Out of Left Field: Women’s voices in history, part II

Michael Dinnocenzo

After my previous column was published, one of North Shore Long Island’s most acclaimed feminists asked me a question. “Do you realize,” she said, “that all the American voices you cited were males?”

Frankly, I had not been attentive to that.

I did not consider the critical comment as a “political correctness” assault.

As a person who taught the first women’s history class at Hofstra in the 1960s, I was now reminded that my half century focus on “Her-story” still had a ways to go.

Clearly, like many males (notwithstanding my ongoing efforts for gender equity and inclusion), I slipped into being the product of my long male socialization (not alert enough to recognize how deeply language and identity should matter in our pluralistic society).

Ironically, I know — and respect — many outstanding female voices.  Although I have taught them for decades, my last column slipped to the exclusivity of “His-tory.”

So, let’s begin a bit of remedial commentary here.

Anne Bradstreet, the first published female poet in America (in the 1600s) had much to say about growing up — and living — female.

You can check her views and also note that the introduction to her book of poetry was by a man.

He explained that lest anyone conclude that Mistress Bradstreet had neglected her husband and children to do her writing, he wanted it known that she had snatched the extra time from her sleep!

Most of Abigail Adams’ letters was not opened to the public until the 1950s.

For years, I taught about her based on primary source research conducted in an honor’s project by Patti Alleva, one of my all-time star students.

So far as I know, Patti might have been the first scholar to pluck from Abigail’s letters to husband John, the comment: “My pen is freer than my tongue, so I am able to write things to you that I would not say.”

That was a view of the code of female modesty and subordination.

Because Abigail did so much writing (John was away for years as a diplomat in Europe), she became bolder and bolder as a social commentator.

She was among the early critics of maintaining a system of slavery while the Americans said they were contending for liberty from the British.

Everyone who has studied Abigail during the past half century knows her famous “Remember the Ladies” letter to John, warning him that women should be included in the new laws and constitutions, and, if they were not: “We are determined to foment a rebellion of our own, and will not hold ourselves bound by laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

Indeed, that is precisely what Elizabeth Cady Stanton did at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.

Not only did she use the model employed by the Revolutionaries of calling a “convention” (an assemblage of citizens), but she took the dramatic step of paraphrasing Jefferson’s “Declaration” as the focal point of the meeting.

Because Jefferson had listed 16 grievances against King George III, Stanton used the same number against the oppressive male sex (a document that, sadly, is still relevant 169 years later).

She began by modifying Jefferson’s opening lines:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men AND WOMEN are created equal.  The history of man toward woman is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”

This discussion is an extremely modest beginning; I will use future column space for so many other significant women’s voices: Anthony, Chopin, Paul, Roosevelt, Friedan, Steinem, and others who represent the qualities of Helen Fisher’s “The First Sex.”

Two aspects of women’s voices are timely right now.

One of those voices has been frequently presented in the Blank newspapers.

Not only is Diana Poulos-Lutz an elegant and articulate voice, but in her “Readers Write” submissions, she regularly presents analytically probing and incisive commentaries of high quality.

One could expect to find her essays in the top publications in our nation.

She writes from a gender perspective, but her views resonate for all who seek just and inclusive societies, here in the U.S. and around the world.

I don’t know if Diana Poulos-Lutz will be among the approximately 200,000 women who have committed to a demonstration in Washington on January 21, the day after the inauguration of the 45th President of the U.S.

Women don’t need to go to Washington.

They will also be mobilizing in towns and cities across the U.S. to remind the new President that, for everyone, there needs to be an agenda of fairness, equity and inclusion for women.

Author Peggy Orenstein has emphasized that the coarse views and hostile policies of the new President might “unwittingly inspire a new bipartisan feminism.”

Women’s Voices going forward from Jan. 21 can help to do for our nation and the world what Eleanor Roosevelt did in fostering the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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