To not want to hear anything about the suffragettes

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How am I meant to support a movement that was disgustingly racist just because I benefit from it being a white female.

The feminist movement is still subtly racist with a lot of white feminists refusing to see white privilege.

The argument of being of its time doesn't wash. Racism is racism and I refuse to support it.

buffy - you have more knowledge than I do but I had mainly looked in her speeches. Such a shame that a phrase was picked up by the internet and used in the way it was out of context.
Please post when you find out the source of this as I am intrigued.

The rebel/slave comment is semantics! Slavery has long needed even in America. She was using the word in the context of women as ensoaved by social expectations, by men, by lack of opportunity and civil rights, lack of jobs, lack of higher education.
Like we say I'm a slave to designer clothes/ I'm a slave to my passions/ my boss treats me like a slave. Slavery as a concept has existed since biblical times/ Ancient Greece and Rome. It is always abhorrent but it has nonetheless given us the lexis of enslavement.

*Had long ended when Pankhurst was campaigning. Sorry, my own semantics issue there

nags I was not referring to the rebel/slave words which as I posted upthread was in one of her speeches in America and is well documented, but the more questionable one which I was trying to find the source of (as is Buffy) .

Pankhurst also said that women’s lack of the vote had “grown the most appalling slavery, compared with which negro slavery falls into insignificance.

Other people who are far more knowledgeable on the subject have answered here, i was going to say i checked through the two books i have and this is from a newspaper / newsletter rather than a speech.

It's very likely that it's an embellishment of the "Rebel / slave" original quote, possibly from the pro suffragette propaganda?

I have no books specifically on the suffragettes but ones that cover later Victorian to pre world war 1 era, so I'm happy to be corrected?

About the concept of women being slaves - I'm not sure that it is semantics. For centuries women did not exist as individuals in their own right, they were technically the property of their fathers until they married, then their husband became their 'owner'. They had no legal rights to their children who were also considered the property of their father, they couldn't own money or property, they didn't even own the clothes they stood up in. They could legally be raped by their husband and were expected to work unpaid for his benefit. And of course, they weren't emancipated so had no way of changing their situation. That does sound an awful lot like slavery.

saski I would agree with that. And also, in some countries, that is still happening now.

Aside from that, this is one of the most ridiculous OPs I've seen in a long time.

YABU. Sexism IMHO should be treated on a par with racism, and race should not be permitted as an excuse for sexual discrimination or sexual harassment. So I'd see minor sexual based offences upgraded to sexually aggravated ones, in the way that racially aggravated offences have been.

Doubly YABU as the suffragettes were a product of their time, as were the men around them.

I agree with Saskia and Titty and have too many other pointless alternatives to rtft.

I did want to add when I suggested the film to my dd1 who is 14 she said she didn't approve of the suffragettes and thinks the suffragists were just as effective in the end without the need for violence.

My own take is that it was women's contribution to the war effort which changed attitudes and so you could say that was an even more violent approach.

Anita Anand has just written a book about Sophia Duleep Singh. Looking forward to reading that.

I have a vague recollection that many suffragettes and suffragists were/had been involved in other protest movements too. I will have to recall that info and produce done evidence. There was also an inherent class bias because there was a property qualification in 1918 as it was based on the sane rights as men.

howabout: "My own take is that it was women's contribution to the war effort which changed attitudes and so you could say that was an even more violent approach."

My understanding is that that is one of those myths - they were planning to give women the vote anyway.

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if the points below have already been made.

The thing about the suffrage movement is that, like all campaigning movements, there were factions and splits. There was a very radical working-class wing (often ignored by historians) as well as the more middle-class wing led by Emmeline Pankhurst. Sylvia Pankhurst was much more radical and left-wing than her mother and was involved with the Independent Labour Party.

If you look at the American black civil rights movement of the 60s, it was rife with sexism. Stokely Carmichael was famously asked in a public meeting what the position of women in the civil rights movement should be and he answered "prone". Delightful. But that doesn't mean we should dismiss what the movement did, or what it achieved.

What you need to remember about the suffrage movement above all is that they were bravely fighting for a cause in the teeth of public mockery, police harassment and authorised violence, in the form of force-feeding in prison. They were an amazing group of women. As for the slave quote - as has already been mentioned - she's clearly talking about the difference between being enslaved as a woman (not able to vote, have a university education, do a professional job, have her own money etc) and fighting for one's rights. It's akin to that famous quote from Emiliano Zapata: "I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees."

I really feel that I need to point out that the T-shirt slogan resonates differently in the US than in the UK. As a white person I certainly would not wear it here in the deep South. Slavery is in the past but its legacy is still very much a part of American life and culture, especially these days with police shootings and the massacre in Charleston. “Slave” does have a special connotation in the US, especially in the South. And right now there is much discussion about the legacies of slavery because racism is so much in the news.

But what many people outside the US may not realize is that “rebel” also has a fraught connotation because that is what the Confederate citizens, soldiers and sympathizers were called. It was not too long ago that some high schools and colleges in the South had “rebel” as their sports mascot, complete with a person dressed in Confederate colonel’s uniform waving a Confederate flag.

It’s the combination of the two words that is the problem in the US.

I really feel that I need to point out that the T-shirt slogan resonates differently in the US than in the UK.

Then really those people should educate themselves and stop thinking everywhere shares their history.

It was not a 'slogan' it was a 'quote' from a speech from a British woman who was striving for equal rights for women in Britain in the early years of the 20th century.
Had it been a modern 'slogan' and used in America to make some kind of point I could understand the backlash but it really baffles me that people jump in and fly to their keyboards to sound off without investigating what is the truth.

The 'slogan' didn't go down too well here, either, as a publicity stunt set up by Time Out.

As has been explained here it is a line from a much longer E Pankhurst speech that is used in the film, and quite clear that she is not actually referring to the transatlantic slave trade but as slavery as a condition of being without rights, power or property.

Having said that it was extremely naïve for the T Shirts to have been made like that, with the words out of context, and because, actually knowledge of the transatlantic slave trade is widespread here, and awareness and sensitivity high - and plenty of us winced when we saw it. I am AMAZED that the actresses' PR people, or someone didn't say 'hang on a moment, folks'.... It has caused a backlash that the film itself doesn't, I think, deserve.

Blu: "Having said that it was extremely naïve for the T Shirts to have been made like that"

Well, only if you think that everyone always has to be alert to the possibility that someone, somewhere will take something in a way that quite clearly isn't intended. Where will it end?

ego I obviously realise women have benefitted from them, the same way black people benefited from the civil rights ect ect. I'm just not getting the hero worship and the papering over the flaws. I am also quite amused/baffled how many posters have took this so personally but then any thread talking about white privilege gets this.

I have said upthread I have taken on board the point Buffy made about holding other women to account more then men. I think a lot of us do this without realising.

hackmum: in general, I agree. I am deeply concerned by all this censorship of free speech that is occurring un Universities etc. However, generally people are more aware of the politics around slavery than that that phrase was from EP as a woman and suffragette. So it was pure PR I simply view it as clumsy.

If you read what the suffragettes went through, then I don't think we give them enough credit. Martin Luther King, Ghandi and Malcom X get hero worshipped, suffragettes don't.

I'm just not getting the hero worship and the papering over the flaws

Who has papered over the flaws?

Honestly open any book on the subject and you will see the flaws, the racism and sexism of the day, no one is hiding it.