Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote!

The line argues that political pleading without political power is futile. By comparing disenfranchised women to “dogs baying the moon,” Anthony uses a vivid image of noisy but powerless protest—sound that cannot alter the object addressed. The quote encapsulates a core suffrage strategy shift: from moral suasion and petitions to demanding the ballot as the only effective lever for legal and social change. It also critiques a system that invites citizens to petition while denying them the basic mechanism—voting—through which petitions can be translated into policy. The statement’s force lies in its insistence that rights are secured through political agency, not merely through appeals to those who already hold power.