Women’s Herstory Month 💪

Behind Every Great Woman Is Another Woman

Everyone knows Susan B. Anthony. Her name is on statues. On coins. In textbooks. She has become the symbol of the suffrage movement.

Fewer people know Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Which is strange, because if you read the history carefully, it becomes clear that Susan likely would not have become Susan without Elizabeth.

They met in 1851 and, for the next fifty years, built one of the most consequential political partnerships in American history. Stanton was the writer, the theorist, the one who could articulate injustice in language that made people uncomfortable enough to listen. Anthony was the organizer, the strategist, the one who carried those ideas into the world with relentless discipline.

Stanton once described their partnership in a way historians still quote: she said she forged the thunderbolts, and Susan fired them.

In other words, one woman wrote the revolution. The other made sure the revolution showed up in the streets.

Their partnership endured decades of travel, public criticism, political defeat, and dramatically different personal lives. Stanton was raising seven children. Anthony never married and dedicated her life to organizing.

But they kept returning to one another intellectually. In letters. In speeches. In strategy. In the shared belief that women deserved a political voice in a country that insisted they did not.

They fought for suffrage for nearly seventy years.

Neither of them lived to see women vote.

The 19th Amendment passed in 1920, fourteen years after Anthony died and eighteen years after Stanton was gone.

Two women spent the better part of their lives pushing against a system that had no intention of changing.

And still they persisted.

Sometimes movements are not built by individuals. They are built by partnerships. By the rare and stubborn friendships where two people sharpen each other’s thinking and refuse to give up at the same time.

Susan B. Anthony became the symbol history remembers.

But the truth is, she did not stand alone.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was there, writing the thunder.

I’ve been thinking about them a lot this month (It is only March 3rd).

I’ve been celebrating Women’s History Month a little differently this year. It’s Lent. I’m busy. Law school is law schooling. The world is… well... on fire.

So instead of big declarations, I’ve been trying to be intentional.

I sent one of my women friends money and told her to take herself out to lunch (cause we're both busy). I texted her, “Empowering Women’s History Month. Go eat lunch on me.”

Because sometimes resistance looks like feeding yourself well. Sometimes honoring women looks like making sure the women you love are taken care of.

I’ve also been writing about women not choosing the bear, because we deserve better than survival. We deserve safety. We deserve steadiness. We deserve love that does not require shrinking.

And when I get tired. When it feels like nothing ever changes, I remember Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

If you ever took even one gender studies class, you know the story.

The lifelong “friendship.”

The letters. The devotion. The intellectual intimacy that history politely labels practical.

They worked side by side for decades. Writing together. Traveling together. Organizing together. Arguing strategy. Building movements.

They were, by every meaningful definition, partners in purpose.

And here is the part that wrecks me every time:

They fought for women’s suffrage for nearly seventy years.

Neither of them lived to see the 19th Amendment ratified.

They gave their lives to a future they would never personally enter.

Tell me that isn’t love.

History will not say they were in love. It will call them collaborators. Reformers. Dear friends. It will footnote their letters and gloss over the language.

But read those letters.

Read the tenderness. The longing. The devotion. The way they wrote to each other about their work, their dreams, their frustrations, and the long road ahead.

Susan once wrote to Elizabeth that she longed for the day they could sit together and talk over their work and their dreams.

That line alone is enough for me.

Because that is what partnership is.

Talking over work.

Sharing dreams.

Staying in the fight together.

And here’s the part that makes me emotional in a very dramatic, very gay way.

They did not win in their lifetime.

They did not get to vote.

They did not get the parade.

They did the work anyway.

So when I get tired and when the political climate feels like a pendulum swinging backwards. When the rights of women and especially women of color feel fragile. I remember them.

Seventy years.

No guarantee of victory.

No immediate gratification.

Just persistence. Devotion. Work.

Good in theory.

Better in practice.

Women have always done the work.

Often without credit.

Often without safety.

Often without the right to exist fully in the love they were clearly living.

This month, I honor the women who fought before me. The women who filled my undergrad classrooms and taught me how to think. The women who organize, heal, resist, write, build, and love with stubborn steadiness.

And I honor the women in my life right now the ones who deserve lunch, rest, softness, and partners who do not make them choose the bear.

Happy Women’s Herstory Month.

May we love each other loudly.

May we fight for each other relentlessly.

May we build futures we might never personally see.

And may we never again call epic devotion

“just friendship.”

Happy Empowered Women's Herstory Month!

#herstorymatters #womenbosses