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Excerpts from Elizabeth Stanton’s address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
“Some men tell us we must be patient and persuasive; that we must be womanly. My friends, what is man’s idea of womanliness? Is it to have a manner which pleases him- quiet, deferential, submissive, approaching him as a subject does a master. He wants no self-assertion on our part, no defiance, no vehement arraignment of him as a robber and a criminal …. while every right achieved by the oppressed has been wrung from tyrants by force; while the darkest page on human history is the outrages on women – shall men still tell us to be patient, persuasive and womanly?
What do we know as yet of the womanly? The women we have seen thus far have been, with rare exception, the mere echoes of men. Men has spoken in the State, the Church and the Home, and made the codes, creeds and customs which govern every relation in life, and women have simply echoed all his thoughts and walked in the paths he prescribed. And they call this womanly! When Joan of Arch led the French army to victory I dare say the carpet knights of England thought her unwomanly. When Florence Nightingale, in search of blankets for the soldiers in the Crimean War, cut her way through all the orders and red tape, commanded with vehemence and determination those who guarded the supplies to “unlock the doors and not talk to her of proper authorities when brave men were shivering in their beds,” no doubt she was called unwomanly. To me, “unlock the doors” sounds better than any words of circumlocution, however sweet and persuasive, and I consider that she took the most womanly way of accomplishing her object.
Patience and persuasiveness are beautiful virtues in dealing with children and feeble-minded adults, but those who have the gift of reason and understand the principles of justice, it is our duty to compel to act up to the highest light that is in them, and as promptly as possible…”
-Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Ms. Stanton had the revolutionary fire that, as of late has been sputtering and spitting; hopefully new female leaders can step forth and reanimate the movement and bring back the revolutionary zeal that in 1890’s (and henceforth) got things done.
-“We harbor an ideological bias against the feminine voice, rooted in positive primal associations with masculinity.”
Some highlights from the JSTOR article On Men and Women’s Public Speech.
“Gunn uses speeches delivered by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in their 2008 contest for the Democratic nomination to illustrate how gendered norms about speech create a double bind for women.
Gunn argues that the field of public address is an important symbolic arena where we harbor an “[ideological] bias against the feminine voice,” a bias, he contends, that is rooted in positive primal associations with masculinity (and the corresponding devaluation of femininity, the voice that constrains and nags—the mother, the droning Charlie Brown schoolteacher, the wife).
Both Gunn and Campbell contend that masculine speech is the cultural standard. It’s what we value and respect. The low pitch and assertive demeanor that characterize the adult male voice signify reason, control, and authority, suitable for the public domain. Women’s voices are higher pitched, like those of immature boys, and their characteristic speech patterns have a distinctive cadence that exhibits a wider range of emotional expression. In Western cultures, contends Gunn, this is bad because it comes across as uncontrolled. We associate uncontrolled speech (what Gunn calls “the cry, the grunt, the scream, and the yawp”) with bodily functions and sexuality—things that happen in the private, domestic spheres (both coded as feminine). Men are expected to repress passionate, emotional speech, Gunn explains, precisely because it threatens norms of masculine control and order.
The notion of control also relates to the cultural ideal of eloquence. Eloquence is not just a Western value but is rewarded in many cultures around the world.”
[…]
““Eloquence” is, essentially, code for values associated with masculinity.”
Ouch. Yet another patriarchal societal barrier that needs to be brought to light and rectified with all due haste.
“Radical feminist theorists do not seek to make gender a bit more flexible, but to eliminate it. They are gender abolitionists, and understand gender to provide the framework and rationale for male dominance. In the radical feminist approach, masculinity is the behaviour of the male ruling class and femininity is the behaviour of the subordinate class of women. Thus gender can have no place in the egalitarian future that feminism aims to create.”
— Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism,
“Adolescence, for a woman, is the slow realization that you are not considered as fully human as you hoped. You are a body first, and your body is not yours alone: whether or not you are attracted to men, men and boys will believe they have a claim on your body, and the state gets to decide what you’re allowed to do with it afterwards.”
-Laurie Penny, Unspeakable Things
Ms.Murphy describes the radical treatment necessary in order to make our society a livable place for women:
“Without the things women are expected to provide in order to “prove” abuse — pictures of injuries, hospital records, DNA — we are already not believed. In fact, “believed” is the wrong word — we are not understood. It is not understood that “consent” does not negate male violence and it is not understood that abuse comes in all sorts of forms, most of which are unprovable in court. It is not understood that pornography grooms women to accept abuse and that gendered socialization teaches women to politely absorb sexual harassment. It is not understood that the limited “sex-positive” discourse pushed by liberals gaslights women into believing they are “prudish,” “uptight,” and “anti-sex” if they don’t accept a male-centered vision of “sexuality.” “Believing women” is not the only thing we must do in these circumstances.
I understand the anger women across Canada are expressing at this unjust verdict. I can only imagine the pain Ghomeshi’s victims are experiencing today. But I don’t, for one minute, believe that a guilty verdict is enough, in terms of holding men to account and changing the public’s view of male power and abuse. We, as a society, are responsible for having that conversation and for effecting real change, in terms of ending male violence against women.”
Ms. Reilly-Cooper has done some fantastic foundational work describing what sex and gender is and, more importantly, how many radical feminists approach the topic.
This will be a long post and a feature here at DWR as it is a resource too good not to replicate.
“Sex
1. Humans, like the vast majority of species, reproduce sexually. This means that the reproduction of our species is achieved through the fusion of a female gamete with a male gamete to produce a new organism. In normal cases, each organism produced will be unambiguously either female or male, and will produce the appropriate gametes for the purposes of sexual reproduction.
2. The categories of female and male are thus general biological categories that apply to all species that reproduce sexually. Humans are not special in this regard. While the language we use to describe these biological facts, and the values we attach to these facts, will be shaped by culture, the facts themselves exist independently of culture or our social understandings of them. Whether or not we have the language with which to describe it, females will continue to produce large, non-motile gametes (ova), and males will continue to produce small, motile gametes (spermatozoa).
3. Humans, like the majority of species and like all mammals, are sexually dimorphic. This means that female and male organisms of the same species are distinguishable from one another, due to differences in their anatomy and physiology: their primary and secondary sex characteristics. In female humans, relatively higher levels of oestrogen will lead to the development of a vulva, vagina, ovaries, uterus, breasts, and a range of other physiological markers. In male humans, relatively higher levels of testosterone will lead to the development of a penis and testes, deepening of the voice and growth of facial hair at puberty, and a range of other physiological markers. Again, humans are not special in this regard. While the language we use to describe these biological facts and the values we attach to them will vary with culture, the facts themselves exist independently of culture or our social understandings of them. Whether or not we have the language with which to describe it, at puberty female humans will begin to develop breasts and to menstruate.
4. As mentioned in point 1, in normal cases, the child that is born as a result of human reproduction is unambiguously female or male and easily recognised as such, as a result of the visible sex organs that develop in utero. In a small percentage of cases, the child is intersex. This means that the sexual characteristics the child displays are such that it is not possible to make a simple classification of female or male. While it is difficult to make a clear determination on the prevalence of intersex conditions, due to the range of different biological factors that may cause it, it is estimated that around one in 2,000 children will be born visibly intersex. The fact that some humans are intersex in no way diminishes the truth of sexual dimorphism, any more than the fact that some humans are born missing lower limbs diminishes the truth of the statement that humans are bipedal.
5. In all of those cases where the child is unambiguously female or male, the biological sex of the child is recognised at birth: female children are called girls, male children are called boys. Correctly identifying the genitals that a child possesses and therefore the biological sex to which they belong is not a matter of assigning gender to the child; it is simply to recognise the biological facts and to give them the correct biological label. Whether or not we have the language with which to describe it, male and female humans will exist. Children with vulvas will continue to be born, and children with penis and testes will continue to be born, whether or not we call them girls and boys (and whether or not we call those organs by those labels. A penis is anatomically a different organ from a clitoris, no matter what name you give it).
6. To summarise points 1-5: despite the existence of some unusual cases that deviate from the norm, the vast majority of humans possess the anatomical characteristics of either one sex or the other. These characteristics determine the reproductive function the individual can go on to perform. Biologists use the labels female and male to refer to these sex classes. Whether we retain these labels to refer to these sex classes, or whether we allow those labels to be co-opted to mean other things and thereby lose our language to describe these basic biological facts, these basic biological facts will remain. Every human being that has ever existed was created through this mechanism, and it took a lot of arduous and dangerous reproductive labour on the part of their mothers to get them here.
7. There is nothing remotely oppressive or unjust about correctly labelling a child’s biological sex on the basis of their genitals, and therefore correctly identifying their potential reproductive role. Neither is there anything essentialist or determinist about this classification. To acknowledge that on the basis of their biology, only one half of our species is potentially capable of conceiving and gestating live young, neither reduces female persons to that reproductive function, nor prescribes it as necessary for them. However, to deny this basic biological fact renders female biology unspeakable, which in turn makes it impossible to describe and analyse the oppression that accompanies living in a female body (such as rape and sexual violence, lack of access to contraception and abortion, provision of maternity healthcare and maternity employment rights, lack of investment and research into female illnesses and diseases…)
8. Women’s oppression has its historical roots and its ostensible justification in female biology and the exploitation of female reproductive labour. Altering the definition of the word ‘female’ so that it now means ‘any person who believes themselves to be female’ is not only conceptually incoherent (more on this in a later post); it also removes the possibility of analysing the structural oppression of female persons as a class, by eradicating the terminology we use to describe the material conditions of their existence. (Bookmark that link for later if you must, but do read it. Read it more than once, ideally. It’s worth it.)
9. Furthermore, for those who feel strongly that they should have been born female but were not, changing the definition of the word female so that it also applies to them will bring only a temporary alleviation of their suffering. It is not the existence of the words ‘female’ and ‘male’ that persons with dysphoria find distressing. It is the underlying biological facts to which they refer, as well as the socially constructed gender roles that are associated with being a member of that sex class, that they find intolerable. Neither of these sources of pain will be remedied by changing the label we use to refer to them. The words female and male are neutral descriptors, and there is nothing pejorative about being classified as male. Any negative connotations the words female and male bring to mind are caused by the social construction of gender norms associated with the sexes, in the form of femininity and masculinity; this will be the subject of the next post.”
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