INEZ | Suffragents

I don't like the subtitle. Unflattering for
women, demeaning to men.

There's a new book out, on "The Suffragents".

Get it? Suffrage-gents, or Suffrage-agents.

It is about the men who helped women get the Anthony Amendment passed. 

Men like... Inez's friend Max Eastman, her father John E. Milholland, and her husband Eugen Boissevain.

I wrote about this topic two years ago, and I noted that the motives of some Harvard Law School students who were seeking to bring suffragists to speak were questioned. 

So the subtitle is: "How Women Used Men to get the Vote." What I knew about the men's leagues for suffrage did not square with this subtitle.

The author spoke recently in East Hampton, and I bought the book, intending to write a long and enthusiastic review here. At the time, I thought the subtitle was a mistake. "How Women Used Men?"

Having heard the author talk, having bought and read the book and having asked myself whether I have overreacted... I can't abide the subtitle. It makes women into manipulators and men into robots without real feelings. It is not the reality I see from reading documents from the period, especially letters to and from Inez Milholland Boissevain. She and her husband make me proud to be a human being. This book does not.👎