"Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote!"
About this Quote
The rhetoric is ruthlessly practical. Anthony collapses the sentimental pedestal into a procedural truth: rights don’t run on respectability; they run on leverage. “We might as well” is doing heavy work here, flattening the era’s favorite compromise position (speak, persuade, influence) into futility. Her target isn’t just male lawmakers; it’s the entire civic script that frames women’s political engagement as decorous appeal rather than rightful participation.
Context sharpens the intent. Post-Civil War America was rewriting citizenship through the 14th and 15th Amendments while leaving women outside the franchise. Anthony’s movement had spent years circulating petitions, giving speeches, and lobbying Congress - the sanctioned channels of dissent. By likening that labor to moon-baying, she exposes how “access” can be theater: the state allows the performance of democracy while withholding its mechanism.
The subtext is a warning: without the vote, moral argument becomes background sound. With it, women stop pleading at the door and start holding the keys.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Remarks to the Gospel Suffrage Meeting, Cleveland (Susan B. Anthony, 1895)
Evidence: Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the power to vote! (The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Vol. II, Chapter XLIV, p. 801; The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Vol. 6, p. 658). The earliest primary-source trace I could verify is a speech Susan B. Anthony delivered at the 'gospel suffrage' meeting during the National W.C.T.U. convention in Cleveland, Ohio, on Sunday, November 17, 1895. The wording most often repeated online is slightly wrong: the primary text I found reads 'without the power to vote,' not 'without the right to vote.' Ida Husted Harper's near-contemporary biography, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Vol. II (1898), prints the line in its account of that meeting. A later scholarly edition, The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Vol. 6, lists 'Remarks by SBA to the Gospel Suffrage Meeting Cleveland' at page 658, which supports the event/date identification. I did not verify an earlier newspaper transcript directly, so I cannot prove this was the first publication in print, but it is the earliest verified primary-source speech context I found. Other candidates (1) Abigail Scott Duniway and Susan B. Anthony in Oregon (Jennifer Chambers, 2021) compilation95.0% ... Women , we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote ! -Susan B. Anthony85 T... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Anthony, Susan B. (2026, March 8). Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote! FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/women-we-might-as-well-be-dogs-baying-the-moon-as-154880/
Chicago Style
Anthony, Susan B. "Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote!" FixQuotes. March 8, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/women-we-might-as-well-be-dogs-baying-the-moon-as-154880/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote!" FixQuotes, 8 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/women-we-might-as-well-be-dogs-baying-the-moon-as-154880/. Accessed 21 Mar. 2026.
