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6.9.12

Women Couldn't Vote -- and That Was Not "Oppression"



This video (and the article it comes from) is gadfly material. And I love to be a gadfly occasionally, if you haven't noticed. The feminist horse needs all the gadflies it can get, until it is literally bitten to death. Or if you prefer, call this death by a thousand cuts. I mean, if the so-called "hate speech" is kept to a very, very low threshhold, it becomes impossible to call it hate speech. Instead, you might call it "get-under-their-skin speech" -- it makes them dance, it makes them squirm, but there ain't diddly-doo-bop they can do about it. Or at any rate, not without showing their hand. The point is to apply social heat and pressure slowly -- call it the crock pot principle. What the hell are they going to do, pass laws against "get-under-their-skin-speech"? No matter what they do, you can ALWAYS stay just an inch outside of any boundary they set, and you will make your message perfectly clear while keeping out of range. So you are always pushing the envelope, a bit here, a bit there, drawing them further and further from the center of their world, and deeper and deeper into the desert where you can ambush them.

As for the video -- a lot of people hated it, but there is no "misogyny" about it. I proposed an outrageous idea -- a "you wouldn't dare say that" thesis which indeed I dared to say!  That much is true. But there is no "misogyny" in stating that women of the nineteenth century were not "oppressed" when they were denied the voting franchise. The so-called oppression, you see, was never factual but only theoretical -- by virtue of a "theory" concocted ex post facto and then retrojected. To put that another way, the "oppression" was an ideological artifact of later times, crafted as a rhetorical weapon for those same times. But it never existed, in a purely objective way, at the time of the actual situation.

And remember that plenty of women, in olden times, not only didn't give a hoot about gaining the franchise, but often actively opposed it. Furthermore, not all men opposed the franchise for women. Some did, and some didn't. So in the end, we are entitled to say that certain people (male and female both) supported women's suffrage, and that certain other people (likewise male and female both) did not. Accordingly, the notion that women of the nineteenth century were somehow "oppressed" because they couldn't vote, is shown to be highly problematic.

Misogynist? Who, me? No, there is not a speck of misogyny about anything I've said here, because no hatred of women is stated or implied, ever, in any form. And if you feel otherwise, then you are frankly an emotionalistic, chickenshit little ninny.

Now, if I the present writer were to propose that the nineteenth amendment to the United States Constitution be repealed, and that women be banned from the polling stations, then in the present historical context you might have a case that I had proposed an "oppressive" measure. And you would have a stronger case that I was "misogynistic" to float such an idea -- but it would still be a weak case.

But if such a measure were indeed carried through, then assuming that women en masse had loudly opposed it, you might plausibly argue -- in THAT historical context -- that women were "oppressed".

However, I the present writer propose no such measure. Let that be officially known and entered in the record. And let the feminists stop crowing that feminism delivered women from "oppression" when it  allegedly secured them the franchise. Feminism did not deliver women from that oppression -- it created that oppression!

Now, go and watch the video in order to round out what is written here.

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