Celebrate Women's History Month

Celebrate Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month. Friday, March 8th is International Women’s Day. Take the time and visit one of the Finger Lakes’ many historic places for Women’s Rights. After all the first Women’s Rights Convention was held in the Finger Lakes at Seneca Falls on July 19, 1848.

Here are a few of the many places to visit to learn about and experience the spirit of the Women’s Rights Movement in our area. The triumvirate of Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton that led the Women’s Right’s Movement during its infancy all have their homes open for viewing. This list is far from a complete.

Auburn

NYS Equal Rights Heritage Center, 25 South Street, 315-258-9820. http://historyshometown.com/nys-equal-rights-heritage-center/.
Contains exhibits and information about Equal Rights in New York State.

Harriet Tubman National Historical Park, 180 South St. 315-252-2081. https://www.nps.gov/hart/index.htm.
Beloved by many Harriet Tubman was the most prolific conductor’s on the Underground Railroad who took pride in never running a train off of the tracks, or having lost a passenger. She worked with Anthony and Stanton for Women’s Rights after the Civil War.

Fayetteville

Matilda Joslyn Gage Home, 210 E Genesee St. 315-637-9511. http://www.matildajoslyngage.org
Gage was the more radical of the three leaders of the Women’s Right Movement (Anthony and Stanton were the other two.) Her gravestone is etched with her words; “There is a word sweeter than mother, home or heaven. That word is liberty.”

Rochester

National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House, 19 Madison Street. 585-235-6124 http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/visit-us/main.php
Anthony was the enduring force behind Women’s Rights, choosing the cause over marriage and children. In 1872 she famously voted and was subsequently arrested. One of her many quotes, “There is not a woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence.”

Fredrick Douglass Monument, Highland Park, 43 State St.
Besides being a fervent abolitionist Fredrick Douglass was an advocate for Women’s Rights and attended the first Women’s Rights Convention. Because his farm was located near the northeast end of Highland Park one must wonder if his monument may be located, on or near the property of his former home.

Seneca Falls

Women’s Rights National Historical Park, 136 Fall Street, (315) 568-0024. https://www.nps.gov/wori/index.htm
Has a museum and next door is the Wesleyan Chapel where the first Women’s Rights Convention was held.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton House, 32 Washington Street.
This is where what Stanton called “the center of the rebellion” was located.

National Women’s Hall of Fame, 76 Fall St, Seneca Falls, 315-568-8060. https://www.womenofthehall.org
Learn about the 266 women that they have honored for their work for Women’s Rights and inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Sherwood

Howland Stone Store Museum, located on Rte. 34b in Sherwood.  The formal address is 2956 Rte 34b, Aurora. 315-345-3210 or 315-364-8158. https://www.howlandstonestore.org
Slocum and Emily Howland were passionate abolitionists.  Emily and her niece, Isabel, were active in the local, state and national women’s suffrage movements.

Syracuse

Grace Episcopal Church, 819 Madison Street. http://gracesyracuse.org 
Congregant Betty Bone Schiess led the successful effort in 1974 to have women ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church in America. She became part of what is known as the “Philadelphia Eleven”. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1998.

Places you can see but not visit.

Newark—Fox Sister’s home1510 Hydesville Road. This is where the Spiritualist’s Movement, that would play a dominant role in the Women’s Movement was born in 1848. As Harvard Divinity School professor Anne Braude tells the “American Women’s Rights Movement drew its first breath in an atmosphere alive with rumors of angels”; and was “a central agent of feminism”. 

Waterloo—Hunt House, 401 East Main Street This is where Elizabeth Cady Stanton, abolitionist Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, Maryann M’Clintock and hostess, Jane Hunt, met for tea and had a discussion that resulted in America's first Women's Rights Convention on July 13, 1848. House, 14 East Williams Street, On July 16, 1848 Mary Ann M'Clintock hosted a planning session for the First Women's Rights Convention along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and drafted the Declaration of Sentiments. It is to be open to public viewing in June.

Sacred Feminine--Awareness of Sexual Assault and Earth Changes

We are witnessing a rise in our awareness over the role and status of women in our society with recent accusations of sexual assault by Harvey Weinstein and other Hollywood moguls. The response of companies to distance themselves from these individuals is encouraging. There has also been a groundswell of victims coming forward as well. All of this is very good and shows that we as a society are having a cathartic moment and evolving. Unfortunately large and powerful counter forces such as 'technology, corporations, large institutions...' are increasing their grip upon us and increasingly manipulating us more and more .

I mention this because I am currently reading a book suggested by friends  Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, by John Lash Lamb. It is an interesting  look at Gnosticism and Paganism in a way I am not familiar with. As a lover of Mother Earth it is a refreshing perspective showing  how we became who we are and that long ago the subjugation of women, and Mother Earth, was not in the psyche of certain groups.

Lamb clearly lays the blame of the assault on women on Rome and the Abrahamic Traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam.) In my opinion Christianity became Rome when Constantine embraced it; we must separate Jesus from the Church, otherwise we promote Rome.

Lamb also says that the assault on women is tied to the assault on Mother Earth. They are inseparable. Mother Earth, is our Mother, she is the Sacred Feminine.

Here are a few quotes;

"The primary insight of ecofeminism--a term originally used in 1974 by Francoise D'Eaubonne, a French sociologist--is that domination of nature goes along with domination of women, This insight links the environmental problem to the issue of gender relations. Ecofeminist theologian Rosemary Radford Reuther stated the principle in one sentence:"There can be no liberation for women and no solution to the ecological crisis within a society whose fundamental model is domination."

"Many ecofeminists suggest that as a movement deep ecology is insufficiently sensitive to the complex ways in which naturism (domination of nature), sexism, racism and classicism interlock, and to the strategically central role of gender analysis could play in dismantling these categories.(quoting Riane Risler)Gender balance in indigenous-pre Christian societies was crucial to their sustainability, but it also made them vulnerable. Salvationist religion (Abrahamic traditions) arising from the Near East brought naturism, racism, and sexism in its wake.. (Page 45)

One of the fruits born of North Star Country was the Women's Rights Movement in Seneca Falls in 1848.  It should be noted that before the Women's Rights Movement women in the Haudenosaunee culture had enormous power; they are considered a matrilineal society.

Interesting to think that awareness of sexual assault and the domination of women is occurring at the same time as the recognition of the problem of Climate Change is growing.The Sacred Feminine is rising.