Okay so social movements led by women – man they’ve been living rent-free in my head the last few weeks. I’m sitting here in my apartment in the us, it’s like 2 a.M., there’s half a bag of chips open on the couch that’s gone stale, the fan is making this weird clicking noise, and I’m just thinking how these women straight-up rewrote rules while I can barely rewrite my grocery list without forgetting something. Like seriously.
I used to think history was just boring names and dates back in school but nah – social movements led by women are the real plot twists. I mean the suffragettes? Those women were out there getting arrested, force-fed in prison, marching in horrible weather, all so people like my mom and my sister and honestly even me indirectly could vote without it being some big debate. And here I am sometimes too lazy to mail in my ballot on time. Embarrassing.
The Suffragette Thing Still Floors Me Every Time
I remember last fall I was walking through downtown and saw this little historical marker about voting rights, and I just stood there like an idiot holding my coffee getting cold, thinking damn these social movements led by women were no joke. Susan B. Anthony, Emmeline Pankhurst, all those names – they weren’t polite about it. They were loud, persistent, sometimes arrested on purpose. I tried explaining this to my buddy over beers once and I totally butchered the timeline, said 1920 was when women got the vote everywhere which is wrong, it was just federal, states were patchy before that. He gave me that look like “bro really?” and yeah I deserved it.
It’s weirdly comforting though? Knowing even the big successful movements had messy parts, infighting, disagreements on strategy, class issues inside them. Makes me feel less bad about how I can’t even keep my group chat organized.
Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer & That Whole Civil Rights Layer
Then you got the women in the Civil Rights Movement who honestly carried so much weight people still don’t talk about enough. Rosa Parks didn’t just “get tired” – that’s the sanitized version I believed until like two years ago. She was strategic, trained in activism. Fannie Lou Hamer got the shit beat out of her registering voters and still spoke at the Democratic convention in ‘64 and basically told the whole country off. I was reading about her while eating cereal at 11 a.m. (don’t judge) and milk almost came out my nose when I got to the part where she said “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Like… same, but on a completely different level.
These social movements led by women weren’t side quests, they were the main storyline in a lot of ways. And I still catch myself surprised when I learn new details, like how much backlash they got from men and other women sometimes. That part stings because it reminds me how complicated people are. Even good causes get tangled.
#MeToo and How Recent Stuff Feels Personal
Fast-forward to #MeToo – that one hit different because it was happening while I was an adult who should’ve known better about some things. I remember scrolling Twitter in 2017 in my old shitty apartment with the radiator clanking, reading story after story, feeling gross about certain jokes I’d laughed at years before. Social movements led by women online did that: made you look in the mirror hard. I didn’t speak up much publicly because honestly I didn’t know what to say without sounding fake, but privately I started shutting down dumb comments from friends way quicker.
It’s not perfect. Never was. Some people got canceled too fast, some real predators slipped through, the whole thing got messy fast – but that’s how change looks when it’s happening in real time, not in a textbook.
- Things I learned the hard way:
- Listening is better than trying to fix everything immediately
- You can support something and still criticize parts of it
- Guilt is useless unless it turns into action (still working on that one)
The Part Where I Admit I’m Still Figuring It Out
Look, I’m not some expert. Half the time I’m just a guy who reads a Wikipedia page too late at night and thinks he’s deep. But social movements led by women keep teaching me that perfection isn’t the goal – persistence is. They fought, lost battles, fought again, compromised sometimes, got betrayed sometimes, and still moved the needle.
I spill stuff, I forget things, I get defensive when I shouldn’t. But reading about these women makes me want to be less of a slacker about the stuff that actually matters. If you’re still reading this chaotic ramble… maybe pick one name you don’t know much about and just google her for ten minutes over coffee. Don’t spill it like I would. Or do. Whatever. Just start somewhere.
