Suffragettes as Fascist...

[5fish]

I found this interesting that many British suffragettes turned to fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. There is a book about four of them... Some videos to get it started...

 

[5fish]

Women drove the fascist movement in Britain...

British Union of Fascists - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The BBC report described how Elam's fascist philosophy grew from her suffragette experiences, how the British fascist movement became largely driven by women, how they targeted young women from an early age, how the first British fascist movement was founded by a woman, and how the leading lights of the suffragettes ...

 

[5fish]

Here more on Brits...

British Fascists - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The British Fascists (originally called the British Fascisti), formed in 1923, was the first political organisation in the United Kingdom to claim the label of fascist, although the group had little ideological unity apart from anti-socialism for much of its existence, and was strongly associated with conservatism

 

[5fish]

More on women leading the drive toward fascism in pre-war Britain...

Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist Movement, 1923-1945 by Julie V. Gottlieb and Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Women’s Food Work by Diana Garvin

The exploration of consent and complicity under fascism has intrigued historians of gender and sexuality

www.europenowjournal.org

By focusing on the politicization of gendered and sexual norms within the BUF, Gottlieb shows that at times “feminine fascism” remained an ambiguous weapon in the BUF’s arsenal. On the one hand, the women’s branch strongly supported dictatorial rule yet found it oppressive when leveled within the BUF’s internal dynamics. Fascist women were supposed to represent ideal women who complemented men allies and provided an image of domesticity; however, many BUF women also engaged in militant and conventionally masculine party activities. Feminine fascism is therefore both a flexible and confounding category of analysis to understand the BUF because BUF members did not always correspond to the idealization of femininity.

 

[rittmeister]

after having read or viewed that stuff it looks like those british fascist got most of it 'wrong'

 

[5fish]

after having read or viewed that stuff it looks like those british fascist got most of it 'wrong'

The British claim fascism was an Italian import...

 

[rittmeister]

The British claim fascism was an Italian import...

they got it wrong italian style, too


... and nobody ever said the italians didn't invent that shit

 

[5fish]

Here in America, we will know the Suffragettes split of Black men voting... The use of education was one tool to keep blacks from voting...

https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/white-supremacy-and-the-suffrage-movement

Unpacking this broadside shows how some suffragists believed educated white women would be a counterweight to Black and immigrant voters.The small poster declares “Votes for Women will Improve the Electorate.” Bar graphs illustrate claims that the vote would “more than double the native white majority,” “make [the electorate] more law-abiding and moral,” and “make [the electorate] more intelligent.” In other words, white, benevolent, educated women needed the vote to secure a white majority and reduce the influence of Black, immigrant, and uneducated men.

The broadside’s assertion that women would make the electorate more “intelligent” has roots in the concept of “educated suffrage,” which in turn was a reaction to the 14th and 15th Amendments of the 1860s. The split of women’s rights groups over the amendments has been well documented: Some white women balked at the idea that Black men might be granted the vote before they were, epitomized by Susan B. Anthony infamously claiming, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.” When Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded The Revolution in 1868, the paper opposed the amendments, instead calling for “educated suffrage irrespective of sex and color.” With the possibility that educated men and women of color might be qualified voters, Stanton and Anthony left themselves some wiggle room against charges that they were against Black suffrage, even while they did not advocate for improved access to education. As Reconstruction ended, states were forbidden from banning Black men from the polls outright but new state laws included rhetoric about “educated” voters. For example, men who sought to register to vote in Mississippi after 1890 were required to interpret the new state constitution. Black registrants were given difficult sections, while whites were asked simple questions. In response, activists within the growing Black women’s club movement embraced both suffrage and education as tools to fight Jim Crow.

This is clear in the words of suffragists such as Kate Gordon and Belle Kearney. Gordon, a New Orleans suffrage activist appointed in 1901 to a national position within NAWSA, told a newspaper that “the question of white supremacy is one that will only be decided by giving the right of the ballot to the educated intelligent white women of the South.” Kearney, who would later become the first woman elected to the Mississippi state senate, gave the keynote address at the 1903 NAWSA convention, arguing that restrictions on the Black vote were an incentive for Black men to become educated and obtain property.

 

[5fish]

The suffragettes like imperialism...

https://www.race.ed.ac.uk/they-all-...ettes-mean-their-statues-must-also-come-down/

The British feminism of the late 19th was not immune to the myth of a superior British national culture and empire. The historian Antoinette Burden explains that British feminists such as Millicent Fawcett, Josephine Butler, and Mary Carpenter built an image of womanhood deserving of suffrage by embracing the idea of Indian women as enslaved and primitive in need of civilization.

American suffragettes of the 19th century often made alliances with white racists to advance their cause for women’s rights. In 1868, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded The Revolution with the support of the pro-slavery democrat George Francis Train to specifically fight against the enfranchisement of Black men.

Stanton insisted that enfranchised Black men would oppress white women. “If woman finds it hard to bear the oppressive laws of a few Saxon Fathers, of the best orders of manhood, what may she not be called to endure when all the lower orders, natives and foreigners, Dutch, Irish, Chinese, and African, legislate for her daughters,” writes Stanton.

 

[5fish]

Here is an article about the British Suffragettes that went into communism...

The Suffragettes Who Became Communists | History Today

www.historytoday.com

Three years before this pageant, Pankhurst had established a branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in London’s East End that proved, to the extreme consternation of Sylvia’s mother Emmeline and sister Christabel, a ceaseless font of radical politics. Sylvia’s creation of ties with socialist organisations such as the Herald League brought her into conflict with the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) leadership. In 1913, her appearance on a platform in support of Irish workers active in that year’s famous Dublin lock-out – a large scale industrial dispute in the Irish capital – acted as the final catalyst that lead Christabel to break the formal tie between the main body of the WSPU and Sylvia’s East London branch. Expelled from the parent organisation in 1914 and thus free to pursue an independent path, the East London Federation of Suffragettes argued that women's suffrage was just one step in a road towards emancipation that necessarily entailed socialist transformation.

 

[5fish]

Here is a club the roots of American Feminism...

Heterodoxy (group) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Heterodoxy was the name adopted by a feminist debating group in Greenwich Village, New York City, in the early 20th century.[1] It was notable for providing a forum for the development of more radical conceptions of feminism than the suffrage and women's club movements of the time.[2] The heterodoxy club was also known to be a space filled with people living remarkably diverse personal lives, allowing for women to congregate and talk about their experiences with one another in what was considered to be a safe space for conversation and change.[3] The group was considered important in the origins of American feminism.[4

who specified only one requirement for membership: that the applicant "not be orthodox in his or her opinion".[2] The club was formed on the basis of the motto: "The only taboo is taboo.

 

[5fish]

Here is more...

The All-Woman Secret Society That Paved the Way for Modern Feminism

Based in Greenwich Village, Heterodoxy had just one requirement for membership: An applicant must "not be orthodox in her opinion"

www.smithsonianmag.com