Wendy Rouse, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Suffrage Movement

In this Women's History Month episode of Armchair Historians, Anne Marie talks to Wendy Rouse about the suffrage movement, specifically about the all but erased queer history of the movement.

Wendy Rouse is a historian whose research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in the Progressive Era. Her most recent book, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (NYU Press), challenges the heteronormative framing of the traditional narrative of the campaign for the vote. Her previous two books explored the history of women and children in the Progressive Era: The Children of Chinatown: Growing up Chinese American in San Francisco, 1850 to 1920 (UNC Press) and Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement (NYU Press). Rouse is presently Associate Professor of History at San Jose State University where she teaches LGBTQ+ and women’s history.

Resources:
Wendy L. Rouse: https://wendylrouse.com
San Jose University: https://www.sjsu.edu/people/wendy.rouse/
Iron Jawed Angels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Jawed_Angels
Suffrage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrage
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Edwards_Walker
Alice Dunbar Nelson: AH episode: https://bit.ly/3sap2kf
Alice Dunbar Nelson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Dunbar_Nelson
Gail Laughlan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Laughlin
Dr. Mary Sperry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sperry

Books:
Public Faces Secret LIves: A Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement: https://wendylrouse.com/queer-suffragists/
Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement: https://wendylrouse.com/research/
Children of Chinatown: Growing up Chinese American in San Francisco, 1850-1920: https://wendylrouse.com/children-of-chinatown/

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Transcript

Anne Marie Cannon: 0:00

Hello, my name is Anne Marie cannon and I'm the host of armchair historians. What's your favorite history? Each episode begins with this one question. Our guests come from all walks of life, YouTube celebrities, comedians, historians, even neighbors from the small mountain community that I live in. There are people who love history and get really excited about a particular time, place or person from our distant or not so distant past. The jumping off point is a place where they became curious than entered the rabbit hole into discovery. Fueled by an unrelenting need to know more, we look at history through the filter of other people's eyes. arm chair historians is a Belgian rabid production. Stay up to date with us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Wherever you listen to your podcast that is where you'll find us. I'm Chair historians as an independent, commercial free podcast. If you'd like to support the show and keep it ad free, you can buy us a cup of coffee through coffee, or you can become a patron through Patreon links to both in the Episode Notes. Hello fellow armchair historians and welcome to a special Women's History Month episode and what better topic to discuss during women's history month than the suffrage movement. Specifically, our guest today focuses on the queer history of the movement. Now Wendy is a historian whose research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in the Progressive Era. Her most recent book, public faces Secret Lives Aquarii history of the women's suffrage movement challenges the hetero normative framing of the traditional narrative of the campaign for the vote. Her previous two books explored the history of women and children in the Progressive Era, and include children of Chinatown growing up Chinese American and San Francisco 1850 to 1920. And the origins of the women's self defense movement, Ross is presently Associate Professor of History at San Jose State University where she teaches LGBTQ plus in women's history. Wendy rouse Welcome to armchair historians.

Wendy Rouse: 2:22

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Anne Marie Cannon: 2:24

Oh, yeah, I was so glad you said yes. Because your new book that I assume you're going to talk about is the kind of history that I really like to highlight on my show. So what is your favorite history that we're going to be talking about today?

Wendy Rouse: 2:39

Well, I love to study women's history and queer history. And so today, we're gonna talk about the intersection of both women's history and queer history in the suffrage movement at the turn of the century.

Anne Marie Cannon: 2:48

Perfect. And you have a new book out?

Wendy Rouse: 2:52

Yes, it's coming out officially out in May. And it is already available on Amazon and on the NYU press website. But the book is called public faces Secret Lives, a queer history of the women's suffrage movement.

Anne Marie Cannon: 3:09

Why don't you tell us that kind of background of the book and kind of set it up for us?

Wendy Rouse: 3:16

Sure, the book is really looking at what I call queering, the suffrage movement, which when we use the word queer, or when I use the word queer for purposes of this research, I'm using it as an umbrella term to really talk about the ways that suffer just specifically to kind of transgress the norms of gender and sexuality during their time period. Right. So obviously, I'm talking about people who if they lived today, my identify as part of the LGBTQ plus community, but the term lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, non binary, the terms we use now didn't exist back then. So the use of the word queer is intended as kind of this broad term that encompasses all of those individuals who were really transgressing the norms of the time period. But when I talk about querying the suffrage movement, I'm also talking about looking at the ways in which suffragists defied norms in other ways to not just gender and sexuality. But for example, suffragists really like redefined what it meant to be a family, right? They redefined what it meant to live in a certain domestic arrangement, or they redefined death. So the book is more of a broader perspective. When I say I'm looking at the queer history of the suffrage movement. I'm

Anne Marie Cannon: 4:44

curious, where did you find these people and what were your sources? And also, maybe if you could give me a story of somebody who was queer and part of the movement? Yeah,

Wendy Rouse: 4:57

for sure. So one of the difficult things about doing this research is that a lot of the queer history of the suffrage movement has been erased. And part of the reason for that is because the suffragists themselves were so radical, right, they're really standing outside the norm of their generation as it is, and insisting that women should have the right to vote. People didn't want that there were many people opposed to women having the right to vote, women oppose the remain oppose. So when they're insisting that we should have the right to vote, they're, they're the radicals of their time period. And they started to be concerned about deviating from their message that anything that looked bad on the movement would reflect poorly upon them. So they tried to distance themselves from suffragists who were standing outside the norm. Like I talked in the book about Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, who was not only a suffragist, and a woman's rights advocate, but was a dress reformer. And that meant that she wore pants. And later on, she adopted clothing that was more typical the style of men of the era. And she was actually arrested walking down the street wearing men's clothing, because there were laws against what they called cross dressing at the time. And she got so much attention for this. When she was arrested by the police, they would say you can't wear men's clothing. And she said, I'm not wearing men's clothing, I'm wearing my own clothing. And so she got a lot of attention, in part because she wanted to draw attention to the issue that women should be able to dress as they please, they should be able to appear as they please. Right, they should be able to present themselves the way that they they prefer. And so she today, like we might say she's gender queer, you know, non binary, but she's definitely like pushing the norm through her gender expression of the era. So she's a radical sufferer, just a queer suffragists. Now, the mainstream suffrage leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, they were concerned about this, because it was drawing a lot of attention to the issue of dress reform, which of course they were originally supporters of. But over time, they noticed that it made them the subject of, of hostility and debate in the press, and it detracted from the issue of the vote. So they began to distance themselves from that movement, and distance themselves from people who they consider to be too radical. And so they almost push queer suffer just like Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, really to the margins of the movement, kind of to the extremes, because they're concerned about trying to present themselves in the best positive light to try to present themselves as respectable, worthy citizens, middle class. So this is where with the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which happened in 2020. We were talking quite a bit about the ways that the role of working class women have suffragists of color of black suffragists has really been ignored. And that, especially when I was talking about queer suffragists has been ignored. And part of this was because the suffrage leaders were so concerned about presenting themselves as these middle class hetero normative hetero sex, heterosexual, married wives and mothers, that they tried to kind of, you know, sweep away anything that detracted from their image. And so they literally, you would literally see the stuff or just parading right, just in all white and these very nice dresses and hats to try to show that we are a certain class, and then they would parade with their children, and to show that we're mothers were wives, and you should give us the vote because we were worthy of it. So this obviously benefited them in the sense that it gained support for the vote. But it hurt anybody who didn't fit in that category, in the sense that they were more marginalized and pushed to the extremes of the movement. So that is one of the issues that I look at in the book. I also look at the ways that suffragists queer suffragists specifically, kind of become some of the leaders of the movement. And they themselves end up in leadership positions. And in part because they do kind of conform to these ideals, of domesticity of proper like middle class status, downplaying their queerness and they themselves are sometimes responsible for the erasure of the queer history of the suffrage movement. So when I talk about erasure, I'm talking about like, literally like, Elizabeth Cady Stanton did not want Dr. Mary Edwards Walker written into the book that they wrote on the history of the suffrage movement. She literally asked that she be removed from that history. So sometimes it was Is that obvious. And sometimes it was, it was more subtle. It was when women were together and what we might identify today as a queer, lesbian relationship later on down, you know, several generations, maybe descendants or biographers started to refer to that person as their friend, or their companion. And it kind of creates this, this downplaying of what that relationship really entailed. And there's also erasure by queer suffragists who later in their life, because they're concerned about their reputation, burned love letters from other women, and tried to destroy evidence of their queer lives. So then the work of the historian becomes very, very complex, because we have to start to look for this information that may have been destroyed, and try to figure out what were what do I know about their lives? what's there, what's not? And if something is missing, why is it missing?

Anne Marie Cannon: 10:59

Wow, that's a lot. There's a lot there to unpack. I'm really curious about that. As far as then you kind of touched on it. How did being queer and being distant? How did that, you know, being the, as you're talking the mainstream kind of suffragists distancing themselves from the queerness of the movement? How did that affect the movement? How did that affect those people who were really, you know, concerned about the cause of getting the vote? who maybe were credit queer, and, you know, out? How did how did it affect, you know, both basically?

Wendy Rouse: 11:40

Well, on the one hand, it, there's a benefit, right, because they are single focused, and their only goal becomes securing the vote. It benefits them in the sense that they can get people on board with that they can win support, it's a simple goal, and they end up eventually getting the ratification of the 19th Amendment. But the downside is that they really dropped a lot of the main issues, and they focused exclusively on on the vote. And and they're ignoring some of the broader issues. I mean, women were talking about economic equality for women, right? Equal access to jobs to education, there were women fighting against domestic violence, there were women fighting for access to birth control, there were women fighting for the rights of children and women working women. So a lot of the issues kind of get sidetracked because they're like, we're gonna focus on this main goal of the vote. And so what we see is later on, then these become the movements of the next generations. Okay, well, that we need to work on this. And now we need to work on that. So that's one way that it impacts the movement. It also impacts marginalized folks like queer women, women of color, black separatists, indigenous suffragists, immigrants suffer, just because their issues specifically are not addressed. And in some ways, like we see the perpetuation of racism and the movement, homophobia transphobia. So you get a lot of this, the, these issues that just are not only not addressed, that are actually in some ways magnified and made worse. So like, an example of this is Black separatists. Like you'll have Alice Dunbar Nelson, who was right working for the National American Women's Suffrage Association, and she was a black separatists. And she was working for them traveling throughout Pennsylvania, giving speeches talking about the vote. And she was not only saying we need the right to vote as women, but specifically we need the right to vote as black women, because there's all this racism, there's segregation, there's violence against the black community, and we need the vote for that purposes. And she's talking about this racism in the suffrage movement itself too, and trying to highlight that to the best that she can while she's also fighting for

Anne Marie Cannon: 14:07

that. I just want to say, I just interviewed in my episode that's coming out tomorrow is Dr. Tara green. I don't know if you've heard of her, but she just published a book about Alice Dunbar Nelson. And I love that. It's connecting into that, but her book is love activism and the respectable life of Alice Dunbar Nelson. So yeah, it's interesting that you're tying her in here.

Wendy Rouse: 14:38

Yeah, and I can't wait to read that book. I know Alice Dunbar Nelson. I talked about her in the context of her queerness in the movement and how specifically she decided to try to focus as much as possible on her heteronormative status, right, her heterosexual relationships, really highlighting the fact that she was a widowed woman that She was the the wife of a prominent black poet. And she did this in part because the stakes were so high, she wants to appear respectable, she wants to gain status so that her audience understands her position. But you know, in her private life, she's having relationships with men, but she also has relationships with women throughout her life at various points. And so I talked a little bit about her relationship with one woman at the time, that she was in the suffrage movement, and some of the letters that they wrote back and forth to each other and how none of this was public, and isn't even necessarily that public. Now, knowledge, like the the knowledge that people have about this particular relationship, but it just kind of reveals that these savages sometimes had very private lives that we don't know about that. Were often very queer.

Anne Marie Cannon: 15:54

And then I keep thinking about that, as you're talking about the suffragists movement. And that idea that she did, you know, play up her respectability on the outside, but at the same time, she honored who she was, personally. And that must have been a difficult kind of balancing act that she did. But at the same time, I, I imagine, there was a lot of that in the suffragists movement with people who were queer, I'll use your umbrella just to make it simple. So imagine there was a lot of that in the movement. But I'm curious, did you come across any stories that surprised you?

Wendy Rouse: 16:41

Yes, there were so many stories that surprised me and took me into different directions. And some of the stories in the book like you'll see a, a person in one chapter and then they'll come back in another chapter, because I ended up approaching it more thematically. But one of the stories that surprised me was Gail Loughlin and Dr. Mary Sperry, in part because they were from here in San Francisco area where I'm at, and in part just because their relationship was so like, well known and understood in the movement, but understated and not really talked about in the whole context of exactly what it was. So Gail Laughlin was an attorney. And she was one of the major speakers for the congressional union in California, and fought for the vote, not only the state vote, but the federal level for the Federal suffrage amendment. And she traveled throughout the state she organized chapters of suffragists throughout the state. And when she was in San Francisco, she met Mary Sperry, who was the leader of the California Women's Suffrage Association, and Mary sperrys daughter, Dr. Mary Sperry, was living in her home at the time. And so when she would host get Loughlin and other suffrage speakers, they would all get to know each other and interact. So Gail Loughlin and Dr. Mary Sperry become a couple. And they actually end up moving away together in Colorado to Colorado for a little bit of time, and living their own kind of private life there. They preferred to be away from California from I think they were trying to distance themselves a little bit from the Sperry family. And they lived several years in Colorado before coming back to San Francisco to take care of Dr. sperrys mother. And they had a pretty well known relationship like people identified them as, as whatever they would refer to it back then, you know as as companions or friends, but they were known as as, as a couple in that sense. After Dr. Sperry passed away very unexpectedly in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Her relationship with Gail Loughlin became very controversial at that point, because Dr. Sperry left everything to get Lachlan to her partner. So the family then contested that the Sperry family went to court contested the probate and said that everything should not have been left to go off on that they were her family and should be the rightful heirs to her property and whatnot. But the judge said well in her will when she clearly made of sound mind and body she wanted to provide this and give us all together, Loughlin. And they'd been living together for so many years and blah, blah. So became this very controversial thing. And on top of it, Dr. Mary Sperry had actually given her ashes her bodily remains to be taken care of by Gail. So this became a flashpoint of controversy as well. And the the court ultimately they settled the issue and the court, for the most part honored what Dr. Sperry wanted including giving the remaining To get Laughlin, but the family was so upset they had in their cemetery. Yeah. And their family cemetery that they have a giant plot there. They have a plaque that says In Memoriam to Dr. Mary Sperry. But her remains are not there, her remains remained with Gail, who kept them with her for the rest of her life. And then when she died, almost 40 years later, when she passed away, she had both of them entered together in the family plot in her hometown, her home cemetery in Maine, and they are actually entered under the same headstone with both of their names on one plaque, in kind of honor of their life together at the end. Yeah, so that's my favorite

Anne Marie Cannon: 20:48

are for happy ending. And I didn't expect it to take that twist. Yeah,

Wendy Rouse: 20:52

that's my favorite story. Because they fought for that, you know, they fought for their right to be together in life, and then to be together again, and death. And so there, there's multiple stories like that, it turns out, that took me on a totally different research path, I started looking at death records, probate wills, because they're, you know, sometimes people would ask me, what were they a couple they lived together. And we don't know, we can't say just because two people live together that they were a couple, that doesn't necessarily mean that they had a romantic relationship or a sexual relationship, they could have just been roommates. So what I would then do is try to find out what was their relationship? How did they interact with each other? How did you know? Were their letters to each other was? Did they write in their diary about each other? Were they romantic with? Did they have a sexual relationship? And so I actually had to try to like find all of this. And when there just wasn't anything there maybe left behind? I would often end up in the probate and the death records to see how did they treat each other upon their death? You know, was it like a friend? Or what was it different? Was it more of this romantic relationship, and actually found several suffragists who were buried together in a similar manner, or who had passed on their home their property to each have tried to care for each other beyond their deaths? So it's really fascinating.

Anne Marie Cannon: 22:14

Are there relationships that you felt and felt that you had enough evidence for that you would make that assertion? Or did you just kind of leave it at? Well, this is how it is, this is how it was, this is how it might appear.

Wendy Rouse: 22:30

For the most part, I explained what I see like, they live together their whole life, they were they cared for each other through death. So I tried to just be explicit there. And that's part of why not labeling them specifically as, as lesbian or bisexual are is helpful, right? Because if we say it's queer, in the sense that it deviates from the norm of the era, then you can understand that as Okay, I understand that this is a non heteronormative relationship. Right? Does that make sense? But there are definitely individuals who have sexual relationships, Alice Dunbar Nelson's letters to her woman lover, they, they're talking about kissing each other, holding each other like, so there's definitely there are poems that other suffragist write to each other, that are definitely romantic, they talk about the physical connection. So it's clear in some of the cases and where it's clear, I provide that evidence and lay that out. But it's also hard to because people back then didn't talk the same way that we do now. And so the ways that they frame their relationships are also not the same as, as we would in this current era. So it's also a reading at, you know, looking at how they treated each other versus other people in their lives.

Anne Marie Cannon: 23:49

I applaud you for writing about this history and digging deep into it. Last year, I had a actually, their married couple, put out a book called Loving a photographic history of men in love. I don't know if you've seen that. But they started as a young couple, they would go to flea markets. And they found this box of pictures in it had men like together in a way that looked like it was a romantic connection. And they were like, they felt like they had found something, you know, really special. And those are the only pictures that they were but as time went on, they started collecting these photographs to the point where they had amassed 1000s and 1000s. And one of their friends said you need to make this a book, you know. And so the thing about, I guess the thing about this history is that it people have tried to erase it. And it's an important history and hopefully we're becoming more enlightened. Sadly, you're kind of left to having, you know, there, it's hard to find real concrete information about people who were together or who were couples. And that, you know, that I think is the saddest thing of all. But I really applaud you for putting this work together and helping to uncover some more queer history that we, we need to know about. Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you wanted to cover in this interview? Because I have a couple more questions. But I just want to make sure that I don't go on to quick.

Wendy Rouse: 25:38

Now, I think that the point that you just made, though, about how important it is, to look at this history, and to try to kind of counter that erasure is really, the main reason why this is so important. When we think about, especially young people today that are going through school, and they're learning their history, right, one of the reasons we teach history, one of the reasons we study history is to be able to see ourselves in the past, and to be able to see others and to understand others and to develop more empathy for the people around us. So it's important to talk about this history because it especially for marginalized groups, like LGBTQ plus people, like it's so rare to see ourselves when we're studying history. So to be able to highlight these stories, and to emphasize them helps kids today helps people in general to understand that queer people have always existed, and, and will always exist and have always been here, even if their stories weren't always told.

Anne Marie Cannon: 26:47

Well put, where do we see this history in pop culture?

Wendy Rouse: 26:53

I think now, there's a lot more pop culture, in general, that's LGBTQ plus focused. The suffrage history itself. There's iron jawed angels was a movie from several years ago now was one of the first movies that highlighted the story of women's suffrage movement. Although it doesn't do a good job when it talks about, you know, queer women in the movement, or women of color, or black women in the movement. But it does focus on the women's suffrage movement, in general, there was a movie on the British suffrage movement called suffragette. And so that's where I've mostly seen it. After the centennial and 2020, you saw a lot more interest in the women's suffrage history. So there's lots of blog posts now. And some podcasts have come out since that time period, you have some short film documentaries, highlighting the roles of some of these women in the movement. So that's where I've mostly seen it.

Anne Marie Cannon: 27:50

If my listeners could take one thing away from this, what would you want them to remember?

Wendy Rouse: 27:55

I think just that importance of finding queer history, and recognizing that it has been erased, it has been glossed over at times, it has been what I like to call a straight washed right, instead of, we don't always know that history, but it doesn't mean it's not there. It just means looking for it and highlighting the examples that we do have. And talking about the process of erasure and how only certain stories tend to get told and why that is. And that even though we might talk about the past, as if we know everything, and that actually, there's so much we don't know, there's so much history that has to be explored, that we have to look at from different perspectives.

Anne Marie Cannon: 28:39

Where can we find you?

Wendy Rouse: 28:42

So my book is on Amazon, and it's also on the NYU press website. So if you're interested in reading more about the book there, I have a blog post on the story of gal Laughlin and Dr. Mary Sperry, and on queer suffragists in general. So you can check that out. It's on the National Park Service website. And I have a website at Wendy l rouse.com. If you're interested in following more of my research.

Anne Marie Cannon: 29:06

Okay, and I'll definitely link out to those. It was very interesting, and I'm looking forward to reading the book and bringing this out into the light. I think it's so important. I really enjoyed talking to you and learning more about this. Thanks for being on the show.

Wendy Rouse: 29:25

Thank you so much. It was great talking to you.

Anne Marie Cannon: 29:28

There you have it. Wendy rouse in the queer history of the suffrage movement. To find out more about Wendy in her books, be sure to check out our episode notes. Thanks for joining us have a great week.