Altogether Independent: An Analysis of the Feminist Perspectives of Gilman, Cooper, Woolf, and de Beauvoir

From the late 18^th century to the mid 20^th century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna Julia Cooper, Virginia Woolf, and Simone de Beauvoir were all having a conversation with another without even knowing it. They were all chiming in on the existence of a phenomenon and concept that had they been in the same room together, they would have realized was the same thing: women’s liberation from a patriarchal society. Despite hailing from various time periods, places, classes, and races, their theories can all be observed as revolving around a single axis issue. For these women, it was evident that women were not free in the same way that men were free to choose what kind of life they wanted. It was clear for these women that they had very little choice and also very little resources to articulate their situations, much less try to find solutions to their problem. However, Gilman, Cooper, Woolf, and de Beauvoir all shed light on what they felt was the dilemma and how they thought it could best be solved. They knew that women must become independent of man, in many senses of the word, and they must also come together if they hope to effect any change in society. Coming together may seem difficult since women do not all share the same backgrounds or identities. That being said, no matter the race, class, or geographic location, due to “anatomy and physiology” (Lemert 2010:346), women all over the world have a shared experience that unites them. It is clear then that with independence comes consciousness, with consciousness comes unity, and with unity comes change.

The independence of women, according to de Beauvoir, is one that is unlike any other previous movement in which a group of humans have fight against a system of oppression. De Beauvoir argues that whereas racial groups or class groups have statuses that change due to singular historical events, the status of women has always existed in societies everywhere and cannot be blamed on a war or document. In her view, women are the absolute “other” because in no capacity are they ever the “one.” For instance, a foreign person in one country is considered a native in their country, so although they may have the experience of being seen as the “other” in one place, they still have the opportunity to be the “one” in their home community.  Using the language of “one” and “other,” women are always viewed and treated as the “other.” De Beauvoir states, “[Woman] is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other” (Lemert 345-346). Women do not have such a space where they can exist without men in the way that men can navigate their daily life focusing on only themselves. An example of men and men’s needs always being a constant, inevitable presence in women’s lives can be seen in Woolf’s fictional, yet very accurate, story of a woman walking and thinking. As the woman, who is supposed to be representative of Woolf herself, walks around pondering the relationship between women and fiction, she suddenly finds her path obstructed by a Beadle. A Beadle is an officer of the church, and in Woolf’s story he is a metaphor for the limitations and guidelines placed onto women by men. Woolf describes the scene: “Instinct rather than reason came to my help. He was a Beadle; I was a woman. Thus was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me” (Lemert 262). Both Woolf and de Beauvoir identify that a woman is supposed to understand her place in society as existing in relation to men. Gilman understands this relationship in economic terms as well by acknowledging that women are not economically independent from their husbands. Gilman claims that a marriage is supposed to be a partnership where both individuals work just as hard and earn according to the effort they put in, but it is clear that this is not the case. Not only are married women not allowed to work and make money, the work they do at home cleaning, cooking, and taking care of the children is seen as their duty. Supporting the family becomes a married women’s job, but yet, she is not paid for it, and she is also seen as inferior to her husband despite putting in just as much time and effort, if not more, into what she does. Clearly, there are discrepancies across the board between what men and women are allowed to do, but in order to tackle these differences, women must be able to be heard and understood independent of their relationship to men. Instead of talking about women as wives and mothers, we need to be able to comprehend them as women who are able to exist not just as a sexual beings or maternal figures, but rather as a human being with individual hopes, fears, and dreams that have nothing to do with pleasing the opposite sex.

Despite writing from different eras and locations, all four theorists describe the experience of women as if it is a singular, unified experience. Yes, there are nuanced differences amongst all women as they identify with different races, classes, religions, and nations, but one thing is the same that brings all women together. That is, women from all different walks of life at the end of the day share the same anatomical physiological structures that somehow impact the way they are treated at both a micro and macro level. For women of all cultures there is an expectation of their role as mothers and wives, no matter how the rituals of getting to that role differ for every woman. For Cooper, women of color are in a unique position in society. She states, “With all the wrongs and neglects of her past, with all the weakness, the debasement, the moral thralldom of her present, the black woman of to-day stands mute and wondering at the Herculean task devolving upon her” (Lemert 179). In much the same way that Gilman stares at the yellow paper symbolic of her imprisonment, so do women of color stare before the laws and history put before them that continue to keep them silent. At one point Cooper recounts an all too familiar experience in which a white man refers to her as a “girl” simple because of her sex and race. For Gilman, she is also treated like a child because she is literally placed in a nursery as well as ordered around by her husband as if he were the parent and she were the child. She comments on how he gives her medicine and doesn’t allow her to write, as if what she has is a disease when in reality that disease is only real insofar as it affects not only her body but her mind as well; and this disease is called patriarchy (Lemert 173-174). Patriarchy, a society in which men are at the dominant position and women in the subordinate, affects all women negatively. In addition, not only do women have a shared experience, they also have a shared enemy. Men are enemies in that they inhibit the freedoms and capabilities of women. This is not to say that men at their core are evil or that the divide between men and women is one that must be solved through war. Quite the contrary, all four women seek to harness the power that women have of being able to care and have love for others in order to achieve a status in which both men and women are equal.

In all of their contemporary societies, these theorists felt that women were not given a voice or space that was independent of men. The home space consisted of women serving men and boys as wives and mothers while men largely dominated both the work and intellectual spaces. Even though it was clear that there existed inequalities and discrepancies between men and women, for all of the theorists, they felt significant advancements were not being made to change this. Surely not all women wanted to be in such a subordinate and belittling position in society, but then why were they not doing more to disrupt the social stratification and patriarchal structures? De Beauvoir posits, “The reason for this is that women lack concrete means for organizing themselves into a unit which can stand face to face with the correlative unit…They live dispersed among the males through residence, housework, economic condition, and social standing to certain men – fathers or husbands – more firmly than they are to other women” (Lemert 347).  Cooper also makes note of this in her writings as she observes how white women treat women of color: without respect and as if they have nothing in common. However, at the end of the day, women must be able to put all those other differences aside if they hope to achieve liberation for women at large. Once all women acknowledge that they have a shared experience, they must use that to shed light on the issue and change it. The economic independence that Gilman dreams of, the social equality that Cooper demands, the academic recognition that Woolf aspires to, and the unified women’s movement towards progress and freedom that de Beauvoir imagines can only be possible if all women speak out against the injustice they have been dealt and altogether work to redress that. Cooper describes a nation as being “the aggregate of its homes” (Lemert 179), so a woman equal in the home also means equality for women at a national, even international level. For this kind of women’s liberation that all four theorists described in some capacity or another, it must be a three-step process. All four theorists so movingly identify the lack of autonomy and mutual respect that women receive from men in society and this acknowledgement of a need for independence is the first step. However, this kind of independence is only personal and so there must next be a shared consciousness that women must all recognize and accept that allows them to realize their affinity for one another. Lastly, once the need for independence and a shared experience is celebrated, women must then come together to actually gain independence for women and continue to honor and recognize all that women have suffered as well as achieved.

 It is incredible that over the span of 100 years, all four theorists were describing a very similar situation that is the subordination of women and the perpetuation of a patriarchal society. On the one hand de Beauvoir notes, “[Women] have no past, no history, no religion of their own; and they have no such solidarity of work and interest as that of the proletariat” (Lemert 347). On the other hand, women do have a past, a history, religious values, and most importantly, solidarity even if it is not in regards to race, class, etc. Women have existed just as long as men have and have experienced a long history of oppression by being made to feel as if the only reason women exist is to make men happy never taking in account what makes women happy, or at least not being able to do it because of social norms and in some extreme cases, laws. Despite new forms of feminism and social progress, the issues that these four theorists touch on still exist today. So then, one feels impelled to ask the question, “Why haven’t things changed yet?” And the response to that after having read Gilman, de Beauvoir, Cooper, and Woolf is that things are changing, but it is not change that matters so much as continuity. If women come together once and achieve one goal, the struggle is far from over. To use Woolf’s story, we cannot let that little fish, that revolutionary thought, die. At every turn, both men and women must look out for the gaps and divides, the privileges and limitations, the injustices and the inequalities and be willing to speak out against them. Cooper was right, “To be alive at such an epoch is a privilege, to be a woman then is sublime” (Lemert 184). Altogether independent, women have the power to change history for good.

 

 Reference

Lemert, Charles, Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, fourth edition, Boulder, Westview Press, 2010.

Today’s Rape Culture Codified in Steubenville Rape Case (*trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault)

On the night of August 11, 2012, an intoxicated high school girl was picked up, undressed, and sexually assaulted by two young men who recorded and shared what happened, including an image of the girl being carried unconsciously, across various social media. The perpetrators were named Ma’lik Richmond and Trent Mays, two high school students who also happened to be well liked, popular high school football players. The Steubenville rape case and the public response to the case brought to light America’s modern day rape culture as news coverage and general attitudes sympathized with the rapists rather than the victim. The kind of rape that was committed by the perpetrators cannot really be pinned down to anger, power, or sadistic rape nor is it clear that the individuals were seeking sexual satisfaction. Instead, because Richmond and Mays were bragging about what they had done, it is clear that they were buying in to American society’s rape culture that promotes the idea that men should feel entitled to sex if a woman is promiscuous or drunk. The nature of rape has changed drastically in the last couple of years, and from this case one can see how men may not be inherently rapists, but rather it is our society’s rape culture that promotes and maintains men’s violence against women.

In the past, the evoked image of rape has been that of a stranger (usually male) jumping out of the bushes and assaulting an unsuspecting passerby (usually female). This kind of violent rape was encapsulated in the original FBI Uniform Crime Report’s definition of rape, which was “rape is the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” Today the definition has come to reflect the complexities of rape and is defined as “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” This new definition includes people of all genders and takes into account how one can still rape another person without necessarily inserting their body part into another’s. Under this definition, the victim of the Steubenville case constitutes as rape because the perpetrators had violated her with their fingers. So although according to the legalistic conception, Richmond and Mays are considered to have committed a wrong, there are many who argued that according to the moralistic conception, it was the victim’s fault for a variety of reasons.

The legalistic conception states that an act is illegal if it is labeled as a crime according to the laws that we as a society have agreed upon. In contrast, the moralistic conception states that an act is a crime only if it goes against society’s shared values. Some times these values are not reflected in our laws. In regards to the Steubenville rape case, the backlash that the victim received through the media proved that there were people who did not believe the two young men had committed a crime. In their eyes, the girl was at fault for having gotten so drunk and/or for wearing such provocative clothes. This kind of victim blaming is a key component of rape culture, and is the reason why many victims of rape stay silent about the matter. Victim blaming attempts to displace the blame from the perpetrators and instead look to the victim for the fault. Most often, even the offender will make excuses. According to the Matza technique of neutralization, individuals have the ability to neutralize against acknowledging a rape by creating and adhering to scripts. For example, one might say, “I raped her because she was dressed provocatively” or  “Drinking allows me to do what I want” or “She didn’t say no.” One explanation for why victim blaming occurs is that a fair number of people, usually men, feel uncomfortable with the increasing independence and success that women have been experiencing since the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) in the 1960’s and 1970’s. According to several feminist theories, since women have been liberated, men have been trying to find ways to dominate them. In today’s society, we see a similar trend to the WLM where it is now okay for a woman to be sexually liberal. Rape is an effective tool that can be used by men to reinforce gender stratification, and it can be done through three different kinds of rape.

According to Nicholas Groth there are three kinds of rape: anger rape, power rape, and sadistic rape (class notes). Anger rape is motivated by, as the title suggests, motivated by anger, and it can be motivated towards a particular person you are mad at or it can be towards women in general. Power rape is motivated by needs or desires to exert power and dominance over somebody else. Sadistic rape is motivated by sexual satisfaction; the perpetrator has a sexual association with power and rage, eroticizing infliction of pain onto someone else. Although most rape cases can be explained using those three motivational theories, there are also rape cases where the perpetrator may not have intended to harm the victim. Although there is no way to ever really know, one could postulate that the perpetrators of the Steubenville rape case did not necessarily commit rape in order to express anger, exert dominance or even satisfy their sexual needs, but rather, they did so because as males they are so embedded in the rape culture of America where it is seen as okay for a man to take advantage of a woman if she is intoxicated or dressed in a certain way. This is a unique kind of rape where the rapists may not even know that what they are doing constitutes as such. Increasingly among youths, especially on college campuses, acquaintance rape is the most prevalent kind of rape.

Acquaintance rape is an assault involving sexual relations without consent of either individual and is committed by a person that the victim just met. The current party culture in America has it set up so that young adults can find themselves intoxicated in an unknown space where hooking up and having one night stands with strangers is considered to be “cool.” Although this can be a very exhilarating experience, it can turn sour if one individual does not know where he or she is and is too intoxicated to consent while the other individual is expecting to have sexual relations without intending to ask for consent. This scenario is almost exactly what happened that night in Steubenville, Ohio. The victim was intoxicated to the point where she was blacked out while the two young men seized the opportunity to have what they thought of as “fun.” Felson and Boba’s Routine Activity Theory can best explain why acquaintance rape at these kinds of environments occurs. According to the routine activity theory, if there is an absent guardian, a suitable target, and a likely offender, then crime will occur. At many high school parties such as the one in Steubenville, there is usually a lack of a guardian as well as many intoxicated individuals that can be easily manipulated. The two young men in this situation were likely offenders because as popular males in their school’s social hierarchy, they already felt a sense of entitlement. It is the American rape culture that gave these young men a sense of entitlement, and the public response to the case only validated that.

Sympathizing with the perpetrators because they were two promising athletes, was not only an insulting response for the victim, but it also contributed to the continuation of rape culture in our society. As it exists today, the concept of rape culture describes the process by which society looks to blame victims for the sexual violence that they suffered. Although this process is largely ideological, the societal implications are all too real. As we have seen in cases like the Duke Lacrosse case of 2006 where a girl claimed to have been gang raped but the gentlemen were not incarcerated due to insufficient evidence or recently with the case of Audrie Potts where she committed suicide after not being able to handle the backlash she received from reporting a rape incident, it is the victim that is dealt the harshest blow when charges are being pressed. In a society where sex is everywhere – in our movies, in our music, in advertising images – adolescents, specifically young females, are expected to juggle the impossible task of being virginal as well as promiscuous. In contrast, men are expected to be sexual creatures; due to our patriarchal society, it is understandable when a man acts on those urges. This is clear from Malamuth’s study conducted on young males where over 30% admitted they would commit rape if they could get away with it (class notes). Men are not born to rape, but rather the rape culture in our society as manifested through the media, teaches men how to rape and shows them that they can get away with it. It takes a village, or in this case a town, to rape a woman because by maintaining that the victim is at fault, we are helping the perpetrator get away with rape. Nothing can be done to take back the act, but it would mean everything if society were to help bring justice.

The Violence of Shaving

I shaved my legs and armpits for the first time when I was twelve years old. It happened when I was away from home for the first time at Space Camp. One night, my three other roommates and I gathered around, as pre-teenagers are want to do, and we began to comment on each other’s bodies when one of the girls looked at my legs and gasped at how hairy they were. To be honest, I had never stopped to notice the hair on my legs, so I was taken aback when she said they looked ugly. Later that day, she lent me her razor, and I remember standing in the shower clumsily wielding a sharp object against my skin as blood dripped down my leg. It burned at first and there were cuts all along my legs and armpits, but once I finished I felt what I thought it meant to be beautiful. Little did I know, but that day I had initiated the female grooming ritual that I would continue to partake in until I came to Whitman and realized that the act of shaving is a violent act.

Most women in today’s society shave, and most started shaving as soon as they hit puberty. For me, I never felt as if I had an option when it came to shaving. When I returned home from Space Camp and told my mother that I had shaved, she said I started earlier than usual, but that every other woman in my family shaved too. My mother then taught me the proper technique to ensure that I would not hurt myself again, and soon I became a professional. It wasn’t until I arrived at Whitman and saw a female friend my age that did not shave, that I reflected on the practice of shaving. At first I could not believe the young woman did not shave, and I felt repulsed in much the same way that my body hair disgusted the girl at Space Camp. But I then looked back at my legs, and this time instead of wondering why I had hair, I started to wonder why I kept removing the hair. I started to question why it was that women spend so much time, money, and effort removing as much hair from their bodies as they possibly can, when removal of the hair is unnatural and serves no purpose other than aesthetics. This prompted more investigation into the Western cultural practice of hair removal until I eventually reached the conclusion that the everyday act of shaving, for women in particular, is an act of violence.

For women in today’s Western societies where the act of hair removal is most conventional, shaving has become a ritual practiced everyday or at least weekly. The act is physically violent by causing pain at times as well as ideologically violent by perpetuating and maintaining the oppression of women through the stigmatization of women who choose not to conform. Women are in turn kept blinded by their bad faith in a taken-for-granted world as Nancy Scheper-Hughes suggests in her book Death Without Weeping. Lastly, because of the way that stigma works according to Erving Goffman, by being denied the pleasure of going au naturel, women are forced to alter their bodies in order to appeal to the male-comprised dominant culture. In this way the subordination of women is maintained. In first unpacking this phenomenon, it is important to recognize how shaving is traditionally violent in the sense that it causes bodily harm.

Hair removal is physically violent whether it causes pain through shaving or waxing or is chemically harmful due to chemical depilatories that dissolve hair. Not only is shaving the most violent method of hair removal because it often leaves behind razor bumps or painful cuts that can turn into scars if not careful, but it is also the most inexpensive and commonly used method of choice for women.  According to a study conducted by Glamour Razor Gator, 58% of women in America admit to choosing shaving as their hair removal method of choice. Most women are expected to have hairless legs and armpits, but increasingly bikini lines and pubic hair have become targets as well. The most dangerous place for a woman to shave on her body is the vulva. There has been a recent trend due to the mass distribution and availability of pornography, to shave the entire pubic area. Shaving the bikini line first became popular with the de-stigmatization of women in bikinis. While requiring a blade to go near the genital area, it was still not as dangerous as shaving the pubic hair is now. At the surface, it is chemically harmful to put shaving cream by the genital area that is prone to infections. In addition, a razor blade in such a sensitive area leaves behind microscopic cuts that can further the risk of exposure to STD’s and STI’s. On an individual basis, shaving of the pubic area is painful and dangerous. On a societal level, the removal of hair from the vulva can promote men’s violence against women, especially young girls.

The removal of pubic hair gives a grown woman a prepubescent look, and so when the vast majority of female pornography actors adopt that trend in videos where women are objectified and even abused, the normalization of sexual violence occurs. Not only that, but by defining a hairless vulva as being sexy, it increases the likelihood of child abuse as viewers, most often men, will associate sexual satisfaction with the body of a girl. Clearly, hair removal as practiced by women today can lead to individual pain and discomfort as well as encourage societal violence against women at large. Yet, although this may be true, most women are unaware and will stand by shaving as a choice they make, when in reality the decision is made for them by societal norms before they even hit puberty.

Shaving continues to be practiced by millions of American women because they have come to accept it as a natural part of everyday life. Whenever a woman says she shaves because it is indecent to not do so, that is a sign of bad faith. According to Nancy Scheper-Hughes in her ethnographic book, bad faith refers to “the ways that people pretend to themselves and to others that they are not really involved in or responsible for what they are doing or for the consequences of their actions” (1997:209). In others words, bad faith is the tendency to accept passively what others have imposed as a reality. Whenever I have asked other women why they shave, they unknowingly made many excuses to justify the practice. Women would claim that they shave because it is more hygienic, though there are no recent studies that prove this. If anything, shaving can be unhygienic if done with a rusty razor or in a sensitive area that should not have any sharp objects near it, let alone chemical shaving creams placed there. Another justification for shaving is that having a hairless body looks attractive. When providing this response, women will automatically follow up with, “It looks nice to me. I shave for me, not for anyone else.” Unless a woman grew up isolated from society and decided on her own that a hairless body looked more aesthetically pleasing, chances are women shave because society tells them it looks “nice.” In all advertisements of beautiful American women, the body is pristinely hairless. Any woman that claims she chooses to shave out of her own free will refuses to acknowledge or simply does not understand the fact that due to a stigma placed onto women who do not shave, women do not actually have a choice in the matter.

As Scheper-Hughes alludes to in her book, stigmas are used to keep individuals or groups of people silent and in a state of oppression (1992). In “The Stigmatized Self,” Erving Goffman defines stigma as a label that is negatively powerful and varies from situation to situation. Goffman distinguishes between three different kinds of stigma: abominations of the body, blemishes of individual character, and tribal stigmas (1997). Abominations of the body are stigmas that pertain to having a physical deformity. For example, someone with an extra finger will find that many people do not want to shake their hand because most people are shocked and even repulsed when they see someone with a physical abnormality. Blemishes of individual character are stigmas dealt by those who possess undesirable personality traits. For instance, an ex-convict is considered to have a blemish of individual character due to his criminal past, and so society members place a stigma on that individual and ostracize him or her. Lastly, tribal stigmas pertain to race, religion, and creed. Concerning race, one may be stigmatized for being multiracial because not fitting into one category goes against our society’s instincts to neatly categorize everything.

As it concerns body hair, there is a blemish of individual character stigma associated with women who do not practice hair removal as well as a stigma associated with men who do remove hair from certain parts of their bodies. Women who do not remove the hair from the parts of the body that society expects to be hairless are considered to be ugly or weird. The removal of body hair on women has been normalized in accordance to the desires of men. Women began to shave as their hemlines began to creep up. At first, those women wearing less clothing were seen as radicals and inappropriate for defying the norm that women should be modest and covered. These women were liberating themselves and going against the status quo. By that point men had already been shaving their faces, but since women did not have much hair to shave, product companies decided to target the areas of women’s bodies that did have hair and that were being exposed. It was at this time that the idea of “unsightly” armpit hair became a trend and the rebel women whose attire offered that risk, flocked to get a hold of products that would remove that hair. Keeping in mind that men have owned these companies, it is men that have been dictating the standards of beauty for women.  The women who were once going against the grain by challenging social norms somehow ended up capitulating to a new social standard of beauty set by men, and now women in the United States have become bound to this ritual that they did not choose for themselves and that only serves to keep women inferior to men.

The violence of shaving is heavily gendered and affects women differently than it does men. It is important to note that according to the Glamour Razor Gator study, only 11% of women shave every day as compared to 75% of men. However, the implications of shaving vary from gender to gender because gender is a social construction that carries with it a set of standards and norms. For instance, according to modern gender roles, men are only expected to shave their face if they so choose. In this instance it is a choice for men because if a man decides to not shave his face, he is viewed as intellectual, wise, or erotically rugged. In contrast, today women are often expected to keep their legs, armpits, pubic area, upper lip, arms, stomach, or any other surface area that naturally contains hair hairless. When a woman does not remove hair from the aforementioned areas she is found unattractive and may be considered a radical feminist or a “dyke,” which are wrongly considered to be negative attributes and examples of stigma. One would argue that women should shave the body parts that are exposed because it is inappropriate to do otherwise. However, if hair removal were not gendered, then the same standard would be given to men. Men would shave their legs because they wear shorts and/or their armpits because they wear tank tops. Obviously, this is not the case. In fact, if a man were to shave any body part other than his face, he would be called feminine, unmanly, and/or weird. Furthermore, stigmas placed on individuals for breaking social norms in regards to hair interrupt the “we-relationship” that Schutz describes as the product of when one individual respects another’s humanity (1970). Through the process of stigmatization, the “we-relationship” is violated and in that violation there is violence.

Although I focused on shaving as the most physically harmful method for hair removal, there are plenty of painless, non-toxic ways to remove hair such as sugaring or laser removal. However, it is important to keep in mind that even without shaving, the act of hair removal will be violent so long as women are not given a choice in the matter. For hair removal to not be violent, men and women should not be stigmatized for any level of hair on their bodies. The day that we see just as many hairless men and hairy women as we currently see hairy men and hairless women portrayed as being attractive in mainstream media, then the removal of hair cannot be violent. Until then, by choosing to stay hairy, I have personally decided that beauty should not be painful nor should it be commodified. By not shaving I am reclaiming my body in a patriarchal society. I am making a choice in a matter I was once blinded into believing I couldn’t. I am reclaiming what it means to be beautiful, what it means to love myself as I was meant to be, and I am letting myself heal. 

References

1. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA/United States of America: University of California Press.

2. Lemert, Charles and Branaman, Ann, eds. 1997. The Goffman Reader. Malden, MA/United States of America: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

3. Schutz, Alfred. Wagner, Helmut, eds. 1970. On Phenomenology and Social Relations. Chicago, IL/United States of America: The University of Chicago Press.

The National Women’s Party Militant Identity

Imagine being part of an organization that wants to achieve the same goals as you, but wants to achieve them in a manner that you feel is not as effective or conducive to the way that you work and feel. This kind of frustration is what motivated Alice Paul to severe her relationship with the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and to instead form the National Women’s Party (NWP) in 1916. Alice Paul wanted the NWP to be more active and aggressive in getting the 19^th Amendment ratified than NAWSA had been. By framing the struggle for women’s suffrage as being comparable to that of a war in which the women participating are soldiers, she created a militant identity for her new organization. This militant identity in turn fostered solidarity and inspired collective action within the NWP. By looking at the NWP’s networking, framing, and mobilization strategy we can better understand how the NWP was able to mobilize the Silent Sentinels (also known as the members of the NWP who volunteered to go out and protest), construct a militant identity, and facilitate collective action.

In order to recruit members for her new group, Alice Paul utilized micro-mobilization strategies, focusing on networking with individuals. As writers on networks have asserted, “individuals often become involved in collective action through their personal connections to people already involved.”[1] These kinds of relationships can be referred to as ties, and there are two kinds of ties: strong and weak ties. Strong ties can be intense, emotional, and time consuming, whereas weak ties are much more loose and useful for connections between many people. When Alice Paul decided to leave NAWSA, there were women already in her immediate network, such as Lucy Burns, who not only felt as she had, but were also willing to join her in her endeavor. The kind of tie that Paul and Burns had can be referred to as a bridge. A bridge is a tie between two people and their various contacts from different social circles. The two people, in this case Burns and Paul, in turn each have weak ties, or ties with others that connects otherwise unconnected groups of people. Through weak ties information can move to people who may not have heard or have had access otherwise. While gaining members was definitely important, it is important to keep in mind, however, that Paul was not interested in “recruiting a large membership or building long lasting organizations.” [2] The reason for this was that Paul feared that in a large organization there is too much room for disagreement as there had been in NAWSA, and so Paul preferred to have less people so long as they agreed with her agenda because that would allow them to be more effective. And so when they set out to recruit members, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns had access to a contact list of potential members “but since many on the list had died or moved away, the two women turned to their own friends and acquaintances for assistance.”[3] Here we can see how strong and weak ties can make reaching individuals that share similar interests a lot easier. Networks of communication facilitate participation, and Alice Paul’s journals on suffrage ideology generated a discourse the provided members in the eventual NWP delegations that opened throughout the country. The networks people belong to give them meaning and inspire them to act. Through networking a collective identity can be formed.

Although having group members certainly lends validity to an organization, the group also needs to have a strong and clear identity in order for people on the outside to see it as legitimate. In the case of the National Women’s Party, Alice Paul codified this militant identity utilizing structural framing techniques. Framing is the very deliberate process of converting grievances into meaningful motivations. Through framing the objective comes to be subjective and interpreted as advantageous to collective action. Southard argues that the NWP had to confront “nationalist, citizenship-based, and gendered ideological forces.”[4] While this may be true, Paul also needed a more concrete “enemy” in order to make the members feel like they are fighting against something very real. President Wilson was a good target for Paul’s purposed plan of action because if they could get him to listen, then they could get that much closer to ensuring political rights for women. Protesting the president was a response to Wilson’s own rhetorical presidency that promoted him as an “advocate for the American people” and willing to “create a more unified American polity.”[5] While NAWSA tried to make him seem democratic and as having an open ear to the grievances of women, Paul recognized that this was not entirely true. And so by framing Wilson’s presidency as not living up to his promises, she was able to make members of the NWP feel like there was a shared enemy. Another framing technique that Alice Paul employed was to keep her members feeling useful and energized by “focus[ing] on positive plans and signs of success, so crucial to keeping people involved and confident of victory.” [6] This idea of “victory” goes well with the militant identity, and it was easy for Paul to inspire members of the NWP to act because in doing so they would be fighting Wilson and the American federal government in order to achieve the victory of the ratification of the 19^th Amendment, which is the ultimate goal. So, by focusing attention onto certain issues and amplifying events and situations, Alice Paul was able to mobilize her constituents.

Once the NWP gained enough members who internalized the militant identity, they were able to set out achieving their aims. The nature of the NWP’s identity was said to have “evolved from petitions, to pickets, to prison.” [7] It is clear from this that the militant identity was able to inspire a kind of collective action that was much more literal than that of NAWSA’s. Keeping this in mind, “[She was] also less concerned about lobbying state legislatures since [she] believed in the necessity of a federal amendment.”[8] It was important to attack the President because he is at the center of the federal government. For Paul, the fight for women’s suffrage had become a political one rather than an educational one – it was time to just focus on getting the 19^th Amendment ratified than to educate others on women’s issues. By honing on one specific goal, it was easier to decide who to target and how. When Alice Paul turns to protesting as a form of collective action, she is drawing from the repertoires of protests used by other movements such as the French Revolution. Repertoires are toolkits of action forms that movements are familiar with and that they employ; examples include: petitions, marches, strikes, boycotts, etc. In the case of the NWP, they sent groups of women, who would later be referred to as the ‘Iron Jawed Angels’ for their resilient resistance, to go out and protest. But these women were not just protesting male and female inequality, but rather they made it very clear who their target was: President Wilson and what he represents, which is the federal government’s inability to take action on the behalf of women’s suffrage. On January 10th, 1917, the day after members of the NWP had had an unfruitful meeting with the President, “a dozen women planted themselves before the White House gates, stood silently, and held up banners asking, ‘Mr. President, what will you do for woman suffrage?’ and ‘Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?’”[9] For women to protest the President’s leadership was unthinkable at the time. For this reason, the NWP received backlash from both men and women who believed that what they were doing was rash and inappropriate. As mentioned earlier, the militant identity was at first meant to rally women together, but as time went on and as members of the NWP felt that the federal government really wasn’t paying attention, drastic action had to be taken. Because Alice Paul was successful in creating an organization that was strong and united, dangerous collective action such as protesting was able to take place.

According to Southard, “the Silent Sentinels’ sense of militancy empowered the protesters by providing a strong, shared identity,”[10] which is exactly how the NWP inspired the silent sentinels in the first place. Framing of events did not just pertain to the formation of the militant identity for group members, but it also extended into he public sphere. After a year of protesting and getting arrested and, as the Silent Sentinels would argue, abused, the public had come to feel that “in dealing with them the government had moved from protection to persecution.”[11] The NWP was able to be effective in its gaining recognition because it had a visible identity and a clear objective. Alice Paul was not only successful in creating an organization that was willing to literally fight for women’s suffrage; she also redefined the women’s movement for years to come. So in the end, because the public and the government listened, the Silent Sentinels were not so silent after all.

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[1] Della Porta, Donatella and Mario Dianni. “Individuals, Networks, and Participation,” p. 134 in Social Movements

[2] Banaszak, Lee A. Why Movements Succeed or Fail: Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1996. Print. 140.

[3] Ford, Linda G. Iron-Jawed Angels: The Suffrage Militancy of the National Woman’s Party, 1912-1920. Lanham, MD: University Press of America: 1991. 49.

[4] Stillion Southard, Belinda A. Militant Citizenship. Ed. Vanessa B. Beasley. College Station, TX: Texas A&M UP, 2011. Print. 3.

[5] Stillion Southard, Belinda A. Militant Citizenship. Ed. Vanessa B. Beasley. College Station, TX: Texas A&M UP, 2011. Print. 3.

[6] Adams, Katherine H., and Michael L. Keene. Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2008. Print. 44.

[7] Ford, Linda G. Iron-Jawed Angels: The Suffrage Militancy of the National Woman’s Party, 1912-1920. Lanham, MD: University Press of America: 1991. 1.

[8] Banaszak, Lee A. Why Movements Succeed or Fail: Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1996. Print. 140.

[9] Stillion Southard, Belinda A. “Militancy, Power, and Identity: The Silent Sentinels as Women Fighting for Political Voice.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10.3 (2008): 399-417. Print.

[10] Stillion Southard, Belinda A. “Militancy, Power, and Identity: The Silent Sentinels as Women Fighting for Political Voice.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10.3 (2008): 399-417. Print.

[11] Adams, Katherine H., and Michael L. Keene. Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2008. Print. 45.