Coed Democracy
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
–The 19th Amendment
This week marks the 90th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Suffragists fought long and hard against a male-dominated society that was not ready to share power with women. On August 18th, 1920, the amendment was ratified by Tennessee, the 36th state to do so, thereby making it the law of the land.
This was not just a victory for women. It was a victory for democracy, and therefore a victory for all of us.
Shawn
Actually, it was far more aristocrat-dominated than male-dominated. There were plenty of women in the ruling classes who opposed the expansion of the franchise because of how it would diminish THEIR power and status, and many, many, many times more men in the oppressed classes who supported the expansion of the franchise, for exactly the same reason — it would diminish the power and status of the ruling class.
It’s been that way throughout history; the differences in power between men and women within the socio-economic classes have been trivial relative to the differences in power between men and women of the ruling classes compared to men and women of the oppressed classes. This is easily demonstrated with a simple socratic question; if you had to choose, which would you rather be — a male member of the slave class, or a female member of the slave-owning class?
Anyone who seriously chooses the first is either depravedly ignorant, or willfully stupid, or both.
So the false narrative that women had to struggle hard against men to win the franchise is actually one of the ruling class’ self-serving misrepresentations, and should not be promulgated. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book — to maintain and increase their own power and status, when there aren’t sufficient external ‘enemies’ to portray as a threat, the ruling classes have consistently tricked the oppressed classes into fighting each other more and more, and thus fighting the ruling class less and less — let alone becoming more obedient and submissive to them.
And consequentially, when you promulgate this false narrative that even a plurality of men were at all meaningfully opposed to the expansion of the franchise, you end up doing the ruling class’ dirty work for them. It was men and women united together who fought long and hard against an aristocrat-dominated society that was still unwilling to give up power and status to ANY of them, and who succeeded. It wasn’t suffragists fighting long and hard against a ‘male-dominated society’; it was men and women together fighting long and hard against an aristocratic ruling class, which was itself composed of both men and women — and remember, those ruling class women had far, far more power and status than the vast majority of men did. A few words from them — rape, for one example — could end a man’s life.
Men got the vote sooner than women simply because everyone was raised to treat men as more expendable than women. In general, this made men stronger — if it didn’t kill them — than their female peers, and thus better equipped to force the aristocracy into expanding the franchise to them.
The suffragists would have accomplished nothing without the massive numbers of their armed male peers standing beside them and prepared to fight, kill, and die to protect them. Characterizing that as a “male-dominated society that was not ready to share power with women” is not just misrepresentatory and divisive, but frankly bigoted.
And the worst part of that, to emphasize my primary point against it, is how it ends up doing the aristocrats’ work for them — dividing men and women and setting them against each other, so that they are not only less likely to unite against the aristocrats, but more likely to continue serving them.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that suffrage was exclusively a women vs. men conflict. Obviously there were men who supported suffrage and women who opposed it. And I have no doubt that class played a role, as you said. However, I really don’t think it’s bigoted to suggest that the U.S. of 1920 (and before) was male-dominated. We don’t have full gender equality even today, but we’re a lot closer now than we were then.
Sexism does exist, and it was more prevalent in the past. I hardly think it’s divisive to recognize that fact, and to celebrate a victory against it.
And again, my other point is that even back then, the differences in power and status between male and female peers within their shared socio-economic levels were vanishingly trivial compared to the differences in power and status between males and female peers of the ruling class compared to their male and female non-peers in the oppressed classes.
You’re continuing to apply an extremely narrow and constrained context to the topic without providing any reasons whatsoever for ignoring the much larger, more comprehensive, and more accurate one I’m presenting. That’s what makes it bigoted, Shawn, because without those reasons for doing so, it’s by-default an unjustified and irrational belief — i.e., a prejudice.
That doesn’t make you a bigot, of course; behavior is not identity. What we do does help define what we are, but we’re not perfect, and nobody is free from prejudice. What matters is to correct ourselves when it’s pointed out, because the self-definition of that action trumps the self-definition of the prejudiced action. We’re imperfect, and can’t always be right, so we have to settle for recognizing when we’ve erred, admitting it, and correcting ourselves.
No, acknowledging the existence of sexism in general or the decrease in its prevalence is neither divisive nor bigotry, but then OTGH, no one here other than you is claiming otherwise.
What’s divisive and bigoted is to characterize the expansion of the franchise to women as a long and hard fight against a male-dominated society that was not ready to share power with women. Because it wasn’t. Just a few generations earlier,and for an incomparably longer time beforehand, the great majority of men had no right to vote either. Male dominance over women wasn’t responsible for that; the force-based violent dominance of the ruling classes over the oppressed classes was responsible for that, along with the nature of reality. Technology is the critical element needed for increased human self-determination and liberty; there have been more failed revolutions against ruling class oppression for millenia than successes. What matters is the disintermediation of force; specifically, firearms, which are what have REALLY liberated women — along with everyone else.
And really, stop and think about the average person’s experience of life throughout history. The vast overwhelming majority of most men and women’s relationships with each other have been positive ones of mutual respect, trust, dependence, and so on, from the level of the tribe/city/nation/species/consciousness to those of spouses and parents. The only way your characterization makes sense is if one excludes all of that from consideration and blows the relatively minor differences in power and status between male and female peers of the same socio-economic level massively out of proportion.
And if none of that persuades you, then please tell me this: what good does it do for you to use that characterization? What are you trying to accomplish by using it, and how is it useful towards those ends?
Just keep in mind that from the development of agriculture forward to the modern day, the oppression of women by men and other women in the ruling classes has been incalculably greater than their oppression by their male peers.
And then ask yourself who would benefit the most and best from shifting the blame for that to those male peers.
as a woman who takes her right to vote quite seriously because WOMEN did not have the right to vote until well after MEN did, i do not understand how anyone can deny that this is not a WOMEN vs. MEN issue. there is nothing about the blog post that offends me as a woman and i didn’t come away from reading it thinking that Shawn didn’t realize that men were involved in the WOMEN’s suffrage movement. to say that it was a class issue more than a WOMEN’s rights issue is grossly minimizing the status of women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann M’Clintock, and Susan B. Anthony, to name a few. these WOMEN believed that suffrage was a civil right that was part of a list of other rights that led them to organize the NATIONAL WOMEN’S RIGHTS CONVENTIONS and the NATIONAL WOMEN’S PARTY.
all of politics, in some way or another involves the division of the classes. that cannot be denied. yes, aristocratic society, including women, has an advantage over the rest of the population, but to minimize the disparity between men and women and minorities, for that matter, when it comes to suffrage is to minimize a big piece of the pie (which is probably apple, by the way).
“as a woman who takes her right to vote quite seriously because WOMEN did not have the right to vote until well after MEN did, i do not understand how anyone can deny that this is not a WOMEN vs. MEN issue.”
I hope my response to Shawn above is helpful with that. If it’s insufficient, please post some specific questions and I’ll see what I can do.
“there is nothing about the blog post that offends me as a woman”
I don’t understand why you’re telling us this. Would you please explain what point you were trying to make?
“and i didn’t come away from reading it thinking that Shawn didn’t realize that men were involved in the WOMEN’s suffrage movement.”
Neither did I, so again, I don’t understand why you’re telling us this, and I would appreciate it if you would explain clearly what point you were trying to make. I apologize for being so dense about this.
“to say that it was a class issue more than a WOMEN’s rights issue is grossly minimizing the status of women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann M’Clintock, and Susan B. Anthony, to name a few.”
I don’t see how, but then I didn’t say that. I said it was more a struggle against the ruling class than it was one against Shawn’s false representation of usa society as a male-dominated one that was not ready to share power with women. That doesn’t preclude it from being a women’s rights issue in any meaningful way, AFAICT. It merely identifies the real opponents, and defends usa society in general and men in particular from Shawn’s false accusation.
And, you know, again, I’m not seeing how even your misrepresentation of what I said, let alone what I actually did say, minimizes their accomplishments in any way. Would you please explain how that’s supposed to work?
“these WOMEN believed that suffrage was a civil right that was part of a list of other rights that led them to organize the NATIONAL WOMEN’S RIGHTS CONVENTIONS and the NATIONAL WOMEN’S PARTY.”
Yes, thank you, I’m aware of that. But yet again, I’m not understanding the intended relevance. What do their belief and actions have to do with your assertions? I don’t understand how they’re supposed to be related.
“all of politics, in some way or another involves the division of the classes. that cannot be denied. yes, aristocratic society, including women, has an advantage over the rest of the population, but to minimize the disparity between men and women and minorities, for that matter, when it comes to suffrage is to minimize a big piece of the pie (which is probably apple, by the way).”
But nobody’s minimizing it here. It’s not a zero-sum equation; disparities within social classes aren’t by-default minimized simply by pointing out the far greater disparities between social classes, let alone the ruling class’s use of those disparities to keep the oppressed classes distracted and submissive.
Thank you for your response. I look forward to reading your clarifications of the points that you were making but I was missing.
This isn’t really the venue for this discussion, so I’m going to close the comments for this post. I’m leaving all the comments up, so everyone’s arguments are still visible. If there is enough demand, maybe someday we’ll install a message board, which is a more appropriate place for this kind of discourse.
Acksiom, you’re welcome to comment here in the future, if you’d like, but I’ll have to ask you to watch the condescending tone.