As early as 1885, MN was a major player in the national stage for Women’s Suffrage. The American Woman Suffrage Association annual convention was held in Minneapolis. National leaders including Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Henry Blackwell attended, as well as Minnesota leaders Martha Ripley and Mary Colburn attended.
I began my research for this series by asking two educated Minnesota Women in their 60s and 70s, about the positions and arguments of Women’s Anti-Suffrage groups.
Neither knew that such groups even existed, let alone had heard or could articulate their positions.
What everyone has heard is about brave suffragettes who fought long and hard for the right to vote against men, who had all the right to vote, who didn’t want to give up their power.
The relative rarity of the vote among non-propertied, illiterate, or uneducated men is rarely discussed in this context.
Nor are the requirements and obligations, including Selective Service, being called to risk death or face prison, which still accompany the conditional right to vote for men. Men who do not register are felons.
The imagination is left to believe that Women were literal slaves with no rights or representation. Women in slavery and bondage has long been a recurring theme of feminism.
We’re led to believe that cigar chewing, mustache twirlers in top hats conspired with abusive working class husbands to control all branches of government, creating laws for their benefit and against those of women and children.
These men wanted to keep Women from being able to vote to keep us from the gender-equal utopia the polling booth would usher in.
The struggle for the vote is a feminist origin story of evil men who hated women and a united front of Women who universally thought women should vote.
This outrageous indignation justified any behavior that led to the franchise.
Everyone against unconditional suffrage for Women must have been men with outdated sexist ideas about Women’s inferiority, emotional immaturity, and easily triggered outrage.
In yet another astonishing and well-researched video, Dr. Fiamengo uses source material with historical documents that presents a different story than popular perception.
The opposition wasn’t entirely men. Many women recognized the costs that came with the vote, and many recognized the legitimate risks to a society granting Women unconditional voting rights.
Prior to 1920, Women were seen as non-partisan citizens. This gave them tremendous influence on whatever they organized on, including anti-saloon, anti-prostitution, and Prohibition.
There were certainly some with the sexist ideas that Women’s emotions, unreasonability, and predilection to rage would lead us to a century of never-ending war.
Still others had outdated beliefs, perhaps somewhat valid at the time, that Women were busy in the home before widespread electricity, running water, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, etc. and didn’t have the interest in larger world affairs.
There were some concerned with the outrageous notion that the entire feminist movement was designed to drive a wedge between the sexes.
A great number were concerned that women’s runaway social sympathies might drive an expansion of the role of government spending, debt, and interference in people’s lives.
Others noted that giving Women the right to vote, without the obligation to bring deadly force when politics fail, was introducing something artificial into the system.
Far from being completely sexist and anti-woman, the women’s anti-suffrage movement had a list of concerns for broader society.
Keep in mind that this was back when you could be concerned for what was good for society rather than what was good for Women.
These ideas have been largely forgotten and conversations curiously silenced.
The often chaotic, violent, and destructive Women’s Suffrage protests (breaking windows, pipe bombs, attacking politicians in the street) possibly did more to delay Women’s vote than to bring it.
They pretty much confirmed the worst fears of their detractors.
Faced with these arguments, it’d be difficult for a reasonable adult, knowledgeable in the history of the 20th Century, to dismiss the partial validity.
This may be why unreasonable little girls, and even some grown up little girls, just blame it on the Patriarchy.
