Tyranny of Custom and Feeling

Mill identifies deeply rooted custom and emotional prejudice, rather than rational argument, as the main obstacles to women's emancipation, noting that such feelings resist logical refutation.

Mill criticizes the custom of excluding women from public life and the pretense that it is for their own good, which he sees as a form of tyranny.

Tyranny of Custom and Feeling is one of the patterns The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill returns to. The chapter notes above are from this edition’s companions — open those chapters to see how the book stages the idea rather than treating the theme as a slogan.