Women’s History Roundup: The Suffrage Edition

If you’re a regular Feminists for Choice reader, you might have guessed that we’re enamored with the US Women’s Suffrage Movement.  We love us some suffragists, ya’ll.  So today’s roundup is focused on suffrage leaders.  And there’s a video treat from “Mary Poppins” to help you get in a feisty, feminist mood in time for the weekend.  Enjoy!

Stop Co-opting Susan B. Anthony Already! – Feminists for Choice
Susa Young Gates: This is What a Feminist Looks Like – Feminists for Choice
Walking in Miss Anthony’s Footsteps – Feminists for Choice
Paying Respect to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Carrie Chapman Catt – Feminists for Choice
Taking a Feminist Pilgrimage to Seneca Falls – Feminists for Choice
Save Susan! – Feminists for Choice

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvk1NZDFvZU[/youtube]

Preserving Women’s History is the Challenge

If preserving our history was as simple as preserving fruit, we might be onto something

Uncovering women’s history has often been challenging because of the scarcity of written records about women’s lives.  But another challenge is the lack of funding for preserving women’s historical sites.  Some sites are in better condition than others, which can be influenced by several factors.

Take Seneca Falls, for example.  The Wesleyan Chapel where the first women’s rights convention was held has not always been designated as a historical site, nor has it been home to a women’s history museum.  In the years following 1848, the Wesleyan Chapel was sold several times.  In its lifetime, the Wesleyan Chapel has been an opera house, a laundry mat, and a car dealership.  Today, the chapel is stripped of all its furniture.  However, the Visitors’ Center next door has an amazing tribute to the women’s movement in the US.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s homes are two other examples.  Although the homes are being preserved, there were many decades where the homes served as private residences, rather than museums.  Stanton’s home is preserved by the National Park System, but Anthony’s home is being preserved by a private foundation.  When I visited Stanton’s home last fall, it had been stripped of everything inside in order for the park service to do structural repairs.  When I asked the tour guide when the home would be restored, he said he did not know – it depended on funding streams.  The Anthony home has been slowly repaired over the years, but there are a few sections of the house that are not safe to enter.  Again, this is an issue of funding.  When you compare the state of these homes to the historical sites that honor men, it’s a little heartbreaking to think that women’s history has no monetary value in the US.  And that’s why we women need to keep demanding to have our history preserved.  [Read more...]

Stop Co-opting Susan B. Anthony Already!

Sarah Palin has a new book out. Didn’t even know she could read, but it’s true. She’s got another book on the shelves. And the loopy lies about how she’s the rightful heir of the first wave of feminism makes me barf a little in my mouth. Palin claims that Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a conservative Christian, and that Palin is cut from the same mold.

Um, news flash, Sarah Palin. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was anything but a conservative, or a Christian. You’ve probably never heard of The Woman’s Bible (notice how I don’t think you know how to read), but Stanton got the boot from the National Women’s Suffrage Association because she published that book and took a bold stance decidedly against religion. Read a book Sarah, and then get back to me on how you and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are cut from the same cloth.

And while we’re on the subject of my favorite sister suffragettes, can you and all your wingnut friends stop co-opting the memory of Miss Susan B. Anthony? For the love of blog! Susan B. Anthony was not anti-abortion. In fact, she never talked about abortion. Just ask her biographers. Susan B. Anthony may have started out with a broad focus (temperance, abolition, women’s rights), but after the Civil War she was very single minded – it was about suffrage or nothing. To return to the issue of The Woman’s Bible, Anthony would tell people to talk to Stanton if she was asked about it, because religion wasn’t her issue. She kept her eyes on the suffrage prize. If Susan B. Anthony were alive today, she would decidedly be pro-choice because she did make speeches in favor of family planning while she was alive. So read a freaking history book and stop spinning the facts to fit your agenda. [Read more...]

Walking in Miss Anthony’s Footsteps

Today I walked in Susan B. Anthony’s footsteps. I visited the Susan B. Anthony House in Rochester, New York, and several other historical spots along the way. And what an exciting way to experience women’s history and do research for my book about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton!

Susan B. Anthony House
The Susan B. Anthony House is located at 17 Madison Street in Rochester, New York. When you turn onto Madison Street from Main Street, you feel as if you have stepped back in time. The narrow street is lined with colorful, Victorian-style houses, and the slate sidewalk is the original sidewalk that Miss Anthony trod. The Visitors’ Center, located at 16 Madison Street, used to be the home of Susan B. Anthony’s sister Hannah and her husband. During the tour of the house, you get a good sense of the strong family bond that was shared amongst the Anthonys, and you also get the impression that many famous abolitionists and suffragists stepped foot under the roof.

Miss Anthony’s family moved to Rochester in 1845 while Susan was away teaching school in Canajoharie. The Anthony’s originally lived on a farm out by where the current day airport is located. But when Daniel Anthony, Susan’s father, died in 1860, Susan’s mother Lucy and sister Mary decided to sell the farm and purchase the home on Madison Street. The three Anthony women lived in the house together for the remainder of their lives.

Often overlooked in the telling of the women’s suffrage story, Mary Anthony was a dedicated suffragist herself. In fact, Mary was the one who persuaded Susan to take up the suffrage cause. As one of the staff members at the Susan B. Anthony House explained to me, “Susan preached the suffrage message, while Mary lived the suffrage life.” Mary had a keen business sense. She pinched every penny, paid the family’s bills and taxes, and she kept the home fires burning for Susan when she would return from long absences from being on the suffrage trail. Mary was a teacher, and when the Rochester school where she worked asked her to replace the male principal, Mary insisted that she would only take the job if she was paid equal wages. They wouldn’t meet her salary demands, so she turned down the job. A year later, the job was again offered to her, this time with equal wages, and she accepted. Because of her frugality, Mary was able to retire at age 55, in a time when pensions were not common. Mary had invested enough money to support herself and her sister for the next 25 years. What an important lesson, even for women today! [Read more...]

Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?

Last week our tributes to Margaret Sanger, the founder of the modern birth control movement, drew some heavy discussion over on Facebook and Twitter. Many friends and members of our Facebook group e-mailed me to say that they have a difficult time honoring Sanger, because of her participation in the eugenics movement. I had already planned to write about post about the eugenics link, but the discussions I had last week reconfirmed the necessity of interrogating the question: was Margaret Sanger a racist?

It is no secret that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist, but that statement needs to be put into historical context. The discussion of historical context is not meant to be an excuse or an apology for Margaret Sanger’s beliefs. But it is important to judge Sanger’s beliefs according to the scientific culture of her time.

Eugenics was a theory about improving hereditary qualities by socially controlling human reproduction. Eugenicists were hoping to improve the human race by preventing people with genetic defects from reproducing, and limiting birth control and abortion for women who were considered “fit” or healthy. This concept got interpreted as a justification for racism, and eugenics was incorporated into the Nazi regime. [Read more...]

The Suffrage Roundup

Greetings Sister Suffragists!  A big Happy Birthday to the 19th Amendment.  In honor of its 90th anniversary, here are some suffrage related links for you, as well as a video treat from Disney’s Mary Poppins.  Enjoy!

Not All Women Won the Right to Vote Today – Womanist Musings
A Forgotten Fight for Suffrage – New York Times
Mormon Suffragists? Not an Oxymoron – Feminists For Choice

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUhwA-C-ACg[/youtube]

Susa Young Gates: This is What a Suffragist Looks Like

August 18th marked the 90th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which formally granted women the right to vote in the United States. When we think about the women’s suffrage movement, we usually conjure images of women wearing purple sashes and carrying banners that say “Votes For Women.”

Women of the western states are often overlooked in the discussion about suffrage. This is especially true of women in Utah. Mainstream culture likes to depict Mormon women as subservient to a patriarchal religion, particularly if we think about women in the 1800’s. However, a brief glimpse of Mormon suffragists gives us a very different view of women during the 19th Century.

Utah women initially obtained the vote in 1870, by a bipartisan vote of the state legislature. However, Congress repealed Utah women’s suffrage in 1886 as part of a series of anti-Mormon bills that were passed through Congress. There was quite a debate in Congress about whether Utah women should retain the right to vote. Many Easterners felt that if Mormon women could vote, they would vote to end polygamy. That view was soon shattered when members of Congress realized that Utah women favored polygamy. The vote was restored when Utah became a state in 1896, and there was overwhelming public support for universal suffrage. [Read more...]

Save Susan!

Each Women’s History Month the portrait of Susan B. Anthony decorates classroom walls around the country. What many people this year will not realize is that a heated debate is taking place involving the life of the 19th Century suffrage leader, and of all things, whether or not she opposed abortion.

Several conservative organizations, calling themselves feminists, have joined forces to manipulate the history of Susan B. Anthony to promote an anti-choice political agenda. Using her image on bumper stickers, t-shirts, and other anti-choice materials, these organizations have painted a woman who devoted her life to securing votes for women, of being publicly opposed to abortion.

According to Mary Krane Derr, an author and member of Feminists for Life, there are “bits of evidence” that prove Susan B. Anthony opposed abortion. Convincing. [Read more...]

Ask 20 Feminists Their Opinion & Get 20 Different Answers

women veteransI just have to rant for a second. Hang in there, OK?

“Feminism” does not exist as a singular ideology that always looks at any given subject in any particular way. Rather than reduce an analysis down to a universal conclusion, by and large, feminists hope to inject topics with larger perspectives that may be lost in dominant ideologies.

The beauty (and bane, on occasion) of feminism is that we are thinkers. We are generally people who think through things and who like to analyze situations/questions in ways that include perspectives that are normally left out of the mainstream–considerations for women, certainly, for people of color or LGBT people, or LGBT people of color, or people with disabilities or poor people, etc. Essentially, our aim is to expand the ways that people think of things to include more than just the concerns of wealthy, heterosexual, white men.

[Read more...]

Challenging Oklahoma’s new abortion law

h140 In 1913, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns founded what would come to be called the “National Women’s Party”. The seal pictured was the official flag of the party, there were 36 stars to represent the 36 states needed to ratify the 19th Amendment which allowed women access to the right to vote. Now, i’m pretty sure you’re wondering what this flag, or the NWP have to do with the new Oklahoma law that was passed a few weeks ago. At first glance, not a whole lot, but in examining the way that the brave women of Oklahoma are fighting back against HB 1595, i have to ask…

What would Alice do? [Read more...]