Expanding the Suffragist Family
The last chapter looked at couples, this one expands to "extended families" among American suffragists and the ways in which they can be seen as "queer".
In the mean time, I'm writing up notes for the next book, which investigates the prevalence of cross-gender presentation in the American West, and the process of erasing or "normalizing" those who participated.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #479d Rouse 2022 Public Faces, Secret Lives Chapter 3: Queering Family About LHMP Full citation:Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
Publication summary:For anyone who wishes to write sapphic fiction set in the American suffragist era—whether your characters are participating in that community or not—this book is absolutely essential. It provides many varied and concrete examples of women’s lives that can in some way be classified as “queer” which will expand your understanding of the possibilities and their reception.
From a structural point of view, the book’s arguments feel very repetitive, but its strength is in “bringing the receipts” with multiple specific biographical examples for each topic. Usually, for a work like this, I’d add blog tags for each specific individual mentioned, but that would rapidly become unmanageable in this case (in addition to the problem of categorizing each individual as to where they fall on the queer map).
Chapter 3: Queering Family
This chapter expands on the previous. While chapter 2 focused on individual romantic/domestic relationships, this one looks at larger non-traditional households that might include couples (or not) as well as un-coupled women. The focus is on mutually supportive arrangements, not simply people sharing an address. These chosen families (to use a modern term) provided emotional, financial, and medical support for each other, as well as mentorship for younger suffragists. They might include biological or adopted children of the members. The author points out that such arrangements both challenged and assimilated to traditional social structures, providing the image of domestic respectability while adapting the model to their own situations.
Such chosen families were especially valuable for those who had separated from their birth families due to their political activism or life choices, such as resisting marriage, pursuing a profession, or wearing not-traditionally-feminine clothing. As usual for this book, many specific illustrative examples are given.
One factor that made it socially acceptable for unmarried women to adopt children was the formation of Children’s Aid Societies, created to place abandoned or orphaned children. This willingness did decrease later, as public suspicion of female couples became more widespread. Such adoptions did meet some resistance from those who charged that they didn’t represent a “proper family.” [Note: And for another view of the dynamics of such adoptions—although depicting Canada rather than the USA—see the facts underpinning the Anne of Green Gables story, where children might be adopted out into situations where they were treated as servants.]
These chosen and blended families sometimes demonstrated their close connections by re-naming the adoptees following familial practices: naming a child after one of the parents or combining the names of both parents.
Young suffragists that had broken with their birth families might “adopt” an older parent/mentor figure, thus establishing family in the other direction. One example of this dynamic also features the biography of trans man Albert Eugene De Forrest, who was supported in his transition by mentor Dr. Alida Cornelia Avery, as well as by his partner in a platonic marriage of convenience. Quotations from 1890s newspapers regarding him show a willingness to accept and use his chosen name and pronouns, with some exceptions. De Forrest’s mentor Dr. Avery initially framed her support in terms of dress reform, and it isn’t clear whether she fully embraced his transition, though supporting De Forrest personally. De Forrest and Avery worked together in a variety of reform movements, including suffrage and temperance. De Forrest briefly married a woman, but a second engagement resulted in arrest and estrangement from his fiancée. Through all this, he was supported emotionally and professionally by a chosen family of activists. (The author points out that his successful outcome to the arrest owed much to white professional-class privilege.)
The discussion moves on to the situation and supportive community experiences of non-white suffragists, such as Dr. Margaret Chung. Chinese-American women faced dual barriers to voting. Dr. Chung also adopted “mannish” clothing for her profession, and the social acceptance of her is seen in how this factor is downplayed in the media of the day, instead emphasizing her support for her extended family—an image she cultivated as well by “mothering” many of her male military patients in the 1930s and 1940s.
These “queer households” also existed in a context of larger queer communities and enclaves. Such communities might be geographically anchored, as in Greenwich Village, or networks centered around specific couples or educational institutions. But moving into the 1930s, single-sex colleges and faculty consisting of unmarried women began to be considered suspect, as medical theories of homosexuality became more prevalent. This shift also affected informal communities built up among faculty members and their students.
The chapter now moves on to how “free love” philosophy could shape ideas of family and community among feminist and suffragist circles. Such communities walked a tightrope between suffrage activism and being viewed as giving the movement a bad image. The communities themselves might manage their public image to avoid undermining the political movement.
Time period: 19th c20th cPlace: USAMisc tags: female co-habitationhomosocial environments/communitiessinglewomenemotional /romantic bonds between womenfemale comrades/friendsromantic friendship View comments (0)
