In the February 1869 issue of Belgravia magazine, an essay entitled ‘Women and Men’ opens with a trio of questions: ‘What is a woman? What is a man? Are women men?’ The writer then takes issue with a particular ‘strong-minded woman’, Lydia Becker, who had campaigned for women to appear on the voting register in Manchester, and finally arrives at the heart of the article: ‘Although Miss Becker appears to have had her innings in the registration court at Manchester, her grand field-day … was at Hull, when at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science she attracted one of the most crowded audiences, by reading a paper with this extremely grotesque title: “On the supposed Differences in the Minds of the two Sexes of Man.”’ As it happened, Becker's title was slightly, though significantly, different: ‘On some supposed Differences in the Minds of Men and Women with regard to Educational Necessities’. While Belgravia dismisses Becker's paper as ‘singularly illogical’ and ‘based on a delusion’, the prominence given to its substance, including the three propositions that form the kernel of Becker's argument, is noteworthy. Take, for instance, the second proposition: ‘That any broad marks of distinction which may at the present time be observed to exist between the minds of men and women collectively, were fairly traceable to the influence of the different circumstances under which they passed their lives, and could not be proved to inhere in each class in virtue of sex.’