20th Century Feminism

As I was listening to the very beginning of Ms. Slater’s lecture, she asked the class, “What is feminism?”

It was really interesting to hear the responses, especially the way certain responses spanned over time.

I’m always a little nervous when I think about calling myself a feminist or not, because it has such varied

definitions. I don’t want to say I’m feminist because I fear people will misinterpret my feminism, but

likewise I don’t want to say I’m not a feminist, because it sounds like I don’t support equal rights at all!

Surprisingly, I feel like it would be almost easier to call myself a feminist back in the 20th century, when

the definition was somewhat simpler and it was so much clearer to onlookers that things like the wage gap

or general mistreatment were a thing—at least, once the women realized why they were unhappy, (which

clearly took a while, according to The Feminine Mystique) . On that note, I’d never realized it would have

taken so much for the women to realize why they were unhappy with their standstill lives. It makes sense

in retrospect, but I had always thought that there were many regular women who knew early on that they

were feeling degraded and wanted more from their lives than a husband or children. I think growing up

with the lives we now live makes it all the more obvious that something definitely needed to change back

then, so obvious that it feels they should have known sooner. 

On a slight change of topics, for my junior thesis, I had done a lot of research on the equal rights

movements of the 20th century, and how multiple different movements interacted. Unfortunately,

much of 20th century feminism also worked against the civil rights movement, after the universal

movement was split in two. At that point, much of the feminist movement turned against the black people

they had worked with before. You can see in a lot of events, black women were excluded altogether, such

as the Seneca Falls convention—despite inviting over 300 women, not a single black woman was invited.

On a similar note, when a large suffrage parade was hosted in Washington, DC, prominent black leaders

such as Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell were told to march in the back, regardless of how much they

had done for women. People thought that only one movement would be able to be enfranchised at a time,

leading to even more fighting, which seems particularly ironic in hindsight, given that the Civil rights

act of 1964 was a significant step in the right direction for both of these movements. Anyways, although

I can appreciate a lot of what the women’s rights movement from the 1900’s did for women and society,

it’s a little tough to look past the blatant racism that came along with it, for the most part. I think

potentially, this early-on bigotry is what has led to the current feminist movement to be the pre-

dominantly upper-class and whitewashed movement that it is today. Hopefully in the future, there will

be more inclusion for black women and black people altogether in feminism.