lpetrich
Contributor
Votes for Women - The Atlantic
Did the Suffragists Support Birth Control? - The Atlantic - Their reasoning shows how far women’s rights have come since the late 1800s.
The Pseudoscientific Arguments Against Women's Suffrage - The Atlantic - During the suffrage movement, conventional wisdom held that civic duty was bad for the ovaries.
The Doctor Who Argued Periods Didn’t Ruin Women's Brains - The Atlantic - Physicians once advised menstruating women against mental exertion, fearing it would ravage their health.
How Women Remade American Government After Suffrage - The Atlantic - Female lawmakers needed a critical mass in Congress before they could begin chipping away at the inequalities baked into the nation’s laws.
When American Suffragists Tried to ‘Wear the Pants’ - The Atlantic - Starting in the 1850s, proponents of the movement for women’s rights traded their long dresses for bloomers—and paid a heavy social price for it.
The Fear That Women’s Suffrage Would Disrupt Home Life - The Atlantic - In the years leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Atlantic writers often pitted political participation against domestic duty.
Women’s Suffrage in the U.S.: Photos - The Atlantic
The Abortion Debate and the Legacy of Women's Suffrage - The Atlantic - Activists on both sides of the abortion wars see themselves as inheritors of the early women’s movement—a history that’s become more contested than ever under Trump.
Women's Suffrage, 100 Years Later - The Atlantic - A century after women won the right to vote, The Atlantic reflects on the grueling fight for suffrage—and what came after.
The Atlantic Women’s-Suffrage Reader - The Atlantic - In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, magazine contributors debated whether women should have the right to vote—and whether they truly wanted it.
In the English-speaking nations at least, feminism emerged as a movement in the early 19th cy. Some early feminists started out as antislavery activists, but they discovered that some male activists would not let them be full participants. As can be seen in the 1848 Seneca Falls
Declaration of Sentiments, they had a lot on their plate. By the late 19th cy., feminist activists ended up focusing on getting the vote, because they expected that to be an enabler for getting other rights.
Some early white feminists resented black men getting the vote before they did, and some of them were downright racist, not willing to let black fellow feminists march with them.
Some early feminists were against abortion and birth control, though mainly because they thought that those two activities were dangerous. However, they championed "voluntary motherhood" in the form of celibate marriage.
"Bloomers" - full-length pants under a knee-length dress or skirt - were considered very shocking in the mid 19th cy.
In the US, women first permanently got the vote in 1893 in Colorado, and then in several other states over the coming decades. Women voting got the farthest in the western states, and the least far in the east-coast and gulf-coast states. The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was first proposed in 1914, and then in 1917. It was narrowly defeated in five votes over 1917 and 1918, with the Southern Democrats being the biggest opposers of it. It was passed in the House on May 21, 1919 304-80, and in the Senate on June 4, 56-25, after some Southern Democrats abandoned their filibustering of it.
The amendment went to the states, with Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan being the first to ratify it on June 10. They gradually did so, though after Washington State ratified it on March 22, 1920, the effort stalled at 35 states. Tennessee became the 36th and final state to ratify it on August 18. Some other states then ratified it, some soon after, and some much later.
The non-ratifiers were mostly southern east-coast and gulf-coast states, states dominated by Southern Democrats. A few New England states ratified only after the overall ratification.
As far as I can tell, the original US feminist movement fizzled out after women got the vote nationwide. It did not restart until the 1960's, and then also, some female activists discovered that some of their male fellow activists would not let them be full-scale fellow participants in activism. That second wave of feminism has continued to the present-day, though some feminist chroniclers identify a third wave or even a fourth wave.
"How Women Remade American Government After Suffrage" notes that having the vote did not produce good results right away. It was an important step in the road of doing so, but it was still a step, and there were many more that had to be taken. But in the US at least, that began to change in the 1970's and 1980's, as women got elected to Congress.
I think that that is a lesson for the Left. It is not enough to have the Presidency. One has to have much of Congress also. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both neglected that. I remember being very annoyed at all the people who wanted Elizabeth Warren to run for President. I thought that she should stay a Senator.
Did the Suffragists Support Birth Control? - The Atlantic - Their reasoning shows how far women’s rights have come since the late 1800s.
The Pseudoscientific Arguments Against Women's Suffrage - The Atlantic - During the suffrage movement, conventional wisdom held that civic duty was bad for the ovaries.
The Doctor Who Argued Periods Didn’t Ruin Women's Brains - The Atlantic - Physicians once advised menstruating women against mental exertion, fearing it would ravage their health.
How Women Remade American Government After Suffrage - The Atlantic - Female lawmakers needed a critical mass in Congress before they could begin chipping away at the inequalities baked into the nation’s laws.
When American Suffragists Tried to ‘Wear the Pants’ - The Atlantic - Starting in the 1850s, proponents of the movement for women’s rights traded their long dresses for bloomers—and paid a heavy social price for it.
The Fear That Women’s Suffrage Would Disrupt Home Life - The Atlantic - In the years leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Atlantic writers often pitted political participation against domestic duty.
Women’s Suffrage in the U.S.: Photos - The Atlantic
The Abortion Debate and the Legacy of Women's Suffrage - The Atlantic - Activists on both sides of the abortion wars see themselves as inheritors of the early women’s movement—a history that’s become more contested than ever under Trump.
Women's Suffrage, 100 Years Later - The Atlantic - A century after women won the right to vote, The Atlantic reflects on the grueling fight for suffrage—and what came after.
The Atlantic Women’s-Suffrage Reader - The Atlantic - In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, magazine contributors debated whether women should have the right to vote—and whether they truly wanted it.
In the English-speaking nations at least, feminism emerged as a movement in the early 19th cy. Some early feminists started out as antislavery activists, but they discovered that some male activists would not let them be full participants. As can be seen in the 1848 Seneca Falls
Declaration of Sentiments, they had a lot on their plate. By the late 19th cy., feminist activists ended up focusing on getting the vote, because they expected that to be an enabler for getting other rights.Some early white feminists resented black men getting the vote before they did, and some of them were downright racist, not willing to let black fellow feminists march with them.
Some early feminists were against abortion and birth control, though mainly because they thought that those two activities were dangerous. However, they championed "voluntary motherhood" in the form of celibate marriage.
"Bloomers" - full-length pants under a knee-length dress or skirt - were considered very shocking in the mid 19th cy.
In the US, women first permanently got the vote in 1893 in Colorado, and then in several other states over the coming decades. Women voting got the farthest in the western states, and the least far in the east-coast and gulf-coast states. The
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was first proposed in 1914, and then in 1917. It was narrowly defeated in five votes over 1917 and 1918, with the Southern Democrats being the biggest opposers of it. It was passed in the House on May 21, 1919 304-80, and in the Senate on June 4, 56-25, after some Southern Democrats abandoned their filibustering of it.The amendment went to the states, with Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan being the first to ratify it on June 10. They gradually did so, though after Washington State ratified it on March 22, 1920, the effort stalled at 35 states. Tennessee became the 36th and final state to ratify it on August 18. Some other states then ratified it, some soon after, and some much later.
The non-ratifiers were mostly southern east-coast and gulf-coast states, states dominated by Southern Democrats. A few New England states ratified only after the overall ratification.
As far as I can tell, the original US feminist movement fizzled out after women got the vote nationwide. It did not restart until the 1960's, and then also, some female activists discovered that some of their male fellow activists would not let them be full-scale fellow participants in activism. That second wave of feminism has continued to the present-day, though some feminist chroniclers identify a third wave or even a fourth wave.
"How Women Remade American Government After Suffrage" notes that having the vote did not produce good results right away. It was an important step in the road of doing so, but it was still a step, and there were many more that had to be taken. But in the US at least, that began to change in the 1970's and 1980's, as women got elected to Congress.
I think that that is a lesson for the Left. It is not enough to have the Presidency. One has to have much of Congress also. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both neglected that. I remember being very annoyed at all the people who wanted Elizabeth Warren to run for President. I thought that she should stay a Senator.