For all of the plays, pamphlets, manifestos and speeches Olympe de Gouges wrote during her short life, she is probably most famous for declaring Jean-Paul Marat "the abortion of the world."

We could read this statement polemically: however many revolutionary ideas Marat held, however diligently he militated against the monarchy, however crucial his paper to the success of the revolution, he was still no friend of the struggle for women's suffrage. Many thus read Gouges' statement as a wholesale rejection of Marat and his legacy. A sexist revolutionary is not a revolutionary.