Is womens sufferage an inevitable result of the introduction of a democratic form of government? Will a democratic Iraq be forced to change it’s socio-religious conventions regarding the role of women in society?
Can a culture that treats females as lesser people fully become a functioning member of western world society?
My Wild-Ass Guess is that it cannot.
Any society that honestly pursues the democratic ideal of political power ‘all men are created equal’ (and so forth) will eventually have to deal with the inherent contradiction behind preventing 50% of the population from voting.
The US did it for about 150 years.
The U.S. is still doing it. Won’t pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
I think it has more to do with a post-industrial social maturing than a democratic change.
I see your application to the Iraq/Afghanistan situations, but I’d rather look at America, Russia and the former Soviet Union. The women’s sufferage movement developed more out of labor movements than anything else - as government begins regulating things more, and citizens’ groups gets more active, women naturally band together and demand equal say. My personal theory is that there is some post-industrial social trip, as I said, that develops slightly after the labor movements get steam.
Can a culture that treats females as lesser people fully become a functioning member of western world society?
Of course they can, but mind your semantics, no culture treats its females as a lesser people. Females are the alpha form of humanity in all of mankind’s diverse cultures. What sometimes appears to our effete western mindset to be abject subjugation of the female is oft times but a particular culture’s manifestation of the female’s high rank and status.
Remember, we as a country did not suddenly become a better people when the mothers and the spinster sisters among us were granted enfranchisement. Rather, a case can be made that we became a more vulnerable people, more materialistic and a people quicker to judge events with the emotions of the moment rather than with time-honored studied logic and abstract thought.
It is called dimorphism.
Milum, I thought I might be entertained when the thread indicated that you were the most recent poster to this thread. And, you did not disappoint!
No kidding. His post is… well… remarkable… as usual.
Ah jshore, it is good that you are entertained, but take a moment and think a bit, goodfellow, what is it that you have learned?
On the general question about women’s suffrage being an inevitability, I’m not sure, but it’s a valid for debate.
However, your OP shows some dramatic misconceptions about Iraq. Iraq’s history of women’s rights is nothing like that of Afghanistan. While Saddam was certainly a repressive and evil dictator, that doesn’t mean he got everything wrong. For instance, the Baathist government actually improved women’s position in society, as much as that is possible in a country where noone had the vote. Similarly, the education and health systems were fairly well-run, though of course there was a great deal of propaganda involved.
If you’re seeing Iraq as being a backwards nation in terms of women’s rights, or a nation that concentrates on religious law, you’re getting it wrong. Given its predominantly Arab and Muslim population, it was and is suprisingly modern in these respects.
<Disclaimer>Of course Saddam was an evil dictator, and of course I don’t think his regime was a good thing</disclaimer>
The lessons of Milum:
Ever wondered why all those women keep slapping you when you talk about this stuff, Milum? Oh right, it’s because they don’t see the logic of your ideas.
I don’t think we’re aloud to make posts like that about you here.
In that case ** Zagadka**, youngfellow, you must say your posts softly.
A lot of times when I would ask why women are/were treated a certain way that seems degrading in Judaism I was told that it is because the woman is in fact more holy. For example, in Judaism the man has more religious responsibilities and takes the lead in religious ceremonies. I asked why and they told me that the woman is already holy so she does not need to go through all that trouble to gain God’s approval.
Actually, the only thing about American politics, law and government that demonstrably changed after the 19th Amendment was that women gradually began to get a better deal out of it – because politicians, even male politicians, now had to consider the female vote. Thus, the assumption that a wife is her husband’s property slowly faded away, legal disabilities on women were dismantled, and the ground was laid for the more dramatic gains of the feminist movement of the '60s and '70s. This is perfectly in accordance with the thesis Robert Dahl developed in his classic polysci text Polyarchy: Democracy really does matter, in terms of protecting human rights, if only because it allows the enfranchised to exert some power to protect their own; but it only works for the enfranchised. Apartheid-era South Africa, as Dahl showed, was in civil-rights terms a dictatorship for the blacks, who could not vote, and (for the most part) a democracy for whites, who could vote.
For the rest – Milum, please answer these questions:
What is “time-honored” about logic and abstract thought as compared with emotions? Seems to me emotions have a much longer history in human society.
What hard scientific evidence is there that women are less capable than men are of logic or abstract thought, or more likely to be ruled by their emotions?
What evidence is there, scientific or otherwise, that women are more “materialistic” than men?
Well now ** lambchops**, sweetheart, you make my point, viz…
You say but yet I wonder, where is this culture that considers it’s mothers lesser people?
What the hell is so sinister about the word “spinster”? Does the incantation of this word degrade womankind? Are you of the superstitious school that believes that changing words changes reality? Com’on lambchops, that’s not logical.
And lastly lambchops, those women who slap me are products of their confused biology. They live in a time in which all human things have jumped their phylum. How sad. Our women want to be men and our silly men want to be women…this is sad… this is confusing to the greatest product of the all of our endeavors… our hopes for a better world through our sweet and innocent young babies.
Or maybe you would rather perfer something better in life, like maybe a sales carreer in real estate. Then maybe one day, that special day, you will become a new alpha female, and as such you will be free to spend the rest of your days lying around the heart-shaped pool of your silly-assed condo.
I don’t know how you’d define lesser but I do know that Judaism sees the woman as mischevous, clever, and dangerous and therefore she must be controlled. When I say Judaism I mean the real pure thing, the Orthodox version. Anyway some people would consider “mischevous, clever, and dangerous” as “lesser” but I guess you could argue to the contrary. Either way, it doesn’t matter if women are seen as inferior or superior. I think what matters is how that’s manifested in real life, does the woman have less freedom and opportunity?
I like you** Brainglutton**, on occasion you think.
Well yes, Brainglutton, as well, humans ran through the jungle fighting lions with a switch until one glorious day, one human (he was a man) picked up a rock.
(At GE…progress is our most important product.)
Name one great female philosophers…no, no, silly, I mean a great female philosophers of modern times. You know, like after the liberation.
Now Braingutton, a word of advice, don’t you go insulting the intelligence of the subcribers to this board. It has always been an imperative of the female to provide for her young. This dire necessity translates to genetic materialism.
How could it be otherwise? 
Ayn Rand? Good lord someone’s going to lynch me for saying that.
Marc
What? Manifestation in real life? Freedom…opportunity? To do what? There is only one worthy manifestaion of anyone’s life and that is to fullfill the purpose of their existence. And simply, inarugably, the prime purpose of the female of our species is to reproduce and then to raise her offspring until the age of reproduction.
Other than a few other contributions to the collective knowledge of the human mindset, all other aspirations by the female are selfish and foolish and are nothing more than aberrant socially induced bullshit.
Believe me I know.