“The Women’s Parliament:” Political Oratory, Humor, and Social Change

Abstract

Why does humour change minds in politics when logic cannot? This article explores this question in the context of the suffragist movement in Manitoba, Canada in 1914, when the Women’s Political Equity League found logical arguments ineffective in persuading provincial legislators to grant women voting rights. When the provincial premier rejected their petition, the Political Equity League staged a series of burlesques around the province of Manitoba in which they reversed the roles of men and women to make the issue of enfranchisement more salient to voters. These satires of the reigning premier have been credited for making women in Manitoba among the first to vote in the Western World. I draw on several rhetorical theories of humour, including those of Cicero, Campbell, Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, to account for the societal shift in support of votes for women as a result of this parody. I conclude that when well-supported and trenchant logic proves ineffective in bringing about social change, innovative emotional appeals can provide the impetus for listeners to laugh uproariously and then rethink what may have been entrenched political or ideological beliefs.