With election day here in the US less than two months away, Andrea Hardie has decided that maybe it would be ok if some women were allowed to vote after all.
Hardie — the oft-suspended antifeminist Twitter activist known online as Janet Bloomfield and/or JudgyBitch — has long been a vocal opponent of women’s suffrage, on the grounds that women tend to vote for politicians who support things she thinks are bad, like economic stimulus packages and other manifestations of “Big Daddy government.”
But she’s been making some concessions on this front. Some months back, evidently taking her inspiration from Starship Troopers, she decided it would be ok for women to vote if they were to join the military — or get themselves elected to public office.
Now she’s decided that maybe it would be ok if women like her were allowed to vote too.
In a post on her terrible blog, she declares that
I have already argued that women should be allowed to earn the right to vote, either by joining the military or by being voted into leadership positions by male voters. I think I will now expand my exemptions to some other women with ‘skin in the game’.
Wives of men and mothers of sons.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Hardie falls into both of those categories, as she has regularly reminded her readers.
But ladies like her are still ladies. Why should we let them vote?
Women who are legally married to a man, who by definition is subject to the draft, have skin the game. They have a right to make leadership decisions that could result in their husband’s death. Needless to say, the right to vote is surrendered upon divorce. It can only be regained by remarriage, to a man.
Huh. Never mind that, in the US and Canada at least, there is no draft, and the chances of a draft being reinstated in the forseeable future can be rounded down to zero percent.
And never mind that all women living in a country have “skin in the game” by virtue of, you know, living in that country.
Let’s just accept her premise for a moment and work out the technicalities. Like, for example: would these women be stripped of the vote once their husbands are no longer of draft age? NOPE!
The ages of the men involved don’t really matter. In the US, the draft currently sits at 18-25 years of age, but in war time, draft ages can and do change. Men up to the age of 45 were drafted in WWII, and all men up to age 65 had to register. Men in Ukraine are currently subject to the draft up to age 50. All societies will prefer to draft men of all ages before they will draft women.
That’s quite an assumption, given that there are a lot more young women serving in the military than there are old men.
The second group is mothers of sons. They, too, have skin in the game. Once a woman has given birth to a son, she earns the right to vote on the grounds that her son can be drafted and she has a right to participate in leadership decisions that could lead to his death. The only circumstance under which this right can be revoked is if she surrenders legal custody of the boy. His adoptive mother, if there is one, earns the vote.
What if … oh never mind, it’s pointless to try to discuss this as if actual logic is involved in anything that Hardie argues.
Or facts, as her next “argument” shows:
The truly sobering thought is that even if women’s suffrage were repealed, I doubt many women would care, beyond the initial shock of ‘Muh rights! Muh rights!’ If the 19th were repealed, I sincerely doubt very many women would take any of the paths listed above for the purpose of gaining the right to vote. Women will do all of the above, but based on their personal feelings and preferences, and not because they are vitally, deeply, profoundly invested in the idea of suffrage.
It’s always seemed to me just a teensy bit strange how invested Hardie is in the whole anti-suffrage thing, because all the (admittedly halfassed) arguments she musters against women voting would seem also to apply equally to women trying to influence politics in ways other than voting. Like, for example, writing blogs and tweeting tweets and putting up videos on YouTube in order to push your political agenda — all of which Hardie herself does, of course.
And even if we accept her bizarre notion that the only women who have “skin in the game” are women in the military, elected officials, wives of men and mothers of boys, wouldn’t this exemption only apply to those women trying to influence politics in the countries in which they live?
Following Hardie’s logic to its conclusion, Canadian women like her shouldn’t have the right to publicly campaign for political candidates in the US. No skin in the game!
But who is this dude staring out from the header on her Facebook page?
He looks vaguely familiar. He doesn’t look very Canadian.
So, I see the irony of her statements have finally reached her.
“Well, women can vote, but only women who are married and/or have sons, and I happen to have both!”
But, of course, all lesbians or women in relationships with other women, or women who don’t want children or women who (Gods forbid) have daughters will all be left out in the cold. Because apparently they have a “political agenda”.
She has a political agenda too, of course, but her agenda’s the only one worth pushing, and thus it’s not an agenda, but the way the world should be!
She’s backpedaling on these rules she made up on the spot like a child on a playground.
Wait, that’s not fair to the kids. They don’t know any better.
Well, good to see she’s carving out an exception for herself. /s
Practicing to be dictator for life.
Her logic is tragically flawed. But she probably doesn’t notice that or ,perhaps worse, doesn’t care.
Imagine hating yourself, and other women this much. Knowing her history ,I am almost certain that she takes her toughts seriously.
I am so used to coded and covert bigotry, that I have a hard time processing this kind. It feels like I punched in a cheat code or something.
Someone needs to break it gently to JB that elected officials focus on many, many other things besides war and the military. Women’s healthcare, education, civil rights, public land, transportation, safety standards…we all have skin in the game. If you’re going to play the game of “this doesn’t affect you directly so you should just shut up and sit down”, then pretty much nobody should have suffrage, ever.
Can her right to vote be repealed, specifically? She’s too stupid to realize that there’s more to a government than just deciding to draft people into war, so probably for the best.
Andrea, why do you want to be American so much? I’d say “Just move there already” but a) you need to have a big bank account and marketable talents to even consider immigrating to the States, and b) I like my American friends too much to inflict you on them.
Ohhh, it’s because you’re starved for attention and just want to be noticed by the Douchebag Brigade. Gotcha. Carry on, then?
Though, a note for the future. Just because you’re shallow, narcissistic, spiteful and don’t care much about anything beyond getting your way, doesn’t mean that all women are shallow, narcissistic, spiteful and don’t care about anything beyond getting their way. So maybe just consider not voting yourself, and let other women make up their own mind without shouting at them? Just a thought.
@Anything Involving JB and the Draft
But the mothers of daughters in the military, they don’t have skin in the game, and you should not be able to have a say on whether there is a stop sign at 5th and Elm unless it could get you killed overseas while you are attempting to kill/ defend other people (domestically is just fine, thanks).
Ugh, I sincerely hope this woman is just an extended performance-art piece gone tragically profitable, like Ann Coulter or Trump himself. Every time I hear something she says, I want to start wearing a scold’s bridle in public, just to demonstrate as loudly and as silently as possible that I could say stupid things, too, I just choose not to do so.
What about draft dodgers? I mean, they specifically chose not to have any ‘skin in the game’. Should Trump’s right to vote be taken away? Only fair…
What about those who’ve skipped jury duty? It’s like a judicial draft. Can they not vote either? Any court summons?
Tax evaders? People who didn’t ration in WWII? Anyone unwilling or unable to perform any civic duty? Cos there’s a list…
Aunt Podger, I’m betting she’s in denial that women are *really* in the military. They just pretend to be while only being there to find husbands and make sandwiches and play nurse.
She doesn’t believe this stuff. She just knows which side her bread is buttered on.
She could have just said that all people who wish to vote must serve if she really believes service and the vote should be conected. That wouldn’t please her fan base though. She needs to find a way to make women subordinate to men in her suggestions in order to keep them happy.
So, I wouldn’t have to pay taxes anymore, right? I’m unmarried, childless and have never served in the military, but if I don’t get any say in how my tax dollars are spent…
Huh. So a woman who divorces a man and then marries a woman serving in the military wouldn’t be able to reclaim the right to vote under this entirely reasonable scheme?
Surely this is just an oversight on the wise JudgyBitch’s part!
Also because she isn’t about to enlist or give up her own rights.
I tried to come up with a scenario where a typical manospherian would think that women had any “skin in the game”. But the only things I could come up with would never come to vote at all unless society changed to the point where women were considered incapable of making decisions, period.
Judas,
You are trying to apply Earth logic to JB’s rants. The two simply do not mix.
I think she believes it; I’d bet money on it actually! If it isn’t legit and she’s faking… She’s been playing this tune for long enough that her opinions and the “pretend” opinions have long since started to blur together. You can only pretend for so long before the fake opinions start becoming real.
I think she believes it, and she’s just bad at spotting the flaws in her reasoning. The reasons she’s giving aren’t really thought out, either – they’re rationalizations. So yeah, full of holes and unforeseen consequences everywhere.
(I also think you’re right in that she realizes that expressing these opinions earns her money; it makes her more extreme and outspoken. But I’ve heard enough terrible people give stupid reasons for believing things to think she’s being sincere, I guess!)
You’re probably right.
Though, that’s sad. I prefer thinking she has more awareness.
Aunt Podger, only rough manly skin counts in this game. Soft, moisturised lady skin isn’t bullet proof, so it has no place in combat.
But wait! Just as a guy afraid of the draft, or already in the military, might cravenly vote against the totally necessary war with Klendathu because they don’t want to get killed, wouldn’t a wife or mother with army skin in the family be similarly swayed by emotion? Shouldn’t the only people eligible to vote be totally logical civilian stemlords, who can be relied on to apply their unemotional manlogic to the question of which brown children to burn?
@Lea, in all seriousness, I think if she read Why Does He Do That cover to cover, she’d explode into the worst tirade of her career, then go three weeks later, go into a hospital, then shave her head and become a Buddhist nun. This particular species of mold only grows in some very particular toxic conditions.
What about the mothers of trans women? Do they get to vote for awhile because they birthed someone AMAB but then get the right revoked when their daughters come out and transition? What if a woman has a son who dies? Is her right to vote revoked? What about widows? Women who are separated from their husbands but not divorced? What about women whose husbands are missing but have not yet been declared dead in absentia?
How would this law be enforced? I don’t know about how it works in Canada, but where I live, once you register to vote, you stay registered and don’t have to reregister until you move. Also, what’s to stop marriages of convenience or women having unwanted babies in order to obtain voting rights? In order to enforce this rule, you’d either have to investigate all registered women every single year, or everyone would have to reregister once a year. This would be incredibly expensive and time consuming. In other words, a lot of big daddy government would be involved.
Of course, this whole ridiculous plan is predisposed on the hypothesis that single and sonless women are more likely to vote for pro-war politicians and men are more likely to vote for anti-war politicians. While there are many anti-war men and hawkish women, in general women are more progressive and more anti-war than men. Perhaps, if the object is to stop men from being drafted and dying in war, than men should be denied the right to vote. Or conservative whites should be denied voting rights. Because I can almost guarantee that my single, childless self has protested war more often that JB has.
Right, that’s why women vote at slightly higher rates than men (in 2012, 53% of voters were female). Obviously women don’t care about voting. *rolls eyes* Just like how people claimed women had no interest in becoming educated but now attend college at higher rates than men. Unlike men, women know what’s at stake if shit slides backward. That’s why we show up more than men– we’ve got more to lose.
I don’t know why she even bothers with this tripe. It will never ever happen, so why even bother going on about it? Clinton is probably going to be president. If the election swings Democrat, we could have the highest percentage of women in Congress as ever before. And unlike JudgyBitch, these women don’t write angry screeds online while doing jack shit about working for things they want. They’ve actually shown up and done the work for the things they believe in.