Hear our sufferings, we are the suffragettes

Political climate is everything to a speech writer. The situation facing present day feminists has nothing to do with suffrage, and rhetoric has nearly done a 180. The rhetoric that shapes women's issues about equality are inherent in the name of the movement: equality. Rejecting the "man-hating" label often ascribed to modern feminists is common practice, but was the last of either of these women's worries.

Susan B. Anthony and Cady Stanton used primarily emotional and argumentative rhetoric, based on principles they considered common sense. They drove their audiences to action by drawing attention to obvious oversights in the rhetoric of the time – most notably the opening phrase of the constitution.  Anthony went as far as saying the United States as it functioned was not a democracy, but rather a "hateful oligarchy of sex."

Verbally painting injustice and humiliation was the inclination of Stanton. She spoke of stripping women of their rights, ignoring their strong tendencies, and trivializing legitimate emotional concerns. Stanton was sticking it to the man, with hopes of her own "I voted" sticker for the future.

To half of a nation that was unjustly disenfranchised this sort of rhetoric would be like throwing sparks on tinder, but for a more conservative group of women it may have seemed simply hysterical. The commentary included in the book implied that she set a fire ablaze.