… Queering the suffrage movement can also help us move beyond a framework that privileges only the stories of heterosexual, gender-conforming suffragists who followed traditional sex roles to also consider the various ways suffragists transgressed normative traditional boundaries of gender and sex roles sexuality. In the early twentieth century, modern terms such as LGBTQ+ did not exist, but LGBTQ+ people have always existed. I use the term “queer” here as an umbrella term to describe suffragists who challenged gender and sexual norms in their everyday lives and, if they were alive today, might identify as LGBTQ+.

One such suffragist, New York philanthropist Annie Tinker (1884-1924), refused to conform to gendered traditional notions of how a woman should act and dress. In the present day, Tinker might have described herself as non-binary, gender fluid, or butch. But in In the 1910s, those words were not in general usage. Instead, people labeled women like Tinker as “mannish.” …