Anti-suffragism

[3] Countries in the Western World began to explore giving women the equal right to vote around the mid 19th century, beginning with the Wyoming Territory in 1869.

[4] Anti-suffrage organizations in Australia were "closely associated with the Conservative Party,[clarification needed] manufacturing interests and anti-socialist forces.

"[9] The Australian media took part in the anti-suffrage movement, and depicted women as being "weak and unintelligent," emotional and too involved in domestic and trivial matters.

[11] Australia stood out as one of the few members of the British Empire where women held the right to vote at the turn of the twentieth century.

[11] Publications advocating anti-suffragism utilized the emotions and politics surrounding forced enlistment for men to argue against women's enfranchisement in other parts of the empire.

[13] Women's suffrage was debated in the Legislative Assembly in New Brunswick starting in 1885, and anti-suffrage "testimonies" began to appear in the newspapers around that time.

[15] In general, most ordinary women had prioritized domestic and family life over paid employment and political activism when it came to the issue of suffrage.

However, the first meeting of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League only took place the following year on 21 July, at the Westminster Palace Hotel with Lady Jersey in the chair.

Since Britain was in the process of colonizing other regions around the globe, some viewed the right to vote as a threat to their imperial power as it would make the British look weak to other nations who were male oriented still.

[28] Some suffragist female groups developed militant and violent tactics which tarnished the image of women as peaceful people that the anti-suffragists had been striving to preserve.

Anti-suffragists used these acts as reasons to show that women were unable to handle political matters and that both genders had different strengths.

[36] This juxtaposed women's customary and now legal exclusion with the public sanctions they had been granted to act politically in the role of the Republican wife or mother and the competency displayed by female politicians.

[41] Helen Kendrick Johnson's Woman and the Republic (1897) was a lauded anti-suffrage book that described the reasons for opposing women's right to vote.

[37] Other books, such as Molly Elliot Seawell's The Ladies' Battle (1911), Ida Tarbell's The Business of Being a Woman (1912), Grace Duffield Goodwin's Anti-Suffrage: Ten Good Reasons (1915) and Annie Riley Hale's The Eden Sphinx (1916) were similarly well received by the media and used as a "coherent rationale for opposing women's enfranchisement.

[43] Many anti-suffrage dramas were overtly political and incorporated the use of farce to paint suffragists as "self-absorbed" and "mannish in dress and manner.

[45][46] The Remonstrance, a journal published by the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women (MAOFESW) between 1890 and 1920 was used to promote anti-suffrage ideas and also to react to and refute the claims of suffragists.

[51] In 1895, the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women (MAOFESW) was created and is noted to be the first effort of the anti-suffragists to institutionalize their cause.

[56] It was active in producing pamphlets and publications explaining their views of women's suffrage, until the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed in 1920.

[65] Figures like William Lloyd Garrison, leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society, advocated for the collaboration of women and blacks in their respective causes.

[67] Historian Faye E. Dudden suggests that the content of Stanton and Anthony's speeches in the year prior to the Fifteenth Amendment's ratification indicates their belief that they were capitalizing on a historic moment of political opportunity that would not recur in their lifetime.

[76] Antis such as Catharine Beecher and Sara Josepha Hale both shared a religiously based criticism of suffrage and believed women should be only involved with Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen and church).

"[79] There were also those who thought that women could not handle the responsibility of voting because they lacked knowledge of that beyond the domestic sphere and they feared the government would be weakened by introducing this ill-informed electorate.

[60] They saw participation in the private sphere as essential to a woman's role and thought that giving them public duties would prevent them from fulfilling their primary responsibilities in the home.

Anti-suffragists claimed that they represented the "silent majority" of America who did not want to enter the public sphere by gaining the right to vote.

[86] The thought was that women were able to influence the government because they were seen as politically neutral and non-partisan and giving them the right to vote would strip them of this unique position.

[90] Progressives criticized suffrage in the Utah Territory as a cynical Mormon ploy, resulting in the passage of the Edmunds-Tucker Act.

[3] The anti-suffrage movement focused less on the issue of suffrage and began to spread fear of radical ideas and to use "conspiratorial paranoia.

"[95] Accusations of being associated with unpopular radical movements was named after the second president of NAOWS, Alice Wadsworth, and called "Wadsworthy" attacks.

This coalition effectively blended anti-feminism and anti-radicalism by embracing and utilizing the hysteria of the post-World War I Red Scare.

[permanent dead link‍] The Library and Archives division of the Georgia Historical Society have a collection of broadsides from the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage from 1917 to 1919.