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.
How else does the dollar store version of Ann Coulter stay relevant, if not by making one pointless statement after another?
/YAWN
Okay, Ms. Bitch (*snort*), even taking your screed as a valid point, there’s something I don’t get. The logic seems to be that women with draftable loved ones will be less likely to vote for politicians who might get those loved ones killed in military ventures. So…why are husbands and sons the only loved ones who count? Lots of women with neither still have brothers, fathers, boyfriends, platonic male friends…shouldn’t the same calculus also apply to them? “Hell no, I’m not voting for that warhawk; my brother Larry is of military age.” What’s with the weird Neo-confucian definition of women’s loyalties?
So, what are we going to do with all of these soldiers and how do we plan to pay them? I mean, that is a reasonable question when people want to bring up mandatory military service, right? Because right now about 0.5% joins.
Given that she appears to be getting her inspiration from dystopian novels, heaven help us if she dips into the Handmaid’s Tale (written by a fellow Canadian). Presumably she’d cast herself as Serena Joy, on the basis of some spurious justification.
@Karalora
JB’s probably a single child, is all.
Does she at any point state that you have to be American? She isn’t herself, right? I’ve cracked the code!
This new, exciting ruling will grant women world wide the ability to vote in American elections! Now, I’m not in the military, but I do work WITH defense personnel, and I get an equivalent rank for management purposes, so I’m in, I think…
The idiot. The fucking idiot. She forgets that this was tried in Canada, 100 years ago, sorta. It did NOT result in pro-war, conservative women voting, as the right-wing warmongers in Parliament had hoped. What it did do was show the stark misogynous hypocrisy of the men making the laws AND sending boys off to the wars. And it brought out more women demanding the vote, with or without sons and brothers and husbands/fiancés in khaki. And they got it, along with full personhood (no men required!) in 1929. The Famous Five…look ’em up, lady.
She also forgets that women did fight, and die, protesting to win the vote for the rest of us. Even idiotic ingrates like her, who wouldn’t know how to use theirs if the need came up and bit them on the crotch. Google the Suffragettes sometime, Andrea…if you have the brains or the guts to do it. Somehow I doubt you will.
http://wpm1920.weebly.com/uploads/6/2/4/4/6244714/1349623029.jpg
Nellieeeeeee
@Bina
Has anybody ever mentioned how awesome you are? Because you’re pretty awesome.
@Handsome “Punkle Stan” Jack
Nope, she’s got four brothers. But I don’t think she likes them very much.
Though it is true that women without husbands or sons will likely have at least one man in her life whom she wouldn’t want to see sent off to war. Though does Hardie seriously imagine that the main proponents of warfare for all these generations have been women? I would recommend that woman read a few history books.
Most of us have dads. How do we not have “skin in the game”?
http://67.media.tumblr.com/5231c08eda9d71218501be3ee5e8678c/tumblr_mm3j5nr1oA1sp6pkao1_500.gif
…Was she…was she, like, the youngest? Like, they were all much older than her and had little impact in her life? Was she forced to do all the chores while they got to just sit around or something so she resents them? Is she such an awful person, they cut her out from her life or something?
I mean, for real.
Shitty dads? Too old for the draft, somehow? JB also hates her dad, he isn’t alive or it just slipped her mind?
you could have a pretty good premise for a “Handmaid’s Tale”-esque dystopian novel with her ideas…
that’s the best thing i can say about all this.
@marinerachel – Maybe JB figured that fathers of women (18 or older) would be less likely to be drafted based on age? But then she says:
so who knows. (ETA: Ninja’d by Jack!)
@Bina – I was just thinking of that! Only I wouldn’t have summoned or summed up the history so handily.
Another Canadian suffragist: Thérèse Casgrain, who campaigned for the right of women to vote in Quebec (didn’t happen until 1940, unlike in the rest of Canada – boo to my home base for that). More info: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/therese-casgrain
For you, Lars:
As much fun as it is to speculate about Harding’s relationships with her male relatives, I think we all know the reason she laid out the stipulations the way she did: because to a conservative like her, real women, worthy women, are wives and mothers. There is no “sister and daughter” standard. I used the term Neo-confucian for a reason.
sorry don’t know how to embed
http://youtu.be/ThUAahmAtDE
@Dreadnought (and epitome):
B’awwwww, shucky darn. I’m just surprised so much of Grade 9 history class has stuck with me after all these years. Funny to think that this country was on the brink of outright revolution just 100 years ago. And how the Conservatives got their butts stomped for proposing something very much like what this idiot proposed here. For DECADES.
And just think, those were MUCH less progressive times, too.
I genuinely don’t understand. Is she strongly anti-war? Does she think women vote for wars recklessly unless they fear losing their husbands or sons?
I happen to have both. I’m also a feminist, which I think she doesn’t like? Lots of feminists have husbands and sons.
I guess my question is, how does she think disenfranchising women without male spouses or children will change anything else?
Complaint: People not directly subject to the “draft” (selective service) should have their basic voting rights curtailed.
Contradiction: Supports a literal de-facto draft dodger, in his campaign to be head of state and Commander in Chief
http://gph.is/2agDsJa
@Podkayne Lives, she thinks that women do vote for reckless wars for men to die in. That’s a pretty common MRA … I can’t even call it a lie, it’s so far outside of reality that I don’t know what to call it. It’s their belief that women are the puppet-masters behind war, so that their beta mens can go conquer other people to steal their scented fucking candles and make them slave in the bon-bon mines.
Which is so far beyond what actually happens in the world that it makes me dizzy.
@Bina, you are the best. I second.
@Bina
Thank you for informing us a bit of Canadian history.
@Grogepi
http://www.salon.com/2016/09/15/trump-targets-the-fda-food-police-calls-for-elimination-of-food-safety-regulations-in-new-tax-plan/
How the in the ever loving realm of niflheim is this bozo only 1 or 2 points below Hillary in the polls?
@Karalora
While I don’t disagree with your thesis, and while I will allow that Confucian thought prioritizes the authority of the father and son in the household (and that its ideological echoes still exist in the greater Sinosphere), I would like to play the pedant and point out that the term “Neo-Confucian”, strictly speaking, applies to a school of thought that peaked some time in the 9th century CE (and that “New Confucianism” applies to a 20th-century movement to fuse Western rationalism with a Confucian socio-moral framework).
Re: sister and daughter
Of course that doesn’t count. You didn’t hafta do anything in order to be a sister or daughter. That’s accident of birth stuff. Nah, if you wanna vote, ya gotta earn it. Get a real job! Hence wife and mother. Ya hafta actually get off your jiggly asses and do something. For a male. Duh. Maybe then you’ll quit voting with your vagina and start voting with your son’s penis. Wait, that came out wrong. The combined, gestalt penis of your son and husband. Yeah, that’s it. Also, something about Islam. Nailed it!
…
And… scene. Outta curiosity, does this woman have a following. I don’t mean general antifeminists. Specific Hardie fans. Like how certain woman haters are all about Elam, but think Roosh is a cuck. Or does she just piggyback off every other sexist?
@Oogly
Cos she’s a pathologically lying, communist, neoliberal, weak on terrorism, genocide advocating, bigoted, SJW, who rigged the primary, killed video games, and orchestrated the Benghazi attack, all while slowly dying of Super Ebola
Oh, and she’s a woman. That too…
See, this is why feminists often argue that patriarchal ideas affect men just as badly as women. Men should be insulted by this woman, who worships the military and apparently thinks that it is her duty to pump out future men for the sole purpose of being brutalized and butchered at a young age fighting some war that they have no “skin in the game in”, because it’s probably at the behest of other, more wealthy men fighting over commodities like oil. What a deluded fool she is.