Since the 19th century, men have taken part in significant cultural and political responses to feminism within each "wave" of the movement. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in a range of social relations, generally done through a "strategic leveraging" of male privilege. Feminist men have also argued alongside writers like bell hooks, however, that men's liberation from the socio-cultural constraints of sexism and gender roles is a necessary part of feminist activism and scholarship. History Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the majority of pro-feminist authors emerged from France including François Poullain de La Barre, Denis Diderot, Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, and Charles Louis de Montesquieu. Montesquieu introduced female characters, like Roxana in Persian Letters, who subverted patriarchal systems, and represented his arguments against despotism. The 18th century saw male philosophers attracted to issues of human rights, and men such as the Marquis de Condorcet championed women's education. Liberals, such as the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, demanded equal rights for women in every sense, as people increasingly came to believe that women were treated unfairly under the law. In the 19th century, there was also an awareness of women's struggle. The British legal historian, Sir Henry Maine, criticized the inevitability of patriarchy in his Ancient Law (1861). In 1866, John Stuart Mill, author of The Subjection of Women, presented a women's petition to the British parliament, and supported an amendment to the 1867 Reform Bill. Although his efforts focused on the problems of married women, it was an acknowledgment that marriage for Victorian women was predicated upon a sacrifice of liberty, rights, and property. His involvement in the women's movement stemmed from his long-standing friendship with Harriet Taylor, whom he eventually married. Parker Pillsbury was born on September 22, 1809 in Hamilton, MA. His parents were Oliver Pillsbury and Anna Smith. He died on July 7, 1898 in Concord, NH. When he was little, he went to district schools until he attended Gilmanton Theological Seminary to graduate in 1838. After a year he became a minister at the Congregational church at Loudon, NH. Later on, he married Sarah H. Sargent. With his wife he only had one child, Helen Pillsbury. He became Massachusetts Abolitionist and woman suffrage leader. His Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles was history of the New England Abolitionist movement. Parker Pillsbury and other abolitionist men held feminist views and openly identified as feminist, using