How can you be anti-enfranchisement in the 21st century?
Misogynists say the darndest things. Take, for example, the claim, verbatim, that “women’s suffrage destroyed western civilization.” It sounds like something Stephen Colbert would say, but it’s something a real live blogger and YouTube sensation actually wrote… on the Internet… on purpose… in the 21st century.
For your enjoyment, we’ve rounded up some of the people who are freaking out that women are enfranchised, and some of the reasons female enfranchisement is freaking some people out.
1. Women’s suffrage: Responsible for the evil that is Cam and Mitchell, the gay parents on “Modern Family.”
Earlier this month, David Barton explained the origins of women’s disenfranchisement in the United States. Now, Barton isn’t just the founder of WallBuilders, an organization whose mission is “educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country.” Barton also fancies himself a historian and has not only a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oral Roberts University but an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Pensacola Christian College. Barton is responsible for… discovering the (non-existent) causal correlation between banning school prayer and an increased rates of crime and alcoholism. So, we must take his historical analysis seriously. And his analysis reveals that our Founding Fathers’ decision to deny women the vote in the Constitution had nothing to do with bigotry and everything to do with… you guessed it… god!
As Barton explains: “The bigotry we’re told they held back then, they didn’t hold.” Bigotry? What bigotry? Certainly no bigotry was coming from the framers of the Constitution, committed as they were to justice, equality, and turning black people into fractions. No. These slave-holding men weren’t anti-anyone. They were just pro-family: “And what they did was they put the family unit higher than the government unit and they tried to work hard to keep the family together.” Just as removing prayer from public school (and, you know, recognizing that whole separation of church and state thing) took away our livers and lives, bestowing women with the vote has ruined the family: “And, as we can show in two or three hundred studies since then, the more you weaken the family, the more it hurts the entire culture and society.”
Barton is that rare breed of historian who is so talented and expert he doesn’t need to look at history or provide evidence. Though he does provide some data: “We’ve moved into more of a family anarchy kind of thing, the ‘Modern Family’ kind of portrayal.” You want evidence? Turn on ABC every Wednesday at 9pm.
2. Women can’t be trusted, trust me! I’m a woman.
Feminists will be thrilled to learn that women are just as capable of sexism as men. Take Janis Lane, a Central Mississippi Tea Party president, who rues the day the vote was granted to… well… her: “Our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting.” Why would our country benefit from the disenfranchisement of women? Because of the devil.
“There is nothing worse than a bunch of mean, hateful women. They are diabolical in how they can skewer a person.” These females are not to be trusted: “The whole time I worked, I’d much rather have a male boss than a female boss. Double-minded, you never can trust them.” And if you can’t trust a female boss, how can you trust a female politician? Surely, women should be excluded from the entire political system, right? Well, not exactly. Lane has an explanation for her simultaneous participation in politics and contempt from women in politics: “Because women have the right to vote, I am active, because I want to make sure there is some sanity for women in the political world. It is up to the Christian rednecks and patriots to stand up for our country. Everyone has the right to vote now that’s 18 or over (who is) a legal citizen, and every person that’s 18 and over and a legal citizen should be active in local politics so they can make a change locally, make a change on the state level and make a change in Washington, D.C.”
In other words, though it is lamentable that women have political rights, because they do, Lane will do her best to fight for a world in which, one day, they won’t.
katiehalper.com 