Remembering Bra Burning Bogeymen on Women's Day

Since the Indian woman did not need to fight for her right to vote (suffrage), she has taken her right to vote and legal equality for granted. We are lucky. .... Now that we need to fight, here are some inspiring glimpses of women’s history, history of this struggle for basic rights.

Shouldn’t we study it in more detail in school, as a part of History?

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

Many (most) of us are not aware of the struggle that women in the West went through to achieve voting rights for women (female suffrage). What you read below might seem ludicrous today but nearly a hundred years ago a lot of people (including women) all over the world thought it was the demands that were ludicrous.

Women worked and paid taxes but were denied the right to vote. Many of them said, "I prefer love to my rights.", "Oh it's a fad - nothing more.", and many feared that asking for suffrage made them lose their feminine charms ...

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1875

The Logic of the Law

In 1875 the Supreme court of Wisconsin in denying the petition of women to practice before it said:

"It would be shocking to a man's reverence for womanhood and faith in woman.... that woman should be permitted to mix professionally in all the nastiness which finds its way into courts of justice."

It then named thirteen subjects as unfit for attention of women, three of them crimes against women.

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"Look at the hazards, the risks, the physical dangers that ladies would be exposed to at the polls."
Anti-suffrage speech. (Suffrage- Right to Vote)

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February 21, 1915, Sunday

Section: Votes for Women Real Estate Automobiles, Page XX1, 433 words

In the editorial "The Woman Suffrage Crisis" in your issue of Feb. 7 this statement appeared: "The grant of suffrage to women is repugnant to instincts that strike their roots deep in the order of nature."

Is this an argument against female suffrage?

Do you think that manhood suffrage was granted because it was in accord with natural laws?

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ARE WOMEN PEOPLE?

(DO GO THROUGH THIS LINK WHENEVER YOU HAVE THE TIME)

1915

Women love self-sacrifice

Suffering and good advice;

If they don t love these sincerely

Then they re not true women really.

Oh, it shocks me so to note

Women pleading for the vote I

Saying publicly it would

Educate and do them good.

Such a selfish reason trips

Oddly from a woman s lips.

But it must not be supposed

I am in the least opposed.

If they want it let them try it.

For I think we'll profit by it.

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Lastly,

Bra Burning Feminist. A Bogeyman to scare women and men away?

"The stereotype of the “bra-burning feminist” is one that remains today as a sort of feminist bogeyman to scare women (and men) away from the movement by pointing out how “ridiculous” and “radical” feminists are. The rub is, feminists never burned their bras as a political statement.

It’s important to remember that, even though the particular claim is a myth, the act that it symbolized — a rejection of patriarchal beauty standards and the trappings that go with them — is absolutely a feminist cause and not trivial at all."

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Well behaved women rarely make history, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

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We are fortunate enough to have inspiration in women who did struggle and succeed. Let's not give up without putting up a good fight, like Surbhi says, 'The new and improved 'desi girl' has decided she isn't going to wait for help - she will help herself... enna rascala mind it!'

Edited to add: Read about the struggle in Karachi here. (Rakesh thanks for the link!)