The Rhetorical Paradox of Anti-Suffrage Women

Abstract

Women anti-suffragists largely have been overlooked in accounts of the woman's suffrage movement. However, the some 350,000 women who opposed their own enfranchisement faced a significant rhetorical dilemma. They believed strongly in the "woman's sphere" of purity, piety, submissiveness and domesticity; the world of politics should be left to men. As state after state began to enfranchise women, anti-suffragists felt the need to protect their world. However, in order to fight enfranchisement, anti-suffrage women had to enter the political arena. Antis became what they were fighting against, political women. This study examines how the anti-suffragists used the rhetoric of paradox and argumentative distinction to hold their movement together. Anti-Suffrage Essays by Massachusetts Women is used in this study to represent the various arguments put forth by the Antis. The book was published in 1916 by the Massachusetts Anti-Suffrage Association. It contains 17 essays from prominent speakers, writers and organizers of the 1915 Massachusetts anti-suffrage campaign. Research found that Antis managed their paradox in three ways: by recognizing the inconsistencies in their arguments, creating an extremist enemy, and justifying their actions on moral grounds. Although these strategies were successful at first, anti-suffragists ultimately failed. Though we cannot attribute the success of woman suffrage to the failure of the Antis, they did contribute to their own demise.