Local opinion: Sister suffragettes' secret weapon
The book was supposed to be about my grandfather leaving Ireland at the turn of the century. But when I started writing, I realized it had to be about my grandmother instead.
A gust of wind blew my grandmother's large, feathered hat right off her head. She chased it down Waterbury's Main Street, laughing loudly rather than wringing her hands. She may have bumped into my grandfather, but he's the one who apologized.
Already a successful shop owner, she eventually agreed to date him but refused to change the fact she swore, she smoked, and she fought for the right for women to vote.
That part shocks me still.
My own grandmother couldn't vote until she was 32 years old. It wasn't until 1920 — the year after my own mother was born — that she had a say in the city she helped grow and feed.
As a child, I loved hearing stories of "Nana" defying the cultural norms of the day by running her own shop and intentionally marrying late. My favorite story invoked the image of her marching with her sign for the women's right to vote, singing "Sister Suffragettes" like in the movie, "Mary Poppins."
Nana and her generation helped pass the 19th Amendment in an age far more oppressive than ours today.
With another qualified woman candidate losing her chance for the White House, I wondered what it will take for American women to gain equal footing in our own country, in the world, in history. How did our foremothers strong-arm their way into the voting booth?
I imagined they must have been fiercely independent, defiant, even scornful of their male oppressors. What I discovered surprised me.
Unearthed from a dusty box of scanned documents in the Connecticut library archives, I found several small, personal notebooks of the Suffragettes' plans.
Their secret weapon?
Men.
All across the East Coast, women made lists of the successful businessmen in their towns. They rated how likely each might be to schedule an appointment with them, let alone listen.
Each woman investigated their potential targets, jotting notes about their potential influence. They began meeting with the men, crossing them off their lists, and reported back which ones committed support. And which ones did not.
They knew they had to actively bring men onto their side. So do we.
Like many of my friends, I was fathered by, and chose to marry, men who fully believed in the capabilities of women. I was and am surrounded by them. Which, in a way, was my downfall in the recent election.
I thought all men, and for that matter, all women, must by now trust that a woman might be fully capable of leading decisions about her body, a community or even a country.
But sadly, the exit polls revealed "the bros" still aren't quite sure.
These are our sons, our brothers, our husband's friends, our business leaders. They are our pastors, the community leaders and the laborers that live with us, among us.
Our shouting to each other, posting to unknown masses through social media, hasn't worked. Our cries of cat-lady outrage only fuel our own souls.
We have to ask our men to commit to active support.
We need men to want to fight with us, for us, just like they did once before.
And we need them to vocalize their support. Loudly.
We need men to do small things like stop their friends mid-sentence when they make disparaging remarks in the name of guy humor and not let slide the offhand comment that insidiously casts a woman as a lesser being.
We need men to do important things like giving credit where it's due in conversations, meetings, papers, and reports. And especially in the voting booth. Give us our chance.
Like the truth that became glaringly evident to men in the early 1900s, a woman denied power will find it anyway.
Help us rise with the tide together rather than leaving us to drown in the undertow.
Men, it's time for history to repeat itself. Your sisters need you.
Kathleen Withey Bethel is a retired CEO and school principal who writes what others may be thinking.
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