It was an honor to be asked by my dear friend and colleague, Heidi Li Feldman, to write the first invited guest essay for her new organization, 51 Percent. It is an organization whose mission I believe is vital to achieving the goal of universal human rights. On this day, when we stand in the shadow of a lie that has been sold to the American public, the marketing of a man who would have himself seen as Lincoln or King, but who could not possibly be further in character and deed from either, it is fitting to remember the origins of the women's movement, and an African American whose deeds matched his words: Frederick Douglass. I hope you will take some time to go to the 51 Percent website, expand your horizons, and understand that working for the full representation of women in our society, and the ending of misogyny, are vital to achieving the goal of a truly humane society.Fundamentally, America is a rights-based society. The notion that our rights are unalienable, that we are in possession of them from the moment we are born, is written into our nation’s Magna Carta: the Declaration of Independence. As Jefferson wrote, “All men are created equal,” and we are entitled to the unobstructed application of those rights; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as others elaborated on in that document. It is with our consent that government is endowed with the power to govern over us to insure our safety and happiness, and it is our indefeasible right to dismantle and dissolve the bonds with any governmental system that fails to do so, be it by democratic action, or by force of arms, as was done when the thirteen colonies declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776.
Further elaboration of our rights vis-a-vis the newly formed republic, framed by the Constitution of the United States, was set down in the Bill of Rights. Whether we as citizens of this republic choose to defend those rights, or allow the federal government to usurp and dissolve them is entirely up to us, as our social contract with our government is clearly defined in the Declaration of Independence. Our governmental institutions function with our consent, and it is entirely within our right to alter or dissolve them.
For fifty-seven years, while the new nation grew, the notion that those unalienable rights, and those later defined, applied to men, specifically white males of age, and in possession of deeded property. But what of the rights of women? All men are created equal? Were women not also endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights? Surely they must have been in possession of rights beyond accepting their non-place in American society, beyond consenting to be ruled by a government that ruled by the consent of the men only. In 1848, at the invitation of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, three hundred women, and eighty men, gathered in Seneca Falls to declare it so.
The Declaration of Sentiments, written by Stanton, closely mirrored the Declaration of Independence, not only declaring that all men and all women are created equal, but that they too possess the power to dissolve the bonds with a government that was acting against their interests, and without their consent. The Declaration of Sentiments also made it plain that the history of human society was one of the subjugation, and the enslavement of women. It was bold, an indisputable act of bravery, and initiated the longest ongoing revolution in the history of Western society, one that is still being fought today, not only in America, but around the world.
But even in the midst of this singular moment in history, the moment that women, though relatively few in number, stood up with the men who supported them, and declared their equality, they still continued to question their self worth, and the prudence of actually demanding those rights, to demand that if they are to be governed that it should be with their consent; that the women of America too should possess the right to vote. What must it have been like to be a woman at that time, to be so relegated to the steerage, that one would hesitate, and equivocate their own declaration of their rights? Ironically, when it came to deciding to include the demand for women’s suffrage in the Declaration of Sentiments, it was a man who was largely responsible for that clause to be included. His name was Frederick Douglass.
As a prominent abolitionist, Douglass was no stranger to the struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. No surprise then that the masthead of his newspaper, The North Star, bore the slogan, “Right is of no sex - Truth is of no color - God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.” The prominent role that women took in the cause of abolition was not lost on Douglass, and inspired him to embrace the struggle for their equality. In fact, it was their involvement in abolition that sparked the women’s rights movement. Mott and Stanton famously met in London in 1840, having both been shut out of an abolitionist convention because of their sex, and it was then that they first spoke of holding a convention to address the rights of women.
Douglass was acutely aware that the key to achieving justice for black people in America was suffrage. Why would this be any different for women? In History of Woman Suffrage, Stanton and others recalled Douglass stating, “A woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.”
It is obvious to me in 2009 that it is a ludicrous notion at best that, nearly 161 years after Seneca Falls, the rights of women are still so abused and unrecognized that they feel they must finish the push to pass the Equal Rights Amendment which, in the end, does nothing more than make it the law of the land that women be fully entitled to the same status and legal protections as men, a right that every woman is born with, a right that no government has the power to deny because, as it is stated in our most sacred canon; we are all created equal. What kind of society are we when women, fifty-one percent of the population, must actually struggle for the legal recognition of what is already theirs by birthright? A civilized society it is not. But as Douglass notably stated at the Seneca Falls convention, “Woman, like the colored man, will never be taken by her brother and lifted to a position. What she desires she must fight for.” And fight they have.
The struggle did not stop with the gaining of the right to vote, an emotionally and physically brutal campaign that cost many women their lives. It continues on today, here in the United States, and around the world where women are victims of abuse at the hands of corrupt military establishments, and at the hands of the men with whom they reside. We are assaulted with images in magazines of women in bondage, while in the United States and around the world they are sold into slavery. And what can women expect from the incoming President, a man whose campaign broadcast Jay Z’s “99 Problems” the night he defeated Hillary Clinton in the Iowa Caucus, a man whose chief speech writer, Jon Favreau, published a picture of himself recreating an image of what happens to women on college campuses across this country; being forced to drink alcohol while being fondled, groped, and worse? If I were a woman I would expect the same indifference and blatant misogyny that has become part and parcel of the lives of women throughout history, in spite of MS magazine claiming that the President-elect is “what a feminist looks like.” As a man, and a feminist, I can assure the editors of MS Magazine that the President-elect is not what a feminist looks like. Au contraire mes amis, he is what a misogynist looks like. Again, it is ironic then that he would be depicted on hats, t-shirts, and baby bibs alongside Douglass, a man that, if he were alive, might likely be appalled by the deplorable way the Obama campaign treated Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin. As Douglass said, what you desire you must fight for. In order to achieve that goal, America will need an education.
America is going to have to learn what misogyny is, and that the hatred of women, the hatred of more than half the people on this planet, is acted upon every day in a not so silent act of collective genocide, where women are victims of rape, honor killings, torture, and enslavement every day in virtually every country.
The effecting of this education is the driving force behind the founding of 51 Percent, a growing necessity, as the attitudes that create the atmosphere in which misogyny is a fact of life around the globe are so pervasive, so accepted, that many are unaware that the condition even exists. The world must be taught in order for this to end. And women must fight for what they desire.
In order for real equity, for real presence, for a real shift in culture, women must not be worried about what is prudent as they were in 1848. There is far too much at stake. Women, and the men who support them, should be fighting for women to be represented in every area of our society, in direct proportion to their population: 51%. When women are fully represented in government, in the private sector, in our educational and professional institutions, perhaps then misogyny will fade. Perhaps then women will not have to fear what they are coming home to, or what is coming home to them. Perhaps this nation will do as Dr. King had hoped when he spoke in Memphis the night before his murder; that America should live up to what it said on paper.
This road may not be traveled with ease. This cause may not be well received. But it is one that must be taken up. How could anyone who accepts their rights as unalienable sit idly by when the majority are kept from fully exercising those rights? As with all new movements there comes a degree of doubt, a degree of trepidation. This was true at Seneca Falls when a man had to stand and be the voice saying suffrage is your right, you must claim it.
In April of 1888 Douglass addressed the International Council of Women in Washington, D.C. He reminisced about the convention at Seneca Falls, and made it clear that ultimately it was women who had to take the lead in the fight for their equality, in the struggle for justice. As this newest endeavor in the struggle for the fulfillment of the Declaration of Sentiments is engaged, Douglass’ words seem more poignant than ever.
Ever since this Council has been in session, my thoughts have been reverting to the past. I have been thinking more or less, of the scene presented forty years ago in the little Methodist church at Seneca Falls, the manger in which this organized suffrage movement was born. It was very small thing then. It was not then big enough to be abused, or loud enough to make itself heard outside, and only a few of those who saw it had any notion that the little thing would live. I have been thinking, too, of the strong conviction, the noble courage, the sublime faith in God and man it required at that time to set this suffrage ball in motion. The history of the world has given to us many sublime undertakings, but none more sublime than this. It was a great thing for the friends of peace to organize in opposition to war; it was a great thing for the friends of temperance to organize against intemperance; it was a great thing for humane people to organize in opposition to slavery; but it was a much greater thing, in view of all the circumstances, for woman to organize herself in opposition to her exclusion from participation in government. The reason is obvious. War, intemperance and slavery are open, undisguised, palpable evils. The best feelings of human nature revolt at them. We could easily make men see the misery, the debasement, the terrible suffering caused by intemperance; we could easily make men see the desolation wrought by war and the hell-black horrors of chattel slavery; but the case was different in the movement for woman suffrage. Men took for granted all that could be said against intemperance, war and slavery. But no such advantage was found in the beginning of the cause of suffrage for women. On the contrary, everything in her condition was supposed to be lovely, just as it should be. She had no rights denied, no wrongs to redress. She herself had no suspicion but that all was going well with her. She floated along on the tide of life as her mother and grandmother had done before her, as in a dream of Paradise. Her wrongs, if she had any, were too occult to be seen, and too light to be felt. It required a daring voice and a determined hand to awake her from this delightful dream and call the nation to account for the rights and opportunities of which it was depriving her. It was well understood at the beginning that woman would not thank us for disturbing her by this call to duty, and it was known that man would denounce and scorn us for such a daring innovation upon the established order of things. But this did not appall or delay the word and work.
At this distance of time from that convention at Rochester, and in view of the present position of the question, it is hard to realize the moral courage it required to launch this unwelcome movement. Any man can be brave when the danger is over, go to the front when there is no resistance, rejoice when the battle is fought and the victory is won; but it is not so easy to venture upon a field untried with one-half the whole world against you, as these women did.
In 2009, nearly one hundred twenty-one years after Douglass spoke those words, women are more than half the world. It is time to finish the fight for what you desire.
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