 Good afternoon. Thank you so much for attending this program today. I'm Liz Thackerastrada. I'm the branch manager here at the Merced Branch. I've been here since we reopened. There's a renovation and we reopened in 2011 and today marks exactly 31 years ago I began working here at the San Francisco Public Library. Thank you. And I've been asked to say a few words about the branch. I do hope after the program that you enjoy our collections for the in the adult collection we have extensive fiction and nonfiction collections. Fiction includes like mysteries and science fiction and we have graphic novels for all ages and here in the children's area we have picture stories and DVDs and board books and all kinds of materials for children. We have a separate teen center as well for teens. We also have a beautiful courtyard outside as you can see and the teens have actually been cultivating a garden out there. We have a nice very nice fireplace which is a great great feature for this kind of weather overcast weather and people can it's cozy place where people can sit and read the newspapers. We also have quite a few computers in for adults teens and children and other collections besides English that we have are extensive Chinese collection language collection and a Russian language collection and I'd say most of all I want to highlight our great staff. We have some wonderful librarians who can help you with your reference questions and also really strong circulation staff to help you check out materials. So please enjoy the library after the program. We also as well as this is an example we have quite a strong programming schedule. For adults we have a bimonthly book club. We have a monthly knit and craft circle. Stand alone programs coming out include a program on March 2nd Saturday March 2nd First Ladies and Women's Rights from 1989 to 2009. So that covers Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush. We have a plant swap on Saturday March 23rd. On April 20th we'll be an author talk by Arturo Villarreal on Jose Manuel Gonzalez who is the Apache Occult Mayor of San Jose. On April 27th Master Gardener Del Maxwell will present succulents and pots and succulents in the garden. And one of the highlights of the spring is the Merced Branch Library annual open house which will take place in the afternoon of May 11th. The tech mobile will be here. There'll be craft making by Museum of Craft and Design staff. The Flying Angels Chinese Dance Company will perform as well. The Aptos Middle School Orchestra will have button making and much more. So hope you can make it then. Before we begin the program I would like to read the land acknowledgement. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that it is located on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Eloni peoples recognizes that as the original stewards of this land. The Ramatush Eloni understood the interconnectedness of all things and maintained harmony with nature for millennia and honors the Ramatush Eloni peoples for their enduring commitment to Mother Earth. On your chairs you found a flyer about the Institute for Historical Study and that's an organization of independent historians. It hosts a riders group that provides many grants to members and it sponsors monthly programs one of which there's a flyer for effect. The program takes place tomorrow in person at the North Beach Branch and it's also on Zoom. And so if you love history please consider joining the Institute especially if you're working on a history related project. Our speaker today is a member of the Institute and is here to present Wild Women's Suffragists the Untold Story. This presentation was originally scheduled in 2020 the centennial of the Women's Rights Amendment but we all know what happened in 2020 and unfortunately it had to be postponed. Turns out for four years but we're very thrilled to host the program today and I'm especially pleased that Emerson Branch could observe the it's a birthday of Susan B. Anthony was February 15th and so this presentation is in her honor. Joe Miller has been studying women's history for many years and is a member of the Institute as I said. He published an academic article in 2015 saying that despite what textbooks say the campaign for women's rights to right to vote was never a fight of women against men. You can read it on his website alternative suffrage.com. So please give a warm welcome to Joe Miller. Thank you. Thank you Liz and thanks to the library for hosting this event. It's a pleasure to be here. Very brief history of the campaign for women's right to vote. It's commonly dated from 1848 the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls New York and it concluded in 1920 as you probably know with the passage of the 19th amendment. The word suffrage comes from the Latin suffragium which means to be seat or to vote and that concludes the academic portion of today's talk. I find women's history extremely interesting and to me the most interesting part is that so much of it has been left out of textbooks so much that's complicated and frankly a great deal of what historians tell us is simply wrong. They like to say that women demanded the right to vote while male lawmakers slammed the door in their faces. Let's take a look at this. This is a picture you see in a lot of textbooks. There will be a few quizzes today by the way. This first quiz is the easiest one by far. Who is in the White House when this picture was taken? 1918 Woodrow Wilson was president at the time. Now when you see a picture like this you would of course conclude that President Wilson was against women's right to vote and the most women were in favor of it. That's actually wrong on both counts believe it or not. Wilson was in favor of women's right to vote and that was widely understood at the time. President Wilson is with us. He had voted for women's suffrage before the picketing in his home state of New Jersey and the distinction was he was in favor of women's suffrage by state action not by federal action. The reason for that is it says in the Constitution that the states not the federal government shall determine who has the right to vote. That was also unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court in 1875 even though the Chief Justice himself was pro-suffrage. As for women there was a tremendous amount of agitation from women protesting against their own right to vote. That is a complicated thing to understand and I'll do my best to explain it to you. My interest in having you understand that is it shouldn't be presented. Women's history should not be presented as a battle of men against women any more than it was. President Wilson was married twice. Both of his wives were against women's right to vote although he himself was in favor of it and I'll have many more examples of that type for you. The women's protest was a women's magazine. A half million women organized against their own right to vote and those anti-suffragist women outnumbered the organized suffragists for 20 years. You can see there was something going on here that is not immediately comprehensible. Another fact that's very very little known is that women's right to vote was never supported by a majority of women not back in 1848 not 72 years later when it became the national law. There's lots of evidence for that and I'll go over some of it. There was a British ambassador to the United States James Bryce and he wrote in his memoir that of the many women whose opinion he had asked the enormous majority were against their own right to vote. Another bit of evidence comes from Massachusetts. There was a poll taken in Massachusetts 1895. The suffragists of course told women to come to the polls to demonstrate that they wanted to write the right to vote. Only 4% of women went to the polls. The anti-suffragists who were very organized in Massachusetts told women to stay home and that's what 96% of women did. The anti-suffragists couldn't imagine telling women we want you to go to the polls to demonstrate that you don't want the right to vote. It just made no sense to them and so cutely enough both sides could claim victory. Of the women who did vote 96% were in favor but 96% of women stayed home. So both sides could claim victory by the exact same percentage and they did. For years they would say the vast majority of women are either on our side or they don't care. A little bit more evidence of women's opposition. Women in Utah got the vote in 1870 but 17 years later 200,000 women petitioned to take the right to vote away from the women of Utah. That's a complicated story too but I'm going to move along to something else. The final leader of the suffrage movement was this woman. I told you there will be quizzes for 100 points. Can anyone name this woman the final leader who led the movement to victory in 1920? Pardon me? No, that's not Mrs. Danton. Sorry? No, no, no. I heard it, yes. Was that Liz? Oh well, the librarian is very interested in women's history, I know. She didn't mention it but she's also the president of the Institute for Historical Study. Carrie Chapman-Cat. I'll tell you just a little anecdote about her before I get to the main point here. When she was leading the suffrage movement a school teacher wanted to build a statue to honor her and so she told her students, she said, kids I want you all to bring in a penny because I think we should build a statue to honor Carrie Chapman-Cat. So one little boy went home and he told his mom, mom I need to take a penny to school because our teacher wants to build a statue to honor Charlie Chaplin's cat. Carrie Chapman-Cat was a very effective leader. She was a strategic thinker but when it was all over in 1920 she admitted privately in a letter that only about a third of women supported their right to vote. Now just imagine that 72 years of campaigning, three generations, and that's the best a suffrage movement could do, was convinced a third of women. So something was going on here that doesn't meet the eye. Everyone understood at the time that women were on both sides of the issue. Here's a cartoon from Tennessee 1920. Here's a lawmaker and he's being uh courted I guess you might say by a suffragist and an anti-suffragist. People understood this very well at the time. Women were quite active on both sides of the campaign. Now I'm often tempted to say that everything you know about women's suffrage history is wrong but that would be an exaggeration. I will concede that there was someone named Susan B. Anthony and she worked very closely with Elizabeth Cady Stanton but after 50 years of campaigning Susan B. Anthony admitted that more women, sorry, she admitted that most women were not supporters. That suffrage would not have passed if it had been up to women to vote for it and remarkably that men were more progressive on the issue than women were. Again there's all this mind boggling stuff that doesn't make it into the history books and I'm sure if you're a teacher it's much easier to teach something that has a simple message it's much easier to say women campaign for the right to vote okay that's true as far as it goes. Male lawmakers refuse to give them that right okay that's true as far as it goes overlooking the fact that the male lawmakers were hearing it from the other side as well. Mrs. Stanton wrote an autobiography in which she acknowledged that when the first women's rights campaigners went door to door most women slammed the door in their faces and greeted them with quote a curl of the lip an expression of ridicule and disgust. Now can anyone suggest for 100 points a good reason why women opposed their own right to vote believe it or not women made 50 different arguments against their own right to vote and again that's one of the things that makes it so hard to understand there were rational reasons and there were emotional reasons i'm going to start with the rational reasons. First one women were busy can you imagine if you had twice as many children as women do now you didn't have electrical appliances to help you with your housework and so on and people understood that if women were going to vote it would be a lot better if they had the time to understand politics according to Susan B. Anthony's early biographer around 1900 not one woman in a thousand knew what each political party stood for it sounds like an exaggeration but the words already concern about the problem of uninformed voters it was a big issue quite aside from women because of immigrants and other uninformed voters so there's my first rational reason for you women were busy second reason this is not well known chivalry the anti-suffragist women predicted that if women got the right to vote it would mean the end of chivalry the suffragists you won't believe what the suffragists said they said nonsense american men are the most chivalrous in the world they're not going to stop being chivalrous just because we start voting well how'd that one work out for you ladies can we take a quick poll of the ladies here please uh hands up american men most chivalrous in the world right right right can you all hear me okay i love reading books written by foreign travelers in america and their observations about the country here's a quote there's one by isabella bird she wrote a book the english woman in america 1856 and here's what she had to say about chivalry i traveled several thousand miles in america frequently alone and never met with anything approaching to incivility and i have often heard it stated that a lady no matter what her youth or attractions might be could travel alone through every state of the union and never meet with anything but attention and respect she says that on one train ride two men stood up to give her their seats two men so that she could have a spacious seat and they stood for an hour and a half she was on another train ride where all the women were seated and only one man still had a seat a lady entered the train car the conductor called out a seat for a lady but the man refused to stand the conductor repeated the request and several passengers also told him to stand one gave him a sharp poke on the shoulder he said i'm an englishman and i tell you i won't be browbeat by you beastly yankies i've paid for my seat and i mean to keep it two men took him by the shoulders and with other men pressing behind shoved him out of the car and gave the seat to the lady isabella bird says the thousand acts of attention which gentlemen are compelled to tender to ladies are received by them without the slightest acknowledgement either by word or gesture the whole fabric of society is so different was so different back then from what we're told and if you read history books now about what was going on with women in the 1800s it's all oh they didn't have the right to vote they didn't have the right to own property they didn't have the right to education they couldn't get good jobs all this negative stuff no mention of chivalry many travelers in these books i've read observed the same thing that american men were the most chivalrous in the world and that women were completely safe traveling alone one of these books even said the position of women in america is comparable to that of royalty in europe it's rather different from what we're usually told so that was my second rational reason for you chivalry third rational reason prohibition there were a lot more women in the women's christian temperance union than there were in the suffrage movement typically three times as much depending on what year so there was a rational fear that if women got the vote that's the first thing they would do pass prohibition now you might be in favor of people drinking less but still a lot of people understood that prohibition was going to have some negative consequences here's another one that's not very well known my fourth reason for you voting was a rough business that's a cartoon i had an artist make voting was a really rough business not just in this country but in other countries there were election riots i'll quote isabella bird again she was in new york in 1854 and there was great antagonism between the irish and the so-called no nothing's the no nothing's were antagonistic towards catholics and immigrants various newspapers said that the number killed in the election riots in new york was anywhere between 45 and 700 it began with a rally of 10,000 no nothing's and after they were shot at there was a musket fire for three days while the police tried to restore order quote from isabella bird i saw two dead bodies myself and in one street both the sidewalks and the roadway were slippery with blood yet people paid very little attention business went on as usual when she asked about it the reply was frequently made oh it's only an election riot showing how painfully common such disturbances had become and i could quote you several more examples of that kind of thing equally gross and we're supposed to believe that women were eager to vote in that situation no they had more common sense than that they were happy to say to their husbands or their brothers you represent me at the polls i don't want to be there here's another reason that you won't find anything about hardy in the textbooks the suffragists had terrible public relations problems involving all kinds of people if i had hours i could go on and on about this but one of the issues involved the english suffragettes by the way that word suffragette refers specifically to the english women who were violent agitators not so much it's generally not used referring to american suffragists the leaders of the violent faction of the english suffragettes were emeline pankhurst and her daughter christabelle here's what you won't find in textbooks those women started a thousand arson fires involving public mailboxes government buildings churches hotels and homes they attacked cabinet ministers with whips and for the first time in english history members of parliament needed bodyguards this gets whitewashed christabelle pankhurst biographer recorded that at demonstrations these suffragettes would sometimes spit in policemen's faces but she says that christabelle pankhurst when she spat in a policemen's face she did it politely i guess that was part of their civil disobedience training how to spit in a policemen's face politely another suffragette i should say threw a hatchet a prime minister asked with well according to that biographer she dropped a hatchet into his car she didn't throw it at him i guess she probably meant to give it to him or something and i guess her hand was slippery that day and people raised the question is this what it means if women enter politics there was a door-to-door poll in england trying to determine how many women wanted the right to vote 16 percent were in favor and so people said is that what it means if women enter politics you only have 16 percent of your group on your side and that entitles you to attack members of parliament with horse whips so as i said the suffragists had terrible public relations problems emeline pankhurst came to the united states i believe it was 1917 and the suffragists here had to decide whether to let her speak at their convention or not because she was so controversial they did decide to let her speak that was kerry chowman cat's decision actually here's my sixth rational reason for women opposing their own right to vote there was a fear that it would someday lead to a battle of the sexes while i sure am glad that never happened so those were some of the rational reasons against women voting i could give you dozens more but those are some of the ones that are easier to understand now if you look in history books and even i've read six books about the women anti-suffragists they just those authors just gloss over their reasons they don't grasp the reasons they might mention three reasons but ridicule all of them and they'll just say oh well the anti-suffragists thought a woman's place was in the home they were old fuddy duddies conservative christians or something like that i think frankly that's insulting to women the women of that time to say that they didn't have the sense to think these issues through but let's move on to something else those rational reasons don't really explain women's gut level reaction that when the women's rights campaigners came around women would greet them with the curl of the lip and expression of ridicule and disgust you don't do that because you're worried about um chivalry and of course the violence of the english suffragettes came along much later some people obviously including women just had a negative reaction to the new woman as she was called with increasing industrialization urbanization more women worked outside the home they became more independent and a new personality type emerged and not everybody liked the new woman she was sometimes perceived as cold and selfish there was a song 1917 here's a song written by a woman called the new woman i'll quote you some of the lyrics there is a new woman so i have been told they say she's most charming though something she's bold because she wears bloomers when she rides on a wheel riding a bicycle was fairly revolutionary at that time so i'll sing of this woman this woman so new i'll pen her a sonnet is the best i can do she'll get her rights sure she's been emancipated she'll keep step with man though she's somewhat belated so give her a welcome though she cares not a jot she'll come just the same whether welcomed or not so i'll sing of this woman this woman so new and to keep in the fashion i will be one too but i think the biggest emotional reason that women were so upset about the women's rights campaigners was there was a long-standing perception that the women's rights people were in favor of free love there was a huge free love movement in the 1800s middle to late 1800s it's not well known but there are a couple books about it free love in america by spurlock if you want to look one up and this perceived connection between free love and women's rights uh it went on for a long long time if you were a man let's say you were a traveling man hoping to find a woman who was interested in free love where would be a good place to meet one at a woman's rights meeting would be a good place a woman's rights meeting 1859 at these meetings they had a policy of an open platform that is anyone could be allowed to stand up and speak and typically some woman would stand up and give some radical speech in in favor of free love now i'm kind of talking loosely when i say there was a free love movement it wasn't a single movement but there were all kinds of sex radicals in the 1800s there were people who wanted to abolish marriage there were people who formed free love communities there was one on long island there was one um in Ohio the one in uh Long Island was founded by Stephen Pearl Andrews and the principle there was you could have as many spouses as you wanted to have and it was impolite to ask who anybody's husband was or who was the father of any of the children these people were pretty extreme in their views and there was a widespread perception decade after decade that the women's rights people were the same people as the free love people now to really understand this you have to remember this was the Victorian age and it was not exactly the most safe thing to do to be identified with such a radical movement here's a quote from Francis Willard she was a college student in 1858 and she writes this in her autobiography when she was a college student quote a young woman who was not chased came to the college not knowing her degraded status i was speaking to her when a schoolmate whispered a few words of explanation that crimson to my face suddenly and grasping my dress that's its hem should touch the garments of one so morally polluted i fled from the room the presidential election of 1872 Ulysses S Grant was running for reelection does anybody know any of his opponents were he had three opponents Horace Greeley founding editor of the New York Tribune was his main opponent but this was also the year that the first woman ran for president the woman's suffrage candidate for president can anybody name that woman 200 points now i keep upping the ante and there's still still not getting a lot of answers no i told you the only the first question was the easy one i'll give you hints she was the most notorious sex radical in the country a very famous woman Victoria Woodhull and she has been described as the most famous american woman in the world at the time she came on the scene in new york in 1870 opened a stock brokerage with her sister Victoria Woodhull in Tennessee Claflin stock brokers in new york became famous for that she was a totally remarkable woman she was a sort of woman that would walk into a large meeting and just declare i'm your new leader and people would follow her she had this amazing Joan of Arc kind of energy she became within two years national leader of the spiritualists an important leader of the labor movement in new york and the most visible leader of the suffrage movement in new york people had been holding suffrage movements at that time for 44 years i'm sorry 24 years but they didn't have a lot of momentum maybe a hundred or 200 people would come up would come and show up for a women's rights movement meeting but if Victoria Woodhull was speaking thousands of people would show up and she stole the thunder of anthony and stanton this is another cartoon i had commissioned at susan b anthony on the left susan b anthony was by no means a sex radical i'll get into that more but because of her association with others in the movement she sometimes had that reputation and on the right elizabeth katie stanton of course mrs stanton worked extremely closely with susan b anthony but mrs stanton was the sort of woman who liked to generate publicity good or bad she started out in the temperance movement but she was also prone to tell temperance meetings that she was in favor of easy divorce that was a very radical position back in the 1850s that anyone should be able to divorce freely and as a matter of fact she said that if a woman had a drunken husband she had a duty to divorce him mrs stanton liked upsetting her allies she was a wonderful person very smart very dedicated to the cause until she left it that was but she had that personality quirk that she liked to come up with the most radical position she could think of and if it upset her allies all the better well getting back to victoria woodhull she was the first person to address a congressional committee in favor of women's suffrage there she is doing that on the left and on the right here she is being nominated for president being involved with suffrage was kind of a lark for her and she abandoned it after a couple of years running for president also was just a lark for her she loved publicity but on election day she was 34 years old so she had no chance of being elected anyway she must have known that and actually on election day she was in prison in new york on an obscenity charge as i said there was already a stereotype a long-standing stereotype of suffragists as being supporters of free love but when victoria woodhull became the most visible leader of the suffragists in new york there was no denying that stereotype anymore here's a very famous cartoon of the time so in the background you can see a woman and her problems are illustrated she's burdened by two children and a drunken husband in the front is victoria woodhull and the caption identifies her as mrs satan and victoria woodhull's slogan there is be saved by free love that was the issue she cared about she wanted to establish free love all over the world she actually wanted to be the world leader and share power with queen victoria she said queen victoria can be in charge of politics but i'm in charge of morals for the whole world now i'm trying to illustrate to you why women and men to some extent but i'm more interested in the women didn't support suffrage at the time so imagine that you're a mother of a couple young girls let's say 12 and 15 and your mom and your kids come to you and say hey mom can we go to the women's rights meeting tonight it's going to be great victoria woodhull is going to speak let's say mom doesn't know about her tell me about her dear i don't know much about her well mom she gave a speech and she said if i want sex with a hundred men i shall have it and she said marriage is the greatest curse from which humanity now suffers and a woman should be proud to have 12 children with 12 different fathers it's of no importance for children to know who their fathers are but here's the best one mom you'll like this chastity she says is not a virtue it's rather a crime against nature so mom can we go to the meeting and also to put that in context you have to remember that syphilis was a deadly disease at that time so to be so radical in favor of free love was a pretty extreme position when we think of the victorian age of course we think primarily of sexual repression that's the first thing usually but the free lovers of the 1870s in some ways outdid those of the 1960s and to help you understand the context more in the middle 1800s there was a great deal of social agitation in the northeast new religions sprang up the shakers the Mormons spiritualists theosophists here's a quote from a journalist in the 1860s how is it that when we meet a vegetarian he is almost certain to be a phrenologist a free lover a woman's rights advocate a root doctor a mesmerist a spiritualist a socialist a cold waterist a ranting abolitionist and an abnegator of the bible the Sabbath day and the religion of his father and notice he put those two adjacent to each other woman's rights advocate and free lover it was all the same people that were involved in all these new movements and they were in the northeast southerners sometimes describe this as northern lunacy the free love movement was not a southern movement so there was this battle going on between the prudes and the free lovers it's been called america's first culture war let's take a look at some of the important prudes here Horace Greeley on the left i mentioned him founding editor of the new york tribune 10 years before the new york times was established Greeley was very prudish about divorce he believed there should be no divorce if you're stuck in a bad marriage you stay in it he himself was stuck in a terrible marriage and it was very well known he didn't leave what he did was he'd go stay in a hotel for a week and not tell his wife where he was and then move to another hotel before she could track him down this is young susan b anthony in the center she had the same view about divorce and similarly if you are married and your husband dies your wife dies tough luck it's a life of celibacy for you from now on that's the sort of prudery we don't even hear about today but the most extreme and influential prude of all was the man on the right i saw his name in the new york times today for 300 points can anyone name this man on the right calm stock anthony calm stock creator of the calm stock laws 150 years ago and they still are on the books to some extent calm stock initially teamed up with the ymca in new york city they had a commission sorry committee for the suppression of vice he was against any sexuality in novels any nudity in art he was against birth control and he influenced congress tremendously and as i said the laws are still on the books in several states it became illegal for anyone to give birth control information to anyone else even in teaching medical school that to me is just over the top conservative he was a black and white thinker here's an incident from the chicago world's fair 1893 there was an exhibit from cairo that's an actual photograph of one of the belly dancers there well someone told calm stock about it he traveled from new york to chicago to see the dance had three of the dancers arrested and find and you can see i mean it is an extremely obscene dance that woman is completely naked and well it's just over the top so there's no no reason to disagree with calm stock that belly dance incidentally led to a craze the hoochie coochie dance the press generally hated calm stock because of course the press don't like censorship but he was totally dedicated to his cause he stuck with it for about 45 years until his death there were other varieties of sex radicals as well and sex radical is a loose term like free lover but just to give you some more context oh oh i let me tell you a little bit more about calm stock a reporter went to see him after this incident with the belly dancer and said mr calm stock what was his dance like so without standing up calm stock demonstrated the dance and the reporter wrote the result was interesting but it was definitely not erotic john humphrey noise was a minister who founded a community at anida new york uh you can visit there there's a small museum and you can stay there it's an interesting place it was a so-called christian group marriage with two to three hundred adults in which all the adults were married to each other it was america's longest lasting utopian community lasted for 30 years it lasted so well partly because they did well economically but eventually uh noise was under threat of arrest so he escaped to niagra falls new york another sex radical not exactly a free lover this man joseph smith founder of the mormon church there was tremendous outrage when the mormon church adopted polygamy and the mormons kept having to move from community to community farther west they that's why they ended up in utah sam brannon actually was a mormon who came to san francisco hoping to find that it was uh a place where the mormons could establish a community and when he saw the us flag flying there his heart sank because he didn't know that san francisco was part of the united states there was tremendous antagonism towards mormon polygamy in the 1880s and there was a crackdown on polygamous mormon husbands here's some of them in jail i don't think throwing them in jail did their wives any good but anyway that's the period when those 200 000 women signed a petition trying to take the votes away from the women of utah so my point here is the suffragists were active during a culture war and they were very often perceived as being on the side of the free lovers it's not that most of the suffragists were sex radicals by any means but there were lots of sex radicals and most of them were women's rights people so the reputation stuck you may know that there were two main suffrage associations the national women's suffrage association which is better known because it was headed by susan b anthony and lizabeth katie stanton and the american association headed by lucy stone top center her husband down at the right henry blackwell some of the other important people there the reverend henry ward beecher mary livermore william Lloyd garrison thomas wentworth higginson one difference you'll notice between the two associations was this association had men as presidents they deliberately altered alternated male and female presidents to show their commitment to equality and the reason that the american association didn't have male presidents they said they didn't want male presidents it wasn't that men weren't supportive but these men are left out of the history books now if you look in textbooks for an explanation of why there were two associations they'll tell you that the national association pursued a federal strategy whereas this american association pursued a state by state strategy that's the kind of thing that makes classroom history so boring and it's it's also baloney that was not the issue at all one huge difference was their position on free love i mentioned that stanton in the 1850s was in favor of easy divorce whereas lucy stone wanted that kept off the agenda she said we should stick to one issue and that's women's right to vote now Horace Greeley especially in the woodhall years publicly challenged the suffragists to renounce free love if they didn't support it the american association did pass resolutions renouncing free love but elizabeth katie stanton and susan b anthony did not they refused to pass those resolutions they shared the stage with victoria woodhall on many occasions and so if there was any doubt about whether suffragists were on the side of free love well it was hard to live it down after that as liz mentioned i published an article you can see it if you want to read more about this kind of thing it has much less to do with the free love aspect but just other aspects of the suffrage campaign it's on my website alternative suffrage dot com and the reason i believe we need an alternative version of history is it's so often portrayed as a battle of men against women i think there's so much antagonism in our society we don't need to exaggerate it by distorting history and saying all the women were on this side and all the men were on that side and that's why i like to come out and explain there were reasons why women were against their own right to vote and uh i've learned not to try to explain this to people in 10 second conversations because it was a oh yes there were good reasons why women why people oppose women's right to vote they they have sometimes a shocked reaction but if i have enough time like this to get into the whole story i really enjoy explaining it because not only am i trying to correct the record but just some of these stories are just so fascinating just in terms of being stories there were many reasons for women's opposition from chivalry and prohibition to the suffragist close connection with free lovers and the standard textbook his version of this history that overlooks all this i call it the woman is victim version because in that version the victims are women and the villains are men but that although you can find perhaps a million pieces of evidence to support that it's still it's a terrible summary of what actually went on to take a step back and look at this from a greater distance i ran across this quote and had to go find the book the book is called culture of complaint written by robert hughes about 30 years ago he was time magazine's art critic and i saw this quoted in another book as our 15th century forebears were obsessed with the creation of saints and our 19th century ancestors with the creation of heroes from christopher columbus to george washington so are we with the recognition praise and where necessary the manufacture of victims and i've noticed recently i listened to npr and if the topic of the interview is a woman it seems to me within the first minute the interviewer will ask the woman oh and how have you been discriminated against so i started counting that happened eight out of nine times the exception incidentally was mary tyler moore and that was an old interview maybe 20 years old so the victim mindset troubles me sometimes one of the early scholars of women's history was eileen creditor she wrote a book in 1965 ideas of the woman's suffrage movement our revised version was published in 1981 and she said in the forward if i were to rewrite this book the main change would be to replace chapter two with one that takes the anti-suffragist more seriously both in tone and content one should not refer to the anti-suffragist as though they all thought the same way i also aired in referring to the anti-suffragist ideology but anti-suffragism was not an ideology but a part of a comprehensive belief system and far more complex than i had imagined unfortunately a large proportion of the recent literature on women's history has been motivated more by the desire to provide current feminists with a heritage of oppression plus achievement than by the desire to find out what happened it is consequently often of poor quality well that was a nervy thing for her to say as i say i really enjoy talking about this subject if any of you are members of groups that like to have speakers in i would love to connect with you about that i have an email list of here if you'd like to find out about future events and i'm hoping to turn this into a book someday all right thank you very much for coming i've enjoyed talking to you