Would the men of the US be willing to fight and die for the rights of women and girls of the US?
I'm not sure if the answer to that question is a resounding yes.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Excerpt:
American men as individuals had publicly supported the rights of women as far back as 1775, when Thomas Paine published his essay “An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex.” After the Seneca Falls Convention to support women’s rights in 1848, other men wrote more specifically in support of women’s enfranchisement, notably William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederick Douglass. In England, John Stuart Mill’s “The Subjection of Women,” published in 1869, echoed many of the arguments that his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, had presented in “The Enfranchisement of Women,” 18 years earlier. And briefly, between 1874 and 1875, a Young Men’s Woman Suffrage League met in New York City, fielding pro-suffrage speakers from its membership — physicians, attorneys, and professors among them — at some 80 meetings in the Plimpton Building, at 30 Stuyvesant Street in what is now the East Village.
In time, male suffragists would become commonplace — and then all but forgotten as an orchestrated movement force. This is not so surprising. The story of the triumph of the suffrage cause has long belonged to the women, and rightly so. In the century since New York State granted women the vote, in November 1917, strikingly few details about the men’s efforts have thus emerged.
... The men’s important contributions were especially apparent during the New York legislative and voter victories of 1917. Who else but the prominent men among the movement’s declared backers had such ready personal access to the — also male — state and federal legislators and government leaders, to publishers, or to the editorial elite? It worked to the movement’s extreme advantage that so many League members and leaders were themselves publishers and the editorial elite. Twice, Eastman sparred publicly with Theodore Roosevelt. At various points, Peabody, Villard, Wise, Creel, Harvey, Hapgood, Malone, and Eastman all had Woodrow Wilson’s ear. Most of them were among Wilson’s earliest political backers; Eastman had his respect. Creel, in the critical period when Wilson at long last came out in favor of the federal suffrage amendment, was on “terms of intimacy” with the president, meeting with him almost daily in his capacity as chair of the Committee on Public Information after the United States entered World War I in 1917.
No doubt an accumulation of other factors, far greater than the Men’s Leagues, led to the ultimate success of the women’s suffrage campaign: seven long decades of effort by passionate women, the changing times and political winds, the burgeoning public support, the growing number of states where women with the vote could influence outcomes, the movingly sacrificial role women played after the United States entered World War I. Still, once the details are known, it is hard to ignore the boost that the men provided. Their involvement amounted to more than an “influential factor” or “invaluable help.” Their commitment showcases the value elite individuals who act with care can bring to marginalized movements, particularly those with social justice aims. The impact of Men’s League actions a century ago speaks loudly to the strategic importance of cultivating people with influence and magnetic media appeal, those who can attract positive public attention, open access to those in positions of power, and alter public perception.
https://timeline.com/the-men-who-supported-suffragettes-c8d1b921d71f
