Women are dominating national headlines currently as demands for equality and respect have given way to the #metoo and #timesup movements. But as the ubiquitous protest sign reads: We can't believe we're still protesting this shit.
Women's fight for equality is nothing new: A hundred years ago, brave women gathered to march and demand their right to vote and, unsurprisingly, Bay Area ladies were on the front lines. Take a look at the women's suffrage movement in San Francisco during the 1800s and early 1900s.
While we might all like to think that SF has always been the emblem of progressive politics, an editorial and illustration in the July 11, 1871 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle stunningly proves otherwise. Upon a visit to the city by iconic suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Chronicle depicted the pair in an illustration akin to criminal wanted posters along with the epithet "female agitators." The paper was clear in its lack of support for the movement at the time, writing, "Mrs. Stanton is an earnest advocate of this modern idea of female suffrage, and might make converts among those who listen to one side and believe all they hear and as resolutely refuse to listen to any refutation." In February of the previous year, the Chron even ran an anti-suffrage poem that's worth a read (that is, if you can make it all the way through!).
