Aren't I a Person?
Women.
It’s such a simple word but it holds so much pain and history.
Women weren’t able to vote until 1920, though women of color had a longer battle of their suffrage movement. Dionne explains how poll taxes and literary tests helped to oppress women and their right to vote. I think that if a woman would get into relatively the same amount of trouble as a man would for breaking the law they should be able to create these laws.
It’s crazy to me how women have to insist on rights that naturally belong to them. There seems to be “a different code of morals for men and women”, as Elizabeth Stanton stated in her Declaration of Sentiments. Take for example, when a man has more than one girlfriend or jumps from one girl to the next without waiting a significant amount of time or even when he loses his virginity in the sixth grade; it’s okay. This man is called a player and womanizer by society but the tone in which it is used wouldn’t come close to the derogatory tone which would be used to degrade and chastise women. I agree with Stanton and her similar belief to civil disobedience. I also believe that if someone is suffering for the sake of a law that only harms them then they have the right to object to it and “refuse allegiance to it.”
Every person should have the opportunity to be happy and the law shouldn’t be the one to take away anyone’s happiness.
Sojouner Truth writes Ain’t I A Woman? This speech displays the different inequalities that are placed amongst women. Truth’s ideas closely relate to Stanton in the sense that both writers believe in justice and equality. To experience firsthand the inequality society pushes allows these two writers to explain the emotional pain that comes with the injustice they had to live with.
Sojouner Truth, however, takes a different perspective than Stanton in The Declaration of Sentiments because Truth dwells from the perspective of a black woman. She explains how black women weren’t really considered women and in a sense were treated like men. No one held the door for them like a man but yet she wasn’t allowed to have the same rights a man would in society.
My favorite part of Truth’s speech was when she brought up the fact that religion can play a role in how women were treated. I heard many times from men on how “women have a place and it’s in the house, as God intended.” It irks me to no end when I hear how men justify their sexism with religion because it reminds me how white men controlled their slaves with the fear of God. They used this to tame their slaves and make them behave while giving them very little if any hope. During the times of slavery when there didn’t look to be any sign of freedom for all, God was the only thing a slave could cling to. As a colored woman myself I understand my history and how people literally lost their lives for my freedom. It irks me when someone justifies a wrong with something that is supposed to be considered sacred.
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