Opposition to giving voting rights, especially to women or other groups.
From anti- (against) + suffrage (the right to vote), from Old French sufrage, from Latin suffragium. Antisuffrage emerged as a movement in the late 1800s opposing women's suffrage.
The antisuffrage movement included women who opposed their own right to vote, believing women's place was in the home—yet within a generation their own daughters would be voting and working in offices anyway.
Opposition to women's suffrage was explicitly gendered—suffragists were predominantly women fighting for voting rights denied to them as a class. The word carries the history of resistance to women's political equality.
Use historically with clear context: 'antisuffrage activists opposed women's voting rights.' Avoid as neutral descriptor.
["suffrage opponent","voting rights denier"]
Women suffragists overcame violent opposition and legal barriers to secure voting rights across the 20th century—a foundational democratic achievement erased when these struggles are neutralized as mere 'political disagreement.'
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