Women have been fighting for full human status in society for a very long time. You’d think a rational society could do more in a hundred years plus, but we’re still not there yet.
” And yet I find in American newspapers there is a great deal of misunderstanding of the fact that one of the chief minds engaged in conducting the women’s revolution is, for purposes of convenience, located in Paris. It is quite easy for you to understand – it would not be necessary for me to enter into explanations at all – the desirability of revolution if I were a man, in any of these countries, even in a part of the British Empire known to you as Ireland. If an Irish revolutionary had addressed this meeting, and many have addressed meetings all over the United States during the last twenty or thirty years, it would not be necessary for that revolutionary to explain the need of revolution beyond saying that the people of his country were denied – and by people, meaning men – were denied the right of self-government. That would explain the whole situation. If I were a man and I said to you, “I come from a country which professes to have representative institutions and yet denies me, a taxpayer, an inhabitant of the country, representative rights,” you would at once understand that that human being, being a man, was justified in the adoption of revolutionary methods to get representative institutions. But since I am a woman it is necessary in the twentieth century to explain why women have adopted revolutionary methods in order to win the rights of citizenship.
You see, in spite of a good deal that we hear about revolutionary methods not being necessary for American women, because American women are so well off, most of the men of the United States quite calmly acquiesce in the fact that half of the community are deprived absolutely of citizen rights, and we women, in trying to make our case clear, always have to make as part of our argument, and urge upon men in our audience the fact – a very simple fact – that women are human beings. It is quite evident you do not all realize we are human beings or it would not be necessary to argue with you that women may, suffering from intolerable injustice, be driven to adopt revolutionary methods. We have, first of all to convince you we are human beings, and I hope to be able to do that in the course of the evening before I sit down, but before doing that, I want to put a few political arguments before you – not arguments for the suffrage, because I said when I opened, I didn’t mean to do that – but arguments for the adoption of militant methods in order to win political rights.”
-Emmeline Pankhurst in Hartford Connecticut, on November 13, 1913
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
5 comments
January 24, 2018 at 1:27 pm
lovetruthcourage
I agree that women are somehow still needing to convince men of their basic humanity, but that is hardly limited to the USA. Women are no better off in the vast majority of countries, unfortunately. In fact, in most places their plight is far more dire. Still, we need liberation from men regardless of our addresses. I hope the USA can lead the way, but many men experience equality as a massive loss. They want to be “above” us. People with power rarely relinquish it voluntarily.
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January 25, 2018 at 12:44 am
Meg
You see, in spite of a good deal that we hear about revolutionary methods not being necessary for American women, because American women are so well off
Well right there shows the problem. Men were saying it then and men are still saying it now that American women just have it too damn good to complain about anything, therefore we can all shut up. It’s a disgusting lie, a gaslighting one at that, meant only to talk us out of any self-respect we might have left if we survive girlhood being raised in a racist Patriarchy.
IMO this quote also perfectly sums up the problem: Americans are professional bullshitters. We see this from the history of how the Native Americans were scammed out of their lands, how freed slaves were denied forty acres and a mule, how workers continue to be exploited by the rich and the corporations, how Wall Street is allowed to gamble our wealth away, how bankers were able to get away with predatory loan practices, how the “American dream” is sold to the world while immigrants are taken advantage of, how our “freedoms” are only taken seriously as long as it’s white Christian men exercising them. And speaking of white Christian men, how convenient is it that this socio-political system allows televangelists to rake in millions of dollars of untaxed dollars while people are homeless on the street?
People say they believe in civil liberties, freedom, the pursuit of happiness, whatever, but they really don’t. People say they believe in god and having values but in reality all they want to do is play god and psychologically terrorize everyone into submission. As Ms. Pankhurst points out, men say they believe in self-governing but deny women self-governance and the opportunity to do so while fully participating in society. People say they aren’t sexist but sit back and gloat while women are treated like punching bags.
I know your post is about women in general – but let’s not forget that other countries around the world have made more progress in the last few decades than America has. Even countries like India where rape culture is horrifying rampant, and women have to literally cut the dicks off of their rapists and give them to the police to have something done about it have had a female head of state. America brags about being so great for women, but Americans turn around and tell women to shut up every chance they get and tell shameless lies that inequality doesn’t even exist.
So in context of Ms. Pankhurst’s comment, which is in the context of American women, women don’t have equal rights in America because America itself is a culture of scam artists. If people aren’t consciously lying to you, they’re unconsciously lying to both you and themselves and worse yet, believing the lies that they’ve been told and the lies they pass on as truth. I don’t think we’d have someone like Trump as president if this weren’t true. He is the definition of a lying scam artist.
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January 29, 2018 at 8:23 am
The Arbourist
@Meg
See also the argument – look how much better you have it than those women over there..you should be grateful… :/
One could argue that other countries have been buried further in the patriarchal soup, and thus are achieving more ‘progress’ just because they are getting rid of the obviously egregious patriarchal shit that is contaminating their societies.,
Capitalism is great, no? :/
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January 29, 2018 at 3:51 pm
lovetruthcourage
I agree. It’s easier to make progress when one is further behind.
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January 30, 2018 at 6:46 pm
Meg
True, and I think we should definitely keep that in mind when we see women in Saudi Arabia being able to drive and whatnot. But the bar for women’s rights has always been set really low, like if you aren’t being beaten in the street or if you aren’t being raped while collecting firewood that you aren’t really experiencing oppression. Like you said, “look over there, women have it so much worse, stop complaining.”
There’s also the problem of having technically having rights while not being able to actually exercise them. American women technically have the right to walk alone at night or go about our daily business without a male chaperon, but what happens if a crime is committed against us while in the process of exercising those rights? We’re told it’s our fault for not paying attention to our surroundings, that it’s our fault for being alone at night, and that it’s our own stupid fault for whatever happens to us if we talk to the wrong person. If women were to listen to everyone’s “advice” on how to avoid rape, we would all be living under house arrest just like the women in Saudi Arabia.
Similarly, American women technically have the right to freedom of speech, but only on men’s terms and what men deem is acceptable speech for a woman. Feminist speech has historically been violently opposed and suppressed, and women cannot criticize men or male institutions without being demonized and viciously raked over the coals for it.
So sure, Americans can argue that American women have more rights than women in Saudi Arabia, and that’s technically true because our legal documents are supposed to protect women the same way men are protected. But we all know that’s really not true in application and everyday life.
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