This coming Monday is the 105th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which finally enfranchised women of the United States with the power of the vote.
Progress in this country has always traveled a stuttering, circuitous path, making promises and reneging, picking and choosing who gets rights and when they get them or lose them, making it difficult if not impossible to exercise one’s rights when they ostensibly have them.
Thus, 18 August 1920 did not suddenly unlock the vote for every woman of age in the country. First, and for decades after, it was white women who could safely step into a voting booth, and not all white women had access to that safety or that vote. It wasn’t until the 1960s, with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, that enfranchisement spread widely to all adult citizens and systems were in place to protect it.
Despite its rocky beginnings, and the obstacles and inconveniences put in place in most states by people seeking to quell the power of the vote in certain demographics, despite the way the VRA has been weakened in recent years, the right to vote has been protected since 1965. For virtually all my life, then, I had the privilege and luxury not to think about the right to vote as anything but a reality in my life and a historical fascination to study. For myself, it was simply something that I could do, a right and a responsibility I’ve always taken seriously.
18 August has been a celebration day for me for most of my life. This year, however, the 19th doesn’t need a birthday party. She needs a war party.
I never considered that someone in the modern world would ever have sufficient power in this country to take my vote, or anyone else’s, away. I honestly never considered that someone who wanted to disenfranchise whole segments of the populace would be widely considered anything more than a crackpot weirdo screaming into the void.
But that void got crowded and grew teeth, and here we are. Women have already lost the right to bodily autonomy. Now people who would have been rightly shunned as cuckoo birds are sitting at the desks of prominent news mainstream shows, and an alarming number of brocasts, suggesting, with minimal pushback if any, that it was a mistake to “give” us the right to vote. And not only women, but anyone in a demographic that gained the right to vote any time after 1776.
I could do a big, messy diatribe here, I want to do a big, messy diatribe here, but I’m tired and seriously swamped with prep work for the fall semester. (I could also do a big, messy diatribe about the absolute FUCKAPALOOZA of trying to teach amidst all the abject horror and infuriating buffoonery taking over the country and the world, but again, I’m too damn busy gearing up for that bloody battle to yell about it.)
So instead of getting my rage on, I’ll use this moment to direct you, if you’re interested, to some content about suffrage and other rights women have fought and died to claim.
First, because this is primarily what my blog is for, some related stuff I’ve written:
Voices, Votes, and Vibrators. An article about suffrage and women’s health for the Dirty Sexy History blog. (Lots of linked sources)
Nothing on Earth & Nothing in Heaven. My historical romance featuring an English suffragette (in which I use a lot of the research linked in the article above).
Some books about the fight for suffrage (US and England):
All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900, by Martha S. Jones
Suffragettes: The Fight for Votes for Women, edited by Joyce Marlow.
My Own Story, by Emmeline Pankhurst
The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement, by Sylvia Pankhurst
The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement 1848-1898, by Lisa Tetrault
The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote, by Elaine Weiss.
Other books about women’s rights:
The Equivalents, by Maggie Doherty
The Portable Feminist Reader, edited by Roxane Gay
She Said, by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
Hood Feminism, by Mikki Kendall
Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement, by Katherine M. Marino
Know My Name, by Chanel Miller
Women Who Change the World: Stories from the Fight for Social Justice, edited by Lynn Lewis
Legislation: International Women’s Rights Law and Gender Equality, edited by Ramona Vijeyarasa.
Okay, I’ve got to get back to semester prep. I hope you find something inspiring to read. If you do read any of my suggestions, I’d love to hear your thoughts, so maybe come back and leave a comment!
I’ll be back in a few weeks with more content about my own books and writing—and on that point, I would be remiss not to remind you that I’ve got a new book coming out in three weeks! Freak, Book 3 of the Signal Bend Heritage series, goes live on Saturday, 6 September!
See you then!
love,
s—