They Ought to Wear Petticoats! : Male Support of Women\u27s Suffrage in America, 1840 to 1920

Graves discusses the important role that men played in the women’s suffrage movement in America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historians have viewed the women’s suffrage movement as a woman only movement. Graves addresses this misconception with a case study of twelve male suffragists who were critical to the movement. She explores the motivations and influences, the arguments they used to gain broader national support, the written activism of their letters and published writings, and the in-person activism through political parties and suffrage organizations. Graves also examines the perceptions of American and British female suffragists regarding male support. Graves uses a plethora of primary resource materials from the suffrage movement and scholarly materials previously written about the movement and the men to make her case that women’s rights and suffrage would not have succeeded without key male support