fKamalpreet has 12 post(s)

Londa Schiebinger’s essay, “Skeletons In The Closet”, asked an important question, why did the comparing of the anatomy of white women and men become such a critical project for the medical community in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth century? And Schiebinger was able to fully answer this question in her essay. In the beginning of the 1750s was when doctors in Europe began to look for the sex differences in the human body, and during this time was when the first drawings of female skeletons appeared (Schiebinger, page 42).  Londa Schiebinger believed that the first representations of the female skeletons came forth to help define the position of women in the European society. The fact that a woman’s skull was shown to be smaller than a man’s skull was evidence to the statement that a woman’s intellectual capabilities were inferior to a man’s. On top of that, a female’s large pelvis added more to the reason as to why she should be confined in the sphere of her home, it showed that she was naturally designed for motherhood and the role of a nurturer (Schiebinger, page 43). Anatomists used the research they did on the skeletons to make visible the separate roles of a man and woman in the social hierarchy, and in the eighteenth century, they began to believe that women held a low ranking in the natural hierarchy (Schiebinger, page 46). Londa Schiebinger explains in her essay that the reason why comparing the anatomy of white women and men became such a big issue was so it can be used to further show the inequality between the both sexes. Basically, it was more of a political reason than anything else. This conveniently happened during the time when women began to raise their voices against the denial of their civil rights, but it only made them fight harder for their freedom.

Angela Davis talks a lot about the Convention at Seneca Falls in chapter three on “Class and Race in the Women’s Rights Campaigns.” Along with that, Angela Davis brings into account the details of the works and lives of other prominent figures during this time, and the different initiatives taken during the movement. We are taught from most of our previous history classes that the Seneca Falls convention was the first of it’s kind, and the start of the women’s suffrage movement. However, Angela Davis makes it clear in her writing that although the Seneca Falls convention was the first public meeting for the resolution, many women beforehand had raised their voices against sexism. The 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London was what inspired Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for the Seneca Falls convention, as the men made it very apparent to exclude the women by the majority vote (Davis, page 51). Lucretia Mott had the experience being a female abolitionist, while Elizabeth Cady Stanton had the experience of being a white middle-class woman. At the Seneca Falls Convention, the activists were able to bring forth the idea of the women’s right to vote, with help from Frederick Douglass, and draft the Seneca Falls Declaration, which officially started the movement towards gender equality. However, the declaration was not so inclusive towards the white working class women, as well as the women of color. From the late 1820s, working women staged turnouts and protests against the double oppression they faced as being female and industrial workers, long before the Seneca Falls convention in 1848 (Davis, page 59). As early as 1837, Angelina and Sarah Grimke criticized organizations and associations for not including or involving black women in their movements. More than ten years before the Seneca Falls convention, Maria Stewart, native-born black women, addressed the issue of women’s rights and education for black women in a newspaper (Davis, page 63). Most historical of all, Sojourner Truth attended conventions after the Seneca Falls one, delivering speeches on the solidarity of black women in this movement. She talked about the fact that black women also deserve to be free from racist oppression and sexist domination, and her speeches still continue to inspire and move the audience today (Davis, page 65). Throughout this chapter, I believe that Davis was trying to tell us that although the ideas of women’s rights and equality were present amongst all women before the convention in 1848, it helped bring those ideas public and initiated the movement.