Suffrage

Being the political junkie he is he experiences the moment live, his television tuned in to any and all coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last month.  Me, I google it.  But I can’t say it’s any less powerful on the small screen:  The faces of the 43 men who have served as President of the United States, culminating in Hillary Clinton breaking the glass as our first female nominee. She is a symbol for how far we women have come.

Yet in some ways our progress feels glacial:  The nineteenth amendment to the Constitution was ratified on this day in 1920.  It’s been nearly 100 years since women in America won the right to vote, and we’re just now getting a shot at the highest office in the land. Really?  But when I think about the resistance we’ve had to fight, the power and passion around denying women this right, and the behavior change still unfurling today to fully embrace all it encompasses, I’m not surprised.

 

I can’t say I appreciated the magnitude of the movement until watching “Suffragette”, a movie about the battle for the same in Britain.  Women weren’t just looking to cast a vote, they were second-class citizens seeking the power to change laws materially diminishing the quality of their lives. And those few but mighty voices leading the charge paid a heavy price for the justice they would not be denied.  Getting to where we stand today is in large part thanks to these courageous women willing to speak up for human rights, to repeatedly raise their voices until they are heard, to stay strong in spite of threats to their existence.

Our Constitution grants us freedom of speech in the very first amendment.  Each one of us has the right to say what is on our minds without fear of retribution, no matter how eloquently or tactlessly our words spill out of our mouths.  I hope that every one of us exercising this right demonstrates common courtesy and respect, but it’s not a requirement.  And somewhere along the way those with opposing views decided it is okay to squelch, even persecute those invoking this basic right.

Voicing a contradictory point of view can be a lonely place to be. A modern-day case study, “Shut Up and Sing” is the 2006 documentary film about the Dixie Chicks in the aftermath of a political opinion expressed from the stage of a concert hall that threatens to ruin the most successful female band of its time. A few small words strung together irrevocably alter lives in a flash:  For the Dixie Chicks it is, “I’m ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”  For those of us less famous, it is words like “I’m going to work for the competition.” or “I’m leaving you.”

  

Sometimes we know exactly what we’re doing, considering carefully our statements, contemplating expression until we’re ready to accept the consequences we foresee. Other times we forget we’re on a stage, or we’re the understudy shoved into the limelight at the last minute.  We underestimate the fear or anger our voices will unleash. Or we don’t expect our whisper to be overheard. May it’s not until we hear ourselves speak the words out loud that we realize our conviction.  When we’re called out we have two choices:  We can scurry back into the protective shell of the mainstream, scripting a half-hearted apology about how we didn’t really mean it and we’re deeply sorry.  Or we can choose to stand our ground, to own the elephant we’ve just put on the table, and to manage the fall-out our gumption creates. The repercussions aren’t always anticipated, fair or deserved, but they are there all the same, and our lives don’t move forward until we deal with them.

We take a giant risk when we utter an opposing opinion, watching doors close on resources and relationships we’re not certain we can live without. And sometimes we close the doors ourselves creating a self-imposed solitude borne from shame. It’s pretty normal to go underground for a while, to wonder:  Was it smart to speak up?  Maybe I should have just kept quiet?  But those of us with true conviction won’t back down.  We can’t. We’ll never again be the person we were before we showed ourselves. And so we begin the long process of reinvention to become a truer version of ourselves.

For many of us, the lengths to which our opponents will go to punish us for our views only make our voices louder.  The suffragettes became more determined than ever, and so did the Dixie Chicks. I’m incredulous, really, when he speaks of a friend who won’t vote for Hillary because she is a woman.  Tell me she lacks experience, tell me she’s focused on the wrong issues; tell me anything about her views, her record, her network, her approach.  But don’t tell me she hasn’t earned your vote because she’s a woman.

While it can take a while to embrace it, there is an undeniable peace and a power that can never be wrestled away from us when we stand up for what we believe in.  In being so fiercely and painfully heard, we find ourselves. Our world does in fact change when we raise our voices, yet what we don’t expect when we raise our voices is we change, too.