Popular perception has it that just over a century ago, women in the Anglosphere fought long and hard for the right to vote. To gain that right, according to the prevailing story, they battled contempt and misogyny from entitled men.
An examination of the history of this period in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries shows that both the villains and the heroines of the story are false constructs employed to whip up anger at men and faith in the goodness of feminism.
The reality, as always, is more interesting and fraught.
