The Feminist Revolution Is Nothing Like The American Revolution

To celebrate America 250, reflecting on what the Founding Fathers did for America can help us understand where feminism went wrong. Many people source the beginning of feminism to its “first wave,” when suffragists had some legitimate claims, similar to the Founders'. This wave was led by women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had seven children, and argued that women could both hold public office and voluntarily be wives and mothers. When she married her husband in 1840, the vows omitted the words “to obey.”

In the Declaration of Independence, the signers claim the king refused his assent to laws, required them to relinquish the right of representation, plundered seas, ravaged coasts, destroyed lives, and ultimately became an “absolute tyrant.” 

Stanton led the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, where they adopted a “Declaration of Sentiments,” written in exactly the same style and language as the Declaration of Independence. The women replaced King George III as the “absolute tyrant” with all men instead.

Susan B. Anthony, another first-wave leader, put together a brilliant legal case for women’s right to vote after the passing of the Civil War Amendments. “Are women persons?” she famously asked. If women were people, the Fourteenth Amendment makes them citizens, and the Fifteenth Amendment gives them the right to vote.

Just like the Founders, Anthony was not requesting something revolutionary, but that political leaders follow the already existing law.

The American Revolution Was Not A Revolution

Many conservative scholars argue that the American Revolution was a “revolution not made, but prevented.” Russell Kirk developed this idea from political philosopher Edmund Burke, who argued the same thing about England’s Glorious Revolution in 1688.

It matters whether or not the war was a revolution, because it changes our relationship with the past. Many Marxists aim to put all historical characters into two categories: the oppressors and the oppressed. Radical feminists aim to do the same thing. The only solution is a revolution—replacing the oppressors with the oppressed, just as the French did—and the cycle never ends. All revolutions tend to repeat this same cannibalistic cycle, and it’s never enough.

But the Founders knew that people are far more complex than dividing all of them into good and evil by some arbitrary measure. According to the structure of the Constitution, they believed it was human nature for all people to become oppressors if they had the chance. Most revolutionaries would argue that tradition—like the patriarchy—upholds tyrants. But the signers of the Declaration believed that tradition and historical precedent (what they referred to as common law) actually keep these oppressive tendencies in check. 

“The common law was their constitution, bill of rights, and code of procedure rolled into one,” conservative journalist M. Stanton Evans wrote in his book The Theme is Freedom. According to Evans, King George III was violating years of common laws and understandings between power and the people. 

“The patriots of this province,” as John Adams put it, “desire nothing new; they wish only to keep their old privileges.” Most, if not all, of the members of the Continental Congress were experts on common law. They would’ve studied the writings of the 17th-century lawyer Sir John Davies, who argued that custom is not good because it is old, but that it has become old precisely because it is good.

First Wave Feminists Weren't Arguing For A Revolution

First wave feminists may have been preserving tradition more than they were upending it, just like the Founders. Many women throughout history fought for what they believed was fair treatment, and won.

As far back as 195 BC, hordes of women swarmed the streets of ancient Rome, refusing to go home until the Tribunes repealed the Oppian Law. The law restricted women from wearing purple, riding in carriages, and possessing more than half an ounce of gold. It was repealed.

Many women in the Old Testament, despite the restrictive law of Moses, were totally badass. Deborah was a military leader and judge over Israel. Abigail stopped David from seeking revenge. Jael drove a stake through an army general’s head. And an unnamed woman threw a piece of stone on the tyrant Abimelech’s head. He was so embarrassed, he asked his armor-bearer to strike him through with his sword so a woman didn’t kill him.

A woodcut print of the women demanding that the Lex Oppia law be repealed, published in Strasbourg, 1574

Hildegard von Bingen was a Benedictine abbess in the 1100s. Hildegard emphasized femininity’s saving power in her writings which establishes balance in the world, combating the corrupt behavior of Church and State.

Hildegard von Bingen receiving divine inspiration and passing it on to a scribe, 1151

Around the same time first wave feminism took hold, masterful observer Alexis de Tocqueville believed European women were made not only to be equal to men, but “alike.” And while men pretended to be slaves to women, no one actually believed they were equal. 

In America it was different. In America, men and women were equal, but different. Tocqueville argued that American women never thought themselves degraded by submitting to a “fortunate usurpation of their rights,” but attached a sort of pride to the voluntary surrender of their own will.

In the United States, “men seldom compliment women, but they daily show how much they esteem them.” Tocqueville concludes: the singular prosperity and growing strength of the American people should be attributed to the Superiority of their Women.

Feminism in Common Law

In Anglo-American common law, a woman in an unmarried state could enter into contracts, sue, or be sued in her own name, and sell property as she wished. This concept is known as “feme sole,” or single woman. Coverture, another common law principle, means the woman’s rights were subsumed under “marital unity,” which often meant: the will of the husband. Coverture began to be dismantled at the state level in the United States starting in 1839, with other states following.

However, dating back to at least 1691 in the American colonies, under the doctrine of coverture, a married woman who wished to sell her property had to be separately examined by a judge without the presence of her husband, ensuring it was her will, and not his. In early America, unmarried women were often given property rights. In fact, a Black woman named Zipporah Potter, allegedly a freed slave, owned property in 1670. Unmarried women could even vote from 1776-1807 in certain states.

It was not totally novel for women to have rights in early America. Women back then could choose very similarly to what women have to choose today: get married and be financially stable, or don’t get married, and maintain your independence. But Tocqueville even wrote that men in America in the 1800s had a “profound respect” for women’s “freedom.” In many ways, the suffragists were similar to the Founders in that they desired “nothing new, only to keep their old privileges.”

The Olive Branch Petition

Not all women felt the way first wave feminists did. The majority of women reportedly opposed suffrage. This, once again, is not too far from the Founders' situation.

Opposition didn’t make the Founders wrong, but it did demonstrate that many people either did not believe they were being oppressed, or that they treasured the old systems so deeply they weren’t willing to fight against them.

The Founders actually listened to the opposition. As a last-ditch effort to retain their relationship with England, they sent the Olive Branch Petition. While the petition was sent to King George III after Lexington and Concord, the document affirmed loyalty to the king and asked for reconciliation, not war. 

The Founders, with very clear boundaries, did everything they could to preserve their relationship with… a literal tyrant.

Radical feminists could never.

Where Feminism Went Wrong

King George III refused to seriously consider the Olive Branch Petition. He declared the patriots traitors for demanding he uphold England’s own common laws.

How did men, the “absolute tyrants” over women, react to suffrage? First, a bit of a political and philosophical war was fought—though the war was not between women and men, but suffragists and anti-suffragists.

One objection to votes for women was that they “are too pure for the dirty pool of politics.” 

Poster from the Smithsonian exhibition “Votes for Women”

Suffragettes comically answered: “If the pool is dirty, THE TIME HAS COME TO CLEAN IT. Women have had Long Experience Cleaning up after Men.”

Poster from the Smithsonian exhibition “Votes for Women”

Opponents claimed women’s suffrage would lead to neglected children, masculine women, confused gender roles, and prohibition. While suffragists countered with feminine voters as wonderful mothers, homemakers, and breadwinners, the opposing predictions have largely come true.

Eventually, the “men” acquiesced to the requests from oppressed women. Over decades of organizing, protest, and argument, women won the rights they demanded—the vote, education, property—through the existing constitutional system rather than by overthrowing. If King George III acquiesced to requests like “men” did, no revolutionary war would’ve been fought.

If any movement is designed to incite violence, entirely replace political systems, or continually promote war, it’s destined to fail.

A physical feminist war was never fought. But the psychological battle between men and women has never ended since the first wave of feminism.

This is where feminism went wrong. And this is where the French Revolution went wrong. If any movement is designed to incite violence, entirely replace political systems, or continually promote war, it’s destined to fail. The Founding Fathers were committed to doing everything they could to make peace with England and preserve their customs. Even with their desire for independence, they would rather totally avoid all-out war.

Radical feminists are now at war with men, with no olive branch in sight, and not the slightest chance of reconciliation. Even first wave feminists that pitted themselves against every man in the world got it wrong. Second, third, and fourth wave feminism is defined in Marxist terms: all men are oppressors, and all women are the oppressed.

But these feminists have their history wrong. It was never that way. Men gave women the rights they asked for. And many women did not feel oppressed, even without those rights. 

It’s the same today. Just because you're a woman doesn't mean you hate men or feel oppressed. And just because you're a man doesn't mean you aim to oppress women. While radical feminists claim to be at war with men, just as the French Revolutionaries claimed to be at war with the aristocracy, they intend to destroy any person who opposes their revolution—man or woman, rich or poor.

When vengeance and hatred dictate ideologies, they’re sure to dictate nothing but vengeance and hatred in return. 

When movements are only about upending tradition, instead of understanding it, they are European, not American. When rebels require restitution from their former oppressors, not just independence, they are signing up for a revolution that will never end. And when vengeance and hatred dictate ideologies, they’re sure to dictate nothing but vengeance and hatred in return. 

When feminism stopped preventing a revolution, and started being an actual revolution, that’s where it went wrong.

This America 250, Extend an Olive Branch

Men are not your enemy. This Independence Day, give men an olive branch. Give them clear and reasonable boundaries, just as the Founders did.

The enemy has always been, and will always be the devil. And he influences women just as much as he influences men, though perhaps in different ways.

Not all women throughout history were oppressed. Many women were leaders, warriors, fierce mothers, and gatekeepers of morality, regardless of the “patriarchy.” While many women have also been mistreated and abused by evil men, this does not make all men evil. Believing that all men are oppressors is akin to becoming a French Revolutionary—filling yourself with bloodlust that will never be satisfied.

This America 250, forgive. Reconcile, if you can. And remember: the singular prosperity and growing strength of the American people should be attributed to the Superiority of their Women.