Heroines of History

I’m slow on the uptake sometimes. I’m generally so focus on my job writing and telling others about the amazing work women of the American frontier did to settle the wild west, I miss when people are insulting me. Since January, I’ve participated in two speaking events with women who genuinely believe females are just a bit better off now than they we were before the 19^th Amendment was ratified in August 1920.

Prior to being introduced as the keynote speaker at one event, the host announced how she’d hoped the gathering would have been a celebration of the election of the first woman president of the United States. The audience groaned with sadness they weren’t celebrating that fact. The host then remarked how ashamed all women who did not vote for Kamala Harris should be. “We need a woman in office,” she insisted, “and women need to vote for the female candidate that is running.”

I am sure the gathering heard my eyes rolling. It was a ridiculous statement and one that took me by surprise. The notion that I’m supposed to vote for someone solely on the basis that they were a woman and ignore whether or not she was a worthy candidate is outrageous. I’d be happy to vote for a woman, but she has to be qualified. Could a woman act cooly and decisively in the event of a national crisis? It depends on the woman. Tulsi Gabbard, yes. Meryl Streep, no. And I like Meryl Streep.

Questions from the audience after my talk centered around what I thought about women in the America struggling to get ahead like they did between 1860 and 1900. I couldn’t produce a single example of women in 2025 NOT having the opportunity to pursue whatever they please in this country. In the early West, women’s choices were limited. They could be a teacher, laundress, or prostitute. How those upper middleclass women could think for a minute that they lacked opportunity today was staggering to me. Of course, none of them could provide any concrete examples to support their argument.

The most recent book panel I participated was just as silly. This time the moderator of the talk wanted to know from the authors on the panel about women who dared to speak. The implication was that in America in 2025, women are still shrinking violets with no voice and no one to hear them when they do speak out. Again, if we were in Afghanistan, I’d agree. But not here and not now. It’s difficult to have a discussion with women who honestly believe they have been objectified by men and then watch at least one of those women walk back to their booth at the book festival I was attending called “Hotties of History.”

I have come to this conclusion. It takes zero politically correct so-called victims to screw in a light bulb, because they are perpetually in the dark.

The women I write about in No Place for a Woman: The Struggle for Suffrage in the Wild West rose above their circumstances to fight for seventy years to gain the right to vote. Those women are the true heroines and worth admiring.

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