When
my first husband and I were married, an insurance salesman advised us only to
insure ourselves against serious losses: his life and my contact lenses.
It’s
actually a little puzzling that it took me so long to figure out what was wrong
with that statement as my mother was an ardent third generation feminist. Equal
rights for women has been a family theme for as many generations back as anyone
can remember. My grandmother, who had a Ph.D. in zoology in 1910, and
great-grandmother, who graduated from college in 1880, were passionate
suffragists.
Unlike
my childhood friends, my early years were filled with youth-level biographies
of Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and even Margaret
Sanger. (It couldn’t have been easy to write a kids’ books about legalizing
birth control. I think they were a little vague on some of the details.)
One
of my grade school reports was written, somewhat to the astonishment of my
teacher, about the 19th amendment to the Constitution which gave
women the right to vote. As I said in my impassioned oral report version, it
took 72 years of relentless effort from the time of the Seneca Falls Convention
in 1848 until the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920 by only one
vote. Of course, my classmates and I
were years from being able to vote, and Seneca Falls might as well have been on
Mars. A lot of blank stares. But my mother was so proud.
As
fate would have it, I had only sons and nephews, no daughters or nieces, not
that I didn’t do my best to inculcate my sons with the value of feminism for
both sexes. The nuances, never mind applications, of the term can be tricky. My
younger son, Henry, came home from fifth grade one day in a huff announcing
that the P.E. teacher was “sexist.” Turns out she gave the girls an extra serve
in volleyball if they needed it, but not the boys. Henry wished me to take
action. (I told my not-yet-husband Olof about it on the phone that night and he
said, “What? You don’t already have an
appointment with the school board?”)
I
explained to Henry that it was important to clarify the issue. Was he
distressed that one group, solely on the basis of sex, was being given an
advantage over the other?
“Yeah!”
he said. “And we lost!”
“And
if you had won?”
“Then
who cares how many serves they get. Call her, will you, Mom?”
It’s
really sad to me that the word feminism has gotten such a bad rap when it just means
political, social, and economic equality of the sexes. The term has
unfortunately been bad-mouthed, co-opted, distorted, and otherwise maligned, with
feminists too often caricatured as testicle-targeting harpies with shrill
voices and bad haircuts. I don’t think any woman I know could really envision
the life that women have historically lived when they couldn’t vote, couldn’t
own property, and had no rights other than what a husband allowed. Never mind the
12 children we would each likely have. Believe me, that would definitely cut
down on the lunch dates.
Prevailing
opinion in the second half of the 1800s was that higher education transferred
blood from a woman’s reproductive organs to the brain which would result in
damaged children. Even bicycle riding was controversial for women. But if we
think feminism has a bad reputation now, the early suffragists – women
campaigning for the right to vote – were not only publicly maligned but jailed,
sent to work houses, and even tortured. We take the vote for granted now, but
as my mother wanted me to remember, a lot of people worked really hard for this.
It didn’t just happen.
After
the 14th amendment in 1868 bestowed citizenship on all persons born
or naturalized in this country, famed suffragist Susan B. Anthony attempted to vote
in the presidential election of 1872 on the grounds that women were citizens.
(The only other legally-recognized categories of persons at the time were minors,
aliens, idiots, and felons.) The effort succeeded in getting her arrested. “Are
women people?” became a catchphrase of the suffragist movement. Sadly, there
seem to be a few politicians still grappling with the question.
Now
I have a tiny granddaughter. I hope it won’t take her even a nanosecond to
figure out what’s wrong with insuring her husband’s life and her contact lenses
(which I’m sure will be obsolete by then anyway). I hope she’ll be as proud to
be a feminist as I am. And you can be sure I’m already shopping for the early
suffragists children’s series. But I might wait until she can pronounce Seneca
Falls.
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