Title: Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement
Author: Dr. Wendy L. Rouse
Rating: 5 stars / 5 stars
Favorite Quote: "This book began with the simple premise that queer suffragists existed. There is an essential point to begin and end with because acknowledging the existence of queer suffragists also helps us to come to terms with the systematic erasure of their existence (or at least of their queerness) from the historical record . . . Because queer history often happens in the in-between places, it is necessary to look deeper and in less obvious locations.” Rouse, Wendy L. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. NYU Press, 2022.
Review: Thank you to the publisher, NYU Press, and the NetGalley platform, for the free e-ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.
Growing up, I didn’t like history class. And in college, it wasn’t until my senior year that I started to realize that maybe the subject of history wasn’t what I despised, but rather the method by which I learned it. See, (and keep in mind, we’re a decade or so removed from much of my pre-college learning), most of what I got out of history classes in elementary school, middle school, and even high school, was white man did thing - wars - marginalized group kindly asked for rights and were immediately granted rights by their oppressors. Obviously, this is whitewashed history. Obviously this is sanitized history that ignores the pain, the violence, and the struggle that accompanies shifts in ideology. But it’s all that I was offered. And I hated it.
This book is what I wish I had when I was younger. This book, and books like it, that shows that history is not a (often white, often male, often cisgendered) monolith. This book presents what seems like a relatively comprehensive history of the women’s suffrage movement, in relation to its queer actors and the “queering” of the movement accomplished by its various actors. It covers a variety of subjects including: pushback from the mainstream movement against suffragists who did not conform to gender expectations, and how suffragists outside the mainstream impacted the domestic sphere, family dynamics and definitions, relationships between US suffragettes and suffragettes outside the US, public spaces (my favorite anecdote here was the repurposing of a home once used my male politicians), and death rituals and grieving.
Dr. Rouse supports her thesis that queer suffragists existed and that definace of gender and sexual norms helped shape the feminist movement, by providing countless examples of historical figures that fall within her definitions of queer activists. She also makes sure to provide examples of suffragists who also represented racial minorities and highlighted the ways in which discrimination based on race, sex, and gender all interacted.
I just keep coming back to the notion that its this type of book that would so inspire a greater interest in history - a book doesn’t just recognize the cisgendered white men of America’s history, but instead recognizes the vast assortment of identities and perspectives that shaped civil rights movements in America’s history and its present.
About that Quote: This quote (which is actually a combination of two lines from two separate pages) effectively summarizes Dr. Rouse’s thesis and her methodology. Queer acvtivists existed in the history of the feminist movement, much like they exist in the movement’s present. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look, since societal and personal pressures often drove these activists into shielding aspects of their identity from public view. And Dr. Rouse clearly knows where to look, because she’s crafted a compelling, thorough narrative of how the suffragist movement developed.
Public Faces, Secret Lives is coming out later this year! Will you be picking up a copy? Share your thoughts below!
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