How we know and why it matters
Anna Dickinson was a lesbian, as Matt Gallman demonstrates in his 2006 biography. He quotes Dickinson’s steamy correspondence with a variety of women, including Susan B Anthony(!), and acknowledges her female partner of 30 years, but hesitates to “label” Dickinson.
How do I know Anna Dickinson was a lesbian? How did I know even before her biographer offered the receipts? I’m going to try and explain as best I can, from the vast record of lesbian accomplishment and my own experience as a queer woman. Family, please chime in.
For Anna Dickinson to develop a deep political analysis beginning as a teenager in the 1850s, and to demand to be heard and taken seriously on matters of state, required not caring what men thought of her.
A girl who is hardwired not to care if boys are intimidated by her is freer than other girls. As we grow, not caring much if men find us attractive or marriageable is a kind of superpower. Not caring leaves us free to take up the space necessary to accomplish something.
Lesbianism isn’t a surefire recipe for success, and plenty of straight women led the suffrage movement. But it is one source of Anna Dickinson’s unusual power and drive to achieve, to be recognized, to be heard.
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1202975157821804545" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
06/12/2019
Dr. Walker, part I
The only woman ever awarded the Medal of Honor - the US military’s highest decoration - was a genderqueer Civil War surgeon named Dr. Mary Edwards Walker.<br /><br />Walker was a suffragist, a veteran and POW, and a talented doctor who challenged convention in every way.<br /><br />She campaigned for dress reform for decades, before & after the war and as an officer of the Dress Reform Assoc. She was deeply disappointed in Lucy Stone, ElizCadyStanton & others who agreed with the cause but gave up on it.<br /><br />She was briefly married to a man, a fellow doctor.<br /><br />They omitted “obey” from their 1855 vows. She kept her name - they hung out a shingle as Drs. Walker & Miller.<br /><br />It took them twice as many years to get divorced as they spent married. Walker fought for divorce reform for the rest of her life.<br /><br />Turned down in her attempts to join the Union army, Walker volunteered at first. She finally got a contract, and proved able and unflappable - but still couldn’t get a formal commission.<br /><br />So she appealed to President Lincoln directly. Referring to herself, she asks:<br /><br />“[T]hat she may render aid in the field hospitals, where her energy, enthusiasm, professional abilities and patriotism will be of the greatest service in inspiring the true soldier never to yield to traitors, and in attending the wounded brave.<br /><br />“She will not shrink from duties under shot and shells, believing that her life is of no value in the country’s greatest peril if by its loss the interests of future generations shall be promoted. - Mary E. Walker, M.D.”<br /><br />Lincoln demurs, but she finds a way. Photo in uniform.<br /><br />The @AmerMedicalAssn tried hard to block her - both b/c of sexism and resistance to “eclectic” or what today we’d call alternative & homeopathic medicine.<br /><br />Recall: traditional medical schools wouldn’t admit women then, so the line between credentialing & sexism is a thin one.<br /><br />Walker challenged the status quo always. Early in her military days she questioned unnecessary amputations, quietly counseling soldiers to refuse if she thought the limb could be saved.<br /><br />She took a 2d degree to study hygiene, which the medical establishment dismissed as fluff.<br /><br />After the war she wanted to be a doctor for the Freedmen’s Bureau, but they weren’t hiring outspoken women.<br /><br />Dr. Walker was famous, which biographer Sharon Harris says is what she wanted - and got, thanks to her "accomplishments, her unique personality, and her appearance."<br /><br />Dr. Walker was a committed suffragist who used her public profile to advance the cause. Like Anna Dickinson in the same period, she was only lightly affiliated with the 2 big movement groups. Walker was wary of both factions, though cooperated w/both Lucy Stone & Stanton/Anthony.<br /><br />Dr. Walker is the first woman known to try and vote in New York, in her hometown of Oswego. It was 1867, early in what becomes known as the New Departure, a strategy of voting as civil disobedience.<br /><br />Tomorrow: So, was Walker queer? Trans?
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1216854671928840197" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
13/01/2020
<a href="https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Walker part II</a>
Dr. Walker part II
PART II. In 1865 Pres. Andrew Johnson awarded Dr. Mary Walker the Medal of Honor. Dr. Walker wore the medal pinned to her suit coat every day for the rest of her life. In 1917, her medal was rescinded along w/those of 911 men, for want of direct combat. <br /><br />She wrote a letter of protest, and simply continued to wear the medal until her death in 1919. Pres. Jimmy Carter reinstated the honor in 1977, thanks to feminist protest. <br /><br />Dr. Walker is still the only woman ever to receive it. <br /><br />Dr. Walker lived a long life, in Washington, Oswego & Albany. <br /><br />She continued to practice medicine and activism. She campaigned for pensions for Civil War nurses and other women who had served, and never stopped urging women to give up corsets & petticoats. <br /><br />She was close to Belva Lockwood, landmark lawyer and presidential candidate; they worked for suffrage thru the 1870s. Walker’s contributions to the movement were all but erased from the record by Stanton & Anthony, who were threatened by her & uncomfortable w/her gender-bending. <br /><br />Was Dr. Walker trans? Genderqueer? A butch? Or just a sensible woman trying to do her job in appropriate clothing? There needn't be only one answer. Gender expression isn't static across one's life. I’ve used the pronoun “she” in these posts b/c Walker did - but with discomfort. <br /><br />In early years she doesn’t try to pass, doesn’t call herself M. Edwards Walker or M.E. In lectures and in writing she regularly describes herself as a woman - a woman willing to challenge convention, and frustrated at how lonely that was. <br /><br />She was arrested repeatedly for her clothing, in New York City & Baltimore. <br /><br />Charged w/disorderly conduct & disturbing the peace, in 1866 she points out to the court that she’s been received by President Lincoln & Justice Salmon P. Chase wearing these clothes. <br /><br />But that’s in 1866, when she was still wearing long hair and women’s collars. <br /><br />Look at what Dr. Walker is wearing <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/omeka-net/53651/archive/files/eecb0518a277a1631beb2ed0c41fcd64.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI3ATG3OSQLO5HGKA&Expires=1596067200&Signature=h4WBF5Lj3wog1SLoOlbIecPladE%3D" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>. THIS is the kind of outfit that led to arrests. This is how little women could reject gender norms. <br /><br />By the 1870s, Walker cut her hair short and wore unambiguously male clothing for the rest of her life. She sat for photos and had portraits painted in those years - in top hat & dinner jacket, Dr. Walker wanted to be seen clearly for who she was. <br /><br />For queer people, Walker’s portraits offer a jolt of recognition. While she had flirty correspondences with men and women, her biographer says there’s no evidence of any relationship after her brief marriage. But she made an indp & defiantly gender-bending life in the 19th cent. <br /><br />Walker proudly wore pants, ties, and short hair - and wasn’t afraid to say you should too. She wasn’t trying to blend in or disappear - though she could have; plenty of transmen did, and I admire that too. Instead, she stood out and spoke out. <br /><br />That’s what makes her so admirable and so unique to me. She modeled professional excellence in everything she did, and demanded that other women interrogate the prison of convention they lived in. <br /><br />There are at least two children’s books about Dr. Walker: Mary Walker Wears the Pants and Mary Wears What She Wants. <br /><br />But the most fitting tribute hides in plain sight: @<a href="https://twitter.com/whitmanwalker" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WhitmanWalker</a>, which has been serving the health and well-being of LGBTQ Washington for 42 years. <br /><br />I’m grateful to @<a href="https://twitter.com/UConn" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">uconn</a> prof Sharon Harris’ terrific biography, Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832-1919, which is available digitally; to Charlotte @<a href="https://twitter.com/cmclymer" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cmclymer</a> for getting the word out; to @<a href="https://twitter.com/albanymuskrat" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AlbanyMuskrat</a> & to @<a href="https://twitter.com/VesuviaAdelia" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VesuviaAdelia</a> for the perfect ending. #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1217151182294192133" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
01/14/2020
<a href="https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Walker part I</a><br /><br /><a href="https://friendsofalbanyhistory.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/dr-mary-walker-recipient-of-the-congressional-medal-of-honor-and-her-time-in-albany/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Mary Walker, Recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor and her time in Albany I came across this picture, taken on State St. in 1911. It’s photo of Dr. Mary E. Walker. I had one of those lightbulb moments. My Gram used to tell me about a nice old lady in Albany..." [Friends of Albany History]</a><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Today is <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TransDayOfVisibility?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TransDayOfVisibility</a> <br /><br />Honor our transgender ancestors - read the 2-part story of Civil War hero & suffragist Dr. Mary Edwards Walker and please share!<br /><br />Part II 👇and Part I in the next tweet. Happy <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TDOV2020?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TDOV2020</a> ! <a href="https://t.co/9eSnOIuzlS">https://t.co/9eSnOIuzlS</a></p>
— Daily Suffragist (@DailySuffragist) <a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1244977635823955968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 31, 2020</a></blockquote>
Rosh Hashana, Day 1: Meet Rose Schneiderman
To ring in the Jewish new year, I’m highlighting 2 women whose impact on labor rights for all working people -esp. women- endures. Both fierce union organizers, suffragists, lesbians. Read <a href="https://twitter.com/AnneliseOrleck1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@AnneliseOrleck1's</a> profiles: <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schneiderman-rose" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rose Schneiderman first</a>. Shana tova!
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1178686028997103616" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
30/09/2019
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schneiderman-rose
Rosh Hashana, Day 2: Meet Pauline Newman
Pauline Newman was dykier than Rose. At 16 she led the biggest rent strike in NYC. After scores of friends died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, she helped write & enforce NY safety laws. Led women in WTUL & ILGWU for decades. There's so much more: read👇! <a href="https://t.co/zMPlqoMjRh?amp=1" target="_blank" dir="ltr" class="r-1n1174f r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao css-16my406" title="https://buff.ly/2mHW2lf" rel="noreferrer noopener"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-hiw28u r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">https://</span>buff.ly/2mHW2lf</a>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1179048592667009028" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
01/10/2019
<a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/newman-pauline">https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/newman-pauline</a>
National Coming Out Day
Happy #ComingOutDay to Anna Howard Shaw & Lucy Anthony! Shaw led the movement from 1904-1915. She wasn't our greatest leader, TBH. But she was a minister, a doctor - the 1st woman Rev. & Dr. - and for 30 years partner of Susan B's niece Lucy. <a href="https://www.autostraddle.com/rebel-girls-meet-some-of-the-gal-pals-of-the-suffrage-movement-287808/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Them & more</a>:
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1182681947430146048" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
11/10/2019
We'll come back for you later...
1. ElizCadyStanton & Susan B Anthony’s objections to Black male suffrage were racist. But supporters of the 15thA were not anti-racist. In fact, the supporters were the more conservative, cautious, and upper-class of what became two factions (both of which were almost all white). <br /><br />2. Why were 15th Amendment supporters so determined to proceed without women’s inclusion? One explanation is that while all of these folks had been abolitionists AND women’s rights advocates, they drew different conclusions from the Civil War. <br /><br />3. The women’s rights movement grew in the soil of abolitionism. Its leaders were passionate abolitionists and political ideologues. When their animating passion - the eradication of slavery - came true in a cataclysm, different people saw different lessons. <br /><br />4. Stanton & Anthony believed the world had been utterly rearranged, and women’s liberation--or at least political participation--was winnable too. Others wanted to keep their eye on the prize of Black freedom and power, and thought women’s empowerment would endanger that cause. <br /><br />5. Does this kind of tension sound familiar? It’s not unique to suffrage. In more recent history, it played out in the LGBT movement, which argued for decades about whether to include transgender people in anti-discrimination laws. <br /><br />6. Trans proponents said “later” could mean never; opponents said the mainstream wasn’t ready, and some improvement was better than none. The tensions are still present, but queers have increasingly come to see that we will all hang together in the end. #Suffrage100 #KnowYour19th
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1187739007012261888" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
25/10/2019
Meet Anna Dickinson
There were no microphones in the struggle for suffrage. Radio didn't yet exist. Public lectures were the only way to hear new ideas, and giving a public lecture in halls like NYC’s Cooper Union or the Academy of Music in Phila. meant projecting your voice to a crowd of <br /><br />Anna Dickinson gave her first public lecture in 1860, at age 18. A radical Republican who disdained Lincoln as too soft on slavery, she quickly became a political sensation. She was adopted by abolitionist luminaries like Lucretia Mott, Robert Purvis, and William Lloyd Garrison. <br /><br />Speaking without notes, Dickinson crafted complex legal arguments against slavery. Over the next two years she became increasingly famous, commanding substantial fees. She was merciless with hecklers, Confederates, and anti-war Democrats known as Copperheads. Tomorrow: Congress.
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1202002143026307072" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
03/12/2019
The Mother of Us All, part I
Susan B Anthony was a lesbian. There’s solid evidence of her romantic relationships with women, and contrary evidence doesn’t exist. You didn’t know? Me neither. ðŸ™Patriarchy is very, very powerful. But in 1946 another dyke came along and brought Susan B. out of the closet.🧵<br /><br />Gertrude Stein - also a lesbian! (That you knew.) Right after WWII, composer Virgil Thomson and Gertrude got a commission for a new opera, their 2d collaboration. He suggested they write something about 19th century American politics. Gertrude immediately thought about Susan B. <br /><br />Stein & Thomson wrote The Mother of Us All. It's still widely performed. It opens with Susan B at home, discussing patriarchy with another woman, “Anne.†Most productions play it gay, referencing Susan’s relationships w. women including Anna Dickinson. <br /><br />Some play it straight and insist that Anne is Anna Howard Shaw, Susan B’s successor in the movement - and the life partner of her niece Lucy Anthony. I'll be at @<a href="https://twitter.com/metmuseum" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MetMuseum</a> tonight to see @<a href="https://twitter.com/JuilliardSchool" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">JuilliardSchool</a> <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-live-arts/fy20-the-mother-of-us-all" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">production</a> - will report back.Â
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1227346188145504258" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
02/11/2020
Law School by Tweet: 14th Amendment
The hashtag #HATM stands for historians at the movies; is there an opera equivalent?! <br /><br />Saw “The Mother of Us All†last night. Happy to report that the all-â™€ï¸ artistic team: @<a href="https://twitter.com/dcandillari" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dcandillari</a> & Louise Proske + @<a href="https://twitter.com/FeliciaLMoore" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">FeliciaLMoore</a> in the title role gave a great (and gay!) performance. 🧵 <br /><br />Gertrude Stein has Susan B Anthony argue that “male†was inserted in the Constitution for the first time b/c men are afraid of us. <br /><br />It’s an intriguing argument! And probably true. <br /><br />I was tempted to stand at the exit w/a sign saying “Ask me about the 14th Amdt.†So here goes... <br /><br />First, the basics: in the Constitution, every state gets 2 Senators. <br /><br />House members are awarded based on state population. <br /><br />Electoral College votes are the # of Senators + # of House members. <br /><br />So, more House members = more power. <br /><br />From the beginning, states wanted to count every inhabitant so they’d get more House seats, but without letting women or Black men vote. (Then and now, if African-Americans and white women voted as a block, we’d outvote white men in southern states.) <br /><br />This is why enslaved people were counted as â…— of a human being - so enslavers would get more seats. <br /><br />At the end of the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was drafted to define citizenship in Section 1 and repeal the â…— clause in Section 2. <br /><br />But its drafters--abolitionists like Wendell Phillips & Charles Sumner--tussled over who would count and who would vote. <br /><br />How could they separate voting from counting-for-proportional-representation?<br /><br />If being counted wasn’t tied to voting, southern states would end up w/even MORE power than they had before the war. They’d bar African-Americans from voting but count them as whole people, not â…—. (This is what soon happened anyway.) <br /><br />If being counted WAS tied to voting, how could states count all their women without letting them vote? <br /><br />@<a href="https://twitter.com/EllenDubois10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">EllenDubois10</a> explains: “the Republican authors of the 14th Amdt had to decide between enfranchising women or specifying male citizens as the basis of representation.†<br /><br />So that’s why Section 2 of the 14th Amendment says male. <br /><br />It does not say that only men can vote or that only men count. It says that if states don’t let “male inhabitants†vote (for any reason other than criminal punishment*), they’ll lose House seats.<br /><br />*Hence states in both the south and the north quickly expanded criminal codes to put more Black men in jail so they couldn’t vote. That & the exception in the 13th Amdt are why criminal disenfranchisement persists today. But that’s another thread. <br /><br />Was Gertrude Stein right to have Susan B Anthony sing that “As the result of my work, for the first time the word ‘male’ has been written into the constitution of the United States concerning suffrageâ€? <br /><br />Yes. <br /><br />“Two decades of women’s rights agitation had destroyed the centuries-old assumption that political rights applied only to men.†-@EllenDubois10 <br /><br />It never needed saying before. But by the end of the Civil War, women were a political force. To exclude us, you had to say so.<br /><br />Historian Laura Free offered an important addendum on FB. She's not on Twitter, so I'm sharing for her: "The original drafts of the Amendment did not specify a voter's gender. It wasn't until Congress had been receiving petitions (From Susan B. Anthony, among others)......that the word "male" enters into the language of the Amendment. Prior to this they simply assumed that all voters were men by default. Once women asked, Congressmen in power knew they had to specify or risk inadvertently enfranchising women with the 14th Amendment! "They were not caught off guard - Stanton wrote a letter in late 1865 warning that the word male was a possibility in the Amendment so they initiated a whole petition campaign to try to stop it. (One of them is on display at the National Archives)." "I was dissatisfied with previous accounts of the gendered language in the Amendment. So I tracked the day by day discussion of the Amendment's language and then the path of the suffrage petitions in committee. The Joint Committee of Fifteen had many versions of the Amendment......before the petitions started coming in. Then after they received a number of the petitions, Roscoe Conkling of New York proposed that the word "male" be added to the Amendment."
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1227710672957583360" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
12/02/2020, 17/02/2020