Browse Items (25 total)

Building mass appeal almost always means making your ideas less threatening. Once persuaded, new adherents may want the cause to reflect their own more conservative interests. For the vanguard, this instrumental tradeoff rarely feels good. To take…

I appreciate that @BlachlyJames was honest when the NYT asked why he initially hesitated to conduct Ethel Smyth’s work. “I have to confess I had this sense that if I hadn’t heard of her, then she must not be very good.” Suffrage &…

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…

Two sisters were among New York’s most prominent society women at the turn of the last century…one a vigorous suffragist, the other an equally committed anti-suffragist. Guess which one founded @BarnardCollege? Maud Nathan and Annie Nathan Meyer…

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. 🙁Patriarchy is very, very powerful. But in 1946 another dyke came along and…

The fight for a federal amendment was so painfully slow that everything after the 1913 Inauguration march looks like a sprint to the finish line. It was a turning point, for sure. But it reminds me of what folks would say to me when they learned I…

Obama’s 2d inaugural invoked a throughline “from Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall.” Brett Kavanaugh has surely been itching to object since. In dissent yesterday he wrote: “Seneca Falls was not Stonewall.” I know more about both of those…

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…

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 @AnneliseOrleck1's profiles: Rose Schneiderman first. Shana…

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.…