Anti-Suffragist, The

▪ American periodical

      American periodical, from 1908 to 1912 the voice of a movement whose proponents opposed giving women the vote because they believed it contrary to nature.

      In July 1908 the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage published the first issue of The Anti-Suffragist. The quarterly magazine echoed the views of the antisuffrage movement, which began in Massachusetts and New York in the 1890s and eventually gained a foothold in some 20 other states. For the most part, antisuffragists were middle-class, conservative, Protestant women who subscribed to the notion that women were biologically destined to be child-bearers and homemakers, whereas men were to be the lawmakers and leaders. In short, antisuffragists believed it was against the laws of nature for women to seek enfranchisement.

      Edited by Mrs. William Winslow Crannell, chairman of the executive committee of the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, The Anti-Suffragist's mission was to present arguments against woman suffrage and to provide a forum for the views of women who did not seek suffrage—a group of women that, according to the magazine, were in the majority. For nearly four years The Anti-Suffragist provided its readers with gratified reports upon woman-suffrage defeats in various states. It also supplied carefully selected examples of instances in which enfranchised women in western states had, from the magazine's perspective, failed to use their votes to better society. In 1911 the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage was formed, and the proposal that the national organization publish its own periodical, The Woman's Protest, resulted in the voluntary discontinuation of The Anti-Suffragist in April 1912.

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