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.
Lol.
However, I do think the franchise should be earned. It’s my opinion (just an opinion, mind) that every US citizen should be required to go through the same process that legal immigrants are forced to go through before we get to vote.
Quite aside from giving us a fuller appreciation of US history and customs, it would also make the electorate much more sympathetic to our immigrant population.
I also think that in an ideal world, people would have to somehow prove they have some idea what the issues up for vote are before they get to vote. Unfortunately, that can’t happen because it would disproportionately disenfranchise certain minorities, and because the two sides of the US’s severely partisan political spectrum would never be able to agree on what the issues are, because we’re all operating out of incompatible notions of reality.
My 2 cents.
@Joek
He knows what’s up
Since Bina beat me to mentioning the Canadian conscription crisis during WW1 I’ll note that the issue resurfaced during WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1944
Hardie apparently hasn’t been paying attention to the question of combat roles for women in the Canadian Armed Forces. All such roles are now open to women, the last holdout being submarines, which only became open for women in 2000.(Not that anyone should want to serve in our current subs, given the problems they’ve had since we bought them from the UK in 1998.) So presumably if the Canadian government decided to reintroduce conscription it would apply to women as well.
It’s really simple.
As I’ve heard a few MRA-types declare over the years, “Men bleed on the battlefield; women bleed on the birthing bed.”
This is just her way of reconciling her investment in gender roles with her investment in military service = the right to vote.
It’s not enough that women “bleed on the birthing bed,” unless they’re producing children for a good ol’fashioned nuclear family. Women aren’t allowed to just have babies; they need to be under the control of a man. Additionally, only having girls leaves their work half done.
Meanwhile, you need a reason to force attachment of women to men in order to make this work at all. Without social pressure and the denial of education and jobs, it turns out that marriages are more temporary — or even more optional — than she’s convinced herself is ideal. Again, too many women exercising too much self-determination.
She just thinks she’s figured out the key to forcing women back into the kitchen; either you’re a woman who does womanly things or you’re a sort of pseudo-woman who she’ll begrudgingly give some rights to if you do manly things like join the army (and thus, she can avoid accusations of hypocrisy or mindless misogyny — “It’s because women don’t do stuff I think is important, not because they’re women per se!”). You have to pick one or the other, and I’m guessing she’s banking on the majority of women picking the birthing bed over the battleground.
She’s not really as clever as she thinks she is. This isn’t even subtle, but then look who we’re talking about. *rolls eyes*
(I also think it’s safe to assume that anyone in the LGBTQ community doesn’t even register for her. I’m sure she could work them in if you asked her, but I doubt anyone here cares to hear any more tortured logic from her.)
Hey David! The man who pleaded guilty to killing his 21 month old daughter on the 20th of February, said he killed her because he was jealous of her. The poor girl survived eye cancer only to be murdered by her own father because of the attention she received because of her cancer! Unbelievable! Here’s the link to the news article.
http://metro.co.uk/2016/09/17/man-admits-killing-daughter-because-he-was-jealous-of-the-attention-she-got-for-surviving-cancer-6134933/?ito=twitter
OK, I think I’m starting to understand her underlying logic:
As Scildfreya said,
And that’s why women must be stopped from voting. She’s a pacifist!
Which is why she, as Grogepi said,
The thing she hates even more than women is the way we suckle on the manly teat of Big Daddy Government. And what aspect of BDG is Bigger, Daddier and a greater part of government expenditure than the military?
People need to stop relying on big government. If they want to wage war on another country, they should do it themselves, not be drafted into some totalitarian armed force. She’s an anarchist!
And if another country invades Canada (for example, the US under President Rodham Clinton), she and her menfolk will drive them off themselves like proper self-reliant people do. Or collaborate with the invaders if they are led by President Trump. I bet she is looking forward to turning her neighbours in to the Militärverwaltung.
A pacifist who has a thing about wanting to kill people with crossbows. :rollseyes:
Um.
We’ve subjected people to testing before they get to vote before. It didn’t work out so well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
@MissEB47
I don’t have the courage to look at it yet.
I’m nauseated and sad. Also, kind of panicky.
No worries: It’s important to know about the real world, whether it’s blue skies or . . . guys like this.
@joekster: Sadly, what weirwood said.
@WWTH
Yes, we did. You’re right, it didn’t. It’s a terrible idea…
Let me dream 🙂
Andy Hardy: all-around good guy — but because of his age often embroiled in trouble; willing to listen to reason; fictional
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Hardy
Andrea Hardie: thoroughgoing jerk — often embroiled in some hateful controversy; willing to listen only to hate; a living person — but her opinions might be fictional
@WWTH: I’m not talking about a ‘literacy test’. I mean the entire process: fingerprinting, interview, civics test, English test (not sure about that last one. It seems odd to me that to legally immigrate to the US, you have to prove you can speak fluent English, but, hey, if it’s appropriate for these people, it should be appropriate for us, right?)oath of allegiance, etc. My best man at my wedding is a naturalized US citizen (born in Venezuela), and it took him four years to get through the process. By the end of it, he was schooling me in US history, and I’d always fancied myself a history nerd.
Becoming a naturalized citizen of the US is a fairly involved process, and it’s something I’d wager most voters (on both sides of the aisle) wouldn’t be willing to go through themselves (which I find incredibly hypocritical, but maybe it’s somehow appropriate to expect far more of people not fortunate enough to have been born on US soil). It also requires a great deal of education in US history and governance beyond what is generally taught in high school, and which the US electorate would benefit greatly from knowing before they voted on issues that will shape the future course of this country.
If you’re interested in the process, below is the US customs and immigration service summary of the process.
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/files/article/chapter5.pdf
Of course, if there was any chance of this actually happening, we’d have to install some sort of safeguards to ensure that the process wasn’t slanted against people of low SES (such as the literacy tests you mentioned above, which were designed to disenfranchise people of color). Not sure how we’d do that, but then, it’s a hypothetical, as it would never happen. The US electorate would never subject themselves to the hassles that go with becoming a naturalized citizen of the USA.
Anyhow, I’m to bed. See you all tomorrow.
(Erratum: I just realized that in my prior post, I said ‘before we get to vote’, which may have read as if I were claiming to be a naturalized citizen myself. I am a native US citizen, and I find myself ashamed of how much we put people trying to become naturalized through, none of which I had to do, just because I was born in the US).
There’s no possible way that making it harder to vote will not result in disenfranchising the least privileged members of society. That’s why Republicans are always trying to make it harder to vote.
@DarkStatistic:
I know…isn’t that inane?
Of course, the problem with this is that women don’t determine the sex of the zygote/embryo/fetus. It’s the sperm, not the egg, that does that, seeing as eggs can only carry an X chromosome and sperm can carry X or Y. If a man wants a son to carry on “the family name”, he’d best be shooting a lot of healthy, fast-swimming Y-bearers. So having sons isn’t really an achievement for a woman, even when that’s the only apparent “achievement” this one values (or deems valid for women to boast of, rather). It’s the man’s “fault” if he only gets his spouse pregnant with daughters. This is why I found it ludicrous that Henry VIII kept divorcing and beheading his various wives for “failing” to furnish him a suitably male heir. Even when it’s a man’s problem, somehow a woman is always to blame. The only way it could possibly square is through the magic of misogyny.
I’d also like to point out for the benefit of any woman-hating lurkers that (cis) women bleed not only on the birthing bed, but once a month between the ages of 12 and 50 (roughly; there are outliers either way), barring pregnancies and other health conditions that can cause menses to temporarily stop. Cumulatively, we shed (and replace!) more blood while simply living than most (cis) male soldiers do while fighting. Probably we suffer a lot more pain that way than they do fighting, too. Not that that’s an achievement either; it’s just a simple fact of life and we cope with it as such. But it’s one the patriarchy and its misogyny-internalizing FeMRA lackeys routinely ignore, belittle and dismiss in their concerted efforts to make us not count for shit.
And it’s even more ludicrously used as an excuse to keep us out of power…even as they’re making “hormonal” excuses for why men should get away with rape (“Oh, men can’t help raping, because hormones!“), they’re making OTHER “hormonal” excuses for why women shouldn’t get good jobs, equal pay, equal promotions, or an equal shot at the highest office in the land. “Oh, you can’t hire/pay or promote equally/trust women with the nuclear launch codes, because HORMONES!” Men and their “hormones” get a free pass for everything (hell, Mussolini even raped a female journalist right in his office for daring to ask him a few hard questions!), but let a woman who manages her hormonal ups and downs rather well get even a little out of line, and all hell breaks loose. How DARE she choose career over family! All she and her hormones are supposed to be good for is breeding. Bleah.
“All societies?” Is she unaware Israel exists or does she not think it’s a society?
And if you want to hear about women fighting for suffrage and pretty clearly giving a fuck, I highly recommend s2e2 (Of Mice and Police-Men) of Iszi Lawrence’s excellent podcast Z List Dead List.
Kat- that’s ok. Just learnt about him this morning and it was quite shock. It still amazes what men like him do because of their entitlement. I am so angry for that poor girl. 🙁
No, we should not be making voting harder. We should be making it less of a clusterfuck as it is.
Andrea Hardie usually has such well-thought-out arguments — it’s a mystery to me why academia rejected her.
Ha, ha! I am of course kidding.
This argument is her usual garbage:
Women fought for one hundred years in the USA to win the right to vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_United_States
More Andrea Hardie idiocy:
(Emphasis mine; she seems to think that she’s the world’s ruler/deity.)
General Douglas MacArthur (that notorious feminist) disagreed with Andrea Hardie. He believed that democracy stabilized a government and that women were more likely to vote for peace, not war:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_MacArthur
I’m sure that the USA wanted democracy to flourish in Japan so that the USA wouldn’t have to fight that country again. That doesn’t, however, make democracy any less of a good. It’s also worth pointing out that some Japanese feminists at the time felt that the US brand of democracy didn’t go nearly far enough.
How about we make voting easier so it better represents the people.
OT: Kentucky governor decides to let out his inner thoughts in all of its utter gullible inanity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlukBB3Hn1g
It certainly seems like alot of bigots are becoming a bit bolder in exclaiming particular views than last election.
Joekster said
In that utopia, it would also be nice if the same criteria applied to those allowed to run for office. Sadly in the real world, the same problems apply. But a voluntary accreditation process would be nice – a candidate sitting those citizenship tests and demonstrating they can pass them gets them a “blue tick”.
I can dream…
@MissEB47
I read it.
Horrible.
Domestic violence takes many, many forms.
@Scildfreja Unnýðnes
Just for you. 🙂
Heritage Minutes: Nellie McClung
@wwth interestingly, last I checked trans men are not required to register for the US draft but trans women are. Which is kind of piling one gross piece of bioessentialism onto another, but maybe JB would think your trans daughter or wife is a ruined and suffocated boy (likely your fault) whose registration is not qualifying, and that your trans son or husband doesn’t count as a man. But it also renders the statement “US women don’t have to register for the draft” less than true.
And are conscientious objectors cool? What if I marry a super manly bearded Quaker and have 12 strapping Quaker sons?
(Apologies if I’m re-making a point that’s been made; I only skimmed the thread so far.)
I kinda love how Hardie and her ilk think of “military service” as absolutely equal to “being sent out to fight and die”. Speaking as someone who lives in a country that actually has a draft (for both men and women)… I served in the army, but had a desk job. So did my brother. So did a lot of people I know. In fact, especially when you have a mandatory nation-wide draft, you end up with a lot of surplus young people; you can’t send everyone out to fight. Even in a war, you still need clerks, drivers, cooks, aerial photography readers, mechanics, IT people, etc. etc., and a whole lot of draftees will end up in those jobs. Why do they have more “skin in the game” than civilians?
Yes, this is a very minor nitpick on a very terrible bigger point, but still, I’m amused by the way people tend to think of “the army”, especially those who haven’t been there.