Those Who Got Us the Vote and Those Who Loved Them

One of my great-grandmothers was a suffragette. A genuine, went-to-rallies suffragette, all while being married and having 12 kids. (Yes, 12). Her name was Ethel May Ripsom Pittenger and she was one of the countless, unnamed women who weren't stars of the movement, who didn't go on hunger strikes but cheered for those who did. She is one of those women who aren't memorialized in history books, but who made up the critical mass that got us the vote. She wanted a say in the world in which she lived, and she wanted her daughters to have the power her sons had.

I never met my great-grandma. She died before my grandfather, her son, even started school. She died before the 19th amendment passed, and she never got to vote. It's hard for me to think about that, that she fought so hard for rights she never got to exercise. Rights that half of those in this country don't exercise. I think I was born into feminism in part because of this woman I never met. Because it's pretty impossible to take voting for granted when I know my great-grandma wanted it more than almost anything and was never able to. She navigated a dozen kids while doing this work, which I get exhausted just thinking about. 

A few years ago I watched "Iron Jawed Angels," a movie about the suffragette movement, particularly focused on Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. The movie gave Alice a male love interest who (if I'm remembering it right) she loses because of her unrelenting commitment to the movement. I'll admit right there that I do not remember the movie very clearly except that there was a minor male interest. I remember that because I'd actually read about Alice Paul and the fact that she never, in her entire life, was romantically linked to a man. Never. She was long thought to have had a relationship with Lucy Burns. Though neither ever identified as gay (because, hello, it was illegal), many historians suspect that the duo were a couple.

Anti-feminist myths usually rely on the idea that men won't love us if we stand up for our rights. If we make it clear that we are smart and powerful and capable, men won't feel needed, will feel scared, won't want us, right? Haven't we all heard that? It goes right along with the stereotype of the feminist man-hater, because the only kind of woman willing to risk that level of male rejection is the kind who hates men. And thanks to homophobia, the idea that lesbians hate men is still alive and well. (Dude, seriously? We really just like girls a lot. It isn't about guys). All this mixes together to create the myth that feminist = man-hater = lesbian.

That makes some straight women really nervous. Betty Friedan actually called lesbians "the lavender menace" of feminism, royally pissing off lesbian feminists and sparking some hilarious t-shirts. As with "Iron Jawed Angels," the effort to discredit the whole feminist-lesbian-man-hater stereotype resulted not in critiquing sexists, but in marginalizing and erasing queer women from feminist history and community. "You're making people think we're all lesbians!" the complaint went. With the movie, I wonder if they were afraid early feminism would be unappealing if the love story was a same-sex one or if there was no love interest at all.

But I think that's missing an important point. Love is not something women have to give up as activists. Whether or not they were lovers, Lucy and Alice were intimately, deeply linked, and not just as movement buddies. Theirs was a love story, and it fed their fight. It was not something they lost in the struggle, but something they gained.

As for my great-grandmother, I've heard that she and my great-grandfather had one of the most loving marriages around, so much that people were a little shocked that married people would be so affectionate. (It was the 1900s and 1910s after all). My great-grandfather carved Ethel May little trinkets throughout their marriage, like he was still courting her after all those kids, and I'm told they lit up in each others' presence. He loved that she was passionate about her rights and supported her in her devotion to the cause. And she adored her husband and her children.

I'm sure some women, maybe even many women, lost their romantic partners because they stood up for their rights. But people worth loving love women who care about our world and want to make it better. Whether that's the story of two women or a married couple with a mind-boggling number of kids, these love stories need to be told, be remembered. These stories need be repeated every time we are told "real" activist women sacrifice love.