The videos did a great job explaining the Women’s Suffrage Movement in multiple facets. I like that it pointed out the difference between struggles among women of color as well as the many contributions to women’s rights from people of color. The video makes an amazing point that “‘not every man is a tyrant but the law grants every man the right to tyranny.” Our country is so deeply rooted in patriarchy because of how the laws were (ARE) written. It was very extremely ingrained into the customs of our culture that white men make all decisions regarding anyone and anything.
Women were not “given the vote”, they fought for this right and earned it. This goes to explain how important it is for minorities and marginalized groups to have a seat at the table. While presidents were traveling trying to spread democracy, rich white men were the only people who truly have this right. Now today decades later, there are still disparities between gender, race, economic standing and more. In order to truly be democratic, we must create a culture that wants to hear from everyone, not just those willing to destroy and die for something that should be open to all.
The quote which you included is incredibly powerful; it is difficult to wrap my head around this concept but it is scary how frequently we see the impacts of this. I also thought that your point about women fighting for their right to vote as opposed to this right being granted to them was very interesting; I had never thought about women’s suffrage this way and am disappointed that this thought never crossed my mind.
I agree that we need to have a culture that is willing to hear from everyone, as that is the only way to each every voice. I think the only way that we can do this is through having true diversity within our government, and we still have a lot of work to do in that regard.
I agree that it is important to note that women were not given the right to vote – they fought for decades to get it. The tendency of our country to frame things as being given to minorities or under-represented populations takes away from the struggle to get that right and puts the power back into the hands of the group that were depriving them of rights in the first place.
I absolutely agree that it is important to point out how the use of “given” does not only apply to the women’s suffrage movement but pretty much everything the government has “had” to change to give minorities more opportunities. I put has in quotation marks there because it pains me that the government is not done despite the changes they have already made to the constitution and overturned court cases and more. You would think by now that maybe people could recognize that changing more at once is easier and less time consuming than changing bit by bit, line by line. The resistance to any change amazes me. Not all change is good and the power has to come from somewhere (this somewhere would be from white men) but I think change to make people feel more equal, less oppressed and less stressed is more good than bad.
I agree I thought the video did a good job explaining how women received the right to vote. I also thought it was important to state that women were not “given the vote” they fought very hard to get it.