The Women in the Anti-Suffrage Movement

Josephine Pearson was the OG Candace

You know how once in a while, your kid will watch a cartoon you find ridiculously obnoxious? You hope it’s just a phase. But then after dinner, they’re humming the theme song. They ask for it again the next few days. They pretend to be the main character in the bathtub. They drop a few hints to Nana and receive a Target bag of character t-shirts for their birthday. And suddenly your house is just All That Cartoon, All Day Long until you want to find whoever invented it and smack them upside the head?

That’s kind of how I feel about this anti-suffrage movement bubbling up within the Christian church.

I don’t want to overstate the problem or make it seem as if most of your neighbors are secretly plotting how to eliminate the vote for women. That isn’t true. The vast majority of people are not behind this movement. But just because a movement is small doesn’t mean it isn’t influential. And anyone who’s had an ear to the ground of Catholic culture the past couple of years has heard large talking heads casually drop how obviously, women’s suffrage is the biggest problem in our world today.