I don't see this topic come up much as it tends to be considered history despite only being a little over a century ago. As the title suggests, are there any good summaries of what the arguments for and against were at the time? I'd imagine it would make for great reading comparing what was forecast with what happened.
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No access to my bookmarks right now so I can't provide too many links, but the basic summation of arguments for and against female suffrage actually changed over time.
It was always an elite driven project. In the 19th century suffrage wasn't universal for men either, so the women arguing for the right to vote were all wealthy and propertied, usually widows who had inherited their money from dead husbands or other men.
Even so, most women before WWI didn't actually want the vote, because they didn't want the responsibilities that were required of men in exchange for the franchise. It was only after the war, when the franchise was expanded to include working class men, that the female suffrage movement started to gain widespread support. This was mainly political: in Europe and the Commonwealth, it was mostly Liberals and Conservatives who supported suffrage for propertied women due to their concern that working class men who had gained the franchise would largely vote for upstart left-wing parties like Labour.
Ironically, this meant that the loudest voices in opposition to female suffrage during this period were often leftists. One of the best distillation of these arguments that I've seen comes from Ernest Belfort Bax, who was a full-on anarcho-socialist. You can read it here.
From the link above.
No. You will never hear them claim shares of jobs as Garbagemen or day laborers. You will not hear them shout that laws must be enforced evenly. Instead, they will affirm the pussy pass and beg light treatment on behalf of women, for women's sake. Rights, with no corresponding responsibilities; to still have their cake even after devouring it, whole.
To whit the above link's conclusion:
Enter Family Courts and no fault divorce, as a point (3) where men may be drafted by the state into the maintenance of women and children treated as theirs whom they did not sire. If you extend this to the welfare state, the taxation mechanisms themselves compel analogous supports.
TheImp may be monomaniacal in his pursuit of and fixation on this issue, but the rise of the Feminist sisterhood and its consequences have been a disaster for Western political culture.
Feminism was a weapon of marxism, meant to deliberately destroy western society.
It was literally women pissed off men weren’t providing enough for them and putting up with their bullshit. Men had PTSD from the civil war, women used this to justify why they should get “rights”, just not the responsibilities of the same men they disparaged. This also fueled the movement of men west to escape the harpies. Just like most biker gangs were Vietnam vets with PTSD. Thats why right after WW1 ended women got the right to vote. A massive amount of men traumatized, and socialist faggots taking advantage of women’s nature.
and keep in mind the 19th was passed shortly after the 16th and by the same people. the league of nations was forming/formed. the same global, internationalist "rules-based order" people knew that having women voting would allow easy subversion of nations and more global policies to crush nationalism.
Only men can really be nationalist because it is men that build, maintain, pay for, and defend everything in the nation. women are not capable of this and never can be.
I'd imagine the sole reason was to get them to shut the fuck up. The probably just went on and on about it until we gave in.
It was a terrible precedent to set. Feminists today are so awful because they know if they throw a big enough shit fit simps will give them what they want no matter how unreasonable it is.
I get disgusted when I see my nieces fake cry to get their way. They know not to pull that shit with me by now, but it's an every day thing for most girls from toddler age.
2400 years later and its still their primary weapon
In America, a large part of it was because former slaves, i.e. black men, were given the official right to vote in 1870 with the 15th amendment. Then it became, "Well if negroes are allowed to vote, then why am I not allowed to?"
wish I could read german and know what the swiss were saying about it in the 70s, they were the last western country to do so*
(individuals states, cantons, had it earlier, but yeah some places were holdouts and they were generally later than most anywhere else)