I want to restore the complexity to feminist pioneers. Their legacies might be contested, they might have made terrible strategic choices and they might not have lived up to the ideals they preached. But they mattered. Their difficulty is part of the story.

Changing the world won't make people like you. It will cause you pain. It will be difficult. It will feel like a struggle. You must accept the size of the mountain ahead of you, and start climbing it anyway.

Changing the world is always difficult.

The suffragettes were easy to condemn, but hard to ignore. Their actions also boosted donations to peaceful, law-abiding suffragist societies. Many of those who claimed to be repelled by the militants were what we would now call "concern trolls" pretending to care about the success of a movement they never supported anyway.

If modern feminism feels toothless, it is because it has retreated into two modes: empty celebration or shadow-boxing with outright bastards. Neither deals with difficulty, and so neither can make a difference.

Women's history should not be a shallow hunt for heroines.