Friday, April 08, 2011

The Second Puzzle



At least two of Those Sites don't think that women deserved to get the right to vote. Guess why?

Because women didn't die for the vote. Or at least not in sufficient numbers.

You see, the opposition to women's suffrage is exactly the same now as it was originally! It goes like this: Only men were conscripted and only men died as soldiers in wars. Those deaths earned men the right to vote. Women, however, were not allowed to fight in wars and this meant that they didn't deserve the vote. Because they didn't die in wars. In which they were not allowed to fight.

This is circular reasoning, even assuming that the right to vote was based on nothing but war service. And in the latter case the argument could only apply to those individual men who in fact did participate in wars but survived. Other men had not paid for their votes. It doesn't matter if they were willing to die for their country or not, because they were not tested. Just like women were not allowed to take that test.

I never thought I'd get the chance to take part in the original women's suffrage battles!