Civil Disobedience

          Civil disobedience: it’s a term we’ve all heard at one point or another if we’ve taken a high school English class. Listening to my teacher lecture on about how a privileged white man, Henry David Thoreau, decided one today to commit to an act of “civil disobedience”, I was incredibly bored and disinterested. Sorry, Thoreau fans, I just think he is a tad bit pretentious! While I still stick to that belief in college, I can and will acknowledge that his idea of civil disobedience now makes more sense to me and I view it as a useful tool for social movements, especially the women’s movement.

            As defined in the classroom lectures, civil disobedience is essentially “deliberate violation of the law in pursuit of some social goal.” Thoreau did not support the war in Mexico and therefore did not pay his poll tax. Obviously, not paying your taxes is against the law and so he was jailed. He deliberately violated the law in pursuit of some social goal, which was protesting the war in Mexico. This gave way to the idea of civil disobedience. The citizens who made up the women’s movement had similar actions: they used civil disobedience to argue for greater rights for women.

            In 1872, around 50 years before women had the right to vote; Susan B. Anthony decided to vote. (My favorite line from an article about her? “The B stood for badass.”) Initially, those running the voting booth told her she could not vote, but she threatened legal action against them if she would not be allowed to vote. She cast her ballot, knowing that she would be breaking the law. Anthony was soon after charged with unlawful voting and demanded to be arrested properly, just like a man would be. She denied bail in order to petition habeas corpus, but her lawyer went ahead and paid it for her because he hated to see a lady in jail. Later, at her trial, she was found guilty and fined $100. This is a prime example of civil disobedience in the women’s movement: Susan B. Anthony did not agree with the fact that women could not vote, so she deliberately violated that law in order to make a point.

            Another favorite example of mine comes from that same year. 1872 was quite a time to be alive! There’s just something about rebellious women of the 19^th century who refused to settle that makes me proud to be a woman. At this point in time, women still did not yet have the right to vote. Therefore, they could not run for president, but that did not stop Victoria Woodhull. Victoria and her sister created a publication where they could express their ideas on women’s suffrage, birth control, and other “radical” ideas of the day. Aside from using her magazine to spread her ideas, she also spoke to Congress on behalf of voting rights for women. She decided that her magazine and her lobbying of Congress was not enough, so Woodhull helped found the Equal Rights Party and ran for the U.S. presidency on that ticket. I’m trying to be academic but my only thought on this is: YES GIRL. I find it so incredibly amazing that during a time period where women were expected to stay in the house and raise children and were ostracized for just demanding equal rights, this woman (and many others) stood up and said “no”. Victoria Woodhull showed her civil disobedience by not voting for president, but actually running for President of the United States. I think Hillary Clinton would be proud.

            Although actors in the women’s movement still display civil disobedience today, I think it was even more impactful in the early women’s movement. In the 19^th century, women were expected to be obedient. Women were homemakers. They cooked and cleaned and raised the children and did not have a say in the government. Women were obedient creatures and that was that. I feel so inspired thinking of the women who stood up and stopped being obedient. Civil disobedience was a way to get the public’s attention, and it definitely worked. Both Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull became the subject of public scrutiny after their actions of civil disobedience, as I’m sure many other women did. These women sacrificed their public image in order to achieve a greater goal: equal rights for women. These two examples deliberately violated the law in pursuit of their social goal. It still took a while for women to win the vote, but I would wager that without the civil disobedience of Anthony and Woodhull, women would have had to wait quite a bit longer for their rights.