Maddy Goodall

I research humanist history and tweet extremely sporadically.

[Maddy Goodall @maddyogoodall]

@RobGMacfarlane Really interesting piece on some Norwegian examples on the brilliant @SubversiveSong website https://t.co/2QNtklm2rk

[Maddy Goodall @maddyogoodall]

Brb making this my profile picture for everything ever ☠️ @SbonesTompaine

[Maddy Goodall @maddyogoodall]

Incredible end to the Freethought History Festival @ConwayHall thanks to an impromptu singing workshop from the brilliant @electricvoice followed by a dance with Thomas Paine 💀 @SbonesTompaine @ClareGS87 What a truly great few days it has been 💃🏻

[National Secular Society @NatSecSoc]

Our head of campaigns Megan Manson chairs the panel 'Freethinking Lives' at @ConwayHall - examining prominent figures from radical history and the relevance they have to the state of freethought today with @Eoin_Carter, @maddyogoodall, @simartin and @SbonesTompaine

[Maddy Goodall @maddyogoodall]

I accidentally bought iridescent blue paint but I actually kind of love it? Hopefully BB would approve @BrophyLevey ?!

[Maddy Goodall @maddyogoodall]

I’m so looking forward to the Freethought History Festival this weekend @ConwayHall & have (finally) painted the Brigid Brophy plaque I made last year for the occasion! 💙 A ‘here’s one I made earlier’ for Sunday’s plaque making with @ClareGS87

[Clare Stainthorp @ClareGS87]

Would you like to enjoy a range of free family-friendly activities in London on Sunday 1 September? Come along to @ConwayHall to get creative, have fun, and learn about the freethinking people and the big ideas that have shaped our society. https://t.co/AiGSwe3mO4

[Maddy Goodall @maddyogoodall]

I believe that the code EARLYBIRD20 will get you 20% all tickets until the end of today. There's so much happening. Come and join us! https://t.co/buOkqcPgSl

[Maddy Goodall @maddyogoodall]

Really looking forward to representing #HumanistHeritage at the Freethought History Festival @ConwayHall🥳I'll be talking about the incredible Zona Vallance & am very excited to make some plaques again w/ @ClareGS87 on the Sunday👩‍🎨 It's going to be such a great weekend!

[Clare Stainthorp @ClareGS87]

Tickets now available for the Freethought History Festival (30Aug-1Sep), which I've been planning with @ConwayHall & others! Join us for 3 days of panels, screenings & activities exploring the history of humanism, secularism, atheism & the ethical movement https://t.co/AiGSwe3mO4

[Poppy's @poppysfunerals]

To mark #WorldHumanistDay tomorrow, we asked local humanist celebrant Tamiko O'Brien to introduce us to the Humanist Funeral Tribute Archive and all the fascinating life stories it contains.

https://t.co/WuIEbZgRZe

[Maddy Goodall @maddyogoodall]

Alert!! Bee orchids opposite the @Humanists_UK convention venue 😍

[Clare Stainthorp @ClareGS87]

Looking forward to this webinar today! Get in touch if you’d like to join us - I’m happy to share the zoom info.
@BAVS_PGs @INCSA_19thC @global19c @RS4VP - please do share!

[Humanist Society Scotland @humanistsociety]

Launching a #ThrowbackThursday series as we digitise materials gifted us by the daughter of John McMillan, founder-member of Glasgow Humanist Society. Here's their 1960-61 lecture series, featuring celebrated poet Hugh MacDiarmid & more. Glasgow Humanists got great speakers! 🤯🔥

[Maddy Goodall @maddyogoodall]

'The group stressed that good conduct was dependent on correct opinions, which were impossible to acquire without ‘unlimited enquiry, free discussion, and liberty to publish whatever may be deemed of consequence in the elucidation of truth.’'

[Aeon Magazine @aeonmag]

A century ago, Scots freethinkers managed to loosen Christianity’s grip. On the radical 'conscientious unbelievers' who subverted Scotland’s Christian establishment @FelicityPL https://t.co/z41kYdhAFn

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

Woman of the Day pioneering suffragist and abolitionist Matilda Joslyn Gage of Cicero, New York, died OTD 1878, aged 71. The Matilda Effect - when the achievements of women scientists are attributed to their male colleagues - is named for her because she first identified the phenomenon in her 1883 essay Woman as Inventor.

Matilda worked with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to found the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 and collaborated with them on writing the History of Woman Suffrage(1881–1887) and the Declaration of the Rights of Women. She published and edited the National Citizen, a paper devoted to the cause of women.

The fight against inequality was in her blood. Born into an abolitionist family, Matilda and her husband offered their home as a station on the Underground Railroad despite the risk of harsh penalties and imprisonment. She described herself as "born with a hatred of oppression” and was a staunch advocate for Native Americans, publicly criticising their treatment by the federal government.

In 1870, Matilda wrote “Woman as Inventor” promoting the work of female inventors including Sarah Mather who invented the deep-sea telescope and Margaret Knight who invented a machine that created flat-bottomed paper bags. She pointed out that society disapproved of women inventors thus suppressing their talents, deterring them from learning about mechanics and patenting their inventions under the names of their husbands to evade insults and ridicule.

She wrote: “In not a single State of the Union is a married woman held to possess a right to her earnings within the family; and in not one-half of them has she a right to their control in business entered upon outside of the household. Should such a woman be successful in obtaining a patent, what then! Would she be free to do as she pleased with it? Not at all. She would hold no right, title, or power over this work of her own brain.”

Widely regarded as an excellent speaker and writer, Matilda also took direct action. In 1871, she organised several women to an attempt at voting in New York. In 1872, she tried and failed to vote in the presidential elections but she actively supported Susan B. Anthony who was arrested and tried at court for successfully casting a ballot. When the Statue of Liberty was unveiled in 1886, she led a protest arguing that it was hypocritical to depict Liberty as a woman when real American women were denied political and social rights.

Writing about laws which allowed a man to leave his children in his will to a guardian unrelated to their mother, she said, “It is sometimes better to be a dead man than a live woman.”

Christianity especially drew her ire. “The most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church towards woman, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person; the fruits of her own industry; her opportunities of education; the exercise of her own judgment, her own conscience, her own will.”

It was this contention in Woman, Church and State published in 1893 that struck a chord with me. The parallels with today are striking.

“The witch was in reality the profoundest thinker, the most advanced scientist of those ages. The persecution which for ages waged against witches was in reality an attack upon science at the hands of the church. As knowledge has ever been power, the church feared its use in woman's hands, and levelled its deadliest blows at her.”

[Maddy Goodall @maddyogoodall]

😮Just learned that Lilla Brockway was born #OTD 1889. I wrote her Wikipedia page last November. It was her idea to form the No-Conscription Fellowship & as such she's been called the mother of the CO movement. #InternationalWomensDay @WikiWomenInRed https://t.co/OiHhsMbdpF

[Lucy Moore @lucyajmmoore]

ICYMI (entirely possible!) the @guardian featured my project to write a @wikipedia article for a woman from every country in the world!
https://t.co/ymQ2pr5ZvS
💻 @RobynVinter

[Rosa Luxemburg Foundation @rosaluxglobal]

Happy Birthday, Rosa Luxemburg! 🌹💫

Our foundation’s namesake was a radical, a rabble-rouser and a revolutionary. As one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, her calls for freedom, socialism and democracy have inspired generations of changemakers.