Warning to militant liberals: What I’m about to say is incredibly sexist and politically incorrect.
In general, males value individual freedom/liberty, individual sovereignty, and personal responsibility. In general, females value security, safety, and social cooperation. No one can deny that this has been a truism of human nature since mankind has walked the Earth. Men and women are pre-wired with these values.
Now to my point… This country (the United States) was founded on the basic principles of individual freedom/liberty, individual sovereignty, and personal responsibility. Thus, our country was founded on traditional male values. And I believe this was the reason women were not allowed to vote; it wasn’t because they weren’t intelligent or informed, it was because their basic values (in general) contradicted the principles this country was founded on.
Now please don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying women should not be allowed to vote. But what I am saying is this: the creeping socialism in the U.S. may be due in large part because women have imposed their basic values (security, safety, and social cooperation) onto a country that was founded on diametrically opposite values (freedom/liberty, individual sovereignty, and personal responsibility).
Well, our country was pretty much founded by white males. Women did not have a say in the matter. Perhaps if they had, we’d have had a country based upon safety, security, and cooperation, and we could blame guys like us for not having universal healthcare, not enough gun control, etc.
Anyway, I think you’re wrong. Socialism, as you call it, probably began with the threat of communism. After the revolutions of 1848, many European countries got a bit worried and decided to pass laws allowing for unionization, pension plans, unemployment insurance, minimum wages, etc. I remember Otto von Bismarck doing this as far back as 1870, before women were allowed to vote anywhere. (I remember it from history class, not from actually being there. No jokes please.) Large government pretty much took off from there. The US still lags behind the rest of the world in terms of taxes and government programs because communism was less of a menace here. We basically enacted bigger government simply because the rest of the civilized world seemed to be doing the same.
P.S. What about all the laws against drug use that our country seems to love? Those seem to favor safety over individual freedom and responsibility. I don’t think that women are to blame for them, though. Even though they did get alcohol banned back in the twenties, we see that today it is the male politicians (particularly Republicans, those who ostensibly value liberty and minimal government the most) who are most in favor of strict drug laws.
Crafter, I credit you for you’re original and interesting view of American history. Innovative theories should be encouraged, even if they turn out to be complete bullshit.
John Adams replying to Abigail: I’m sory dear, but we cannot remember the ladies on the matter of voting. You are far too concerned with security, safty and social cooperation. This are things our new nation is adamently opposed to.
Yeah right.
I believe many suffergettes did make the case the women would vote for kinder more humane laws. I don’t see as that has been the case, but if women’s votes had anything to do with certain “socialist” reforms (ooh, maybe the child labour laws?) then, good!
Freedom/security, cooperation/personal resposiblity are, yes, to some extent in opposition, but both have be part of American society…forever.
D’oh! I misread the title of the thread as “Women and Vomiting”, and came in here all set to discuss eating disorders.
As for the OP, even if one accepts the basic premise (which I do not), it fails to explain why women were not allowed to vote in countries other than the US, countries which were not founded on the same principles. It also does not explain why “frontier” areas (the western US states, countries like New Zealand) tended to grant women suffrage before more settled areas.
By the way, these three things are, for our purposes, synonyms:
freedom/liberty, individual sovereignty,
as are these two:
security, safety,
So, to be brief, youa re saying men value freedom and personal responsibility, and women value security and social cooperation.
Assuming that this is true (and I can certainly understand why you might jump to these conclusions, so I’ll let you for now), how do they conflict? I can be free, personally responsible, socially cooperative, and secure all at once, as can my nation. In fact, it requires social cooperation to create the systems that ensure my security and my freedom, and will force me and my countrymen to take responsibility for our actions. So it would seem that we need each other to create a balanced whole.
Actually, when I look at the different voting patterns in, say, this past Presidential election among men and women, I often think that I would be more than willing to sacrifice my own right to vote, as a male, for the good of this nation! Sometimes it seems to me that testerone and intelligent voting habits don’t mix very well…But, hey, that’s just my biases!
Let me reiterate: in general, males value freedom while females value safety and security. I’m certainly not saying this true for all males & females; it’s a generalization based on painfully obvious patterns of human behavior throughout history. Sorry to ruffle some feathers, but I think you would have to be in extreme denial to disagree. (I once read an introductory book on anthropology, and the “male = freedom / female = security” assertion was taught in the first chapter.)
Reading your OP again… I address your assertion: Hooey. You are giving the founding penises WAY too much credit for thinking things through on the subject of gender.
They werent’ looking at female vs. male *value systems *, for god’s sake! That implies that they believed that women had value systems at all! It is a fact that men did NOT, in general, believe women to be intelligent or informed. It is a fact that men generally made it a point to see that women were not educated or well-informed. Men ruled. Men liked ruling. Men wished to continue to rule. Hence, no girlz allowed. Our country was founded on rules not unlike those implemented in tree houses throughout our nation.
Assuming that Crafter_Man’s tidy generalization contains a kernel of truth, who’s to say that women aren’t right to value security and social cooperation over liberty and freedom?
Anyway, Stoidela is absolutely right. None of these values are mutually exclusive and the best society probably contains a nice balance of security, social cooperation, and personal freedom.
I have considered this topic, in different terms, for a long long time. Not implying that women necessarily all voted similarly, even before women could vote there were different political agendas, but that in granting women the right to vote a huge, uh, thing was created in our politics.
If we are to consider the female population to be about 50% the male population, suddenly granting women the right to vote is undeniably going to cause an incredible shift. Even if, as someone pointed out, the difference between men and women are societally imposed, that doesn’t change the fact that they are socially different and would also vote differently, have different views on how they should be goverened, ad nauseum.
However, even then I’m williing to bet that even women didn’t agree with each other on lots of things. It is very likely that at the time women voted similarly with their family, though I can’t support this with a quote. What happened, IMHO, is that politics got a whole lot messier in degree, though not different in structure.
Sometimes it seems to me that testerone and intelligent voting habits don’t mix very well…But, hey, that’s just my biases!