It was interesting to hear the prof point out the subversion of gender issues to advance racial ones that were espoused by the civil rights movement.
That wasn't new with the civil rights movement. It actually started with the abolition movement and the first women's movement in the 1850s, which set that pattern in place. Women who were seeking to advance the state of women in the US turned their attention to stopping slavery (at the request of white, male abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's husband, Henry Stanton), which was obviously the more pressing issue. They promised that once slavery was abolished, those men would push for women to get the vote along with black men. That didn't happen, and was a major sore spot for the early women's movement. They wound up fracturing into two separate organizations, so that what began in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, at the first Women's Rights Convention saw no fruition until 1920 and the passage of the 19th Amendment.
When the same thing happened with the second wave women's movement and the civil rights movement in the 1960s, women got seriously pissed off, which is why the "women's lib" movement of the 1970s was pretty vitriolic, and led a lot of women today still having a hard time calling themselves feminists. In a nutshell. ;)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-01-15 03:03 pm (UTC)That wasn't new with the civil rights movement. It actually started with the abolition movement and the first women's movement in the 1850s, which set that pattern in place. Women who were seeking to advance the state of women in the US turned their attention to stopping slavery (at the request of white, male abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's husband, Henry Stanton), which was obviously the more pressing issue. They promised that once slavery was abolished, those men would push for women to get the vote along with black men. That didn't happen, and was a major sore spot for the early women's movement. They wound up fracturing into two separate organizations, so that what began in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, at the first Women's Rights Convention saw no fruition until 1920 and the passage of the 19th Amendment.
When the same thing happened with the second wave women's movement and the civil rights movement in the 1960s, women got seriously pissed off, which is why the "women's lib" movement of the 1970s was pretty vitriolic, and led a lot of women today still having a hard time calling themselves feminists. In a nutshell. ;)
I look forward to reading the debate. Thanks!