 According to Poulain, the law of the stronger (la Loi du plus fort) is in several respects arbitrary. He emphasizes that with the exception for the dependence of children upon their parents, dependence “is a purely physical or civil relation” and it should be “considered only as an effect of change, violence, or custom” (T1en 153; TTfr 95). As argued by Stuurman, Poulain can have been influenced by Thomas Hobbes’ views about the artificial nature of political power (Stuurman 2004: 177–178). Inequality is not natural and neither is the male sex oppressive by nature. Poulain explicitly rejects the idea that men, when they usurped power over women, were “driven by some hidden instinct—that is, by a general command of the author of nature—to act in this way” (T1en 126; TTfr 63). God has not made men oppressive. From the arbitrary nature of the power relation between the sexes follows also that “women might have [favored their sex] had they been in a similar situation” (T1en 152; TTfr 95). Neither sex is by its nature oppressive or submissive.