Women Who Did Things
In the midst of the Bohemian days of New York, 1912, a small group of prominent women began gathering in “secret” at Polly’s, a restaurant owned by anarchist Polly Holladay out of the basement of a townhome in Greenwich Village. This group would eventually become one of the precursors for modern feminism, a secret society called Heterodoxy.
(Photo from SmithsonianMag.com)
Every other Saturday, this group of women would meet to discuss a predetermined topic and occasionally they’d also have a guest speaker, with conversations covering issues like social reform, women’s rights, birth control, immigration, employment and wages, and the antiwar movement. The Heterodoxy movement grew throughout progressive circles, with most members already belonging to various other organizations or societies. While they prided themselves on having open conversation and debating issues with no public record in a safe space for disagreement, it must also be noted that many of the members held similar beliefs.
The group was founded by a Unitarian minister named Marie Jenney Howe who ran in those aforementioned progressive social circles. To become a member, the requirement was simply that the prospective member “not be orthodox in her opinion.” Many of those who were accepted were lawyers, doctors, and otherwise well-educated women, something that was quite unusual for the time. Also quite unusual was the relative diversity- meaning the group admitted those with various ethnic backgrounds, religions, and sexual orientations.
Let’s be clear, however, the majority of the women involved in Heterodoxy were middle class or higher, educated, and left-leaning. As Smithsonian Mag says (while referencing Joanna Scutt’s book Hotbed) -
“These were women with the leisure time to participate in political causes… and who could afford to take risks, both literally and figuratively. But while political activism and the ability to discuss topics overtly were both part of Heterodoxy’s overall ethos, most of its members were decidedly left-leaning, and almost all were radical in their ideologies.”
Some of the most well-known members included:
- Crystal Eastman (the founder of the ACLU),
- Susan Glaspell (who founded Provincetown Players- known as the first modern American theater company),
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman (author of “The Yellow Wallpaper”),
- Beatrice M. Hinkle (the first woman physician in the United States to hold a public health position),
- Lou Rogers (a cartoonist whose work was used as the inspiration for Wonder Woman),
- Rose Pastor Stokes (a Jewish socialist activist), and
- Grace Nail Johnson (a civil rights advocate who was influential in the Harlem Renaissance).
(Photo from brucewatson4.medium.com)
Their secret society gathered steam during the suffrage movement, and the women not only discussed the issues at hand each week but collaborated on ways they could take action. According to the Washington Post, the “Heterodites agitated for upending societal constructs that made life brutal, or even deadly, for women, even as they argued over competing priorities implicated race, class, and national vs. international agendas.”
While their agenda as a club was noble at heart, many times the women had difficulty looking past their own privilege and prejudices to find an inclusive mission, or to step back and allow immigrant women, poor women, and women of color to have their time as well. Founder Marie Jenney Howe said “we intend to simply be ourselves, not just our little female selves, but our whole big human selves.” Sounds good, right? But just like intersectional feminism today, that should apply to all women, and it fell short then, just as it does now.
In Hotbed, Joanna Scutts notes that many of the immigrant women striking for improved working conditions “suspected…that their cause was at risk of being co-opted to advance the suffrage agenda”. And that wasn’t wrong. In many philanthropic and socially-conscious circles today, the wealthy white women who primarily make up the ranks still tend to whitewash the issues at hand or, as Scutts said, “co-opt” the cause for their own.
Many times, then and now, the wealthy white folks protesting an issue tend to forget that they face significantly less risk- physically, of course, but also in terms of their employment, their livelihood, their social currency, and more. And women of color, immigrants, queer women, disabled women… then and now, they still showed up, still fought alongside the women blinded by their privilege, and still “fought to be treated fairly and recognized for their contributions.”
(Photo from Hotbed by Joanna Scutts)
A quote from Hotbed has stuck with me as I’ve been researching and I think it’s important to discuss-
“It’s enough to be, as one member puts it, ‘women who did things, and did them openly.’ It’s enough to simply show up.”
I want to discuss this because there’s a duality there, right? This quote is in reference to being a member of Heterodoxy- and how it’s enough to show up to the meetings and just be openly yourself. For women who were still fighting for basic rights, this was a monumental feeling. There were very few spaces where these women could “just be”.
But on the flip side of that, this reminded me that a lot of times in these moments were great effort is required to make significant change (the women’s rights movements of a century ago as well as today), just showing up is not always enough. Especially as white women, it’s not enough to just be there. It’s important to consciously and intentionally step out of the way to ensure that the voices of all women are heard. It’s necessary to step in and step up to defend and fight for our sisters.
Scutts discusses the parallels to what was going on at the time of Heterodoxy and today by saying- “voting rights are under sustained assault, and feminists continue to turn out into the streets in the thousands to demand rights that the Heterodites were also fighting for—as well as some that they could only have dreamed about.” As we think of these trailblazers, and admire the work that they did to make crucial progress, let’s not lose sight of the things they did wrong, and let’s work to ensure that A) progress is not lost, but B ) we don’t make the same mistakes over and over again.
Heterodoxy shifted through the years. After women won the right to vote, after the “Red Scare”, as the neighborhood and the membership changed, the meetings dwindled. With no new generations falling in step behind them, by the 1940s, the meetings ended, and many of stories of these remarkable women faded into history.
According to Scutts, the women described themselves as “the most unruly and individualistic females you ever fell among”. Maybe I shouldn’t toot our horn but I’m proud to say that our little not-so-secret society is also made of some of the most “unruly and individualistic” people I know, and I know that with the looming threat of the loss of women’s rights in nearly every way, many of you are out there trying to carry that Heterodoxical torch. Let it burn, sibs.
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SOURCES
https://lithub.com/secret-unruly-and-progressive-the-history-of-the-heterodoxy-womens-club/
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joanna-scutts/hotbed/9781541647169/?lens=seal-press
