Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Why Elizabeth Cady Stanton Couldn't Work for Edwards


As you can see from the quotations below, if 19th century feminist foresister and suffragist leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton were alive today, she'd be just another woman who couldn’t work for a Democratic presidential candidate.

Outspoken women need not apply.

Which is why most women who talk about the patriarchy do it behind closed doors. So here's a toast to Amanda Marcotte and Elizabeth Cady Stanton because there are far more important things than working for the Democrats patriarchy.

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eight Years and More (1898), p. 26

The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, quoted from Free Thought Magazine (Sept. 1896)

When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brain of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of "thus saith the Lord." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, quoted from Thomas S Vernon, Great Infidels, quoted from James A Haught, ed., 200 Years of Disbelief

I know of no other book that so fully teaches the subjection and degradation of women. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eight Years and More (1898), p. 395

The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to woman is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Free Thought magazine (November, 1896), quoted from Freedom From Religion Foundation, "What They Said About Religion" (Nontract #4)

All the men of the Old Testament were polygamists, and Christ and Paul, the central figures of the New Testament, were celibates, and condemned marriage by both precept and example. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

These teachings in regard to woman so faithfully reflect the provisions of the canon law that it is fair to infer that their inspiration came from the same source, written by men, translated by men, revised by men. If the Bible is to be placed in the hands of our children, read in our schools, taught in our theological seminaries, proclaimed as God’s law in our temples of worship, let us by all means call a council of women in New York, and give it one more revision from the woman’s standpoint. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, quoted from Dr. Mynga Futrell, "The Ladies Clamor for Change"

Women are afraid. It is unpopular to question the bible. They are creatures of tradition. They fear to question their position in the testament, as they feared to advocate suffrage fifty years ago. Now they are quarreling as to which were among the first to advocate it. You see they are not used to abuse as I am. In Albany, fifty years ago, when I went before the legislature to plead for a married woman's right to her own property, the women whom I met in society crossed the street rather than speak to me. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Interview, Chicago Record (June 29, 1897), quoted from Annie Laurie Gaylor, Women Without Superstition, p. 105

via Positive Atheism