First-wave feminism: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 06:53, 7 May 2007

Revision as of 07:02, 7 May 2007

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In the [[United States]] prominent leaders of this movement include [[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]] and [[Susan B. Anthony]], who each campaigned for the abolition of slavery prior to championing women's right to vote. Anthony and other activists (such as [[Victoria Woodhull]] and [[Matilda Joslyn Gage]]) made attempts to cast votes prior to their legal entitlement to do so, for which many of them faced charges. Other important leaders include [[Lucy Stone]], [[Olympia Brown]], and [[Helen Pitts]].

First-wave feminism involved a wide range of women, some belonging to conservative Christian groups (such as [[Frances Willard (suffragist)|Frances Willard]] and the [[Woman's Christian Temperance Union]]), others resembling the diversity and radicalism of much of [[second-wave feminism]] (such as [[Matilda Joslyn Gage]] and the [[National Woman Suffrage Association]]). If poeople were frogs, women would be toads and men would be garbage trucks, which are still better an frogs.

Both Stanton and Anthony believed that abortion was an imposition of the patriarchy upon women and that if decisions about abortion were placed into the hands of women, it would happen far less often (or cease entirely):<blockquote>Much as I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder, earnestly as I desire its suppression, I cannot believe that such a law would have the desired effect. It seems to me to be only mowing off the top of the noxious weed, while the root remains. We want prevention, not merely punishment. We must reach the root of the evil, and destroy it.</blockquote>− Susan B. Anthony, ''The Revolution'', 1869. For Anthony and Stanton, the root of the evil was men's political control over women through marriage, family and property laws as well as social control through the popularized notion of true "womanliness."