Love & Passion Quote by Brigid Brophy

Brophy’s provocation lands like a compliment that’s also a slap: she’s not “raising” men, she’s judging them. The first sentence flips a familiar patriarchal script. Women have long been treated as childlike dependents; Brophy reverses the condescension and dares the reader to notice how insulting it sounds when aimed at men. “Consign” is the key verb - bureaucratic, punitive, final. The “nursery” isn’t cute; it’s a holding pen for people who won’t be trusted with responsibility.

Then she twists the knife with an insistence that’s both generous and suspicious: “some men are my equals.” Not all, not automatically. Equality here isn’t a sentimental grant; it’s earned admission into adulthood. The line dramatizes a feminist impatience with the mid-century expectation that women should educate, soothe, and excuse male behavior - the emotional labor of turning boys into partners. Brophy refuses that assignment. She also refuses the opposite trap: a blanket misandry that turns political critique into a simple reversal of prejudice. The joke is that she’s offering men the very thing they’ve assumed as birthright: the possibility of being taken seriously.

Context matters. Writing in a Britain still dense with paternalism and domestic ideology, Brophy was part of a sharp-edged cohort for whom sexual politics were inseparable from intellect. The subtext is radical but clear: treat women as equals, or accept the humiliating implication that you’re not. Equality isn’t romance; it’s a competence test.