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stevenleser

(32,886 posts)
Fri Oct 13, 2017, 10:54 PM Oct 2017

Here is an example of a guy who should be invited to speak at a women's conference [View all]


Fredrick Douglass

https://www.thoughtco.com/frederick-douglass-quotes-on-womens-rights-3530068

Frederick Douglass was one of the few men present at the pioneer woman’s rights convention held at Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848.

"When the true history of the antislavery cause shall be written, women will occupy a large space in its pages, for the cause of the slave has been peculiarly woman's cause." [Life and Times of Frederick Douglass,1881]

"Observing woman's agency, devotion and efficiency in pleading the cause of the slave, gratitude for this high service early moved me to give favorable attention to the subject of what is called "woman's rights" and caused me to be denominated a woman's rights man. I am glad to say I have never been ashamed to be thus designated." [Life and Times of Frederick Douglass,1881]

"[A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments.

The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence."
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Douglass' last speech was to the National Council of Women in 1895; he died of a heart attack suffered the evening of the speech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass#Women.27s_rights
In 1848, Douglass was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, in upstate New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the assembly to pass a resolution asking for women's suffrage. Many of those present opposed the idea, including influential Quakers James and Lucretia Mott. Douglass stood and spoke eloquently in favor; he said that he could not accept the right to vote as a black man if women could not also claim that right. He suggested that the world would be a better place if women were involved in the political sphere.

In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world.

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All of the quotes I pasted above seem normal and average now. They were earthshatteringly shocking at the time.
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