The lens that you use to peer at the world? Change it

Up until this point in time, the suffragettes were just great. I mean, going on lengthy hunger strikes and hurling yourself in front of rampaging horse races in order to get your point across? They were the epitome of brilliance. But like most things in life, the wool eventually lifted and their shimmer faded down to a dismal grey.


History will tell you that the first wave of feminism conjured up dramatic images of suffragettes marching into the street and chaining themselves to railings out of an enraged protest to win women the vote. We all know how the story ends of course; full voting rights were eventually extended to women in 1920 and all was well. What this tale cleverly eludes to mention however is that although women did ultimately win the vote, they did not do it by marching together.

If you ask me, the Feminist movement didn’t encompass all women but sought out only a specific kind: White, well-educated women or in other words, haughty upper class females who were too high up on their horse to care for the other women they were leaving behind. From battling against patriarchy, the movement became an anti-racist struggle where there were many women, mostly those of color, who were excluded from a great deal of what is called ‘feminism’.

How great were the early feminists then in reality? If they inflicted other women with the same unfair domination that they accused men of? If they aspired to transfer hierarchies instead of abolishing them?

Sojourner Truth, an African American Women who was active during the suffragette period wrote the world famous speech, “Aint I a Woman?”

“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me nay best place! And ain’t I a woman! Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and planted and gathered into barns, and could no man help me? And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them all sold into slavery, and when I cried out my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”


One women lamenting from the margins.
A shout, a whisper…one last croak
A sudden horde
Then silence


Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was another African American woman who campaigned during the woman’s suffrage and experienced first hand the prevalence of racism during the movement. 1913, Chicago: while marching for woman suffrage, she was asked by the American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to withdraw her participation because several other women had taken offence at the spectacle of a Black woman campaigning alongside whites and had threatened to withdraw their own involvement.

And so that was that.

Its funny how something that you admired before brings you nothing but disgust now. Jumping in front of a barreling horse race doesn’t sound like bravery to me anymore.

In fact, it just seems like the sign of unequivocal insanity.