The Suffragette movement was racist, and neither historical costumers or women's rights movements like to talk about it. The first 1,000 people to use the link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/snappydragon06221
What's wrong with the Suffragettes, and why are they not the feminist icons we need right now? Why should (white) historical costumers not dress up as a Suffragette to protestWith Roe vs Wade overturned surely we need them as protest symbols? Not really-- there were major political problems with this section of the womens' rights movement that we should not be looking up to. Ora Lin joins me to talk about how the Suffragette movement's racism and "white feminism" came from attitudes that still exist today, and are still causing problems in womens rights.
The Suffragette dress relied entirely on Western colonizer gender norms of "pure" and "virtuous" and "delicate" femininity to subvert criticisms of the Votes for Women movement. They changed the political narrative by showing that they had no intention to truly smash the patriarchy, they simply wanted to hold onto their own power as the social order changed. These women's rights protests excluded Black women, with one march organizer famously telling all the Black suffragists to march at the back of the parade in 1913. The suffragettes were not interested in abolishing an oppressive system; rather their movement's goal was to gain more power for white women and become the equals of white men, oppression and all. Following the 19th amendment, these womens rights activists did not continue to protest in solidarity with BIPOC, because they had what they wanted.
The suffragette sash and colors had carefully chosen political messaging, which we cannot separate from it. While the UK purple and green sash is slightly better recognized, the US Suffragette movement more often used purple and gold. The gold represented the Kansas sunflower and a failed womens' suffrage bill in 1867 where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony worked with a racist politician who was supporting womens rights to keep Black people disenfranchised. Womens rights history is full of similar instances of intersectional feminism being ignored as white suffragettes touted limited women's suffrage in the South as a way to further racist political goals. The Suffragette sashes colors weren't chosen in spite of this, they were a reflection of this historical womens rights movement failing to fight for anyone but white, upper- or middle-class women who were largely comfortable in patriarchal gender roles. We cannot separate these Suffragette dresses from their meaning, from the amount of white feminism from the Suffragettes, and from the Suffragette movement's racism. Angry as we may be at the Supreme Court and this Roe v Wade news, we can find better forms of womens rights protest.
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What is mutual aid?
Mutual aid is a voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. Mutual aid projects can be a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions.
Some mutual aid accounts :
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00:00 How not to look racist in Edwardian clothes
00:22 The introduction
1:00 Stop separating clothing and context.
2:53 Learn new things!
4:00 Womens' suffrage leaders were racist.
5:08 racism and how they used it
5:59 How Darwin's "science" plays into it.
6:34 girlboss feminism vs. intersectional feminism
7:20 How white womens' beauty standards hurt BIPOC
8:31 the repercussions are worse for POC
9:34 When slavery abolition and womens' suffrage split
10:23 Reform vs. Abolition
12:21 Bringing it back to the suffragettes
14:14 Virtue signaling is not the same as caring
15:30 Okay, but what's the take away?
15:54
16:33 Tell us about a costume transformed by context