on the work it takes to bring about change

November 6, 2008 in Brilliant blogging, Commenty goodness
Tags: activism, equality, feminism, history, lgbtq, marriage, politics, quotes, usa, women

Carrie Chapman Catt, an American suffragist, describing the 72-year struggle for women to win the right to vote – via comment on Shakesville

“…During that time they were forced to conduct 56 campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to get state legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 state campaigns to get state constitutional conventions to write women’s suffrage into state constitutions; 277 campaigns to get presidential party conventions to adopt women suffrage planks in party platforms; and 19 campaigns in 19 successive Congresses…Millions of dollars were raised…hundreds of women gave the accumulated possibilities of an entire lifetime, thousands gave years of their lives, hundreds of thousands gave constant interest and such aid as they could…. Young suffragists who helped forge the last links of that chain were not born when it began. Old suffragists who forged the first links were dead when it ended.”

Also, PortlyDyke @ Shakesville, lists the slow progress of lesbian & gay rights in the USA in her lifetime and concludes:

When I was 17, the thought of being accepted as a queer in my family, or in society at large — the idea of being “out” at a job — any job (except maybe a gay-bar) — simply did not exist.

At the time, I was pissed about this at some level — but it was a vague, subconscious kind of anger — and I would never have expected it to be addressed in the media or a topic of conversation outside of the secretive community that I inhabited as a queer.

Now, at 52, I’m pissed again — but this time, my anger is out in the open.
That may be bitter cause for Hope — but it is, for me, Hope, nonetheless.