History of Feminism
Related: About this forumSeven Reasons You Should Thank A Feminist Today
You know the type - women who want to live in some kind of souped up 1950s fantasy world where they get married right out of high school and their husband makes enough to support their family on just his income and they think the moral decline of society has something to do with the fact that women no longer wear crinolines and genteel white gloves and cute little hats. Never mind that, you know, lots and lots of families in the 1950s werent able to live off of a single income; trust me when I say that feminism did not invent the working mother. Leaving that little scrap of truth aside, I guess I can see what some women find appealing about this model. They want to live in a world where there were fewer expectations put on women and lord knows that in this day and age, when women often work full time jobs outside of the home and yet are still expected to do the majority of the housework and childcare, the idea that there was a time when you only needed to be pretty and fertile might seem downright relaxing. I guess.
Of course, many women were miserable back then, and the feminine mystique and blah blah blah. Im not going to get into all that Betty Friedan second wave fun here, but feel free to look it up if you dont believe me. Life for women back then was like a fancy chocolate with some gross shit inside really pretty to look at, but best left in the box so that some other sucker who HASNT read the chocolate map gets tricked into eating it. Just kidding. No one should eat that chocolate its a garbage chocolate and should be treated as such.
All that being said, the thing that REALLY makes me howl with exasperation over this time-travel housewife fetishization is that the vast, vast majority of the women who say that they hate feminism seem to be pretty damn happy to reap the benefits of it. So either theyre totally unaware of what feminism is, what its done, and how history works, or else theyre just total hypocrite jerks.
http://bellejar.ca/2014/07/04/seven-reasons-you-should-thank-a-feminist-today/
shenmue
(38,538 posts)sheshe2
(88,302 posts)sheshe2
(88,302 posts)I was just going to post that gif! Love it!
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)malthaussen
(17,801 posts)How many rabid anti-labor types gleefully benefit from the work and bloodshed of their predecessors on the front lines? They're dwarfs lounging on the shoulders of giants.
-- Mal
ismnotwasm
(42,482 posts)I use that analogy all The time-- I work in an open shop, and although I don't begrudge it (much) my union dues are paying for others' benefits. My union fought for those benefits in the first place.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)1. VOTE
2. OWN PROPERTY
3. HAVE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS !!!!!
4. WEAR PANTS
5. GET AN EDUCATION
6. WORK OUTSIDE THE HOME AND BE FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT
7. BE A PERSON
ancianita
(38,913 posts)Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)I can see it might happen.
niyad
(120,825 posts)National Womans Party
The Suffrage Era
Alice Paul was a well-educated, Quaker woman working and studying in England in 1907 when she became interested in the issue of womens suffrage. She met Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, who were causing controversy throughout England with their militant tactics to secure the vote for women. Pauls participation in meetings, demonstrations and depositions to Parliament led to multiple arrests, hunger strikes, and force-feedings.
She returned to the United States in 1910 and after completing a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1912, turned her attention to the American suffrage movement. After the deaths of the two great icons of the movementElizabeth Cady Stanton in 1902 and Susan B. Anthony in 1906the suffrage movement was languishing, lacking focus and support under conservative suffrage organizations that were concentrating only on state suffrage. Paul believed that the movement needed to focus on the passage of a federal suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After joining the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and assuming leadership of its Congressional Committee in Washington, DC, Paul created a larger organization, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. Pauls tactics were seen as too extreme for NAWSAs leadership and the Congressional Union split from NAWSA in 1914.
In 1916, the Congressional Union formed the Womans Party, comprised of the enfranchised members of the Congressional Union. In 1917, the two organizations formally merged to form the National Womans Party (NWP). From the Pankhursts, Paul adopted the philosophy to hold the party in power responsible. The NWP would withhold its support from the existing political parties until women had gained the right to vote and punish those parties in power who did not support suffrage. Under her leadership, the NWP targeted Congress and the White House through a revolutionary strategy of sustained dramatic, nonviolent protest. The colorful, spirited suffrage marches, the suffrage songs, the violence the women faced (they were physically attacked and their banners were torn from their hands), the daily pickets and arrests at the White House, the hunger strikes and brutal prison conditions, the national speaking tours and newspaper headlinesall created enormous public support for suffrage.
The Equal Rights Amendment Campaign
In 1920, the 72-year struggle ended with the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, granting women the vote. Paul believed that the vote was just the first step in womens quest for full equality. In 1922, she reorganized the NWP with the goal of eliminating all discrimination against women. In 1923 Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), also known as the Lucretia Mott Amendment, and launched what would be for her a life-long campaign to win full equality for women. The current version of the ERA reads: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States on account of sex. Congress passed the ERA in 1972 but remains three states short of ratification today. For over fifty years, the ERA has been introduced in every session of Congress.
International Womens Rights
In addition to working on issues affecting American women, the NWP was extensively involved in the international womens rights movement beginning in the early 1920s. In 1928, the NWP assisted in the establishment of the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW), which served as an advisory and policy-planning unit on womens issues for what is now the Organization of American States. The NWP sought equality measures for women at the League of Nations through Equal Rights International and the International Labor Organization. The Party also provided assistance to Puerto Rican and Cuban women in their suffrage campaigns. In 1938, Alice Paul founded the World Womans Party, which, until 1954, served as the NWPs international organization. In 1945, Paul was instrumental in the incorporation of language regarding womens equality in the United Nations Charter and in the establishment of a permanent UN Commission on the Status of Women.
The National Womans Party Today
The political strategies and tactics of Alice Paul and the NWP became a blueprint for civil-rights organizations and activities throughout the twentieth century. The NWP ceased to be a lobbying organization and became a 501©(3) educational organization in 1997. Today, the NWP seeks to educate the public about the womens rights movement and to use and preserve the Sewall-Belmont House, with its outstanding historic library and suffragist and ERA archives, to tell the inspiring story of a century of courageous activism by American women.
http://www.sewallbelmont.org/learn/national-womans-party/
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)niyad
(120,825 posts)think it is far past time to resurrect it as an actual party again.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)that society has not progressed past this need to divide in order to unite in a more fair and balanced manner.
niyad
(120,825 posts)Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)DreamGypsy
(2,252 posts)...and I thank my favorite feminist (my wife) for it frequently:
8. BE A MENTOR AND A ROLE MODEL FOR OTHER WOMEN, YOUNG AND OLD
She's a scientist (biochemist), entrepreneur (founder of a number of companies, some successful, some not), business person (CEO). She has helped her six granddaughters, my three nieces, and many of her colleagues, friends, and associates to realize that though the paths they choose may be very different for the ones she has chosen, they can strive and achieve to become whoever they want to be.
Thank you.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)thank you, DreamGypsy
ancianita
(38,913 posts)damned long. Only the youngest seem to slap and snap each other out of that stockholm syndrome. Stil, it's enough to make a grown woman cry.
redqueen
(115,173 posts)and that an average of three women are murdered by their male partners or ex partners every single day, on average, just in the US... I fucking loathe the statement that we are our own worst enemy.
ismnotwasm
(42,482 posts)You know whats awesome? Being a full-fledged person in the eyes of the law. I really, really love not being a mans property. I love having agency. I love being able to make my own decisions. I love that I live in a world where its no longer completely 100% legal for a man to rape his wife. Being a person is so fucking rad. And yeah, if youre a woman, you can fucking thank feminism for the fact that you are legally a person.
And as a recent ruling expresses, not everyone thinks women are people. Brood mares maybe, but not people
ancianita
(38,913 posts)Women and girls' being trained into religious and social identities while concomitantly untrained for psychological and physical defense does embolden weak or strong patriarchalists to presume privilege, proclaim superiority or to violently show it toward their mothers, sisters, community women or random women, whenever and for whatever reasons. Singly or in groups. Abuse is internalized, then displaced, family to children over millennia. Force succeeds in domesticating girls and women's free will.
Fighting is my preference, on any level. Infighting isn't. I'm describing, not condemning. Infighting doesn't strengthen women; it weakens women; yet we do it.
Harriet Tubman saw slaves the way I see women: "I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."
I could say more to explain myself but won't.
Thanks for your support.
tea and oranges
(396 posts)the female mill workers in the Carolinas didn't want to protest or strike for fear men would see them as unfeminine.
The first anti-feminist we must all defeat is the one planted in our heads by our sexist culture!
ancianita
(38,913 posts)of them.
tea and oranges
(396 posts)Men aren't in the same economic circumstances women traditionally are or have been.
It's only recently that some women have been able to become high earners.
Which is exactly what pisses authoritarians off. If women aren't dependent on men's wages, OMG, freedom.
littlemissmartypants
(25,999 posts)We should.
Love, Peace and Shelter.
Lmsp
ismnotwasm
(42,482 posts)littlemissmartypants
(25,999 posts)Warpy
(113,131 posts)the eighth being an end to child labor, not being forced to send your little six year old to crawl into tight spaces in a coal mine because you, yourself, were not allowed to work for money.
That's about the first thing women did when we got the vote in partnership with some of the unions.
ismnotwasm
(42,482 posts)niyad
(120,825 posts)theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)A big K&R!