“The Ballot Humbug”

Abstract

This article explores how anarchist women viewed the feminist struggle for suffrage in the early 1900s. By focusing on this ostensible historical anomaly — women against patriarchy refuting the call for women’s suffrage — the article ventures into a plural history of feminism. The historiographic wave metaphor, typically employed to portray different stages of feminism, is here reimagined as radio waves. Through a variety of publications written by influential anarchist women, the article tunes into a broadcast that airs how anarchy expels patriarchy through a generic struggle against hierarchy. The case of anarchist women and women’s suffrage arguably signposts how to productively invoke plurality in social movement historiography.