Interesting points and very balanced view. It's a tricky one - should their holding of the prevailing racist and classist views seriously undermine their achievements and sacrifices in the campaign to get the vote?The answer is, as always, it depends – I think. I'd preface this by saying we're moving into an area that I'm not as familiar with as I should be, so I may be oversimplifying.
But the issue is, as always, that historical figures are products of their time and even ones that did a lot of good held opinions and ideas that are out of step with what we consider right now. That's true for the suffragettes as much as anyone else.
As the fight for suffrage was a global movement there were worse expressions of marginalisation in some places than others. Susan B. Anthony came out with some incredibly questionable stuff in the US, and there's always a pervading sense that the campaign for female suffrage separated itself from the campaign for racial equality because they thought it might damage the movement.
In the UK the issue is less clear cut, perhaps, but still there. Emmeline Pankhurst, despite her fostering of the still troublesome 'I'd rather be a rebel than a slave' motto became a huge supporter of Empire, and Fawcett is reported to have been incensed that Maiori women in NZ received the vote before white women in the UK. There was always a bit of a sense of 'well civilised white women in Britain should have the right to vote if the uncivilised brutes elsewhere in the world do'; that came with the territory of Britain's colonial mindset.
Some leaders were, at best, uninterested in the fight for working class women's right to vote. The Pankhurst's fell out over the issue with Sylvia Pankhurst later saying that Emmeline had said “a working woman’s movement was of no value; working women were the weakest portion of the sex, how could it be otherwise? Their lives were too hard, their education too meagre to equip them for the contest.”.
However we choose to square the circle with the good they did, and however future generations choose to do so, it's a part of the fight that deserves not to be forgotten.
Exactly, and it should come as no surprise that people from the turn of the twentieth century, even those who we remember as social reformers, held social views that simply have no place in a modern society. I think you have to recognise social reformers as steps on a ladder, but I can also see why those who were dismissed (if thats the right word?) might not see it that way.Interesting points and very balanced view. It's a tricky one - should their holding of the prevailing racist and classist views seriously undermine their achievements and sacrifices in the campaign to get the vote?
It can't entirely, but it's troublesome all the same and shows the limitations in their outlook I guess. Any bloke gunning them down over it is on pretty thin ice though I'd say, given that at the time they were mostly racist, classist and sexist.
Talking of aggressive feminist splinter groups. From the court news feed.In terms of what I mean specifically with what I've said?
I actually think the most fascinating thing about the suffragettes legacy going forward is going to be how public perception of changes over the next hundred years. Already some intersectional feminists, whilst acknowledging the legacy of the suffragettes, express issues with how people of colour (male and female) and lower classes were marginalised in the fight for suffrage across the globe. I have a feeling that if and when intersectional feminism becomes mainstream people are going to start focussing more on the negative aspects than the positive. Not the time or place for that discussion mind, but it's definitely interesting.
So who punched who? Was it a TERF doing the punching or getting punched?Talking of aggressive feminist splinter groups. From the court news feed.
FEMINISTS AND TRANSGENDER ACTIVISTS SLOG IT OUT IN HYDE PARK BRAWL
15FEB2018
STRATFORD
A demonstrator punched a rival protester when a brawl broke out between feminists and transgender activists at Speakers’ Corner, a court heard. Tara Wolf, 26, allegedly hit Maria Maclachlan 60, twice during the clash at the iconic Hyde Park venue on September 13 last year. The event was being hosted by a panel of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs), who believe that trans women should not be given the same rights as those born female.
I stupidly don't yet have a courtnews subscription, despite the fact I can expense it.So who punched who? Was it a TERF doing the punching or getting punched?
Actual "IRL" punch-ups aside, all the in-fighting you see online has to be doing more harm than good. It certainly makes it hard to warm to any of their causes. For the same reason I find the Guardian article so tiresome. It just seems that whatever society does to try and further the feminist agenda it will piss some of them off and end up as a bun fight about essentially unimportant issues.
