Illustration in satire magazine Punch by Arthur Wallis Mills, 1910
“Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.”
This was one of the many vindications of suffragist Susan B. Anthony at the conference of Seneca Falls in 1871, a founding moment of the white US feminist movement. Depending on men for safety curtailed women's freedom and made them more vulnerable to the violence of their protectors. A hundred years later, Susan Griffin called this combination of male chivalry and rape culture a “male protection racket”. Women doing it for themselves took up martial arts.
