Intersecting Gender and Sexuality in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Methodological Challenges and New Research Prospects

In her book on woman suffragism, Lilian Faderman asserts that "[f]rom its inception, women’s fight for the vote was largely led by women who loved other women. […] What Catt did not say in her dry summation was how many female couples (including herself and her partner, Mollie Hay) were at the forefront of the struggle, and how their intimate relations helped them endure and stay focused on their elusive goal through years of discouragement.” Lilian Faderman’s analysis of the suffrage movement tries to retrace the importance of sexuality in the different mobilizations for emancipation. She considers “lesbian arrangements” as necessary conditions allowing women to participate in the struggle for the vote. But couldn’t this point of view be turned upside down to argue that these “lesbian arrangements” might have also been one implicit goal of the movements? In this perspective, what are the meaning, the construction, and the place of both sexuality and gender in the suffrage movements? What were the multiple forces, ideas, and social practices at play? Faderman also hints at the silence of women suffragists on this question: evidence might have been destroyed and sources erased by partners, surviving family members, friends or archivists. So how can the historian deconstruct these silences in historical sources and narratives? Based on the study of suffragists’ papers, this paper will address these methodological challenges and attempt to define the new research prospects that the complex interplay of gender and sexuality can entail.