Do you consider yourself a

feminist? Perhaps you’ve done some research on feminism or some feminist

activism. Maybe you even went so far as to get a university degree in

Women’s Studies. I did. I graduated from the University of Toronto

with a major in Women’s Studies in 2008, and yet I do not have a working

knowledge of feminist history. This is wrong. Communication and storytelling

is essential to the development of any community, and the feminist movement

is no exception.

So who do you find "teaching"

feminist history on a campus like the University of Toronto?

None other than Feminists for

Life (a part of larger student group Students for Life). This group,

which calls itself "pro-woman and pro-life," appropriates the history

of the late 19th century suffragette movement in order to further its

sexist agenda of criminalizing abortion and contraception.

In the preface to Rebecca Walker’s

1995 book "To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of

Feminism," Angela Davis expresses disappointment in the third wave

of feminism. She argues that if the third wave feminists had "the

same kind of nuanced vision of the past that they did of the present"

they would come to understand that feminists of the past had indeed

confronted and challenged identity politics. In her 1997 article "Charting

the Currents of the Third Wave," Catherine Orr notes that many third

wave feminist writers indeed engage with ideas that have been explored

before in feminist theory and "end up fighting ghosts that could be

exorcised (or rendered more complex) by looking at history." Why did

we not study these established critiques along with classic and current

third wave feminist literature? We studied and created so many critiques

that when I thought of this one in the later years of my degree, I immediately

dismissed it as irrelevant simply because we had not encountered it.

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If it weren’t for the feminists that came before us, we would not

have several important rights: to vote, to work outside the home, and

to choose if and with whom we will have a relationship, among others.

Do all people, regardless of gender in Canada, have those rights in

2009? No. This does NOT mean that we should throw out feminist history.

As today, the feminists of the past were products of their social location,

and their work and views should be considered within that context.

On their website, Feminists for Life argue that Susan B. Anthony would

take an anti-choice position in the debate on abortion today because

in her time she condemned it as harmful to women and families. To unsuspecting

researchers who happen across this article and are unable to place it

into an informed historical context, it presents a reasonably sound

objection to abortion on "feminist" grounds.

However, historians will note that in Susan B. Anthony’s time and location

(late 19th century in the United States), contraceptive methods were

not readily available and so the results of marital indiscretions could

be much more visible and therefore disastrous. Women would not be considered

citizens until 1920, affording them little or no protection when facing

precarious/abusive living arrangements. Abortion was illegal and was

often the only option for women who were pregnant out of wedlock or

whose partners did not or could not acknowledge the relationship publicly.

From the perspective of many married women, the availability of abortion

in a community encouraged pre- and extramarital intercourse. Thus, privileged

women such as Susan B. Anthony and her early feminist colleagues generally

viewed abortion as a threat, denouncing it in their organizing.

Since the late 19th century, there have been many technological and

social movements that have altered the circumstances under which women

can make autonomous choices about the course of their lives. Winning

the vote, the invention of the Pill, the ability to work outside the

home, and the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade are just a few of

the changes that have taken place in North America in the 100+ years

since Susan B. Anthony’s day. So, Feminists for Life’s claim that

abortion is bad for women and families because Susan B. Anthony said

so in 1889 has little or no relevance in 2009. It must be noted that

it is possible to view Susan B. Anthony as feminist within the context

of her time – in a time when families were larger, labor unions had

yet to organize and women could not earn their own discretionary wages,

it was very important for women to ensure that their husbands were not

spending their wages on the costs associated with extramarital affairs.

When viewed in its proper historical context, her condemnation of abortion

may be considered acceptable on feminist grounds. The feminist movement

has also made a few changes since Anthony’s day in terms of recognizing

how it has neglected the needs of women of colour, queer and differently-abled

women as well as recognizing all genders as potential allies. Much work

remains to be done here, particularly in light of the carnage dealt

to women’s/maternal health globally by the Bush Administration.

Feminists for Life pamphlets have been readily available at most anti-choice

events to take place on the University of Toronto campus throughout

the 2000s. This is only one example of how they have perverted one famous

feminist’s history to attack women’s rights. If women’s studies

students are not taught this history and its relevant feminist/structural

critiques, how will we revise and add to our knowledge without a critical,

nuanced perspective from which to draw without repeating mistakes?

In our ongoing effort not to privilege a feminist critical lens over

others, we sometimes neglect to consider a feminist viewpoint at all.

This causes even more damage in practice than theory: multiple oppressions

and privileges translate very messily into real life interactions with

others. Attempting to sort out one’s varying identities with others

for even a small project can be daunting at best, and damaging at worst.

With so many of the marginalized (which overwhelmingly includes women

and families) suffering during this time, we cannot afford to sell a

seminal feminist figure like Susan B. Anthony to the persistent anti-choice

movement. It is deeply offensive to conflate her hard work with a patriarchal

institution that wishes to subjugate women.

If the misogynistic anti-choice movement can convincingly claim such

figures as Susan B. Anthony as their own, we can re-claim and re-define

them in a historical and critical context that reflects current feminist

and anti-oppressive thought. Each one of us that remains silent while

our history is stolen for an agenda predicated on "traditional"

gender roles is complicit in its abuse.