Women’s Rights

A woman is a woman no matter what ethnic background she is from, but when the Seneca Falls Declaration was signed they didn’t think about the Chinese prostitute that was held a sex slave for four and a half years. Or the African American slave that wasn’t considered a woman because of her color of skin, and the upper class women that even when they seemed to have everything their life was filled with corsets, silence, and isolation. If you were any of these women would you claim having life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? In 1886 there were Chinese immigrant women who were being exploited as sex slaves in San Francisco. African American women were put the idea that she was the slave owners property, she was subject and object at the disposition of her master having no rights to oppose. Even the wives of the rich had to go trough endless labor working in pastries, fixing the clothes for the husband and still being forced to put on dresses and corsets that oppressed them even in the minimal form of vesture. The dispute that women had their rights given and were equal to men after the Seneca Falls Declaration is incorrect. Chinese women were used as sex slaves and weren’t given the right to speak against their oppressors. African American women weren’t considered women and were treated as objects because of the color of their skin. Corsets were a famous among the upper class, but not only did it make women look beautiful it gave them a different label a label full of abuses and injustice.

Chinese women came to the US to find a better life and pursuit a dream but perhaps prostitution was the only way to come to the land of the dreams. In 1886 Xin Jin came to San Francisco, the cost of her travel was to be paid by prostituting herself for four and a half years. She would have to work “voluntarily” as a sex slave until her debt was paid. If Chinese Women would have been included in the Seneca Falls Declaration then prostitution wouldn’t have been their only way of working to pay their debt. In Daily Alta Californian 1867 a Chinese woman was abused and beaten down by a group of men to the point were she was dragged by her hair down the street. Such abuses that she had to be taken to jail as the only way to protect her. None of this would have happened if Chinese women would have been acknowledged in the Seneca Falls Declaration. Chinese women were brought to Angel Island and inspected before they were send to San Francisco. Here they were checked and processed as a way to make sure nothing was wrong with them. As you can see these women were separated from everything that distinguished them as women all their rights were violated in numerous ways when they were inspected like objects before they were used by someone as a toy. Chinese women had very few ways to represent themselves and make them be heard but since they couldn’t do it, it doesn’t mean they should not be given the same rights as American women; after all they were paying to be American citizens at a high price.

African American slaves were brought to the US as early as the first colonial settlers were here shouldn’t they have rights of a woman after being a slave throughout those years? Harriet Jacobs was a slave, growing up ideas were put into her head of being property of her master and subject to his will. As young as fifteen years old she had to endure the fact that she wasn’t seen as a woman or a child but as an object, and such right couldn’t be given to a “thing.” The color of one’s skin shouldn’t play a role on freedom or liberty but African American women in the1880’s weren’t considered women which automatically took away the rights women were fighting for in the Seneca Falls Declaration. During 1851 Sojourner Truth was ignored as a woman, respect and manners weren’t shown to her because she was African American. This shows how slavery was a border that even when women were oppressed African American women weren’t even looked upon as a woman. Linda Brent was a slave she as well was overpowered to the point that simple a visit to her mother’s grave was inspected by her owner. She was tied to the chains of slavery which denied her being a woman. The upper class women were allowed to at least