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MRA: Women Couldn’t Vote.That Was “Oppression?”

Women campaigning for suffrage for no real reason, because not voting was just what women did back then.

I swear, sometimes I wonder if the entire Men’s Rights Movement is an elaborate hoax.  Our old friend Fidelbogen weighs in today with a typically pompous post on the cutting-edge issue of women’s suffrage, posted with the almost-too-good-to-be-true headline: Women Couldn’t Vote.That Was “Oppression?” If I didn’t know better, I’d be tempted to dismiss it as half-baked satire – except that FB is serious, deadly serious.  (And deadly dull, too, most of the time, but I’ll try to keep this snappy.)

Fidelbogen’s thesis:

It annoys me to hear the feminists say that women were “oppressed” because they didn’t have the voting franchise in olden days. Excuse me. . . oppressed? I would take exception to the semantics in this case, for is not a bit clear to me that what was happening ought to be called by such a heinous name.

While most people are either for or against women having the right to vote – though I’ve never met any of the latter group outside of MRA blogs – FB bravely declares himself “a third way thinker upon this subject.”

Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen, because Fidelbogen is going to get all philosophical on us:

 I would submit that women’s historical lack of voting rights was neither a good thing nor a bad thing. Rather, it was a morally indifferent state of affairs, based on a cultural consensus that was shared by men and women alike in the past.

Hey, it was the olden days. People wore silly hats and watched silent movies and no one had iPhones.

Our ancestors lived in a very, very different world than we do, and their cultural norms were very, very different from ours, yet undoubtedly befitting to their world — a world mysterious and unknown to us nowadays. Who are we to judge?

I mean, really, how dare we offer any sort of moral judgment of anything that happened in the past. The Holocaust? Stalin’s purges? Hey, it was the mid-twentieth century – people were just into that shit back then.

Well, FB doesn’t mention either Hitler or Stalin, but he definitely considers women’s former lack of voting rights to be just one of those things that, hey, people were into back then:

[W]as it really, inherently, such a horrible thing after all, that women could not vote? … Why should it even matter? Did the average woman in those days honestly feel that voting was “all that”? Seriously. . . who are we to judge the men and women of past times for their very different way of life which we can no longer entirely fathom?

And besides, most men had been denied the vote earlier, so even if it matters and it totally doesn’t, what’s the big deal if the dudes in charge decided to deny the vote to the ladies for a while longer? As FB puts it:

[W]as it really such an unspeakable crime that the female population couldn’t always go to the polls during that comparatively trifling span of years?

Or is that entire concept nothing but feminist historiography, meant to wring pathos out of history for present-day political purposes by the device of retrojection? That would certainly conform to standard feminist tricknology, wouldn’t it?

Seriously. Those feminologicalnists are totally retrojecting the fuck out of the pastological period using their standard sneakyfulogicalnistic tricknology.

And besides, even though we’re not supposed to judge the past, and even thought that whole denying-the-ladies-the-vote thing was totally a “morally indifferent thing which ought to concern us very little,” FB thinks that maybe it was actually sort of, you know, cool.

I believe a case might be constructed that it was a positive good in the context of those times.

FB decides to leave that case unmade, and returns to the whole “who the fuck cares” argument.

Once upon a time, women didn’t have the voting franchise because societal norms found nothing amiss about such an arrangement. Then times changed, norms changed, and women were admitted to the franchise. That’s all. And women were never, at any point along that general story-line, “oppressed.”

Besides, the whole idea of “rights” is, well, just like, an opinion, man.

Furthermore, women were never at any time deprived of any rights. You see, women’s “right” to vote simply did not exist in the first place — or not during the period when the so-called deprivation occurred. I mean that “rights” are only a figment. Only a mentation. Only a notion. Only a construct. Rights do not exist in their own right. They are not some mystical pure essence which hangs in the air all by itself — they must be conjured into existence by a strictly human will-to-power, and fixed by law or custom.

And so, if the dudes of the world denied the ladies these “rights,” well, uh, it was “morally indifferent” yet also probably good for some reason.

In conclusion, shut your pie holes, ladies:

So in conclusion, I wish that second and third-wave feminists would shut the hell up with their dishonest, self-laudatory rhetoric about “the vote”. They need to quit tooting on that rusty old horn. It is getting really, really old.

Well, unless they’re this lady. She’s actually pretty good at tooting a horn.

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KathleenB
KathleenB
13 years ago

Ami: Whoa, does NWO run around with a sword, beheading other immortals? Because that would be kind of awesome.

Holly Pervocracy
13 years ago

Oh fine. God this is a sickness.

Did men fight wars to save their wives and children? Why yes they did.
Men often fought wars for their own benefit, and to the detriment of the women and children in the places they attacked. Also, women serve in the military.

Did women from aggressor countries cheer men to their deaths to bring them more exotic goods? Why yes they did.
No. This is Mars logic.

Did women whose country was being attacked cheer men to save them? Why yes they did.
Oh these evil women, selfishly wanting to not die.

Did men often send the women and children away from danger zones in war to protect them? Why yes they did.
So did (and do) other women. This is a good thing for men to do, but it’s not so uniquely good that completely different men should get special privileges forever.

Have men always willingly done the most hazardous work to support their families? Why yes the have.
Women do and have done lots of hazardous jobs, and are actively asking to be allowed to do more.

Have men died in staggering numbers in these dangerous jobs to support their families? Why yes they have.
See above. Also, do you believe that men with desk jobs should be allowed to vote?

Did mothers instruct their daughters to make sure they marry a man of means? Why yes they did.
Marrying a man of means was necessary when it was impossible to be a woman of means by any other method. Fortunately, thanks to feminism it’s possible for a woman to make her own money, which takes a lot of pressure off men.

I hope this disproves the otherwise-ironclad thesis “women never contribute anything to society because they just lie around and men feed them bon-bons and mammoth meat.”

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

Yes! xD

HERREEEE WE AREEEEE

BORRNNNN TO BE KINNNNGGGSSSSSS

katz
13 years ago

Someone’s adding all that to the Big Book of Larnin’, right?

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

@Holly

OH! Talking about Mars logic. I figured out how NWO can work 28 hour days actually! He’s on VENUS! XD so actually he’s slacking off… cuz Venusian days are 224.7 Earth days… so he’s only spending 28 Earth hours of that time working xD

THAT’S where he gets the time to spend trolling all these sites online xD

KathleenB
KathleenB
13 years ago

Oh, now I’m imaginable NWO meeting Methos. Nwo would get his ass handed to him on a platter…

Holly Pervocracy
13 years ago

I would really love to hear NWO name which specific wars were caused by ladies’ insatiable lusts for fancy shoes and pretty dresses, or whatever “exotic goods” he thinks those harpies were clamoring for.

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

@Holly ALL of them

@Kathleen Methos was BY FAR the coolest person on that show 😀

Pecunium
13 years ago

Kirby: @Moewicus:

He’s deleted three or four of mine… Yet some snark has been left standing for some reason.

It’s protective cover. When someone says, “He edits things to make himself look good,” he can say, “no, look at the nasty shit they said. I don’t need to edit them, and they are just upset at how bad their own words make them look.”

NWOslave
NWOslave
13 years ago

@Holly Pervocracy
“NWO, all I got out of your comment was “men exist and they’ve done stuff, so women weren’t oppressed.”

And all you ever say is how women were oppressed not only in the past but even today. Do tell. What special laws are there just for men.
The draft is the only law I can think of that is exclusively for men.
Are there a lot of State sponsored grants, loans, business ventures and other entitlements for men?
Are there a lot of charities and corporate sponsors just for men?

Can you name me a lot of hardships from the past where women suffered disproportionally compared to men? And if they did suffer disproportionally, did men have hardships where they suffered disproportionally?

If men and women each had their own crosses to carry, than no one was oppressed. There’s no patriarchy to blame. There’s no men to blame.

If you insist on blaming men for womens harships in the past, I wil continue to point to all the areas where women are to blame.

If you say patriarchy, this shifts the blame from all women to men systematically oppressing women. There is no patriarchy.

Every time you say women were oppressed. I will use the same tactics as you. Strawman, Ad Homenim. The zero sum game. All of it. As soon as you say, women are/were oppressed it will instantly become a zero sum game. Women were never oppressed.

Pecunium
13 years ago

Did men often send the women and children away from danger zones in war to protect them? Why yes they did.

Sometimes. Sometimes they just drove them out of the city to die.

KathleenB
KathleenB
13 years ago

Ami: Oh, yeah, Methos was awesome. Not nearly so much a stick in the mud as McLeod…

Moewicus
Moewicus
13 years ago

In order to claim oppression, you have to actually be oppressed. Men as a whole, have always had it much harder in every aspect of society than women as a whole. So how can women as a whole claim oppression? If you’re going to point at a tiny handful of elite men who had it better, I can play the same strawman game. Isabella sat at the table with ferdinand and the pope when they divied up the new world. She was a woman therefore all women were oppressors of men. There. See. I played the strawwoman game.

You’re already adept at created Straw Persons, NWOslavey, it’s how you work. We’re neither surprised nor impressed.

You might want to look up the term “Kyriarchy.” We all also know that you disdain “wiki-smarts” but it has its own page on Wikipedia, just sitting there waiting for you to go and read it.

Indeed as you point out, most men have had a hard time of it through history. Most women have, too. Who, after all, got carried off to enemy camps and cities as the spoils of ancient wars? Who was considered whose property in a Roman family? Who was given away to other families by their fathers in order to cement alliances, obtain more property, etcetera? All of that is oppression of women because they are women. Oppression is oppression whether you might be considered in the most comfortable cage or not.

And if you want to go into the stupid game of who had it worse–tell me, how often were wars fought in the ancient world? Who was deliberately told they couldn’t fight, couldn’t develop strength or skill to defend themselves because of gender roles? How do the few relatively short campaigns that most men in history would be expected to participate in compare to being someone else’s property and living in servitude for a lifetime? How do you even stack these things against each other?

Not that I’m playing that game. Most people have been oppressed throughout history. You, on the other hand, seem to think it’s some kind of binary game in which one gender sits on the couch and eats bon-bons while sending the other off to amuse them with a giant game of Risk. That…why, that is just stupid. Your simplistic arguments and views are why you are so thoroughly mocked here and it is why your views will never gain any traction among people who know half a shit about what they are talking.

NWOslave
NWOslave
13 years ago

@Pecunium
“Sometimes. Sometimes they just drove them out of the city to die.”

Oh goody! The zero sum game.

And sometimes women shamed men into dying for them. Will you run away like a coward and let them kill your sons and rape your wive and daughters?”

Ya wanna play some more?

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
13 years ago

“HERREEEE WE AREEEEE

BORRNNNN TO BE KINNNNGGGSSSSSS”

Wait. I’m an actual Highlander by birth, and I know how to use a sword, and I’m a feminist. Does this make me NWO’s nemesis?

I kind of feel like I deserve a more challenging nemesis, honestly.

KathleenB
KathleenB
13 years ago

NWO: And Greek mothers would tell their sons marching off to war at the ass end of the earth (as they knew it) to “Come home with your shield or on it!” People cheer war, for some stupid, ungodly reason. It’s not just women.

Holly Pervocracy
13 years ago

Are there a lot of State sponsored grants, loans, business ventures and other entitlements for men?
No. White people, straight people, and rich people suffer similarly. (There’s plenty of opportunities open to these people, just not specific ones that are closed to other groups.)

Although there are some. My nursing school, for instance, has a “Men in Nursing” scholarship, because nursing is a field where men are under-represented. Men do not get scholarships in fields where they are already represented.

Are there a lot of charities and corporate sponsors just for men?
I’m not sure what you mean by “corporate sponsors,” but there are certainly charities for men’s health, for prison reform (mostly affecting men), and for male survivors of abuse.

Also, a charity isn’t something that the system just hands to you. If you want there to be a men’s charity, start one.

Can you name me a lot of hardships from the past where women suffered disproportionally compared to men?
Well, we couldn’t vote, for one. (Some men couldn’t vote, but this wasn’t because they were men. It was because they were poor or black or other things you don’t approve of.) Also sometimes we were treated like property and it was legal for our husbands to rape us and sometimes beat or kill us and we couldn’t own property and sometimes were married off as children and almost never could hold the same jobs for the same pay as men.

For starters.

And if they did suffer disproportionally, did men have hardships where they suffered disproportionally?
Actually, yes. Men often were the ones to get drafted into the military, for instance. I think this is terrible and that’s why I support women in combat.

If everyone is oppressed, that’s not “fair,” that’s a reason to try to get everyone un-oppressed.

Pecunium
13 years ago

NWO: You are the one who keeps painting the twin games of, “men had it worse” and “men are always sacrificing for women”.

Neither of which are true. Most men have always had it bad. Women are not the reason. The reason is some men played other men against themselves.

But you, you are convinced that it was all better back then, if it weren’t for all the women.

You blame women for all the evils in the world, as it was is now, was in the beginning, and ever shall be.

It’s so not true it’s past wrong, and into the realms of fantasy.

NWOslave
NWOslave
13 years ago

@Moewicus
“And if you want to go into the stupid game of who had it worse–tell me, how often were wars fought in the ancient world? Who was deliberately told they couldn’t fight, couldn’t develop strength or skill to defend themselves because of gender roles?”

Yaay, more zero sum games.

Ahh, helen of troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. Go kill, go die for me. Ahh the anciencts in Rome. The richest women in the world at the time, demanding men kill and die and pillage, to bring back silk and perfume and luxury goods to satiate their every whim.

Women were “told” they couldn’t fight. What didn’t women have the moxie to up and do stuff?

Aren’t we having fun now?

C’mon lets play.

Pecunium
13 years ago

Dude… Helen didn’t say that. Her husband said, “That man stole my woman, help me go kill him.”

By the way… do you know what zero sum equation/game is?

KathleenB
KathleenB
13 years ago

Eh, that should read ‘ancient Greek parents, not just mothers. I has a tired…

Holly Pervocracy
13 years ago

I know it’s just ol’ NWO, but this stuff about grants and charities is getting to me.

MRAs never seem to understand that if you want a thing to happen, you do it yourself. Petitioning the government to do it for you is only sometimes effective, complaining that feminists haven’t done it for you is never effective, and attacking charities that benefit other groups because they don’t benefit your group is completely ass-backwards.

If you want there to be a men’s scholarship, take up a collection and find a school that will accept an endowment with the stipulation “for an outstanding male student.”

If you want there to be shelters for abused men, open one.

If you want there to be a charity supporting single fathers, start one.

These things didn’t just magically appear for women because they whined hard enough (no, really. they didn’t), and they’re not going to magically appear for men.

NWOslave
NWOslave
13 years ago

@Pecunium
“Neither of which are true. Most men have always had it bad. Women are not the reason. The reason is some men played other men against themselves.”

Yippeee!!! More fun.

More to the point would be women playing men against other men of wealth in the past. “Samantha’s husband bought her a new silk dress imported from china when the caravans came by. If you weren’t a lazy worthless laborer and made something of yourself I could be wearing silk instead of rags. Beggers have finer things than we do!”

This is fun!

Moewicus
Moewicus
13 years ago

Yaay, more zero sum games.

Are you complaining? You’re the one who presented the issue as a zero-sum game, asshat. I was pointing out how idiotic that is.

Ahh, helen of troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. Go kill, go die for me.

You realize that is fiction, right? You also realize that it was Menelaus and Agamemnon who did the whole “go kill, go die for me” thing, right?

Right? I do not take your understanding of either point for granted. Your reading comprehension skills have not been adequately demonstrated.

Ahh the anciencts in Rome. The richest women in the world at the time, demanding men kill and die and pillage, to bring back silk and perfume and luxury goods to satiate their every whim.

And the all-male Senate–you know, the people with the actual power– was doing what? Living as aesthetes to please their wives?