The 19th Amendment and Social Media: The Trending of #Repealthe19th

In October 2016, during the heated run-up to the presidential election, statistician Nate Silver of the blog FiveThirtyEight.com published a map predicting voting patterns by gender. His analysis showed that if only men voted in the upcoming election, Donald Trump would win by a landslide, and, conversely, if only women voted, Hillary Clinton would undoubtedly be president. Following this article, Trump supporters started tweeting #Repealthe19th, referring to the notion that if women hadn’t gained the right to vote through the passage of the 19th Amendment, Trump would easily win the election.

#Repealthe19th was used by Trump backers, as this LA Times article reports, but the hashtag was also seized upon by others, especially women, who used #rRepealthe19th and the negative commentary around it to urge women to go vote (see this Washington Post article for more).

To read about the historical context of the influence of media on suffrage, see #Repealthe19th: Women’s Suffrage Throughout Time and Media.

Anti-Suffrage Book: Socialism, Feminism, and Suffragism; The Terrible Triplets, Connected by the Same Umbilical Cord, and Fed From the Same Nursing Bottle

Part of the NAWSA Collection of the Library of Congress, this ponderously titled book comprises about 300 pages of anti-suffrage invective. As the Library of Congress’ description puts it, “[t]his book equates feminism and woman suffrage with both socialism and atheism. According to the author, feminism and the enfranchisement of women will destroy the family. The book also suggests that pregnant women who vote run the risk of bearing ‘physically imperfect or idiotic’ children.”

The book’s dedication page offers a snapshot of its tone and worldview:

To the innumerable multitude of motherly women, who love and faithfully serve their fellowmen with a high regard for duty, with a veneration for God, respect for authority, and love for husband, home and heaven, whether such a woman is the mother of children, or whether she has been denied motherhood and bestows her motherliness upon all who are weak, distressed and afflicted.

This book is also dedicated to the man who is, in nature, a knight and protector of the weak, the defender of the good, who shrinks no responsibility, who has a paternal love of home, a patriotic affection for country, veneration for moral and religious precepts, and who has the courage to combat evil and fight for all that which is good.

Socialism, Feminism, and Suffragism is an interesting—if thoroughly dated and retrograde—screed. Though many modern readers will doubtless object to its attitude of frank paternalism, it provides worthy insight into the thinking of those who saw the push for suffrage as part of a larger and more sinister attack on the foundations of early 20th-century American society.

And Hubbard was indeed far from the only person to argue that giving women voting rights would benefit American socialists; see “The Red Behind the Yellow,” a poster attacking the suffrage movement on anti-socialist grounds.

You can read the Library of Congress’ digitized version of the book by clicking the button below, or here, via Google Books. You can purchase the book in hardcopy here, via Forgotten Books.

With Hillary’s Nomination, Lots of Interest in Suffrage Movement, But Did Media Get the Facts Right?

In this essay from the Women’s Media Center, Louise Bernikow fact-checks suffrage-related claims made in the media during the 2016 election campaign. One common misconception she points out is that suffragists did not always wear white and that the media disproportionately focuses on images of suffragists wearing white; other colors and types of clothing, such as military-style outfits, were also part of branding efforts by suffragists. Bernikow argues for the need to properly contextualize complex historical movements such as the suffrage campaign.

How Were Suffragettes Treated by the Media?

In this Bustle article, J.R. Thorpe dissects how suffragettes were treated by the media of their time. Using primary sources from the era, Thorpe argues that suffragettes were depicted as neglectful, violent, and disgusting, and further were accused of war-mongering and inciting the downfall of society.

For more primary materials, such as postcards and posters, depicting suffragettes see The Suffrage Postcard Project and American Women Suffrage Postcards.

How Suffragists Used Cookbooks as a Recipe for Subversion

In this National Public Radio article, Nina Martyris outlines how suffragists published cookbooks to support the cause of women’s suffrage.

The first major work of this kind, The Woman Suffrage Cook Book, was published in 1886. By 1920, when the 19th Amendment was ratified and women nationwide gained the right to vote, an estimated half-dozen cookbooks had been published by American suffrage organizations.

Martyris shows how such cookbooks raised funds for suffrage campaigns and often featured suffrage propaganda, spreading the cause’s message. In addition, these books were used to counter the era’s negative depictions of suffragists as neglectful, kitchen-hating mothers and wives. Also, suffragists gained new skills and networking opportunities in the process of publishing these books, which were important practical outcomes for women at the time that helped further the cause.

‘Women, Their Rights, and Nothing Less’: Literary Activists of the Woman’s Suffrage Movement

In this Book Riot article, Margaret Kingsbury writes about how suffragists were “literary activists” who used a variety of written forms—including newspapers, pamphlets, poetry, and novels—to fight for women’s voting rights. Kingsbury compiles a list of suffragists, providing a profile of each woman and an excerpt of her writing, as well as links to further reading. The list includes abolitionist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who was the first black woman to publish a short story, and Lillie Devereux Blake, a journalist and novelist who led the New York Suffrage Association.

#Repealthe19th: Women’s Suffrage Throughout Time and Media

This Feminist Wednesday article by Taylor Ciambra delves into the history of the suffrage movement and the importance of the media in the 2016 election.

Ciambra links the history of the 19th Amendment with the recent trending of the hashtag #repealthe19th. #Repealthe19th surged in popularity on Twitter in early October 2016, when statistician Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com posted a map of projections showing very different results if only men or only women voted in the 2016 election. His analysis suggested that if only men voted, Donald Trump would win the election by a landslide, and conversely, that Hillary Clinton would undoubtedly be president if only women voted. The hashtag was used by Trump supporters to show support for repealing the 19th Amendment. However, many others used the hashtag to express outrage at its use and to rally women to go out and vote, as this Washington Post article explains.

Op-Ed: The Suffragettes Were Rebels, Certainly, But Not Slaves

This editorial by Dr. Ana Stevenson, published on The Conversation, discusses the media controversy surrounding the 2015 film Suffragette and its use of the Emmeline Pankhurst quote, “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave.” Promotional material for the film, which stars Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan, used Pankhurst’s words, sparking debates about racism, feminism, and historical context.

In the piece, Stevenson presents a history of antislavery and women’s rights and links this history to current discourse about intersectionality and the film. She argues that “to understand the suffragettes, we need to consider what they said and why they said it; to view them as the fallible products of their time as well as the radicals they were.”

The official trailer for Suffragette can be found below:

Woman Suffrage: Wyoming Women Had the Right to Vote Years Before the 19th Amendment

This 2011 National Geographic article by Mary Schons examines Wyoming’s pioneering role the history of women’s suffrage, how it happened, and the arguments for and against women’s right to vote. Wyoming women got to vote for the first time in September 1870. In 1890, Wyoming became the first US state to have full voting rights for women and so gained its moniker as “the Equality State.”

The Difference Suffrage Has Made

Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett was an eminent English suffragist and president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, or NUWSS, from 1897 until 1919. In her article “The Difference Suffrage Has Made,” published in the January, 1920 issue of The Englishwoman, Fawcett writes of the accomplishments of the suffrage movement in the 20th century. She describes in detail the various acts of Parliament that have contributed to improved political and legal standing for women, with a particular focus on those made between 1918 and 1919.

This excerpt can be accessed at the website of Women’s Print Media in Interwar Britain, a research project focusing on feminism and media in interwar Britain.