Talk:Matilda Joslyn Gage

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Selective quoting
The user at IP address 68.34.232.20 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=68.34.232.20 ) is responsible for selectively misquoting the letter "Is Woman Her Own?" in order to advance a political position that is irrelevant to Matilda Joslyn Gage and her contemporaries (in fact, the dishonest quoting technique effectively reversed part of Gages stated position on the issue). I have provided a more complete quotation, and placed Gage's words within the context demanded by the source material, i.e. Gage's original letter - available on microfilm.

Compare "a subject which lies deeper down in woman's wrongs than any other" to "a subject which lies deeper down in woman's wrongs than any other. This is the denial of the right to herself ", for example.

Note that 68.34.232.20 appears to be active on many abortion-related articles, and seems to have a political axe to grind. It might be worth tracking this user's movements, as this probably is not the first (or last) time he/she uses a dishonest and politically motivated Wiki edit.

Please, everybody:
 * Source all quotes (68.34.232.20 failed to source the quotations, possibly deliberately, as referencing the title of Gage's letter would have unravelled the misquote...), and
 * Check the context of any dubious quotes with the source material.

Dissembly 10:38, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Matilda Joslyn Gage and Abortion
Recently there have been adits adding a large selection of text into the Gage article discussing the modern abortion debate; something which i do not feel is appropriate for a biographical article. A short mention that the scope of the debate was different is already present in the text, and beyond that, Matilda's own words are quoted directly (and more expediently that the extensive discussion that was added).

I have reverted these edits as i do not feel they are of an appropriate nature ofr an entirely neutral POV.

Perhaps the text can be ressurrected and placed in a more appropriate article that actually focuses on the history of the abortion debates?

Dissembly 05:44, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Alicekate: Brief explanation and documentation on the concept of "Voluntary Motherhood" added. Alicekate 15:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Tribal membership
This article says that Gage was initiated into the Wolf Clan of the Iroquois. Our article on L. Frank Baum specifies that Gage was adopted into the Mohawk nation, who were part of the Iroquois Confederacy. Iroquois explains that each Iroquois tribe has several matrilineal clans. Assuming that all the articles are accurate, it would seem that Gage was initiated into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk nation — however, I'm sufficiently unsure of this conclusion that I'd rather leave the edit to someone who has access to relevant sources, and can confirm the accuracy of this syllogism. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:24, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Confusing View About Abortion
The article states : "Gage opposed abortion on principle, blaming it on the 'selfish desire' of husbands to maintain their wealth by reducing their offspring. Her letter called not for the outlawing of abortions, but for the turning of the decision over to women. Other feminists of the period referred to "voluntary motherhood," achieved through consensual nonprocreative sexual practices, periodic or permanent sexual abstinence, or (most importantly) the right of a woman (especially a wife) to refuse sex." She seems to have opposed abortion, but according to the article she wasn´t against making it ilegal. It´s obvious the article needs cleanup and a more neutral and not so obvious pro-choice tone. She was for or against legal abortion ? She appears as a pro-life feminist in the Wikipedia article about feminism.81.193.191.210 (talk) 20:34, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * She appears as a pro-life feminist in other articles because these articles have been edited by members of "Feminists For Life", an organisation which, as has been documented here already, has made use of selective misquotation. Primary sources matter more than Feminists For Life claims. Feminists For Life did not even exist when Gage was around - they do not count as a reputable source taking precedence over primary sources. Dissembly (talk) 07:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

"Her letter called not for the outlawing of abortions, but for the turning of the decision over to women [quotation needed]." This needs the exact quote, since it´s so relevant.81.193.191.210 (talk) 20:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The exact quote is clearly provided. Dissembly (talk) 07:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

"An earlier piece by Gage in the radical women's paper The Revolution unambiguously shows that her term "infanticide" includes child killing before and after birth. She insists that the "spiritual origin" of this oppression be recognized: "History is full of wrongs done the wife by legal robbery on the part of the husband....I hesitate not to assert that most of this crime of child murder, abortion, infanticide, lies at the door of the male sex." She then states that a woman merits trial by a jury of her peers in such cases of "crimes committed against her as a woman." This quote from the Feminists for Life website seems to prove that she was definetely pro-life. I ask, unless proof in contrary to leave the article this way.20:44, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The feminists for life website is not a primary source; it is an unreliable source with a history of non-NPOV innaccuracy; the letters themselves are clearly a better source than fragmentary and selective misquotations from the Feminists For Life website. The statements in this article are based on the letters themselves as primary sources, and they are extensively documented within the article. Dissembly (talk) 07:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

"As the following documents show, Gage unequivocally considered abortion to be "child murder" and a "crime." She was not content to leave it at that. Like other feminists, she believed it vitally necessary to identify and remedy the underlying causes of abortion. Gage did not believe that abortion and other forms of infanticide were caused by "selfish" and "uppity" women, as antifeminist abortion opponents claimed, but by the "Patriarchate," the centuries-old system of male domination." Quoted from the website. 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Once again, primary sources contradict these claims. This is not a reliable source. Dissembly (talk) 07:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

From all the sources I searched, it seems obvious that she, opposing abortion as a crime, believed, unlike nowdays pro-choice supporters, that women should be responsible for the choice of having or not sons, before pregnancy. After that she didn´t believed morally acceptable to choose betwen the life or death of the unborn.85.244.49.140 (talk) 20:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * That is contrary to what the primary sources say; your research skills are lacking. Dissembly (talk) 07:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

You seemed obsessed with this question. Nothing in the quote from her own letter says that she supported legal abortion. She calls it always a crime.
 * Rubbish - she calls ABORTION a crime, but she supports WOMEN having control over it. It's made VERY clear in the quotations provided in the article. Dissembly (talk) 01:58, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Were in her letter she says that abortion should be legal and without any restrictions ? She calls it ALWAYS a crime. Please don´t distort her own views.85.240.22.27 (talk) 22:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

You´re being silly. Women never could be in total control of this question, since it was the physicians who could do it properly. It´s you who are inventing.85.244.48.233 (talk) 14:37, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

The letter says :" The short article on "Child Murder" in your paper of March 12 that touched a subject which lies deeper down in woman's wrongs than any other. This is the denial of the right to herself ... nowhere has the marital union of the sexes been one in which woman has had control over her own body. Enforced motherhood is a crime against the body of the mother and the soul of the child....But the crime of abortion is not one in which the guilt lies solely or even chiefly with the woman....I hesitate not to assert that most of this crime of "child murder," "abortion," "infanticide," lies at the door of the male sex. Many a woman has laughed a silent, derisive laugh at the decisions of eminent medical and legal authorities, in cases of crimes committed against her as a woman. Never, until she sits as juror on such trials, will or can just decisions be rendered." (Reference: "Is Woman Her Own?" pages 215-216.)

Were in this letter it´s stated that she supported legal abortion ? She calls it ALWAYS a crime. If she really supported legal abortion she wouldn´t call it that way. I ask to someone to show better sources from her own hand were she explains better the question if she was for or against legal abortion, without any restrictions. "But the crime of abortion is not one in which the guilt lies solely or even chiefly with the woman....I hesitate not to assert that most of this crime of "child murder," "abortion," "infanticide," lies at the door of the male sex." She really seemed to support, from all I ever read from her the choice before conception."Declaring something does not make it true." I agree totally, and whateve are my own beliefs in this question, I am trying to be faithfull to her own beliefs. Nowdays pro-choice women bever call abortion a crime and always minimize the value of human life in the first weeks of pregnancy. By the way, primary sources are her own words, all of them. If you´re obsessed in making her a abortion supporter, it´s your own problem. 23:00, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

From a former editor : "It is a contested point whether or not she called here in her letter for the outlawing of abortions, something that a number of early feminists advocated, or for the turning of the abortion decision over to the woman in question. Even when early feminists opposed abortion to the point of supporting laws against it, they focused primarily on eliminating its root causes rather than a mere legal ban." For some reason our zealot eliminated totally this.85.240.22.27 (talk) 23:07, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

She answeared in that letter an article by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I show them here :

"The Revolution, the radical feminist newspaper published by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, opposed abortion as a matter of editorial policy. The following was most likely authored by Stanton, the instigator of many other challenges to conservative religion.

Child Murder....The public attention has been much drawn to this frightful subject of late...Infanticide is on the increase to an extent inconceivable. Nor is it confined to the cities by any means. Androscoggin County in Maine is largely a rural district, but a recent Medical Convention there unfolded a fearful condition of society in relation to this subject. Dr. Oaks made the remark that, according to the best estimate he could make, there were four hundred murders annually produced by abortion in that county alone....There must be a remedy for such a crying evil as this. But where shall it be found, at least where being, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of woman? Forced maternity, not out of legal marriage but within it, must lie at the bottom of a vast proportion of such revolting outrages against the laws of nature and our common humanity.(7)

A few weeks later, The Revolution published Gage's response.

The short article on "Child Murder" in your paper of March 12, touched a subject which lies deeper down into woman's wrongs than any other. This is the denial of the right to herself. In no historic age of the world has woman yet had that. From the time when Moses, from the hardness of his heart, permitted the Jew husband to give his unpleasing wife a letter of divorcement--to Christ, when the seven male sinners brought to him for condemnation the woman taken in adultery--down through the Christian centuries to this nineteenth, nowhere has the marital union of the sexes been one in which the woman has had control over her own body...

The crime of abortion is not one in which the guilt lies solely or chiefly with the woman. As a child brings more care, so also, it brings more joy to the mother's heart....

History is full of the wrongs done the wife by legal robbery on the part of the husband. I need not quote instances; they are well known to the most casual newspaper reader. It is accepted as a self-evident truth--that those "who are not masters of any property, may be easily formed into any mould."

I hesitate not to assert that most of this crime of child murder, abortion, infanticide, lies at the door of the male sex...

This reason and that reason have been pointed to by the upholders of equal rights, to account for the oppression of women during past ages, but not one that I have ever heard offered has looked to the spiritual origin of that oppression....(8) From the website There are plenty of her quotations there.85.240.22.27 (talk) 23:12, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

The abortion question lies also in if the physicians should be allowed to do it or not, without being a crime. Women never could to it themselfs by ther own. By the way, this issue also concerned men and women, since women couldn´t be pregnant without men intervencion. If she says abortion was a crime she was definetily against it´s legalization. I can´t see she opposing it and saying it was ok. From her own words : "I hesitate not to assert that most of this crime of child murder, abortion, infanticide, lies at the door of the male sex..." If she believes that child murder and infanticide are crimes, in the same way as abortion, it's obvious that she opposed legal abortion as much as child murder and infanticide. Not even a single pro-choice women would ever refer to abortion that way, for obvious reasons.85.244.48.233 (talk) 14:37, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Gage as inspiration for Glinda the Good: Needs cite
Moving this to Talk for now:"'Gage was, actually, the inspiration for Glinda the Good.'"- This was added to article 16 June 2008, tagged as "cite needed" July 2008, has never been cited. Please provide a good cite for this before returning to article. -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 03:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would like to see a citation for this claim. Sally Roesch Wagner of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation cited Dorothy Gale as specifically having character traits like those of Gage, but Glinda the Good, as far as I can remember, only insofar as representing the concept of the matriarchy. --Scottandrewhutchins (talk) 04:21, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I think Gage's thinking pops up all over the place in the Oz books, but more specificly, the narrator is a nod in the direction of Gage, a few books in (I'm really rusty here, it was 20 odd years ago that I wrote a dissertation on this) the narrator is bestowed the rank of 'Royal Historian of Oz', Gage was regarded as something of a historian herself... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Utilly (talk • contribs) 22:35, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Missing Verb
>Gage was well-educated and a prolific writer—the most gifted and educated woman of her age, claimed her devoted son-in-law, L. Frank Baum.

Claimed her devoted son-in-law, L. Frank Baum.....

-- as an dependent for tax purposes? -- had run off and joined the circus? -- as her butler? -- had visited Oz twice?

There is something missing here. Rissa, copy editor (talk) 19:53, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

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A passage I don't understand
I honestly don't understand this:"president of the National Woman's Suffrage Association during 1875–76, which was one of the affiliating societies forming the national suffrage association, in 1890; she also held the office of second vice-president, vice-president-at-large and chairman of the executive committee of the original National Woman Suffrage Association"

How many National Woman Suffrage Associations were there? Why is "national suffrage association" in lower case? If she was vice president of the "original" society, what is the newer or revised society? Is the 's a mistake? Remember that readers will probably know very little about the topic. deisenbe (talk) 19:19, 24 April 2020 (UTC)