Politics & Power Quote by Victoria Woodhull

Woodhull doesn’t plead for permission; she declares an existing leverage point. The line turns the usual hierarchy inside out: yes, the law and government are “altogether of the male order,” but power isn’t confined to statutes. It lives in social dependence, moral authority, labor, sexuality, consumer choices, and the everyday running of households and communities. Her provocation is strategic. By insisting women already “have the power in their own hands,” she reframes women not as victims waiting to be rescued by enlightened men, but as political actors who can force change through collective refusal and coordination.

The subtext is a dare to stop treating disenfranchisement as helplessness. Woodhull is naming the soft infrastructure beneath formal politics: who raises citizens, who organizes charity networks, who teaches values, who sustains men’s public lives. In the 19th-century U.S., where women were excluded from the ballot and many professions, that argument carries a double edge. It’s empowering, but it also hints at how patriarchy relies on women’s consent and unpaid work. If the state is a “male order,” it’s also a fragile one, because it rests on women continuing to cooperate with rules that deny them personhood.

Context sharpens the intent. Woodhull, a notorious suffrage firebrand who argued for women’s rights with a willingness to scandalize polite society, is speaking into a culture that equated female virtue with political silence. She answers with a blunt inversion: the government may be male, but its legitimacy is negotiable. Her message is early feminist realpolitik: power isn’t just granted; it’s exercised.