Description
Issue 1: “Well behaved women”
We first came across the slogan “Well behaved women seldom make history” on bumper stickers back in the 80s. We took it as a reminder to break the rules and push boundaries in order to make a change, to “make history”. While its origin is more nuanced, the slogan fits the aim of our project on several levels.
Laurel Thatcher Ulricht coined the phrase to explain why she chose to focus on the “quiet”, “respectable” women in conservative communities: because otherwise they’d be ignored by history, their contributions unseen. But she also welcomed the popular appropriation of this phrase as encouragement to rebel, and she didn’t see a contradiction between the two meanings.
As those of us resisting fascism today work to reclaim the initiative, we need more rule-breakers who can disrupt the narrative and make our own history. At the same time, we need to recognize the work being done by people who don’t making the news, the caregiving and kin-keeping work that hold people together through the dark times.
This project, then, is an attempt to bring the two threads together. We honor five women who did make history by refusing to collude in their own oppression. We also want to highlight examples of everyday antifascism which are being done by people who aren’t on the front lines and might never be the subject of history.
Read more here: https://www.thevoidartsandgarden.com/antifa-means-antifascist/