Ep. 2 Hairy-Faced Ladies & Anti a Billion Babies

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In this episode of My Favorite Feminists, Megan & Milena cover what suffragists have to do with the Guerrilla Girls & the slightly problematic Margaret Sanger

The Guerrilla Girls & Those Silly Shrill Suffragists

Guerrilla Girls artists Kathe Kollwitz, Zubeida Agha and Frida Kahlo during a press preview for an exhibition of works by the Guerrilla Girls titled “Not Ready To Make Nice: 30 Years And Still Counting,” at the Abrams Art Center, April 30, 2015. Photograph by Andrew Hinderaker

Sure, equal representation in the art world is skewed AF, but good news! Since the 1980’s there’s been a badass group of anonymous art activists calling out art world BS. In this episode we learn what they have to do with the Suffrage movement, how postcards are actually really cool, and the public perception of women daring enough to speak out against gender injustice & how visual aids in the public domain have aided in countering stereotypical notions of feminine roles specific to the visual art world. Yah’know, just the little things.

Suffragette Movement
BFF’s Elizabeth Cady Stanton (left) and Lucretia Mott (right)
Anti Suffrage post card is from 1909, perfectly arguing the suffragist position – if it’s not fair for a man, why is it fair for a women?
 

As promised, a excerpt from the 1915 book Are Women People? A book of rhymes for suffrage times by the American Alice Duer Miller:

Why We Oppose Pockets for Women

1. Because pockets are not a natural right.
2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did they would have them.
3. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them.
4. Because women are required to carry enough things as it is, without the additional burden of pockets.
5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to whose pockets were to be filled.
6. Because it would destroy man’s chivalry toward woman, if he did not have to carry all her things in his pockets.
7. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature.
8. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco, pipes, whiskey flasks, chewing gum and compromising letters. We see no reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely.

You can read the entire (short) book HERE

Art Influencing the Guerrilla Girls
1981 Work by Barbara Kruger Your gaze hits the side of my face. Her direct text over imagery inspired the Guerrilla Girls early work
Work from the Survival Series (started 1983) by Jenny Holzer. The Guerrilla Girls use similar biting, searing aphorisms paired with visuals to confront the viewer
Selected Work of the Guerrilla Girls
We Sell White Bread, 1987 poster by the Guerrilla Girls
Same shit, different decade : (
One of the Guerrilla Girls most well known (and depressing) satirical works, from 1988.

Wanna see more of the Guerrilla Girls’ work? Or check out that tote bag with eyeholes? Check out their website HERE

Slightly Problematic Margaret Sanger


Margaret Sanger. Being Intense.

Controversial, yet effective, Margaret Sanger got stuff done. She could ABSOLUTELY be considered a problematic fav. From ensuring public sexual education….to getting arrested…. to erecting medical clinics, Sanger had a crazy ride of a life.  Tune in to hear about her determination to bring education and women’s issues to the forefront of the public eye….as well as her problematic past and the legacy that surpasses her.

One of the many publications of Sanger. The Woman Rebel was the first publication that focused on the working woman’s issues and sparked nationwide controversy.

An exterior shot of the Brownsville Clinic, the first birth control clinic in the United States, started by Sanger, her sister Ethel Byrne, and a mutual friend Fania Mindell.
The Publication Sanger would put out, backed and funded by her girls at the National Birth Control League.
Sanger surrounded by the rest of the women who made up the American Birth Control League, which would later become Planned Parenthood.

As always, music by EeL