My Americana. Politics is the place for woman.

[shkrobius]

The story of woman's suffrage in ten words: Disenfranchized women have organized and undone the centuries of injustice. They've got their right to vote! Amen.

But there is a bit more to this story. Having the right to vote and voting are not the same thing. The suffragettes not only wanted the right to vote, they wanted to vote. Something was

Comments

[nassims]

why did you change the last phrase? Anyway, great read, albeit a little overdramatic.

[shkrobius]

It is overdramatic, indeed.

[shkrobius]

vdinets

[vdinets]

I am not saying it was all good. But was it 100% bad? It did give us universal suffrage, after all :-)

[shkrobius]

Almost nowhere else in the world the universal suffrage was so tightly linked to alcohol prohibition. We all would be better off without the Noble Experiment.

[poltorazhyda]

Here's a fascinating rant against women's suffrage written in 1879 by R.L. Dabney, Stonewall Jackson's minister and Confederate theologian. Note that while his own personal ideology is a bit bonkers, his analysis of the American political process and the inevitability of continual Progressive victory on all fronts is spot on: "The fantastical project of yesterday, which was mentioned only to be ridiculed, is to‑day the audacious reform, and will be tomorrow the accomplished fact...the frantic lust for innovation which has seized the body of the people like an epidemic. It is enough with them to condemn any institu­tion, that it was bequeathed us by our forefathers; because it is not the invention of this age, it is wrong, of course

[poltorazhyda]

http://www.amprpress.com/women's_rights_women.htm

[shkrobius]

I did not come across this particular guy, but it was common sentiment of the period. If you read anti-suffrage agitation of the early 1900s, especially the British one, most of it made perfect sense, while the counter-agitation was denying the obvious and choke full of nauseating proto-Fascist rhetoric, just like Willard'd quote in the post. Suffrage movement was never just about the suffrage itself, it was a package deal with the voting rights added as an ice frosting. Now it is all forgotten, and we have the B&W photos of matrons parading the streets and shaming men into giving them their deserved right. It is not emphasized that there was little difference between these damsels and the Nazi storm troopers. Both were using the toolbox of liberty to vanquish all opposition to their true agendas, with deadly efficiency and by any means possible

[poltorazhyda]

The remarkable thing in Dabney's analysis is that he can see the forest for the trees; female suffrage and its entourage of bad ideas are, to him, just datapoints in the Progressive degeneration of the body politic. Of course, he sort of hoists himself by his own petard when he goes out of his way to emphasize that the founding fathers were not part of this historical phenomenon, which, of course, they were

[i_eron]

What about the suffrage movement in Britain? Prohibition was not on their agenda AFAIK. This in itself is strange, I thought there was a significant influence of British politics on the US, but here we seem to have a real difference.

There certainly were many unpleasant types in the British suffrage movement over the years, but it spanned several generations and it is difficult to argue that its main purpose as a whole was anything other than the suffrage itself. Equality and all that.

[shkrobius]

Britain was diffirent. There were no harsher critics of NA suffragists than English suffragists, people like HG Wells (you should read what he was writing about Frances Willard...) But they were much less successful politically than American and Canadian suffragists despite having an unholy ally removing the whole generation of men, the Great War. Then it is simpler to argue for something which has been tried elsewhere.

[shkrobius]

Read any travelogue about America of the 18th and 19th centuries written by a European and there will be a long chapter about how independent American women were. This liberation occurred much earlier. I bet that women would get their voting rights 30 years before they did had there been no radical fringe that tied suffrage with prohibition, anti-immigration laws, "social issues", etc.

[shkrobius]

I do not see any connection of socially acceptable drinking and gender equality. In the 18th century England both sexes were boozing at the rate that has never been surpassed.