Category Archives: Female Power Project

Writing about the “La Guadalupana” shawl

Suzanne Kulperger Photography made some amazing photos for me of the first object I ever made in the Female Power Project. So I am taking this opportunity to finally post the text I finally wrote for this piece in 2022. You can order the shawl and scarf for La Guadalupana on my Etsy site at this link.

Copyright 2023 Suzanne Kulperger Photography, all rights reserved.

Her attention reminds us that we are human.

Let me explain how this design for the Virgin of Guadalupe was the beginning of the Female Power Project. 

In 2015 the Pope came to Washington D.C. and celebrated mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, near my studio. I wanted to make some shawls that people might buy when they came to see him. As usually happens for me, the project took longer than I thought, and the pieces I created were not ready in time! Still, I pressed ahead with production. 

The Catholic Church considers the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe imprinted on the cloak of Juan Diego as a picture of supernatural origin.

Why did I choose the Virgin of Guadalupe for the project? Primarily, she was part of where I grew up, literally part of my geography, because the street where I grew up in New Mexico was a dead end road that came off a road called Guadalupe Trail. She was everywhere I looked in the Spanish culture of New Mexico and the Latinx culture around me in California and Texas, places I lived later. So when I wanted a Catholic image that was meaningful to me, the Virgin of Guadalupe came first to mind. 

At that time I hadn’t made work with religious imagery. Since then I have made more such works, enough that I named a series for them: the Divines. I am fascinated by religious images, symbols, and stories because they seem to have a direct access into our brains, more than other images. Since La Guadalupana was at the beginning of the Project, at the time I hadn’t developed a method for making or writing about divine females. I now understand better what I am doing in the Divines Series: I don’t retell the stories or depict the deities, I interpret aspects of the stories in reworked images and reinterpret their messages in the context of my point of view as a non-religious feminist, living here and now. 

The Virgin of Guadalupe is Mexico’s Virgin Mary. There is an important story for the Mexican and Mexican-American people about Mary appearing to and communicating with a local man, Juan Diego. This is a true story to the people, but it is not corroborated in the historic records of the time. The story involves local prelates, in the upper hierarchy, but there is no church record of the events, and there should be if the story is historical. It looks like the story was published later to help legitimize a legend and a cult that had developed over time. According to my research, the Church resisted acknowledging Mary’s visit to Mexico, and the cult of the Virgin that arose in Tepeyac, until it was impossible to deny for political and social reasons. The visitation, which was supposed to have taken place in the 1550s, cannot be separated from the complicated politics of the Mexican Church 100 years later, when the story was published and later accepted by the Church. 

A more recent Guadalupana story is that her cult at Tepeyac arose on the site of a shrine sacred to an Aztec goddess called Tonanzin. The implication is that somehow Guadalupana worship was really Tonanzin worship, or a mash-up of the two. But this also should be questioned. As Rosemary Radford Ruether writes in Goddesses and the Divine Feminine, A Western Religious History, “Tonanzin was a title for the maternal aspect of any Aztec goddess, not the name of a particular goddess.” Therefore, a local person referring to the Virgin as “Tonanzin” was saying she is a holy mother, which is not unchristian. The locals calling Mary “Tonantzin” did worry the priests. They were very anxious about the purity of the object of worship of the native people. This anxiety was behind the institutional resistance to the Guadalupana cult. Any native-derived worship must be demonic, they thought.

So these cherished stories about the Virgin of Guadalupe are … complicated. But I maintain that powerful stories are meaningful even if they are not true in a literal or historic sense. I like to ask how they are meaningful, and, in this case, why is this design meaningful to me: an artist, an atheist, feminist, Jew?

Why might La Guadalupana be so important to Mexican identity? I think I may have found at least part of an answer recently in the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (pub. 2020). She writes that Christian colonizers did not consider the non-Christians they met to be human. The colonizers were allowed by their laws and customs to treat these people like animals, or like any other exploitable natural resource. Once the colonized people became Christians, they and their mixed-blood descendants did gain some human dignity in the eyes of the colonizers, and were absorbed into the caste system, although they were considered to be lower caste, or even “untouchable.” When I read this I immediately thought of the native Nahuas having their own Virgin Mary speaking to them. She even required a native man to carry a message to a member of the Church hierarchy, and when the Church man doubted Juan Diego, the Virgin produced a miracle to prove Juan Diego was worthy of her (and his) attention. This was proof that the people in Mexico must be real Christians, that is, human beings. This was proof that Mexico is a place in Christendom, and not a place outside of civilization. The place of worship of La Guadalupana was established by her, and that place is Mexico.

Although I created the La Guadalupana shawl in 2015, I am writing this now in 2022. It’s taken me till now to think of ways to frame this design, and talk about its message in the context of the Female Power Project. It is very easy for me to get lost in historical detail, so I had to let my researches settle for a while, to let the details fade and the edges get rounded, so I could find a figure in the noise. 

La Guadalupana Shawl for the Virgin of Guadalupe
La Guadalupana Scarf for the Virgin of Guadalupe

The shawl references parts of the divine image of La Guadalupana at her shrine in Mexico: the mantle of stars she wears (I especially love this idea of wearing the sky); the flames representing rays of light; and the clouds around the flames. The roses, out of season and of a different region, are a miracle that proves the divine message to the sceptical curate. These things depict Mary’s situation, but not her self. 

It is amazing that a divine mother has persisted even in a patriarchal faith. It often seems to me that female power pushes through fissures in history, because our species needs it. Here is the message as I understand it: Mary did not forsake her child, and her power is mercy. Her cult is of devotion, more than worship, and the emotion she embodies is love without fear. Her attention makes us human, as she had made human her son, and she mediates between humans and the non-female divine. People who wear the shawl will have their own meanings, of course.

Back in 2015, I remember standing in front of a mirror in my studio, near that Basilica, trying on the shawl I had just finished, and something seemed to happen, because I felt like I was putting on the power of someone else, like in a ritual. I found it remarkable and meaningful, in a quiet way. (No fireworks!) My very next thought was, I wonder what other women I can make a shawl for, so that I can put on their power, too? 

And that, dear reader, was the beginning of the Female Power Project: my explorations of the stories of transformative women and divine females made into images, words, and objects—messages that we can try on, powers that can fit us, or situations we can inhabit.

I think if I were Catholic, I might feel like the Virgin had sent me a message.

REWRITE the default, for Hansa Mehta

REWRITE the default, for Hansa Mehta, perSISTER print in the Female Power Project.
You can purchase this print HERE.

“As India’s delegate to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1947–52, [Hansa Mehta] championed the case for a gender-neutral phrasing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mehta proposed the name of Eleanor Roosevelt as Chair of the committee that founded the Human Rights Commission and undertook the writing of an International Bill of Rights. The initial wording of Article 1 was ‘All men are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ Roosevelt’s biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook (2006: 558) writes that Hansa Mehta, the only other woman on the Commission, ‘significantly transformed the document by her insistence that the words “all men” would in much of the world be taken to exclude women. Hansa Mehta influenced ER in many ways. The commission adopted her inclusive formula “all human beings” during its June 1948 session, and women’s equality was forevermore affirmed in UN literature.’”
from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2022/09/12/hansa-mehta-an-early-indian-feminist/

“If not for Hansa Mehta, according to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ statement from December 2018, ‘we would probably be speaking of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man rather than of Human Rights.’”
from https://thepaperclip.in/hansa-mehta-all-human-beings-are-born-free-and-equal/

Hansa Mehta was born on July 3, 1897, to a privileged household in the princely state of Baroda, now part of Gujarat state along the western coast of India. Hansa pursued an education beyond what was typical of a woman at her time: she graduated with honors from Baroda College with a degree in philosophy; she studied journalism and sociology at the London School of Economics; and she participated in an exchange program in San Francisco. While in London, Hansa became friends with feminist, poet, and Indian independence activist Sarojini Naidu, who was friends with and worked closely with Mahatma Gandhi. Through this friendship Hansa also became close to Gandhi. She and a group of women visited Gandhi jail and this visit had a profound affect on Hansa.

It would be hard to overemphasize the effect that Gandhi’s ideas about non-violent resistance have had on global freedom struggles. (For example, perSISTER Pauli Murray engaged with these ideas when she refused to leave her bus seat, and when she participated in lunch counter sit-ins with other Howard University students in Washington DC.) 

Hansa married a man of a lower caste than hers, which caused a stir. She worked for women’s rights and Indian independence from England, organizing boycotts and participating in demonstrations. She and Kamala Nehru shouted revolutionary slogans in the Delhi train station, causing the British to blast the train whistles non-stop to drown them out. The increasing number of women revolutionaries caused trouble for the British rulers. Hansa was arrested and spent some time in jail. 

Upon release from jail, Hansa became involved in electoral politics in India, running for provincial office and winning a seat. She worked toward social, economic, political, educational, and reproductive justice for all people. 

Hansa worked within the All India Women’s Conference and became its president in 1946. There she drafted the Indian Woman’s Charter of Rights and Duties, which demanded education, equality, and civil rights for women. You can read this document at this link: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1494728?ln=en

Starting in 1946, Hansa Mehta served as a member of the United Nations sub-committee on the status of women before she became the vice-chair with Eleanor Roosevelt of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Committee. 

From 1946 to 1949, having been elected to the Constituent Assembly, Hansa sat at the tables to hash out the fundamental rights of the people of India and other details for their new constitution. Mehta was one of the 15 women framers of the Indian Constitution.

In the first few minutes of August 15, 1947, Hansa Mehta presented the new flag to the Constituent Assembly of the new nation of independent India, as a gift from the women of India. “It is in the fitness of things that this first flag that will fly over this august House should be a gift from the women of India!” She also presented “a list of nearly one hundred prominent women of all communities who have expressed a desire to associate themselves with this ceremonial” and stressed that there are hundreds and hundreds of women who want to contribute to the function of the government of the newly independent India. You can listen to her speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFC6_5yqM-U

Hansa Mehta served in many high caliber positions in academic administration in India, on the board of UNESCO, and she was also an author and translator. She died on April 4, 1995.

DESIGN NOTE
When looking for photographs of Hansa Mehta I found some examples on Ebay of printed postcards with her image, from the 1930s. I love the texture and color of this rather low-quality printing (by current standards). This led me to look up images of Indian vernacular typography like hand painted signs, match book printing, painted trucks. The bright colors, shadowed type, misregistered (not lined up) colors, blotchy halftone dots, I love it all. So this mode influenced my design for this print in the perSISTERS series. 

See ebay print here (for a while, anyway: https://www.ebay.com/itm/404345693088). Also I found such good stuff to inspire me on Pinterest and you can too. Search for: Indian Street Signs, Truck art, match books.

The bars of color in the background (and the clor scheme of the print) are from the national flag of India, and the star burst shape is a riff on the Ashoka Chakra, also from the flag.

RESOURCES
https://indianexpress.com/article/gender/hansa-jivraj-mehta-freedom-fighter-reformer-india-has-a-lot-to-thank-her-for-5034322/

https://thewire.in/history/hansa-mehta-jivraj-sarojini-naidu-mahatma-gandhi-united-nations

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13540661221115957

A blog on hand painted signs in India

https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day/women-who-shaped-the-universal-declaration

https://ardra.medium.com/the-women-who-shaped-human-rights-at-the-un-3464a158e959

https://www.constitutionofindia.net/members/hansa-jivraj-mehta/

DARE for Shirley Chisholm

DARE for Shirley Chisholm, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project. You can purchase this design here.

“I want to be remembered as a woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be a catalyst for change.” –Shirley Chisholm in the documentary, Chisholm ’72

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm  (November 30, 1924 – January 1, 2005) was born in Brooklyn, New York, to immigrant parents from Guyana and Barbados. Shirley spent some of her youth living with her grandmother in Barbados and did some of her schooling there in a completely Black environment. Back in New York, she graduated from Brooklyn Girls’ High in 1942, from Brooklyn College cum laude in 1946, and Columbia University with a MA in early childhood education in 1951. 

Shirley worked as a school teacher and school director and by 1960 she was a consultant to the New York City Division of Day Care. She joined local chapters of the League of Women Voters, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, as well as the Democratic Party club in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

In 1964, Chisholm was elected as the second African American in the New York State Legislature. After court-ordered redistricting created a new, heavily Democratic, district in her neighborhood, in 1968 Chisholm sought—and won—a seat in Congress. There, “Fighting Shirley” introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation and championed racial and gender equality, the plight of the poor, and ending the Vietnam War. She was a co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971, and in 1977 became the first Black woman and second woman ever to serve on the powerful House Rules Committee. (https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/shirley-chisholm)

She appeared to her colleagues in congress as a little Black school teacher with a lisp, but Shirley Chisholm immediately set about finding ways to represent her district’s people with moral purpose, integrity, and grit. She practiced coalition politics and avoided back-room dealing and machine or patronage politics. She was explicit in her feminist goals: universal child care, guaranteed income, equal pay, equal access to employment and education. Like Ella Baker, she entered male spaces without shrinking. A quote often attributed to Shirley is, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” (However, her biographer, Anastasia C. Curwood, could not find the source.) Shirley claimed many times that she got much more discrimination as a woman than as a Black person, but she did acknowledge the intersectionality of the oppression, calling it a “double handicap.”

When Shirley Chisholm ran for president in 1972, she didn’t ask permission from the Black male political establishment. Even though they would probably not have “granted” such a thing, this gave some Black men an easy reason to oppose her campaign (“How dare she!”). Just deciding to run and insisting on her legitimacy was a radical act. She struggled to be taken seriously and had to take legal action to be included in a televised debate.Anti-war activists, militant Black activists, young people, and women both Black and white, were her base. 

“She entered 12 primaries and garnered 152 of the delegates’ votes (10% of the total)—despite an under-financed campaign and contentiousness from the [mostly] male Congressional Black Caucus.” (womenshistory.org) She knew she wouldn’t become president. She ran because she wanted to have an effect on the discussion and to steer the debate: she was a catalyst. She wanted to hold on to her delegates until she could give Black people and women a concrete say in the party platform. She was only partly successful because she ended up having to release her delegates before the first vote. 

In the documentary about her mentioned at top, at about 1:02:50, you can watch Shirley Chisholm giving a speech to Black delegates at the 1972 Democratic Convention. She refers to what people have been telling her, about how they admire her for dealing with the discrimination and aggression she encountered as a candidate, they told her they know she has “the courage, the balls, the audacity to shake up the system within the system.” 

I have included below the full text of one of Shirley Chisholm’s speeches. I find it remarkably good, and pertinent to my goals with the Female Power Project. She is talking about how to imagine or define Female Power outside of the distortion of patriarchal oppression. She even uses the term “caste.” 

Shirley Chisholm was a kind boss and a brilliant and charismatic woman who wanted her country to live up to its promise. She was quirky. She was radical. She had “the balls” to meet racist and sexist social sanctions and keep going. And she did dare.

SOURCES
Shirley Chisholm, a biography by Anastasia C. Curwood
Unbought and Unbossed, by Shirley Chisholm
Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed, documentary by Shola Lynch available on Amazon Prime
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/shirley-chisholm

In 1969, Shirley Chisholm empaneled at the New School with Gloria Steinem (author, feminist, and activist) and Jacqueline Grenenwexler (the former president of Webster College). The three women, inaugurating the Human Relations Center at the New School, considered the provocation “Do Women Dare?” Available here in audio as well: https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS070210_000007

Her brilliant speech was recorded via a WBAI broadcast and is transcribed below, and sourced from here: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/shirley-chisholm-first-black-woman-congress-presidential-candidate-speech-1294152/

The topic this morning of course is, “do women dare?” And I have said, of course women dare. Do women dare? I assume that the question implies do women dare take an active part in society and, in particular, do they dare to take a part in the present social revolution? And I find the question as much of an insult as I would the question, “Are you, as a Black person, willing to fight for your rights?” America has been sufficiently sensitized to the answer, whether or not Black people are willing to both fight and die for their rights. To make the question itself is asinine and superfluous. America is not yet sufficiently aware, but such a question applied to women is equally asinine and superfluous. 

I am, as is obvious, both Black and a woman. And that is a good vantage point from which to view at least two elements of what is becoming a social revolution. The American Black revolution and the women’s liberation movement. But it is also a horrible disadvantage. It is a disadvantage, my friends, because America as a nation, is both racist and antifeminist. Racism and antifeminism are two of the prime traditions of this country that we have to face objectively. For any individual, therefore, challenging social traditions is a giant step. A giant step, because there are no social traditions which do not have corresponding social sanctions, the sole purpose of which are to protect the sanctity of the traditions. 

Then when we ask the question, “do women dare?” we are not asking are women capable of a break with tradition so much as we are asking, are they capable of bearing with the sanctions that will be placed upon them? Coupling this with the hypothesis presented by some social thinkers and philosophers that in any given society the most active group are those who are nearest to the particular freedom that they desire, it does not surprise me that those women, most active and vocal on the issue of freedom for women, are those who are young, white, and middle class. Nor is it also too surprising that there are not more from that group involved in the women’s liberation movement. There certainly are reasons why more women are not involved, and this country, as I said, is antifeminist. Few, if any Americans, are free of the psychological wounds imposed by racism and antifeminism. 

 A few weeks ago, while testifying before the office of Federal Contract Compliance, I noted the antifeminism and every other form of discrimination is destructive both to those who perpetrate it and their victims. That males, with their antifeminism, maim both themselves and their women. In Soul on Ice, Eldridge Cleaver pointed out how America’s racial and sexual stereotypes were supposed to work. Whether his insight is correct or not, it bears close examination. Cleaver, in the passage “the primeval mitosis” describes in detail the four major roles. There is the white female who he considers to be ultra-feminine because she is required to possess and project an image that is a sharp contrast to the white male’s image as the omnipotent administrator, all brain and no body. And he goes on to to identify the Black female as sub-feminine or amazon by virtue of her assignment to the lowly household chores and those corresponding jobs of tedious nature. He sums up the role of the Black male as the super masculine menial, all body and no brain, because he was expected to supply society with its source of group power. 

What the roles and the strange interplay between them have meant to America, Cleaver goes on to point out quite well. But what he does not say and what I think must be said, is that because of the bizarre aspects of the roles and the influence that nontraditional contact has on the general society, Blacks and Whites, males and females, must operate almost independently of each other in order to escape from the quick sands of psychological slavery. Each Black male and Black female, white male and white female, must escape first from their own historical trap before they can be truly effective in helping others to free themselves. Therein lies one of the major reasons that there are not more women involved in the women’s liberation movement: women cannot, for the most part, operate independently of males because they often do not have sufficient economic freedom. 

In 1966, the median earnings of women who worked full-time for the whole year was less than the income of males who worked full-time for the whole year. In fact, white women workers made less than Black male workers and of course Black women workers made the least of all. But whether it is intentional or not, women are paid less than men for the same work, no matter what their chosen field of work. Whether it is intentional or not, employment for women is regulated still more in terms of the jobs that are available to them. This is almost as true for white women as it is for Black women. 

Whether it is intentional or not, when it becomes time for young high-school girls to think about preparing for her career, her counselors, whether they be male or female, will first think of her so-called natural career—housewife and mother; and will begin to program her for a field for which marriage and children will not unduly interfere. And that is exactly the same as the situation of the young Black or Puerto Rican who the racist counselor advises to prepare for service-oriented occupations because he does not even think of them entering the profession. So the response of the average young lady is precisely the same as the response of the average young Black—passive agreement. Because the odds do seem to be stacked against them. 

This is not happening as much as it once did to young minority group people. It is not happening, because they have been radicalized and the country is becoming sensitized to its racist attitudes and the damage that it does. Young women must learn a lesson from that experience. They must rebel. They must react to the traditional stereotype education mapped out for them by the society. Their education and training is programed and planned for them from the moment the doctor said, “Mrs. Jones, it’s a beautiful baby girl.” And Mrs. Jones begins believing mentally the things that she might’ve been and add the things the society says that she must be! And that young woman, for society begins to see her as a stereotype the moment that her sex is determined, will be wrapped in a pink blanket. Pink, because that’s the color of her caste. And the unequal segregation of the sexes will have begun. Small wonder, therefore, that the young girl sitting across the desk from her counselor, will not be able to say “no” to educational, economic, and social slavery. Small wonder, because she has been a psychological slave and programmed as such since the moment of her birth.

On May 20th of this year, I introduced legislation concerning the Equal Employment Opportunity for Women. And at that time, I pointed out that there are 3 and one half million more women in America but women held only 2 percent of the managerial positions. That no women sat on the AFCIO council or Supreme Court. That only 2 women had ever held cabinet rank and there were, at that time, only 2 women of ambassadorial ranks in the diplomatic corps. I stated then, as I do now, that this situation is outrageous. In my speech on the floor that day I said, “it is true, the part of the problem is that women have not been aggressive in demanding their rights.” This is also true in the Black population for many years. They submitted to oppression and even cooperated with it. Women have done the same thing. But now there is an awareness of this situation, particularly among the younger segment of the population. And as in the field of equal rights for Blacks, Spanish-Americans, Indians and other groups, laws will not change such deep-seated problems overnight. But they can be used to provide protection for those who are abused and begin the process of evolutionary change by compelling the insensitive majority to reexamine this unconscious attitude. The law cannot do it for us. We must do it for ourselves. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles, and stereotypes. We must reject the great (or Greek?) philosopher’s thought, “it is thy place, woman, to hold thy peace” and keep us indoors. We must reject the thought of Saint Paul who said, “let the woman marry in silence.” And we must reject the Nietzschean thought which says that when a woman inclines to learning, there’s something wrong with her sex apparatus.

But more than just rejecting, we must replace those thoughts and the concepts that they symbolize, with positive values based on female experience. And a few short years ago if you called most negroes “Black,” it was tantamount to calling them “n*****s.” Now, Black is beautiful and Black is proud. There are relatively few people, white or Black, who do not recognize what has happened. And Black people have freed themselves from the dead weight of the albatross of the Blackness that once hung around their neck. They have done it by picking it up in their arms and holding them out with pride for all the world to see. They have done it by embracing it. 

Women must come to realize that the superficial symbolisms that surround us are negative only when we ourselves perceive and accept them as negative. We must begin to replace the old negative thoughts about our femininity with positive thoughts and positive actions that affirm them more and more. What we must also remember, is that we’ll be breaking with tradition. And so when you break with tradition, you have to prepare yourselves educationally, economically, and psychologically in order that you’ll be able to accept and bear with the sanctions that society will immediately impose upon us. 

I’m a politician. I detest the word because of the connotation that clings like slime to it. But for want of a better term, I must use it. I have been in politics for twenty years and in that time, I’ve learned a few things about the role of women in politics. The major thing that I have learned is that women are the backbone of America’s political organizations: they are the letter writers, the envelope stuffers, they are the speech writers and the largest numbers of potential voters. Yet, they are but rarely the standard bearers or elected officials. Perhaps it is in America more than any other country in this world that the inherit truth of the old bromide, the power behind the throne is a woman, is most readily apparent. And let me remind you, once again, of the relatively few women on the American political scene. There are only ten United States representatives, there’s only one Senator, no cabinet members that are women, no women on the Supreme Court. It is true that at the state level, the picture is somewhat brighter; just as it is true that the North presents a surface that is somewhat more appealing when compared with the South.

Secondly, I have learned that the attitude held by high-school counselors that I mentioned earlier is a general attitude held by political bosses. A few years ago, a politician remarked to me about a potential young female candidate, “why invest all of the time and effort to build up the gal into a household name when she’s pretty sure to drop out of the game to have a couple of kids at just about the time we are ready to run her for mayor?” I pointed out time and time again, that the harshest discrimination I have encountered in the political arena is anti-feminism. And when I first announced that I was running for Congress, both male and females advised me, as they had when I ran for the New York State Assembly, go back to teaching, a woman’s vocation, and leave the politics to men. And one of the major reasons why I will not leave the American political scene, voluntarily that is, is because the number of women in politics is declining. There are at least two million more women than men of voting age but the fact is that while we get out the vote, we often do not get out to vote.

In conclusion, I believe that women have a special contribution to make to help bring order out of chaos because they have special qualities of leadership which are greatly needed today. And these qualities are the patience, the tolerance, and the perseverance which have developed in us because of suppression. And if we can add to these qualities a reservoir of information about techniques of community action to help our society become the kind of society it must be, well then, we will have become effective harbingers of change. Women must participate more in the legislative process because even if the contributions that I have just mentioned, the single greatest contribution that women can bring to politics would be a spirit of moral purpose. But unfortunately, women’s participation in politics is declining, as I have noted. The decline is a general one but it is because it is a decline that I believe that the true question is not whether or not women dare—women have always dared! The question which now faces us is: will women dare in numbers sufficient to have an effect on their own attitude towards themselves and thus change the basic attitudes of males and the general society? Women will have to brave the social sanctions in great numbers in order to free themselves from the sexual, psychological, and emotional stereotyping that plagues us. It is not feminine egoism to say that the future of mankind may very well be ours to determine, it is simply a plain fact, the softness warmth and gentleness that are often used to stereotype us are positive human values, values that are becoming more and more important as the general values of the whole of mankind are put more and more out of kilter. And the strength that marked Christ, Ghandi, and King was a strength born not out of violence but of gentleness, understanding, and gentle human compassion. We must move outside the walls of our stereotypes but, we must retain the values on which they were built. 

This is the reason that we must free ourselves. This is the reason that we must become revolutionaries in the fashion of Ghandi and King and hundreds of other men and women who held those as the highest of humane values. And working towards our own freedom, we cannot only allow our men to work towards their freedom from the traps of their stereotypes. We are now challenged in ways we have never been challenged before. The past 20 years with a decline for women in employment, in government, with the status quo in ‘preparation for young women for certain professions,’ it is clear that evolution is not necessarily always a process of positive forward motion. Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Nation, and Sojourner Truth were not evolutionaries, they were revolutionaries, just as many of the young women in today’s society and more and more women must join their rank. 

In a speech made a few weeks ago to an audience that was predominantly white and all female, I suggested the following if they wanted to create change—you must start in your own homes, your own schools and your own churches. I don’t want you to go home and talk about integrated schools, churches, or marriages when the kind of integration you are talking about is Black with white. I want you to go home and work for, fight for, the integration of male and female, human and human. Franz Fanon pointed out in Black Skin, White Masks, that the anti-Semitic was eventually the anti-negro. I want to say that eventually both are antifeminist and even further, I want to indicate that all discrimination is essentially the same thing—anti-humanism. That is my charge to those of you in the audience this morning, whether you are male or female. Thank you.