Advances in the History of Rhetoric

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A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege: Elizabeth Cady

Stanton, Harriot Stanton Blatch, and the Educated
Vote

Belinda A. Stillion Southard

To cite this article: Belinda A. Stillion Southard (2014) A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege:
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriot Stanton Blatch, and the Educated Vote, Advances in the History
of Rhetoric, 17:2, 157-178, DOI: 10.1080/15362426.2014.890962

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Advances in the History of Rhetoric, 17:157–178, 2014
Copyright © American Society for the History of Rhetoric
ISSN: 1536-2426 print/1936-0835 online
DOI: 10.1080/15362426.2014.890962

A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege: Elizabeth

Cady Stanton, Harriot Stanton Blatch, and the
Educated Vote

BELINDA A. STILLION SOUTHARD

University of Georgia

Recently, scholars have explored the empowering potential of

epistemic privilege, a concept that refers to knowledge acquired
through oppression as a privilege. Advancing these conversations,
this article considers epistemic privilege as a rhetorical strategy.
To explore the strategy’s potential and limits, this article turns
to public letters exchanged between suffragists Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch, in which the mother–daughter
pair deliberated over the voting rights of the immigrant and work-
ing classes. Through this case study, this article finds that a rhetoric
of epistemic privilege can work to empower multiple oppressed
groups and yet reify power relationships.

Between 1894 and 1895, suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Harriot
Stanton Blatch exchanged public letters contesting one of the central ques-
tions of their day: Who should be allowed to vote? The mother–daughter
pair joined a chorus of voices—including champions and detractors of vot-
ing rights for women, African Americans, immigrants, and laborers—in a
debate over whether educational requirements should be demanded of those
who sought the franchise. In the legislative arena, these debates resulted
in restrictive measures, requiring African American men and immigrants to
take literacy and comprehension exams before voting (Smith 1997, 371–385).
Widespread support of such measures was owed to the shared belief that
the ideal U.S. citizen must be able to read and write in English and, perhaps
more so, that those without a formal education were unfit for U.S. citizenship
(364–365). Tapping into the force of these social truths, Cady Stanton ardently
supported literacy tests as a way to enfranchise educated white women and

Address correspondence to Belinda A. Stillion Southard, Department of Communication

Studies, 602 Caldwell Hall, Athens, GA 30602, USA. E-mail: bss@uga.edu

157
158 B. A. Stillion Southard

to ensure the moral fortitude of the nation. Like her mother, Stanton Blatch
refuted the charge that enfranchising women would “double the ignorant
vote” (Cady Stanton 2007, 304), but she disagreed with her mother’s ideal of
the educated voter. Rather, Stanton Blatch valued the knowledge of immi-
grants and working classes. She argued that their experiences of oppression
cultivated a unique understanding of society’s ills and how best to redress
them. Thus, to Stanton Blatch, the most oppressed were the most deserving
of the franchise.
Cady Stanton and Stanton Blatch expressed these opposing views in The
Woman’s Journal (TWJ ), considered “the most visible and widely distributed
suffrage periodical in the nation” (Huxman 1991, 87).1 In September and
November 1894, Cady Stanton published position statements in support of a
literacy bill. Appealing to popular nativist sentiments, Cady Stanton’s (1894c)
first statement asserted that the educated could better contribute to the nation
than the uneducated. She wrote, “There is a growing feeling among thought-
ful people that the thousands of uneducated foreigners landing every day on
our shores should not be so soon admitted to the governing of this coun-
try” (276). In December, Stanton Blatch (1894) published “An Open Letter
to Mrs. Stanton,” admitting her “humiliation” and “chagrin” upon seeing her
mother’s views in print (402). Reflecting her more socialist views, Stanton
Blatch sought to enfranchise men and women of all classes, asserting the
value of nonformal types of knowledge. She wrote, “Many a man, with-
out a sign of the 3 Rs about him, is gifted with the sterling commonsense
and abiding honesty which the school of life’s experience teaches” (402).
In response, Cady Stanton published two more articles (1894a, 1895) address-
ing her daughter and other opponents to educated suffrage. Standing firm,
Cady Stanton (1895) justified her position as an antisexist one: “To subject
intelligent, highly educated, virtuous, honorable women to the behests of
such an [male] aristocracy is the height of cruelty and injustice” (1). The
exchange thus held considerable potential to shape ideals of knowledge and
the franchise among its readers, made up mostly of “housewives” or literate
middle- and upper-class women (Masel-Walters 1976–1977, 107).
In this exchange regarding voting rights for immigrants and for women,
both rhetors advanced claims about the knowledge of oppression. As such,
this exchange offers rich texts for charting the limits and potential of what
scholars have termed “epistemic privilege” (Baum 2004; Mohanty 1993; Moya
1997). Emerging from contemporary conversations centered on empowering
those without access to a strong formal education, epistemic privilege refers
to the knowledge acquired through oppression as a privilege—or a knowl-
edge that the more empowered cannot access nor formulate. According to
Satya P. Mohanty (1993), epistemic privilege “acknowledge[s] that the expe-
riences of victims might be repositories of valuable knowledge” (74). Paula
M. L. Moya (1997) elaborates, arguing that these experiences “can provide
[the oppressed] with information we all need to understand how hierarchies
 A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege 159

of race, class, gender, and sexuality operate to uphold existing regimes of

power in our society” (136; emphasis in original). As such, epistemic privi-
lege has aided scholarly explorations into the relationships between identity,
power, and texts—texts through which the oppressed share their unique
knowledge.2 While scholars conceptualized epistemic privilege to empower
the oppressed, Mohanty urges us to consider its limits. She contends, “Our
relationship to social power produces forms of blindness just as it enables
degrees of lucidity” (74). Thus, while asserting one’s own epistemic privilege
or recognizing that another’s epistemic privilege may be empowering, schol-
ars must consider such knowledge claims within broader systems of power
relationships. In the context of social movements, for example, what if a
rhetor asserts one’s epistemic privilege only to displace the epistemic privi-
lege of another? Or what if an empowered rhetor grants epistemic privilege
to an oppressed group, without really knowing what their oppression is like?
In light of these questions centered on power, rhetoric, and social change, it
is surprising that epistemic privilege has yet to be considered as a rhetorical
strategy.
Taking up this task, this article advances a rhetoric of epistemic privilege,
arguing that such a rhetoric claims or grants the knowledge of oppression
toward the empowerment of the self or others. The exchange between Cady
Stanton and Stanton Blatch provides an ideal case study for charting the
emancipatory limits and potential of a rhetoric of epistemic privilege. Indeed,
through their respective rhetorical appeals, Cady Stanton and Stanton Blatch
exposed the potential for epistemic privilege to empower multiple oppressed
groups to come together, while they also exposed how this strategy can
reify positions of power. Although she argued against “ignorant suffrage,”
Cady Stanton claimed the epistemic privilege of humiliation, enacting the
empowering assertion of individual sovereignty. In this case, epistemic privi-
lege took the form of humiliation, representing one way a rhetor may be
oriented to oppression. Cady Stanton, however, wrote to and prioritized
the enfranchisement of educated white women, limiting the potential for
this rhetorical strategy to empower other oppressed groups. Stanton Blatch,
alternatively, granted the immigrant and working classes the epistemic priv-
ilege of experiencing economic oppression, redefining their oppression as
a source of voter-ready knowledge. Stanton Blatch’s defense of epistemic
privilege, however, took place as part of a conversation between her and
her more elite readers, precluding immigrants and laborers from asserting
the very knowledge Stanton Blatch aimed to recognize.
In addition to advancing a rhetoric of epistemic privilege, this article
contributes to studies of women’s rhetorical history. The exchange between
Cady Stanton and Stanton Blatch is an understudied moment in the rhetorical
biographies of both activists—a rare moment in which the pair engaged in
public disagreement.3 The timing was opportune, considering Cady Stanton
was in the twilight of her career and Stanton Blatch was just emerging as
160 B. A. Stillion Southard

a public figure in the U.S. and British suffrage movements. Further, the
exchange represented competing stances on suffrage at the time. According
to historian Ellen Carol DuBois, Stanton Blatch was forging her identity
as “an insurgent leader,” helping rewrite “feminism in its essentially mod-
ern form, around work” (1986, 132; 1987, 42). DuBois (1987) elaborates:
“Whereas her mother had based her suffragism on the nineteenth-century
argument for natural rights and on the individual, Stanton Blatch based hers
on women’s economic contribution and their significance as a group” (44).
Although Stanton Blatch shared her mother’s views on an individual’s nat-
ural rights, she was part of an emerging group of socialist feminist leaders
who viewed women’s rights across classes as paramount to the rights of the
individual. Thus, while the exchange tells us more about Cady Stanton and
Stanton Blatch as suffrage rhetors, it also dramatizes the tensions between
political philosophies of suffrage in the 1890s.
To underline the rhetorical force of the exchange, this article proceeds
in two sections, one for each rhetor. Each section couples a framework
of the rhetor’s political views with an analysis of the rhetor’s strategies.
Specifically, the first section summarizes the exclusive and inclusive strains
of Cady Stanton’s views on education and the franchise. These strains, then,
animate an analysis of what I term Cady Stanton’s privilege of epistemic priv-
ilege. The second section traces the development of Stanton Blatch’s political
views on education and the franchise, showing how they both aligned with
and departed from her mother’s views. These views, then, frame an analysis
of what I term Stanton Blatch’s epistemic entitlement. Across both sections,
Cady Stanton’s two position statements, Stanton Blatch’s open letter, and
Stanton’s two responses are the primary texts for this study. Cady Stanton’s
and Stanton Blatch’s arguments were part of an ongoing “conversation” in
TWJ regarding the educated vote, and thus the analysis references arguments
published by other leading activists at the time.4 The conclusion evaluates
the historical and theoretical implications of this study, assessing the impact
the exchange had on the suffrage movement and the potential and limits of
a rhetoric of epistemic privilege as a strategy of empowerment.

CADY STANTON: VOTING AS THE PRIVILEGE OF

THE ALREADY PRIVILEGED

Cady Stanton’s legacy as the U.S. suffrage movement’s “chief theorist” has
received voluminous scholarly attention (Campbell 1989, 144). Through half
of a century delivering lyceum speeches, founding and leading organiza-
tions, campaigning, and publishing, Cady Stanton argued for women’s rights
grounded in a liberal theory of human rights (Campbell 1989, chs. 4, 6, 9;
Davis 2008; Ginzberg 2009; Griffith 1984; Poirot 2010). Cady Stanton (2000)
believed in woman’s “individual sovereignty,” which, as she put it in one
 A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege 161

speech, “has earned [woman] the crown of American citizenship, and in all
its rights, honors, and dignities she should be now secured” (625). Cady
Stanton insisted that women were human beings capable of rational thought
and engaging matters of public and political significance. To reach their
potential as rational agents, she argued, women needed access to a formal
education. From her earliest public address in 1848, Cady Stanton (1997a)
promoted the formation of “societies for the education of young women of
genius whose talents ought to be rescued from the oblivion of ignorance”
(110). To Cady Stanton, universal education was key to a healthy, thriving
democracy. In fact, in Cady Stanton’s 1875 lyceum talks, she advocated for
kindergarten and “compulsory education for working-class children” (Hogan
and Hogan 2003, 432). Cady Stanton’s primary goal, however, was to pro-
mote the education of women and girls. As she declared in her 1880 address
“Our Girls” (2003): “Every girl should be something in and of herself, have
an individual aim and purpose in life. . . . She too has a will of her own and
desires the dignity and independence of self-support” (487).
Cady Stanton coupled her argument for women’s education with an
undeniable resentment of the voting rights afforded to African American
men and immigrants, whom she once referred to as “the new made south-
ern freeman and the unlettered foreigner just landed on our shores” (2000,
625). Studying Cady Stanton’s untenable extension of liberal politics to mat-
ters of race, class, and nationality, Kristan Poirot (2010) concluded, “As a
participant in a certain production of sex and race, Cady Stanton both rei-
fied and resisted prevailing trends in the differentiation of human political
subjects” (202–203). Sue Davis (2008) observed that Cady Stanton’s rhetoric,
though broadly liberal, reflected a combination of liberal, republican, ascrip-
tive, and social Darwinistic beliefs, which prioritized the rights of educated
white women over others (206). In an appeal to legislators in 1854, for exam-
ple, Cady Stanton (1997b) advanced an argument very similar to the one her
daughter made in their exchange decades later—that only the oppressed
could speak to the laws that affected them directly. Cady Stanton said, “The
nobleman cannot make just laws for the peasant; the slaveholder for the
slave; neither can man make and execute just laws for woman; because in
each case, the one in power fails to apply the immutable principles of right
to any grade but his own” (244). As Ryan Skinnell (2010) observed, however,
Cady Stanton in this address combined these “immutable principles of right”
with “racist, classist, and paternalistic resonances” (131). Notoriously, Cady
Stanton invoked racist and nativist beliefs after the constitutional extension
of voting rights to African American men (and not to white women). In the
late 1860s, for example, Cady Stanton (1868) asserted that she and other edu-
cated white women “prefer Bridget and Dinah at the ballot-box to Patrick
and Sambo” (120–121).
According to Davis (2008), these more “illiberal strains continued to
grow more pronounced” throughout the 1880s and 1890s (206). Consider
162 B. A. Stillion Southard

Cady Stanton’s views on education expressed in “The Solitude of Self,” deliv-

ered in 1892 just a few years before the exchange with Stanton Blatch. The
address maintained that formal schooling was woman’s best opportunity
toward the development and expression of independent thought—or, as
Cady Stanton (2009) said, toward “the solitude and personal responsibility
of her own individual life” (425). Further, she argued that the kind of school-
ing available for women and the working classes was “shallow” and lacked
intellectual rigor (425). However, according to Nathan Stormer (1999), Cady
Stanton’s “assumptions of race, class, and a sense of normality” “hamper[ed]”
the extent to which her arguments resonated with multiple disenfranchised
groups (63). Cady Stanton’s homage to middle- and upper-class professions,
able-bodiedness, and idioms of colonial rule reflected her privileged view of
the good life (Stormer 1999, 63).
Among others, historian Lori D. Ginzberg (2009) had well documented
“the limitations of the Protestant middle class worldview from which [Cady
Stanton] emerged: claiming universal standing from the vantage point of her
own experience and having enormous faith in the ability of the law to make
fundamental social change” (12). Worth noting, however, is that when it
came to the question of educated suffrage, Cady Stanton’s politics weren’t
wholly exclusionary. In her view, white women should be educated first; but
in time, when formal schooling became more available to the uneducated
members of society, they too could vote. Indeed, Poirot (2010) cautioned
against ascribing Cady Stanton’s exclusionary rhetorics to opportunism or
expedience. Poirot argued, “[W]hile [Cady Stanton] differentiated the edu-
cated human from the uneducated ‘barbarian,’ ‘foreigner,’ and ‘Sambo,’ she
did so within a theory of humanity’s ontological and metaphysical com-
monality” (196). In the public exchange with her daughter, Cady Stanton’s
arguments exuded this commonality even as she advanced arguments against
the “ignorant vote.”

CADY STANTON’S EPISTEMIC PRIVILEGE

Cady Stanton’s arguments against the educated vote illustrated the limits
and potential of a rhetoric of epistemic privilege. Cady Stanton addressed an
audience of elite women, foreclosing the ability of her appeals to reach other
oppressed groups, although her claim to a unique knowledge of humiliation
enacted an assertion of individual sovereignty. The potential for this strategy
to empower was remarkable, considering that earlier in her career Cady
Stanton recognized the humiliation of uneducated women. Nonetheless,
Cady Stanton’s views on the elite franchise gave way to her privilege of
epistemic privilege—that is, the claim to know oppression from an educated,
upper-class point of view.
 A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege 163

Cady Stanton’s claim to the knowledge of humiliation helped validate

oppression as a source of voter-ready knowledge. In two of her articles
(1894a, 1894b), she refuted male opponents to the educated vote through
claims that they did not and could not know feelings of sex oppression.
Directed toward a previously published position in TWJ by William Lloyd
Garrison (son of the prominent abolitionist of the same name), Cady Stanton
(1894b) argued that if he “belonged to a disenfranchised class he might more
keenly feel the humiliation of a foreign yoke, such as educated women
endure today: tried in the courts by foreign jurors and witnesses, who
scarcely understand the language in which the advocate pleads the case
and the judge gives the charge” (348). Likewise, Cady Stanton (1894a) rebut-
ted Garrison’s reference to abolitionist Wendell Phillips’s position on the
educated vote: “If he had been compelled to fight half a century for the
smallest civil rights, if he had suffered the humiliation of seeing the cultured
class to which he belonged, denied a voice in the government, while the
ignorant masses, hostile to his class, had a direct influence in legislation, I
think his opinion would have been essentially changed” (402). To be sure,
Cady Stanton (1894b) identified her feeling of humiliation as one endured
by “educated women,” yet she validated humiliation as a way of knowing
how a policy could fail to fulfill its democratic promise and further, how best
to fix it (348). Also, Cady Stanton’s claim to humiliation reversed the social
order in which lawmakers and voters held a more privileged seat above the
disenfranchised. To Cady Stanton, humiliation functioned as a knowledge
claim that the more privileged classes could not assert. Thus, the claim to
the epistemic privilege of humiliation functioned as an empowering strategy
toward redressing the source of one’s oppression.
Cady Stanton’s recognition of others’ humiliation pointed to the empow-
ering potential of her claim. Resonating with what Phyllis Cole (2000) saw as
Cady Stanton’s “expressive mode affirming sensibility and self-awareness,”
to Cady Stanton, recognizing another’s humiliation was a recognition of
the sovereign individual (534). In “The Solitude of Self,” for example, Cady
Stanton (2009) pointed to individual suffering as the one thing that united
the human race, or as Susanna Kelley Engbers (2007) observed, Cady Stanton
“assumes the necessary connectedness of all people” (324). Indeed, in “The
Solitude of Self” Cady Stanton (2009) took great measure to recognize the
humiliation felt by uneducated women: “But society says women do not
need a knowledge of the world, the liberal training that experience in public
life must give, all the advantages of collegiate education; but when for the
lack of all this, the woman’s happiness is wrecked, alone she bears her humil-
iation” (428). Here, Cady Stanton afforded uneducated women the epistemic
privilege of humiliation that she later claimed for herself. Further, since the
woman in this vignette bore humiliation from the lack of an education,
we see that, to Cady Stanton, humiliation resulted when a basic civic right
was denied. Thus, as a legitimate impetus for social change, the epistemic
164 B. A. Stillion Southard

privilege of humiliation ideally affirmed the individual’s right to express the

humiliation of oppression and to demand its redress.
However, in TWJ, Cady Stanton’s claims to the epistemic privilege of
humiliation reflected a type of humiliation reserved for educated women.
Enacting a privilege of epistemic privilege, Cady Stanton claimed that edu-
cated white women suffered graver humiliation than others. Thus, her
arguments for the educated vote promoted the immediate inclusion of edu-
cated white women and the eventual inclusion of other disenfranchised
groups or, in the case of male immigrants, immediate exclusion. So although
Cady Stanton validated the humiliation known to uneducated women and
possibly to all individuals worthy of self-expression, to her, disencumbering
educated women of their humiliation was paramount.
Cady Stanton’s privileged knowledge of humiliation resonated with her
view of the good life, in which educated women were ideal political actors.
In the exchange, Cady Stanton referred to educated women as “the best” and
“virtuous” women because they possessed what she considered “the high-
est intelligence and morality [needed] to govern a nation with justice and
wisdom” (1894c, 276; 1894a, 402; 1894b, 348). As a purifying force in soci-
ety, educated women needed the vote. In one rebuttal Cady Stanton (1894a)
argued, “[Men] have it in their power to extend the suffrage to the best
class, on an educational qualification. Begin with them until, in combination
with the best class of men, the ignorance, poverty and vice of the remain-
der are reduced to a minimum” (402). To Cady Stanton, formally educated
voters ensured the moral fortitude of the nation. Thus, as a woman whose
father allowed her to read books from his law library, who attended the first
seminary established for women, and who had access to the resources to
educate herself on historical and political matters (Flexner and Fitzpatrick
1996, 24–25; Griffith 1984, 6–17), Cady Stanton was positioned as an imme-
diate beneficiary of educated suffrage as well as a member of the “best” class
of citizen actors.
Cady Stanton’s invocation of the “best” women tapped into cultural ide-
als of motherhood, reflecting a combination of gendered, raced, and classed
privilege. During this time, motherhood was considered the utmost fulfill-
ment of womanly virtues, though attaining these ideals was more possible for
affluent, white women, whose husbands could offer them a leisurely domes-
tic life (Theriot 1996). Cady Stanton also invoked the vestiges of “republican
motherhood,” which glorified mothers as the reproducers and guardians of
a virtuous, republican nation (Kerber 1980). Cady Stanton spent much of her
career exposing the legal and social trappings of these ideals, arguing that
motherhood was a socially conferred role—not a natural, predestined one.
Still, Cady Stanton believed that motherhood cultivated an invaluable source
of voter-ready knowledge. In a response to Stanton Blatch, for example,
Cady Stanton (1895) argued that the “remedy” to man’s “dangerous vices”
was the “education of the higher, more tender sentiments in humanity, the
 A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege 165

mother-thought omnipresent in every department of life” (1). Cady Stanton

rehearsed the popular prosuffrage argument that women’s “mother-thought”
would purify the voting polls and U.S. politics more broadly (Kraditor 1981,
ch. 3). Yet Cady Stanton did not argue that the experience of motherhood
alone qualified women to participate as voters, but motherhood along with
a formal education provided the best combination of morality and intellect.
In an empowering sense, Cady Stanton’s view of the ideal voter offered a
critique of the male citizenry, who could not cultivate the morality afforded
through motherhood, thus elevating motherhood as a politically valuable
experience. As Cady Stanton (1895) put it, “The imperative need of the
time is woman’s influence in public life. It is the height of wisdom, as
well as the best policy, to protest against any further male accessions” (1).
Nonetheless, Cady Stanton’s demand to enfranchise “virtuous” women con-
flated the ideal woman voter with the white, upper- or middle-class woman
fortunate enough to aspire to these ideals.
Cady Stanton’s resistance to sharing the franchise with members of the
immigrant and working classes also reflected her more privileged brand of
humiliation. As discussed earlier, Cady Stanton’s commitments as a woman
suffragist prioritized the voting rights of educated women. Regarding other
disenfranchised classes, Cady Stanton was content to allow the due pro-
cesses of legal and social change to take their course. For example, she
(1894b) wrote, “If a foreigner can read and write the English language intel-
ligently, he has taken the first step towards understanding the spirit of our
institutions and the duties of citizenship” (348). Following the “first step” of a
longer process toward citizenship, Cady Stanton (1894b) added that beyond
mere literacy, she “would draw the line a little higher, at intelligent reading
and writing. To acquire this would take the ignorant foreigner at least two
years, so we should be sure that he did not go straight from the steerage to
the polls” (348). Implementing an educational requirement would not only
ensure better policymaking decisions but also keep the uneducated from the
voting polls for some time while Cady Stanton and other educated women
would fashion a more moral nation.
Cady Stanton’s (1894c) faith in compulsory education to, as she put,
“speedily diminish” an “ignorant, worthless class of voters,” however, gave
way to her fiery indignation with the male foreigner (276). Once naturalized,
male immigrants could exercise their right to vote, hence Cady Stanton’s
frustration with her inability to vote as an American. Indeed, Cady Stanton’s
nativist sentiments exposed the privileged source of her humiliation as they
supported a worldview in which the “best” classes were not only educated
but white and American born. Cady Stanton considered male immigrants
the chief opponents to the enfranchisement of America’s “best” women. She
(1895) wrote to Stanton Blatch: “We must cry ‘halt’ on ‘male suffrage’ for
the present, especially on the immense, increasing foreign element, chiefly
male, and all a dead weight against women” (1). Even more than just “a dead
166 B. A. Stillion Southard

weight,” male foreigners posed a threat to educated women. Implementing

the educated vote would, in Cady Stanton’s (1895) words, “lengthen the road
from the steerage to the polls many miles,” allowing women to “press their
claims without encountering their worst enemies” (1). Indeed, kept at a safe
distance from “their worst enemies,” educated women would engage in their
voting duties as citizen actors unencumbered. To point, Cady Stanton (1895)
commanded: “Apply the educational qualification. That will hold another
class at bay, until the best women are enfranchised, and their efforts, united
with the best men, have time to make new conditions” (1). Here, Cady
Stanton’s realization of the good life rested more on the continued exclu-
sion of immigrants (kept “at bay”) and less on their eventual education and
enfranchisement.
Cady Stanton’s vilification of immigrant men as a danger to edu-
cated women further exposed the privilege of her epistemic privilege. She
(1895) contended, “With the ignorant and impecunious from the Old World
landing on our shores by hundreds every day, we must have some restric-
tions on the suffrage for our own safety and for their education before they
take part in the administration of the government” (1). Cady Stanton (1895)
created an image of massive invasion, also posited by her as “the swelling
tide” and as “the mighty multitude” that threatened her “safety” as an edu-
cated voter (1). The metaphorical vision of immigrants as a “tide” “landing
on our shores” in a sense reduced immigrants to mere motion, destined to
invade and block women from the voting polls (emphasis added). In another
sense, this vision activated immigrants as rational agents, intent on inflicting
harm.5 Whether in motion or action, to Cady Stanton, immigrants possessed
the ability to threaten educated women and notably did not possess the
ability to learn to read or write English, earn wages for their families, or
eventually participate in the nation, as Cady Stanton previously acknowl-
edged. Cady Stanton’s own views on the educated vote clashed: On one
hand, the educated vote allowed the uneducated eventually to join the vot-
ing population; on the other hand, the educated vote was a mechanism to
insulate educated women from male immigrants.
When placed in context, Cady Stanton’s construction of the male immi-
grant fed not only nativist but also racist fears of enfranchising “others.”
Cady Stanton’s vision of a mass invasion invoked a faceless mass of “others”
threatening to attack the virtuous, educated woman—a scenario concur-
rently articulated by many whites as the fear of black men raping white
women (Logan 2007, 53–56). Rooted deeply in biologically determinant
understandings of sex and race, the symbolic purity of the white woman’s
body sustained arguments of physical domination over the raced and native
“other” (Logan 2007, 53–56). Here, what Kelvin A. Santiago-Valles (1999) calls
“the racially authoritative discourses of the late nineteenth century” propped
up Cady Stanton’s view of the educated vote as a mechanism to protect
educated white women from nonwhite “others” (50). Notably at this time,
 A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege 167

however, the threat of bodily harm was very salient to African Americans,
laborers, and immigrants, particularly in light of the physical abuses endured
by coal mine and factory workers, as well as the heightened number of
lynchings perpetrated by vigilante mobs (Logan 1999, 70–71). Thus, Cady
Stanton’s vision of the good life rested upon educated white women kept at
a safe distance from the male immigrant. Troubling her faith in the sovereign
individual’s right to feel humiliation and to redress its source, in the case of
the male immigrant Cady Stanton resisted viewing him as an individual at
all. In theory, Cady Stanton’s liberal views on compulsory education would
catch up with her nativist views on the male immigrant; yet to achieve Cady
Stanton’s goal to enfranchise educated women first, the educated vote would
help separate classes rather than unite them.
Returning to Cady Stanton’s claim to know the humiliation of oppres-
sion, this knowledge was in many ways derived from her position of
privilege. Cady Stanton’s humiliation stemmed from the knowledge of a
world in which educated women symbolized the best of the nation, in which
white women were upheld as moral pillars, and further, in which moth-
erhood produced a superior voter-ready knowledge that manhood could
not produce. Furthermore, Cady Stanton’s humiliation resulted from know-
ing a world that prized the rights of educated white women above other
disenfranchised groups, so much so that at times nativist and racist construc-
tions of the male immigrant accompanied her liberal theory of inclusion.
Even so, Cady Stanton’s privilege of epistemic privilege bore the imprint of
her liberal theory of politics in which all individuals deserved the right to
self-expression, and specifically the right to claim the epistemic privilege of
oppression. Moreover, that Cady Stanton explicitly acknowledged the humil-
iation suffered by uneducated women showed not only her commitments as
a woman suffragist but also the potential for a rhetoric of epistemic privilege
to function as an enactment of self-sovereignty.

STANTON BLATCH: VOTING AS THE RIGHT OF ALL CLASSES

Grounded in her mother’s tutelage in liberal activism, Stanton Blatch argued

that the vote should be available to all classes. Born in 1856 as the sixth of
Cady Stanton’s seven children, Stanton Blatch was celebrated as the arrival
of a second daughter in the family. Days after Stanton Blatch was born,
Cady Stanton (cited in Stanton Blatch and Lutz 1940) wrote to her cousin,
“We are all rejoicing that no boy was sent in her stead” (3). Both of Stanton
Blatch’s activist parents raised and educated her for the work of reform.
Stanton Blatch recalled in her youth: “Our dining table was a platform for
debate, our mother acting as arbitrator on moral and sociological issues, and
our father as referee in political and historical disputes” (cited in DuBois
1997, 35). As Stanton Blatch matured, Cady Stanton saw Stanton Blatch as
168 B. A. Stillion Southard

the child most likely to carry on her torch. Ellen Carol DuBois (1997) noted:
“Her mother had placed on her a weighty charge to follow in her footsteps
and become a social reformer and a fighter for women” (35). Accepting the
charge, Stanton Blatch embraced a life of activism. Following her graduation
from Vassar College in 1878, for example, Stanton Blatch toured the western
states with her mother and spoke out on women’s rights. Then, as Stanton
Blatch (Stanton Blatch and Lutz 1940) recalled, she saw her potential as a
rhetorical leader: “[I] had discovered I could move an audience to think my
way” (45). In fact, Stanton Blatch continued to hone her rhetorical skills at
the Boston School of Oratory (Stanton Blatch and Lutz 1940, 45). In 1880,
Stanton Blatch sought her own path and, with Cady Stanton’s blessing, she
departed for Europe to begin her career in activism (DuBois 1997, 32–33).
In her first few years abroad, Stanton Blatch crafted her own theory
of political rights. Through the guidance of French aristocrat Caroline de
Barrau, Stanton Blatch’s politics embraced the scientific study of social prob-
lems (DuBois 1997, 45–46). In contrast to Cady Stanton’s belief in individual
sovereignty, Stanton Blatch focused on the health of society as a whole,
whose progress and order relied on realizing the potential of all (DuBois
1997, 40). To Stanton Blatch, the scientific, detached study of the underde-
veloped parts of society was key toward this realization. In service of these
ideals, Stanton Blatch traveled throughout Europe to document the state of
the lower classes, noting the “poverty and deformity” as well as “dwarfs
and other forms of terrible monstrosities” in Germany and Italy (DuBois
1997, 40).6 In the spring of 1881, encouraged by de Barrau, Stanton Blatch
applied to Paris’s École Libre des Sciences Politiques, described as “self-
consciously liberal and antirevolutionary, dedicated to the ‘scientific’ study
of social affairs, focused on history and political economy, and committed to
the preparation of a politically independent, educated elite able to administer
a modern state” (DuBois 1997, 46). In fall of 1881, however, Stanton Blatch
was denied admission to the school and at the same time was called back
to the United States to help her mother write the History of Woman Suffrage
(DuBois 1997, 51; Stanton Blatch and Lutz 1940, 61–63). Working with her
mother impeded Stanton Blatch’s career plans, yet not for long.
Stanton Blatch returned to England in the spring of 1882, marking the
beginning of her immersion in England’s class politics and her rise as a suf-
frage leader (DuBois 1987, 40). In her memoir she recalled, “Interested as I
was in politics, those twenty years were absorbing. Beginning with the great
changes in educational control, there went under my eyes the upbuilding of
district councils, county councils, indeed all the machinery necessary for local
self-government” (Stanton Blatch and Lutz 1940, 70). During these years,
Stanton Blatch saw the passage of bills allowing unmarried women to vote
and sit on local law and school boards, as well as the election of close female
friends to those seats. Stanton Blatch familiarized herself with parliamentary
politics, lobbying and speaking to party clubs as a member of the Women’s
 A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege 169

Liberal Federation (DuBois 1997, 63–65). As a leader of the socialist Fabian

movement, the Women’s Local Government Society, and the Women’s
Franchise League (DuBois 1997, 74), Stanton Blatch worked to “put women’s
economic equality at the center of a feminist politics” (Briggs 2008, 84).
Stanton Blatch’s socialist feminist politics shaped a more inclusive view
on education and the vote, although Stanton Blatch did not disavow the priv-
ileged worldview afforded by her upbringing. For example, Stanton Blatch
ensured that her daughter, Nora, received a superior education and accompa-
nied her on her travels (DuBois 1997, 68–69). In addition, like Cady Stanton,
Stanton Blatch (1891) advocated for compulsory education, arguing in one
essay that “a broader education for women” would ensure the improvement
of the entire human race (283). Unlike her mother, however, her advocacy for
education and votes for women was motivated by socialist views. In the same
essay, for example, Stanton Blatch (1891) argued that a “first step” toward
women’s freedom was not education per se but the securing of “financial
independence” for all women (283). Stanton Blatch saw the vote as the
means to diminish the force of sex oppression for women across classes.
At the time of the public exchange with her mother, then, Stanton Blatch
believed that a formal education should not be a barrier to the vote and,
furthermore, that those who experienced the dual oppressions of sex and
class possessed knowledge that qualified them as educated voters.

STANTON BLATCH’S EPISTEMIC ENTITLEMENT

Opposing her mother’s position on the educated vote, Stanton Blatch granted
immigrants and the working class the epistemic privilege of economic
oppression. To Stanton Blatch, the experiences of oppression produced
an acute knowledge of how best to redress society’s ills. The process of
granting epistemic privilege, however, effected an epistemic entitlement, or
speaking about another’s knowledge of oppression. This move was both
empowering and disempowering: On one hand, Stanton Blatch promoted
the economically oppressed as educated voters, and thereby drew her edu-
cated audience’s attention to the needs of the working classes; on the other
hand, Stanton Blatch objectified the members of these classes as capable but
constrained actors. Stanton Blatch’s granting of epistemic privilege helped
redefine what it meant to be an educated voter and eventually helped build
a forceful cross-class alliance in the U.S. suffrage movement.
Expanding on what it meant to be an educated voter, Stanton Blatch
argued that nonformal knowledges qualified immigrants and members of the
working class to vote. As referenced previously, Stanton Blatch’s (1894) let-
ter to her mother contended that “many a man, without a sign of the three
Rs about him, is gifted with the sterling common sense and abiding hon-
esty which the school of life’s experience teaches” (402). Stanton Blatch
170 B. A. Stillion Southard

continued, arguing that German immigrants, “whether able to read or not,

can give a more valuable opinion than any other class upon such a ques-
tion, for example, as the housing of the poor” (402). Grounding knowledge
in “the school of life’s experiences,” especially experiences of class oppres-
sion, Stanton Blatch challenged the notion that the formally educated are
ideal policymakers. Immigrants’ experiences with poor housing, for exam-
ple, made their “opinions” more “valuable” than those of formally educated
statesmen. Stanton Blatch goes so far as to say that the more oppressive the
experience, the more valuable the opinion. She argued: “Every working man
needs the suffrage more than I do, but there is another who needs it more
than he does, just because conditions are more galling, and that is the work-
ing woman” (402). Here, Stanton Blatch’s rhetoric of epistemic privilege took
the form of epistemic entitlement, in which she assumed that others’ expe-
riences of oppression would contribute unique and valuable knowledge to
the democratic processes of redressing class oppression.
Stanton Blatch’s epistemic entitlement also reflected her socialist feminist
politics. Stanton Blatch’s recognition of working-class women’s oppression
validated experience as a legitimate source of knowledge. In the context of
the first and second waves of feminism, recognizing women’s experiential
knowledge helped challenge dominant, more privileged ways of think-
ing and speaking (see Campbell 1973; Dubriwny 2005). Toward this goal,
Stanton Blatch’s letter urged readers to recognize the oppression of working-
class women and, in turn, to recognize these women as knowledgeable
voters. In so doing, Stanton Blatch helped raise awareness of the working-
class woman’s plight among TWJ ’s more affluent readers. Stanton Blatch’s
recognition was also remarkable considering that more privileged women,
such as those reading Stanton Blatch’s missive, typically resisted viewing
working-class and immigrant women as allies. Indeed, Alice Kessler-Harris
(1982) noted that “organized middle-class women sought to provide poor
women with vocational possibilities they considered appropriate to their
sphere” (90). Thus, constructing working-class women’s oppressive work-
ing conditions as a source of experiential knowledge helped shift popular
views of these women.
Reading Stanton Blatch’s epistemic entitlement as a recognition of expe-
riential knowledge also points to the strategy’s limits. Although Stanton
Blatch helped raise awareness of the needs of working-class women and
men, her interpretation of these experiences created this awareness. As Sara
Hayden (1997) argued, asserting experiential knowledge is a process that
begins with “‘I experience, therefore I know’” (141; emphasis added).
Thus, granting someone else epistemic privilege, unlike claiming one’s own,
involves representing someone else’s knowledge. Indeed, Stanton Blatch
spoke about the knowledge of the oppressed while engaged in a conver-
sation with her mother, read by a literate, more privileged audience. Stanton
 A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege 171

Blatch’s voice, then, was central to this assertion of knowledge—not the

voices of the classes she aimed to help enfranchise.
Further situating herself and her readers as key voices in this conver-
sation, Stanton Blatch constructed immigrants and the working classes as
capable of generating a knowledge of oppression but unable to assert them-
selves as agents of change. For example, Stanton Blatch (1894) extolled the
knowledge of the aspiring immigrant who “under the grinding, economic
conditions of the Old World” generated an “understanding of Republican
principles” (402). Yet to Stanton Blatch this understanding could not trans-
late to action. The immigrant, she continued, “stints himself to lay by, little
by little, his passage money across the Atlantic, hoping to find in America a
broader freedom for himself” (402). Here, the aspiring immigrant could only
hope to cross the Atlantic and, despite generating a knowledge of American
republicanism, the conditions of his “Old World” country constrained and dis-
abled him. Thus, Stanton Blatch granted the working and immigrant classes
the ability to develop knowledge from their experiences but assumed they
did not have the agency to assert themselves.
Positioning the uneducated as capable but constrained actors abetted
Stanton Blatch’s appeal to her elite audience as agents of emancipation.
Toward the conclusion of her open letter, Stanton Blatch argued that the
uneducated held great potential to contribute to the nation but needed the
help of the educated to do so. To begin, Stanton Blatch (1894) took a broadly
inclusive stance. In her view, an ideal government was “a method of express-
ing collective thought, and achieving concerted action. And the thought is
not collective if any human capable of thought is excluded” (402). Toward
these ends, Stanton Blatch recognized multiple kinds of citizen-ready traits,
expanding on what it meant to be an educated voter. Above all, for exam-
ple, Stanton Blatch believed morality, not intellect, should qualify one to
vote. She desired an “aristocracy of the moral,” arguing that it was pointless
to try to get “morals and character out of intellect,” declaring rather that “they
grow on quite other soil” (402). She contended that many voters were cor-
rupt and unworthy of the franchise even with a formal education. She also
defended the formal education of German immigrants, for example, whose
remarkable schooling should not be discounted simply because they could
not communicate in English (402).
Though Stanton Blatch believed that a fit citizen did not necessarily need
a formal education, she inscribed her vision of an inclusive society with the
belief that the educated would perfect the uneducated. Consider her words
at length:

We cannot escape the law that society is never stronger than its weakest
link. Hence the wisdom of having the weakest link brought out in full
light of day, freely showing its weakness, so that flaws may be corrected.
If the strong links never were made to feel the detriment to themselves,
172 B. A. Stillion Southard

individually and collectively, of the existence of the weak, nothing would

be done to improve the feeble. Let the illiterate man express himself, he
is not ignorant on all sides; and let the mistakes which arise from his
limitations stand as stumbling blocks in the paths of the wise, so that his
power for evil may bring conviction of his need for help. (1894, 402)

Stanton Blatch construed the uneducated man as a “feeble,” “weak,” and

somewhat “ignorant” member of society who inevitably makes “mistakes.”
Stanton Blatch saw it necessary to strip down the “illiterate man” “in full light
of day” for the wise to inspect. And though Stanton Blatch saw the unedu-
cated as a necessary part of society, their value was as a “stumbling block”
to the more educated—as something to help perfect the already enlight-
ened. Further, Stanton Blatch’s argument against the educated vote worked
to activate her and her readers as agents of change. As such, Stanton Blatch’s
granting of epistemic privilege valued the knowledge of the oppressed but
did not deny that some kinds of knowledge were more valuable than others.
Stanton Blatch’s more inclusive position on the educated vote took the
form of epistemic entitlement, in which she praised the knowledge of the
economically oppressed as citizenship-worthy, yet in doing so empowered
herself and her readers as agents of change. Stanton Blatch’s recognition
of the men and women of the working classes was remarkable considering
the limited cross-class alliances in the suffrage movement at the time. And
although ultimately Stanton Blatch’s appeals to an elite audience precluded
the uneducated from participating in this particular public debate, Stanton
Blatch’s rhetoric of epistemic entitlement exposed the plight of the work-
ing classes. Considering that, at the time, working-class men and women
demonstrated their abilities to speak for themselves—through their robust
participation in labor and populist movements, in the formation of trade
unions, and in the protests of governmental abuses—Stanton Blatch’s speak-
ing about these classes helped force a conversation among affluent and
educated readers regarding the voting rights of the uneducated.

CONCLUSION: TOWARD THE EMPOWERMENT OF

MULTIPLE OPPRESSED GROUPS

In 1896, shortly after this exchange, a bill passed through both houses of
Congress, requiring the passing of a literacy test to become a U.S. citi-
zen. Before ending his second presidential term, however, President Grover
Cleveland vetoed the bill. Cleveland’s veto pointed to the ongoing contes-
tation over what exactly qualified one to exercise the right of the franchise.
Indeed, support for literacy tests remained strong throughout the next two
decades, resulting in the passage of two more bills that included a literacy
requirement for citizenship. Notably, Presidents William Howard Taft and
 A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege 173

Woodrow Wilson vetoed the bills, though the passage of the Immigration
Act of 1917 overrode Wilson’s veto. The act allowed the exclusion of “aliens
over sixteen years of age, physically capable of reading, who can not read
the English language” (1917, 877). Although Cady Stanton may have been
pleased with the eventual implementation of the educated vote, women did
not see enfranchisement until 1920, long after her death in 1902. In fact,
at the time of the exchange with her daughter, Cady Stanton’s force as a
suffrage leader was fading. Volumes of her Woman’s Bible, published in
1895 and in 1898, were not received well and helped solidify the perception
that her views were less relevant to the current suffrage movement (Kern
1991, 379). That said, the public exchange with her daughter helped grant
Cady Stanton’s wish to propel Stanton Blatch into the work of national suf-
frage, as Stanton Blatch soon took up a central role in the passage of the
Nineteenth Amendment.
Stanton Blatch’s more inclusive position on the educated vote helped
advance the U.S. suffrage movement. Seven years after the exchange with her
mother, Stanton Blatch left England determined to revitalize the movement,
described by her (Stanton Blatch and Lutz 1940) as “completely in a rut”
(92). Stanton Blatch (Stanton Blatch and Lutz 1940) wrote in her memoir:
“I was eager to help win the vote for women, eager to finish the work my
mother had begun” (92). To these ends, Stanton Blatch joined the Women’s
Trade Union League in 1902, where she formed alliances with wage-earning
and factory women. Toward the unity of working- and-middle class women,
Stanton Blatch founded the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women in
1907, recruiting women across classes to engage in public activism. Trade
union members of the league, for example, testified before the New York
state legislature and participated in open-air meetings and trolley campaigns
(DuBois 1997, 104–105; Flexner and Fitzpatrick 1996, 243–245). Inspired by
her close alliance with the leaders of the militant suffrage movement in
England, Stanton Blatch brought militant, newsworthy strategies into the U.S.
movement, especially to the New York state campaign. Scholars attribute
the success of the woman suffrage movement in part to the militant tactics
borrowed from socialist feminists in England, pointing to Stanton Blatch as
the initial force behind their implementation (Borda 2003, 370; DuBois 1987,
53–54; DuBois 1997, 105–109; Dye 1980, 136–137).
In addition to these historical implications, this case study offers the-
oretical implications on the potential and limits of a rhetoric of epistemic
privilege. Regarding its limits, the claim to epistemic privilege is filtered
through the rhetor’s worldview—even if the rhetor herself is disenfranchised.
Further, the rhetor’s audience may share this worldview, limiting the partici-
patory potential for multiple oppressed groups to share in the rhetor’s claim
to know oppression. On the other hand, when a rhetor aims to recognize
the epistemic privilege of others—that is, the ability for others to possess a
unique knowledge of oppression—the rhetor’s voice can take precedence,
174 B. A. Stillion Southard

while the oppressed can be objectified as the topic of conversation. Further,

this recognition can abet the rhetor’s privileged worldview, insofar as talking
about another group empowers the rhetor and her audience as agents of
change.
Keeping these limits in mind, we have a better understanding of
epistemic privilege’s emancipatory potential. Overall, this case study suggests
that rhetorics of epistemic privilege aid in the process of forging alliances
across oppressed groups. Cady Stanton’s case showed that an assertion of
epistemic privilege functions as an enactment of self-sovereignty. Though
Cady Stanton’s politics and audience limited the potential for this enactment
to empower other oppressed groups to enact their self-sovereignty, her asser-
tion of the epistemic privilege stemming from the experience of humiliation
functioned as grounds for demanding equal rights. Thus, exploring the extent
to which claims to epistemic privilege perform a constitutive function for the
self and for other oppressed groups represents a line of future research. This
study also suggests that the granting of epistemic privilege functions as an
initial step toward persuading an elite movement constituency to expand
its base. In Stanton Blatch’s case, helping her elite audience recognize the
oppression of working-class women exposed the potential for a rhetoric of
epistemic entitlement to make a movement constituency more inclusive of
another oppressed group. Overall, a rhetoric of epistemic privilege aids in
the broader process of shifting grounds of knowledge toward the liberation
of the self and others.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is indebted to Mari Boor Tonn, who provided feedback on a very
early draft of this project. The author also wishes to thank Kristy Maddux,
who kindly read this article at its different stages. Last, the author wishes to
thank Ekaterina Haskins and this article’s blind reviewers for their feedback
and support.

NOTES

1. There is no record of circulation numbers between 1870 and 1907, but Agnes Ryan reports that
in 1910 the journal had a subscription of 3,989, and by 1915, subscription had reached 27,634 (1916, 15,
23). Also Lynne Masel-Walters characterizes TWJ as one of the “cohesive forces” for the woman suffrage
movement in the 1890s (1976–1977, 107).
2. Mohanty (1993), for example, offers a brief discussion of epistemic status and cultural identity
in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Moya’s (1997) discussion of epistemic privilege is subsumed within a larger
framework of a realist theory of identity, used to discuss Cherríe Moraga’s relationship to the third-world
feminist project. Bruce Baum’s (2004) work offers a brief discussion of the Equal Rights Amendment
and female circumcision practices to illuminate a feminist critical theory of recognition more so than
epistemic privilege. Last, in the field of rhetorical studies, a few feminist critics have discussed feminist
 A Rhetoric of Epistemic Privilege 175

epistemologies, particularly in terms of consciousness raising but not in terms of epistemic privilege (see
Campbell 1973; Dubriwny 2005).
3. The exchange is mentioned in at least three historical works on woman suffrage. That said, the
exchange has not been studied for more than its historical and biographical import. See Ginzberg (2009,
162–164) and DuBois (1997, 72–73; 1987, 40–41).
4. Cady Stanton’s article “Educated Suffrage Again,” published on December 22, 1894, appeared in
the same issue as Stanton Blatch’s rebuttal; thus it was not a rejoinder to Stanton Blatch but to previous
TWJ articles published by William Lloyd Garrison (son and namesake of prominent abolitionist William
Lloyd Garrison) and suffragist Anna Gardner, both of whom shared Stanton Blatch’s views. Cady Stanton’s
response to Garrison and Gardner informed her rebuttal to Stanton Blatch, published on January 5, 1895.
See Anna Gardner (1894) and William Lloyd Garrison (1894a, 1894b).
5. For a discussion of how Burkean concepts of action and motion can be used to express
determinism in cultural contexts, see Mari Boor Tonn (1993).
6. Harriot Stanton, diary entry, June 25, 1881. DuBois cites this entry in Harriot Stanton Blatch, 40,
sourced on 289n30. DuBois’s careful archival work attributes this diary entry to the Rhoda Barney Jenkins
Papers in Greenwich, Connecticut.

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