Has there ever been a more manly president than Theodore Roosevelt? Big-game hunter in Africa, soldier leading the Rough Riders up Cuba’s San Juan Hill, cattle rancher and defender of the mighty bison in the Dakotas. The nation’s youngest president (at age 42) was a man of action, his name synonymous with vigor, strength and vitality.
Less known than his physical exploits is the interesting fact that this paragon of masculinity had views about women that were radical for his day. In 1880, four decades before the 19th Amendment gave American women the right to vote, TR argued in his senior thesis at Harvard that women deserved to have the same rights as men, be paid the same as men and be allowed to keep their maiden names.