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The Delightfully Quaint Antis
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (December 11, 1909) : 34
U Michigan copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
 

      As the anti-suffrage men feel so strongly about women voting, a natural nervousness arises in the minds of the women as to why. They cannot help wondering if the men know some damning thing about them, of which even they are ignorant. It makes one walk so circumspectly; and with more than a little effort the women ask, half expecting to be crushed to the ground with the answer, “Why shouldn’t women vote?” The answer comes, with a great deal of masculine weight, “Because they are women.”
      “But then” — and one’s heart stops at sight of the dark caverns contained in the question, from which truly terrifying answers may leap — “what is a woman?” The definition is waited for with that turtle-like desire to draw in one’s head at the psychological moment that Damocles must have felt. Imagine the surprise when the men say, “A woman is a person who does not vote.” But this is talking in circles. Have they nothing more to annihilate us with than verbal hoops? It is surely evasion, though containing for the women a dram of relief. For, in spite of the fact that they appear to have disposed of us by this comprehensive statement, we feel they have not said anything against us which we will find it impossible to live down. We may even in time be able to clear ourselves of the accusation.
      All the amusement to be had, and there is a great deal of it, unevenly lodges itself with the antis, for the suffragists are so prosaically reasonable that one could as easily extract humor from a time-table. Rather less so, as a time-table shows such a cheering number of chances of getting to one’s destination that good humor is an inevitable result of the first reading, whereas the women who want votes are unable to reach the completion of any work they happen to be doing, for lack of votes on which to transport their influence. They are held up, much necessary work being held up as well, and a grim humor, ruefully recognized, lies in the behavior of the shunting, nervous, affectedly abstracted managers of the line who refuse cleared tracks, passes, or a limited right of way, and instead turn on a ridiculous number of danger signals. One of their favorites — and they make this gleam in a truly lurid way — is that instead of women purifying politics, politics will soil the women. One of their favorites — and they make this gleam in a truly lurid way — is that instead of women purifying politics, politics will soil the women. They shoo them off with frantic gesticulations, dwelling with a Zolaesque realism on the state of their gown if they approach any nearer this really shocking thing.
      The women are brought up with a start, not by any fear of possible spots, but by real amazement at the guileless candor of the men. Politics, the thing which they have put their best efforts into for centuries; politics, the bigest game in the world, played by the biggest men; politics, the mechanism of governing a country that can barely contain its pride in itself, during this high-water mark of civilization — is it true that politics is unsafe for us as much as to sniff at? One breath, and we are done for? Dear, dear, it would almost seem that if things were in such a state a little decent concealment would be more in order than this honest, naïve pointing out of what a mess they, so they say, have made of things. If they have thrown mud until they are all covered with it, and find themselves in a state quite distressing to every sense, then why announce it with such ghoulish glee? Why, instead of using themselves as scarecrows with which to send us scurrying, why not do a little necessary washing up, by way of making ready for our approach? We only have their word for it, Heaven knows, that they are so to speak, in a condition, but since their word is pretty strong we are driven by a merely human desire to help any one in a pickle, to offer ourselves as temporary substitutes while they disappear into an apparently keenly needed bath. We hope this suggestion will not be taken in bad part. We promise that their clothes shall not be stolen while they are, as it were, immersed.
      There is an exalted-eye-rolled-to-Heaven, feet-neatly-crossed, gentility about the antis that makes us feel we are living incongruously enough in Cranford, and have been requested to have sufficient delicacy of mind not to eat our oranges in public. We wouldn’t, not for the world. And we would like to assure the antis that the vote, when it comes, will not prove an alembic which will bring out the latest desperadoes up to now concealed in our quiet selves. And we would like to assure the antis that the vote, when it comes, will not prove an alembic which will bring out the latest desperadoes up to now concealed in our quiet selves. They say, and present the picture very prettily, that women must not have vote, as then the community would no longer have an unbiased element, looking with a large white justice on both sides. The beauty of the idea strikes one instantly. Also its novelty. There is something very regrettable about the unbiased element being thought of just as it is on the point of disappearing. Every one feels sorry that the pose was not taken years ago, it has such obvious points. For, in spite of its being a rather annoying fact, it remains a real one, that women might have been unbiased judges of both sides, looking first on one then on the other (the becoming majesty of the idea is too tantalizing), instead of which we looked on neither side, and only admitted that politics was immediately before our eyes when it had bumped our individual noses. Then all of us that was not bias was ignorance, and we missed completely the tremendously clever dodge of looking over the entire situation from a height so great that we need not of necessity see it.
      Another of their charmingly funny objections is the terrible pity it would be to have homes broken up because husbands and wives wished to vote differently. Womankind is joyfully faint at so overwhelming a compliment. Was there ever anything more irresistibly quaint than the suggestion that such is woman’s allegiance to an impersonal idea that she will forsake home, babies, and husband, and stagger with her last breath to the polls? It is sublime. The husband and wife arguing with each other like two exhausted jurymen, only to end by bidding each other good-by and — it is a little difficult to know what the antis think us capable of at this point, but we gather that under such circumstances both husband and wife leave the home, the babies picking up the discussion where their parents left off.
      Do they really think that married people agree on every subject under the sun (what a dull affair they must find married life to be) and that such is the perfect clarity of their amber that a tiny, political fly is going to spoil everything? Wrecks are not as unavoidable as that. With care one can walk very nicely with-out stubbing one’s toes on the pattern of the carpet. A détour here, a détour there — let no one be shocked, a détour is not of necessity immoral — and one might manage to make it right with one’s conscience that the person at the other end of the dinner-table was a well, what one wasn’t.
      The principal thing, of course, is to calm the fears of the antis as much as possible, and to make them believe, if it can be done, that though women will have to ponder mildly on fibrous matter — which will, we do not deny, be more or less exhausting — their long rest and preparation will doubtless enable them to endure the strain.
 

13 November 2022