The history behind "Bad Romance: Women's Suffrage"

If you haven't yet seen this spectacular parody/tribute of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", then do yourself a favor and watch it immediately. It uses the famous song to tell the story of first wave feminism - specifically, Alice Paul and the Women's Suffrage Movement.

I knew precious little about the American Women's Suffrage Movement prior to this video and the research it inspired. But I guess that's the point of videos like this - to raise awareness and interest into the stories that are at least as interesting as this music video. Based on comments on Youtube and elsewhere, it appears lots of people are as ignorant as I was of the rich history in this video. This brief post will hopefully provide some context.

Alice Paul was a spectacularly remarkable woman. She grew up in a Quaker community that believed in equality of the sexes. As the eldest, she displayed remarkable responsibility and intelligence - she has enough degrees to make everyone else in America feel like complete morons. (They include a Bachelors in Biology, a Masters in Sociology, a PhD in Economics. She also earned a LL.B., LL.M., and  D.C.L. - law degrees). She learned how to be a "militant suffragist" in England, and was beaten and jailed during protests. She and others protested their confinement by engaging in hunger strikes. The institution guards tried to break the strikes by forcibly feeding raw eggs. The spit move isn't just a tribute to Gaga's original video - it is a reflection of what actually happened while Paul was incarcerated.

She later brought her knowledge of tactics and protest to the United States, experiencing similar handling by the police, but ultimately successful in pressuring the Wilson administration for a vote. She organized the National Woman's Party (NWP), an independent organization from both political parties and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).  Interestingly, the split came about because the NAWSA leadership didn't feel it was the right time to push for a Constitutional amendment. Paul led a march the day before Wilson's first inauguration and organized the "Silent Sentinels" outside of the White House. Her full biography, definitely worth reading in its entirety, appears at the Alice Paul Institute website.

She was unflinching in her commitment, and reminiscent of Lenin in her belief in a small, motivated group to move mountains.

I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.

It is better, as far as getting the vote is concerned, I believe, to have a small, united group than an immense debating society.

Alice Paul, as it turns out, was also a vegetarian.

It occurred to me that I just didn't see how I could go ahead and continue to eat meat. It just seemed so... cannibalistic to me. And so, I'm a vegetarian, and I have been ever since.

Update: Mary Jane Lindrum of Soomo Publishing, the producers of the music video, informed me that the anti-suffragist vignette is actually taken from a contemporaneous political cartoon.

I just want to provide a little more information about the anti-suffragist scene in the video. It's based on a political cartoon that appeared in Puckmagazine in 1915. You'll see that it features a satirical anti-suffragist and pokes fun at those who did not support voting rights for women. You can find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:POTD/2011-08-18 and here:
http://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/rightsforwomen/cartoons.html 

The second major story arc concerns the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. President Wilson was initially reluctant to push the issue of women's suffrage - however, after persistent protests, and influence by his strong, intelligent wife (arguably the first female president, if one considers the time when Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke), Wilson decided to push for its passage as a "war measure". (Both WWI and WWII saw gains by women, socially and economically.) The proposed amendment passed in the House but failed in the Senate; a year later, it squeaked by in both chambers. The amendment was sent to the states for ratification.

It came down to Tennessee, in which the pro-suffragists (the yellow roses) squared off against the anti-suffragists (the red roses). Gail Collins of the NYTimes describes the vote with her typical combination of humor and insight in a 2010 Op-Ed. But here's the gist of the story. Alcohol manufacturers and distributors, worried that women's suffrage would lead to Prohibition, handed out samples on the day of the vote. Both pro- and anti-suffragists were pretty piss drunk by the time the vote happened. After initial deadlocks, Harry T. Burn, a 24-year old legislator, and the youngest member of the Tennessee House, changed his vote from "nay" to "aye". The measure carried by a single vote. It is said that Mr. Burn had to escape out a window and hide in the roof for a few hours. The anti- forces tracked down his hotel, but he had fled town by that point.

He later justified his vote by saying it was the right thing to do, and also cited a letter from his mother that told him to vote for suffrage.

Page 2 of 7 of the letter Harry's mom sent him.

Page 6 of 7 of the letter Harry's mom sent him. 

The letter is about a wide range of things, but the parts relevant to the suffrage debate are these:

From page 2:
Hurrah and vote for suffrage! Don't keep them in doubt! I notice some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet. 

Page 6:
Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the "rat" in ratification 

Burn directly cited his mother's letter as a reason for why he voted for suffrage.

 [T]hird, I knew that a mother’s advice is always safest for a boy to follow and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.

(More details available in this pdf.)

On the video itself:

One thing I was asked a few times: why no women of color? That's actually an interesting question. From what I've gathered, African-American women formed their own groups (the National Association of Colored Women), partly because, outside of New England, women of color were not allowed to be members of white suffrage groups. Also, these groups had slightly different priorities - they were concerned with Victorian sexual morality, temperance, and economic social rights of women. But they were also actively working against Jim Crow laws and lynchings. W. E. B. du Bois came out in favor of women's suffrage, while other African-American males, including Booker T. Washington, were against it. This source has some good background on the position of African-Americans on the issue of women's suffrage.

As far as Asian-Americans and other races - well, it's notable that women received the vote in California in 1911. However, Asian-Americans, even citizens, faced increasingly severe restrictions, economically and politically, throughout the period leading up to World War II. I've written a bit about those in a previous post.

The video cleverly illustrates that women didn't stop baking, raising children, and doing laundry after they received the vote. The fears raised by anti-suffragists that women would desert the household en masse proved unwarranted.

I forgot to include this earlier - the phrase "Remember the ladies" is a reference to a letter Abagail Adams wrote to her husband, John, pushing him to support women's suffrage at the birth of the Republic. She was unsuccessful - however, it's fair to say that she was a prototype for empowered American women.

Finally, I'd like to point out the differences in the opening and closing scenes.

Opening Scene

Closing Scene

Note that in the opening scene, the husband and wife are on opposite sides of the shot. However, in the closing scene, they are together, and actually moving. The husband puts an arm around his wife and plays with the child, suggesting that suffrage actually brought some families closer together.

The policeman, in the beginning, is standing in an aggressive posture. At the end, he is seated. This perhaps reflects the end of hamfisted police action (at least when it came to white women).

In the opening scene, the suffragists have their faces covered. At the end, they have their faces revealed. They have come out from under the shadow of anonymity, and can now proudly, openly, be empowered women. (Or, is this commentary on the covering of Muslim women?)

It was prudent to display the male politicians in the back. Sometimes, we forget that real history is made in the streets, not the statehouse. Politicians, even those of courage and vision, are often merely confirming what was created by those in the trenches of the fight.

I was a bit confused that the anti-suffragist woman disappeared. Was she merely a symbol? If she were converted to the suffragist cause, wouldn't she appear in the final scene? There were probably a not-inconsequential minority of women who were anti-suffrage, just as there is a not-inconsequential minority of women today who claim to be anti-feminist.

Again, this isn't meant to be a comprehensive review. But I loved this video too much to just let it pass without comment. I strongly encourage you to read up on this fascinating chapter - there are obvious parallels to today.