One of the biggest obstacles for
woman suffragists was a general fear of gender inversion. The predominant
antisuffrage fear throughout the nineteenth century was that the female sex
would possess a masculine gender if women were granted the vote.[1]
For a nineteenth and twentieth century audience, gender was a binary system –
male/female, masculine/feminine. The primary concern among suffrage opponents
in print and film revolve around this concern for inverted gender relations.
Because of this belief that genders were mutually exclusive, there was little
room for departing from expected gender norms. It was in this vein that much of
the antisuffrage literature and sketches of nineteenth century suffragists
emerged. The twentieth century was certainly still very invested in this gender
dichotomy, which is why suffragists worked so hard to frame woman’s suffrage as
distinctly feminine through their own media. Still though, publications like Life magazine, which was opposed to
suffrage presented a number of cartoons that played with the idea of gender
reversal.

Consider “The Eclipse,” the
cartoon features a small, sad-looking man in the background of his plump wife
who manages the affairs of the public sphere – indicated by reading the newspaper. The picture suggests that women, if more involved with
matters outside the home, would usurp the significance of men within the home
and in public. Significantly though, this cartoon was created in 1908, which
was before the large-scale revision of the woman suffrage strategy.

Life magazine published a number of cartoons that dealt directly with
this fear of gender inversion. They printed cartoons of women driving cars,
smoking cigarettes, and mailing letters. The same magazine published
a cartoon on their cover in 1918 during the Great War, which featured a woman
farmer, completely feminine with a pink bonnet, ruby lips, and bright cheeks.
She is kissing her soldier goodbye. The caption for the illustration reads,
“From producer to consumer.” Certainly, this specific cartoon emulates the
style of NAWSA’s campaign to present suffragists as helpful citizens during the
war. The magazine seems to move away from a staunch antisuffrage campaign in
1908 slowly toward a stance that, if not pro-suffrage, is at least
significantly less resistant to the cause.

Life even dedicated an entire special issue to support suffrage in 1913.
The magazine explained, “This issue of Life
perpetrates, illustrates, defends, and illuminates the cause of Woman
Suffrage. It has seemed to Life that
it was only fair that this side should be given.”[2] It
seems likely that Life felt compelled
to produce an issue in support of suffrage as a result of the surging
popularity of the movement, which was predicated largely on the success of the
suffrage parade in Washington D.C. that March.

 In the special issue,
magazine published cartoons like “Barred Out,” which plays into the vanguard
prototype that suffragists presented in their own media. The cartoon features a
woman’s hand holding a ballot that contains a wall of graft, corruption, and pollution within a city.
The side under the vote’s protection appears pristine with the sun peeking out
above the city municipal building.