I fail to see how men having only recently gotten the vote is a good argument against women getting the vote.
It wasn’t meant as an argument against women getting the vote, but rather as an example against the argument that good causes don’t require lying. Well, strictly speaking, maybe the lying wasn’t necessary, but such is the human nature that even when a good cause becomes a political topic, people immediately start lying and spreading lies that make their cause seem even better.
For example, women’s suffrage was not only believed to fix a specific legal inequality, but also to end all wars, etc. The idea of “no difference between men and women other than a few anatomical details” is probably recent; the original argument for women in politics was that women were better than men. To see how serious were historically feminists about the idea of “equality of sexes”, note that some famous feminists supported the white feather campaign, and influential feminist organizations opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. So there was and still is a lot of lying involved.
Debates about slavery are often framed as “evil white men enslaved peaceful black people”, ignoring the historical fact that slave trade was popular in Africa before white men started participating in it. If we are going to condemn slavery as a principle (as I believe we should) then it is a lie by omission to speak about American white masters, and ignore the whole culture of slavery in Africa… plus another huge elephant in the room, the traditional Islamic slavery, which is even supported in their holy book, specifically encourages sexual slavery, and existed since the very beginning of their religion, and still exists today. Also, current debates about slavery completely erase all the white slaves / indentured servants, and their descendants are ironically told to “check their privilege” and feel ashamed for having benefited from slavery.
And Prohibition? Uhm, what is your opinion on the current “War on Drugs” and how exactly it differs?
It wasn’t meant as an argument against women getting the vote, but rather as an example against the argument that good causes don’t require lying. Well, strictly speaking, maybe the lying wasn’t necessary, but such is the human nature that even when a good cause becomes a political topic, people immediately start lying and spreading lies that make their cause seem even better.
For example, women’s suffrage was not only believed to fix a specific legal inequality, but also to end all wars, etc. The idea of “no difference between men and women other than a few anatomical details” is probably recent; the original argument for women in politics was that women were better than men. To see how serious were historically feminists about the idea of “equality of sexes”, note that some famous feminists supported the white feather campaign, and influential feminist organizations opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. So there was and still is a lot of lying involved.
Debates about slavery are often framed as “evil white men enslaved peaceful black people”, ignoring the historical fact that slave trade was popular in Africa before white men started participating in it. If we are going to condemn slavery as a principle (as I believe we should) then it is a lie by omission to speak about American white masters, and ignore the whole culture of slavery in Africa… plus another huge elephant in the room, the traditional Islamic slavery, which is even supported in their holy book, specifically encourages sexual slavery, and existed since the very beginning of their religion, and still exists today. Also, current debates about slavery completely erase all the white slaves / indentured servants, and their descendants are ironically told to “check their privilege” and feel ashamed for having benefited from slavery.
And Prohibition? Uhm, what is your opinion on the current “War on Drugs” and how exactly it differs?