Public Faces, Secret Lives

Suffragette history has always been full of queer women in all aspects and stages of its evolution. However, these people were not always treated well or respected even among the very movement that they were working with.
The author organized this book into several different sections and talked about how being a queer person affected so many parts of the activism and life that these people were trying to lead.
The different aspects of life that the author discussed in regards to being queer included how they presented themselves to the public, how they decided to live, how they participated in the suffragette movement and how they mourned and also prepared for their death.
This book is really interesting and shows just how important queer people were to the suffragette movement in every part of its evolution even when they were not appreciated or recognized by the movement at large.

I was given a copy of this book from Netgalley. This book is a great book that covers an couple of often overlooked people in the woman's suffrage movement. Specifically there are profiles of queer and queer women of color profiled in the book. As a gay man I know much more about the male gay rights movement so I think I might have added an extra star because I think its extra important to tell these stories before they are lost to us forever.

Thanks to Netgalley and NYU Press for the opportunity to read and review this title. Wendy Rouse writes a detailed, well-researched history of the Suffragist movement in the US and the role of queer people in the movement. This is not a dry history. The author brings these women to life, sharing their lives, their loves, and their losses.

This is an inclusive volume, detailing the experiences of women of color and indigenous women. The battle within the Suffragist movement over maintaining feminine respectability, pushing out non-white women, and the erasure from history of the loving relationships of many of these women is documented.

I greatly respect the author's effort to shed light on this history and update history with the truth of the movement.

The opinions expressed are mine alone and are freely given.

I have been known to joke that historical women were invented in the 1960s - before that, only Cleopatra, the Virgin Mary, Joan of Arc and Elizabeth I existed (obviously none outside of the European context). More recently I have added that queer people were invented in the 21st century.

I was joking, but ... only because there's an element of truth. Straight white men rule history, amiright?

This book, then, is a massively important addition to the history of the fight for suffrage.

I should point out that although I have a fairly substantial library of suffrage books, they are all either Australian or British. My knowledge of the American experience is limited to the film Iron Angels, and the magnificent "Bad Romance" spoof video clip. I do not, therefore, know a lot about the private lives of the main characters like Susan B. Anthony, who aren't covered here in any detail because it's been done elsewhere. It's interesting therefore to get the focus on women who were, apparently, lesser lights - or who have become such as the history of the period has been presented.

I'm also not an expert on queer history, so I don't know whether Rouse's particular definition is standard or expansive. Here, queer is outlined as "individuals who transgressed normative notions of gender and sexuality... suffragists who were not strictly heterosexual or cisgender" (p2). There's a nice point about how language changes and that words we might use to describe relationships today, for instance, may not have been available to or appropriate for people in the past.

The chapters follow general themes, or categories, allowing Rouse to explore different ways in which queerness was expressed - and fought against, in some instances. For example, in the chapter "Mannish Women and Feminine Men", she examines how some suffragists fought against the derisive stereotype of 'mannish women' by insisting that suffragists perform femininity to a signifiant degree - to the detriment of gender non-conforming individuals and those women who advocated less restrictive dress. Other chapters include "Queering Domesticity" and "Queering Family" - so many of these women ended up setting up house together, and whether they were in physically romantic relationships can often not be conclusively determined, but they still spent their lives together! There's also "Queering Transatlantic Alliances", "Queering Space" and "Queering Death", so it covers the entire gamut of suffragist lives.

There's a really nice intersectionalism at work here, too, with commentary on how "queer white suffragists... helped maintain a system of white supremacy by policing access to the vote" (p63), for example. There are definitely black and First Nations people mentioned in the book, but I suspect one problem of not being familiar with the American history here is that I didn't automatically recognise the name of any of the suffragists - let alone recognise whether they were white or not. Still, Rouse did point it out, and made note of the times when white suffragists, for instance, either tried to block black women from marching in demonstrations or told them to go to the back of the line. There's mention, too, of class - something that's often lacking in standard stories of the British fight for suffrage, if it focuses on Emmeline and Charitable Pankhurst and forgets Sylvia.

I'm really glad this book exists. It's a really great look at the American fight for women's suffrage in general (as far as I can tell), as well as presenting a dimension that is much-needed across all history.

Rouse’s Public Faces, Secret Lives is exactly as advertised in the subtitle: it is a thorough, well-researched, and informative overview of the active and central role lesbians and other queer persons played in the women’s suffrage movement. In some cases, Rouse brings attention to lesser-known individuals; in others, she highlights relationships among well-known figures that have not always been clear in histories of women’s suffrage. The book is published by an academic press and thus perhaps tends toward academic jargon, and occasionally tries too hard to establish the exact nature of the relationship between certain women via archival material such as correspondence or other writings (there are a lot of heartfelt poems!), but it is a valuable and interesting contribution to a more complete account of the suffrage movement.

Thanks for netgalley and the publisher for giving an advance copy of this book. This book talks about hidden history of queer sufferagist . It was really great book. The book chapters follows a theme and categories which makes it easier to understand. This book not only commented about white queer folks but also POC queers folks too and the difference of struggles and benefits of each races. I had a great time reading this. Author is well researched on this topic. This book well definitely suitable for beginners read for queer history

A new book focused on the roles that LGBTQ+ people played in the women's rights movement starting with some more known people like Dr. Mary Edwards Walker and delving into the lesser known members of the queer movement. This is a slightly academic treatment of the subject, but it is one of the first books about the topic so that is to be expected. Definitely adds to the scholarship of the suffrage movement that is needed in 2022.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review, but all opinions are my own.