Introducing: The Wrong Side of History — The Women Who Fought Against the Vote

Jay Singleton (0:00)

Hey, everyone, this is Jay, the producer for Secret Leaders. And as Dan, Chris and I have all gone on to do different things, I have been making a show that I think you're going to like. It's called Wrong Side of History, and it's all about helping you understand history's bad guys in the way they understood themselves. I'm going to explain the worldview of the people who ended up on the wrong side of history from their perspective. So you understand what they feared, what they valued, and why it all made sense to them. In this season, we're talking about one of the strangest movements in modern political history, the women who fought against getting the vote, and why they thought that getting the vote would be a disaster for women, children, and the nation. If that is hard to believe and doesn't make any sense, let me explain. So I'm going to play you the first episode, and if you like it, follow Wrong Side of History wherever you're listening now. Alright, let's get into it.

The anti-suffragists. For decades, they stood in the way of progress. These people, most of them women, did everything they could to stop themselves and other women from getting the vote. Were they fooled? Were they coerced? Were they self-hating? Maybe they just couldn't even imagine a world with rights.

Over the next couple of episodes, we're going to dive into the worldview of the American anti-suffragists. What were they really fighting against? What were they really fighting for? And how did they understand the world? Hello, and welcome to The Wrong Side of History. I'm Jay Singleton, and this is a show where I help you understand some of history's bad guys in the way that they understood themselves. To actually understand what they feared, what they valued, and sometimes discover how things might have made sense from their perspective.

No one thinks that they're the bad guy. Nobody wakes up one day and says, today, I'll be on the wrong side of history. And so, here's the question. If no one thinks that they're the bad guy, how do well-meaning and intelligent people end up there?

If you think history is often told too simply, with clear heroes and villains, if you've ever wondered how people could genuinely see the world so differently, then this is for you.

Through this show, I want to give you the opportunity to try on a new perspective.

To see things from the perspective of people who history has so resoundingly rejected as backwards. But more than anything, this show is a challenge. It's an experiment in radical empathy. Over the next few episodes, I want to tell you about the women who opposed the women's suffrage movement in America.

First, I want to help you understand what they feared. That is, why they thought the vote would be a disaster. And then I want to help you understand why they thought they had so little to gain by getting the vote.

But before all that, I need to tell you three things from the outset that might be pretty hard to swallow. And frankly, you'd have every reason to be suspicious of, but go with me.

Women got the vote in America in 1920 And up until that point, suffrage was never popular with the majority of women. Two, for many years, men were more progressive on it than women. And three, up until 1916, there were more women recorded as actively being organized against getting the vote than there were in favor of it. These women were called the aunties. And if all of this sounds inconceivable, I think it makes a little bit more sense if you can see the world the way they did.

You see, for them, the vote was about so much more than casting a ballot. It was a symbol of a wider rearrangement. Their role in a new republic, the status of women in society, the role of government and private life, religion, tradition, even capitalism and socialism. These women who oppose the vote, the antis, they genuinely thought that they had very little to gain and everything to lose. That defending the country against the vote was the best thing that they could do for women, children, and the nation. And by the 1900s, with the suffragist movement becoming more successful, they felt that they can no longer ignore it.

But, what were they so afraid of?

I want to start with the core concept that helped shape the way the anti-saw getting the vote. And this doesn't just tell you what they're afraid of, but it also tells you what they sought to protect. And that is the ideology of separate spheres, or what many people would call today, gender roles.