Among February’s vintage Valentine’s Day postcards from the early 1900s was some anti-suffragette propaganda. That brand of misogynist messaging, it turns out, wasn’t reserved just for Cupid’s favorite holiday — in fact, as the suffrage movement swelled into a groundswell in the early 20th century, the picture postcard industry was enlisted in producing propaganda that discredited and denigrated women fighting for the vote. Here are a few more anti-suffragette postcards from the period, a reminder at once amusing and appalling of our culture’s history of socially sanctioned bigotry. (No doubt, Tea Party signage on marriage rights and immigration will appear in similar contexts in the cultural criticism of tomorrow.)
If this wasn’t amusingly appalling enough for you, up the ante with this Victorian list of don’ts for female cyclists, but then lift your spirits with a look at how the bicycle actually emancipated women.
