Thread by @hatpinwoman

Book 3 of 2022 was something a bit special. Taken from a publisher who highlights “forgotten books” I managed to find on kindle “What I remember” by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the famous suffragist. Her words take you straight back to the 1800s…

She covers her life from her own perspective which is fascinating. Not only to understand the time she lived in (she was 4 when Prince Albert had his great exhibition and 2 at the start of the Irish potato famine) but also to glimpse the world in motion in that era

She met her husband at a party when he overheard her views on Lincoln’s assassination. She was a supporter of the north, horrified by slavery and thought Abe was a hero for fighting against it.

Her husband was blind, after having been accidentally shot by his father. He was a good man, who supported her fight for women’s suffrage and did much of his own great work. One of the beautiful things about this book is getting an even bigger picture of the women’s movement

Not only about the vote, but the whole movement. Access to education, for example, was a key part of what women were fighting for. So was workers rights for women.
MGF’s own sister was determined to be a doctor and to break the particular glass stethoscope men put in her way.

There are so many stories here that made me smile. The hat and the train! The bird eggs and the river! Phillipa’s Victory! The man who wrote a Latin grammar book and held the conceit everyone had read it! Delightful. There’s also lessons to be taken from the past for own movement

For example, the complex nature of women’s relationship with male allies. Now, as then, good men are standing for the cause. Now, as then, there are times of betrayal or dismissal and women who are concerned about potential for that. One notable story saw 104 liberal MPs pledge

To support the enfranchisement of women but, at the final hour, vote against an amendment that would have achieved it. The distrust and misery it caused, MGF believed, was a key cause of the more militant suffragette movement which followed.

There’s a tendency for people to dismiss discussions on here, especially of late,where women try&hold men’s feet to the fire as “drama”. I’ve long seen it more as politics&this book shows it’s practically tradition.Fractures&fissures in a movement are normal,so is talking of them

Clashes of political aims are going to inform the positions we take and for a movement that understands sex matters, some can be a little too squeamish in acknowledging the political relevance of our sex amongst ourselves and that it is important to grasp this

One of my favourite parts of this book was seeing Josephine Butler stand up for women who were considered to be prostitutes and who were being forcibly examined under the contagious diseases act for potential syphilis. Some were locked up for months at a time.

She&the “ladies” stopped that. They were concerned about prostitutions affect on women and girls. Butler,with imperative efforts from W.T Stead helped raise age of consent from 13 as well. Their success eventually led to League of Nations work to protect trafficking victims

The women’s movement has always stood with prostitutes over the men who would buy them, with children over the men who would rape them and with all women over the men who would subjugate them. We’ve always been monstered for it too. The thread remains unbroken.

It is these objectives that clearly distinguish us from anti feminist movements. One amusing point was MGF pointing out that anti suffragist women made a song and a dance about women not being political and needing to stay home….as they politically campaigned&didn’t stay home.

She felt they didn’t really believe the nonsense they came out with (except Mrs.Humphrey Ward who could believe all manner of conflicting things at once). Instead, she felt they just wanted to be on the winning side and believed that side would win.

A vast amount of people are now doing exactly the same. They’ve decided trans “rights” will win (and who can blame them, women are still so easily disregarded) and they wish to appear like champions of a winning cause. They fail to reckon, again, with the courage of our sex

This whole book is intrepid. At one point she, and other women, visited concentration camps in South Africa with the objective of helping improve conditions for women and children there. The book doesn’t properly mention that her Fawcett Commission report confirmed criticisms,

such as those raised by Emily Hobhouse, about the treatment of those in the camps, and recommended more rations, more nurses and a host of other practical considerations should be brought in at once. Contrary to the governments hope of a nice soft whitewash

Reading about the camps still made me uncomfortable as history of course so often does. I worried about how much the Boers suffered in them. With or without improvements which seem an insufficient response to the idea of such camps.

Then she talks of the suffragettes.

She defends them. She talks about years of violence against them before they returned it, and how even when they did they seriously harmed no one. This is another lesson to take from the past: women defending other women, even those who have different tactics.

&even where we seriously disagree on those tactics.We can stand with women,even when we do not stand with everything they say or do

I sincerely believe we need the patient women&the rebel ones

&they need each other
💜🤍💚

P.s I leave the rest for you to discover if you read it