Nine inspiring lessons the suffragettes can teach feminists today

[redqueen]

...

Find your voice, and use it

The dearth of women in public life today is often attributed to a lack of confidence, and the suffragettes sometimes struggled with this too. Margaret Wynne Nevinson, an avid campaigner, once wrote she felt a "dizzy sickness of terror" the first time she stood up to speak publicly, outside a gasworks in south London in 1906. There were shouts of derision as hundreds of men crowded around her, and she almost succumbed to stage fright before hearing a voice whisper: "Go it, old gal, you're doing fine, give it 'em."

This echoes the recollections of Kitty Marion, an actor as well as a suffragette. The first time she sold the Votes for Women newspaper in Piccadilly Circus, Marion wrote, "I felt as if every eye that looked at me was a dagger piercing me through and I wished the ground would open up and swallow me. However, that feeling wore off and I developed into quite a champion."

Sweetness is overrated

Women were bound by feminine ideals at the start of the last century –expected to be submissive, nurturing, self-effacing – and we still are today. The suffragettes weren't having it. As Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the militant suffragettes, once said, "We threw away all our conventional notions of what was 'ladylike' and 'good form', and we applied to our methods the one test question: will it help?"

This was echoed by Fred Pethick-Lawrence, who fought strongly for women's votes alongside his wife – who was also called Emmeline. In his 1911 book, Women's Fight for the Vote, he offered a rallying cry. "Nothing has done more to retard the progress of the human race than the exaltation of submission into a high and noble virtue," he wrote. "It may often be expedient to submit; it may even sometimes be morally right to do so in order to avoid a greater evil; but submission is not inherently beautiful – it is generally cowardly and frequently morally wrong."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/29/nine-lessons-suffragettes-feminists

I'd like to point out that solidarity is on this list, and its extremely important.

It is crucial that though feminists will have disagreements, and will criticize each others' tactics, priorities, etc.... that we not let anyone use those differences as a wedge to divide us.

[niyad]

1. thank you so much for posting this.

[BlueJazz]

2. I admire Christabel Pankhurst for her tireless work for equality.

[redqueen]

3. Holy crap... that sigline...

that's a quote from some comedian's bit? I hope?

[BlueJazz]

5. That wasn't the original saying but it was something like that. Do you think it's a bit too much ?

[snagglepuss]

4. to read later

[smirkymonkey]

6. Great Post! K&R!

[Just Saying]

7. Bravo!

The original "feminazis"

We should hope to be as brave as the women who caught for us on both sides of the pond.

[Sanity Claws]

8. Suffragists, not suffragettes

The latter was a pejorative term. Women fighting for the vote called themselves "suffragists."

I learned this when I attended some events put on by the League of Women Voters.

I agree with the point of the article but perhaps another point is that we can't let "them" define us or label us.

[redqueen]

9. Yes, the language used to marginalize feminists (and girls and women in general)

is definitely important and worthy of challenging.