"That man over there says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles. And ain't I a woman? Look at me! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me. And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man." — Sojourner Truth, Akron, Ohio, 1851
Truth's intersectional argument differed from Seneca Falls (1848) by
- A
Calling for total separation from male reformers
- B
Rejecting the Declaration of Independence's framing
- Ccheck_circle
Centering enslaved and laboring women's bodily experience
- D
Demanding suffrage above other rights
Explanation
Seneca Falls focused on legal rights of largely middle-class white women; Truth grounded equality in the physical realities of enslavement.