2. The Unequal Feminist Twist of History
Anti-Suffrage Movement Imagery starting at 2:22
With so much focus directed on the victor of the
19th Amendment, it is difficult to truly appreciate what they were
victorious over when so little is logically discussed about the opposition. The
Suffrage Movement was not an easily blazed trail, but rather a fight against sisters,
mothers, husbands, fathers, and friends. There were political, financial, and
domestic interests at risk due to this major shift in societal life lurking on
the horizon. Ironically, historians who often stood upon feminist soap boxes,
have proceeded to downplay the importance of the Anti-Suffragette linking her
power to that of the invisible man standing behind her, pulling the strings
like so many marionette puppets.[1]
While male interest and support in the Anti-Suffrage Movement appears to be loudly
prevalent, with common themes of argument directed at protecting interests in
alcohol and domestic life it is the depiction of the women who fought against
female enfranchisement that has been brutalized through dialogues of historic
condescension. Descriptions of their motivations stripped down to foolish
female weakness were only supported by leading members of the Suffrage Movement
who described these women as disloyal, comfortably placed socialites more
concerned that “… the privileges they enjoyed might be lost in the rights to be
gained….”[2] The
assumption that their base argument of “a woman’s place is in the home”[3]
has carried forward from the early twentieth century into modern conversations,
sweeping aside the true intelligence, forethought, concerns, and progressive
ideologies which drove the women within the Anti-Suffrage Movement.[4]
 |
| SOURCE |
[1] Manuela Thurner.
""Better Citizens Without the Ballot": American AntiSuffrage
Women and Their Rationale During the Progressive Era." Journal of
Women's History 5, no. 1 (1993): 33-60. https://muse.jhu.edu/
(accessed April 28, 2019).
[2] Ibid, 34
[3] Ibid, 35
[4] Ibid, 35