Iron-Jawed Angles (blog entry 4)

                    The readings that I have read for this class have informed me of the challenges that woman have faced when fighting for equality and women's rights. I have learned the achievements and rights that have been gained in result of the feminist movement. I have learned about how feminism itself has evolved over time and how there are still battles that need to be fought. I understand that it has taken courage, and hardships to get to where we are today but I did not realize to what extent of how brutal the challenges and consequences were until I watch Iron-Jawed Angles. This film really got to me and at the end of it, for the first time since the beginning of the class I honestly consider myself a feminist.

                        The horrors and hardships that made up the scenes in this movie shocked me and are important to the history of women's rights. Without Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Burns, Alice Paul and many other brave women my voting right would not exist. For a right a lot of women today get to take for granted, there was a tough and violent battle for this right to be secured in our constitution in order for women to have. This movie is a powerful document depicting the struggle for the nineteenth amendment to be part of our constitutional rights. It was not a simple protest where women said "give us our voting rights" and poof there they were. They were courageous women who stood out in all forms of whether (freezing or rain), were attacked by angry mobs, and let nothing hold them back from saying what they had to say. Some were arrested, Lucy Burns and Alice Paul included, and the workhouse which they were held were in no conditions a nice place to be confined too. They were in fact atrocious. In fight against the conditions of the workhouse and battle for their rights many held hunger strikes. Alice Paul refusing to eat was brought to the psychiatric ward to be diagnosed as insane, but after an evaluation from a psychiatrist he confirmed she was not insane but simply following Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death. In return to her hunger strike she was force fed multiple times. This graphic scene is showed in the video clip below. This remarkable woman experienced torture to gain a right that women should be privileged at birth, not by years of fighting and dealing with brutal consequences.  "It's so unfair that anyone should have to die in a fight that shouldn't have to be fought," Alice Paul said after one of her fellow feminists fell to unconsciousness and died when the battle for her right became too much for her to handle. This brutality and struggle should not have been necessary. Women are people. All people deserve rights. "We're legitimate citizens, we're taxed without representation, we're not allowed to serve on juries so we're not tried by our peers. It's unconscionable, not to mention unconstitutional. We don't make the laws but we have to obey them like children."

                     This is a film that should be seen by all women and men. It is important to the history of America. Everyone needs to understand exactly what these women had to endure just to get a right that should of been ours to begin with. When the film came to an end I was proud. I was proud to be a woman. I was proud of all the women who have fought and are fighting for our rights, and it made me want to be as strong and as great in the women in this film.

                 Some questions that were raised as I watched this film were:

How could President Wilson ignore the suffrage movement for as long as he did? Would I be able to stay as strong and Alice Paul and Lucy Burns did throughout the struggle they went through? Why am I just learning the brutal details of this struggle for the right for women to vote now???

               This movie connects to most all of our readings. The battle to secure the nineteenth amendment in our Constitution is at the heart of all the major achievements of the Feminism Movement. All of the stereotypes, biases, and challenges we have talked about in class were all shown in this film. When the women fighting for their right to vote stood on the side streets and went up to people to ask for sponsorship or help in anyway,  they were instantly ignore as soon as they mentioned their cause. The people would continue walking as if what they had to say way dirty and wrong. Also the racist issue with white and black women were shown in the film as bell hooks has written in her book Feminism if for Everybody. Black women were not at first accepted into feminism. They were segregated into their own section and not included as equals to the white women fighting for their rights. This was seen in the film when the black women were expected to march in their own section at the end of the parade instead of with their white sisters who got to march in the front.