. A contemporary woman entered the room. She failed to notice the forbidding expression on Dostoevsky’s face. She did not hear his cold tone of voice or his formal question, “What do you want?” This lady, filled with her own motives, began to tell her story, with animated and shining eyes and flushed cheeks.

    Dostoevsky listened to her attentively. His expresion became very nervous, and I saw that every feature of his face had become very tense, as if he had a volcano burning within. I sensed that he was restraining himself. As soon as this woman finished her discourse on the Women’s Question, she waited for a word of support from Dostoevsky. At this point, the resolute enemy of the Women’s Question put to her his own question. “Have you finished?” “Yes, I have finished,” replied the lady with the short haircut.

    “So, listen to me. My speech will be much shorter than yours. I want to tell you this: all that you told me now was very stupid and banal. Do you understand me? It was stupid. It would be better to dispense with you, in this matter, but your family, your children and your kitchen cannot survive without a woman … a woman has only one main purpose in life: to be a wife and a mother … there is no, there was no, and there will not be any other ‘social purpose’ of a woman. This is all stupidity, senseless talk, and gibberish. All that you have told me here is nonsense, do you hear me? It was nonsense, and I am not going to say anything else to you.”

    This was the conversation I witnessed, and which I remember. He was equally strict and uncompromising with regard to all other fashionable, liberal, social questions, and he hated these issues because he considered them to be false.

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