ON FEMALE SUFFRAGE, By GK Chesterton
It may seem to many that I dismiss too curtly the contention that all women should have votes, even if most women do not desire them. It is constantly said in this connection that males have received the vote (the agricultural laborers for instance) when only a minority of them were in favor of it. Mr. Galsworthy, one of the few fine fighting intellects of our time, has talked this language in the “Nation.” Now, broadly, I have only to answer here, as everywhere in this book, that history is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced. If we really forced General Elections upon free laborers who definitely disliked General Elections, then it was a thoroughly undemocratic thing to do; if we are democrats we ought to undo it. We want the will of the people, not the votes of the people; and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more valuable than the democracy it declares.
But this analogy is false, for a plain and particular reason. Many voteless women regard a vote as unwomanly. Nobody says that most voteless men regarded a vote as unmanly. Nobody says that any voteless men regarded it as unmanly. Not in the stillest hamlet or the most stagnant fen could you find a yokel or a tramp who thought he lost his sexual dignity by being part of a political mob. If he did not care about a vote it was solely because he did not know about a vote; he did not understand the word any better than Bimetallism. His opposition, if it existed, was merely negative. His indifference to a vote was really indifference.
But the female sentiment against the franchise, whatever its size, is positive. It is not negative; it is by no means indifferent. Such women as are opposed to the change regard it (rightly or wrongly) as unfeminine. That is, as insulting certain affirmative traditions to which they are attached. You may think such a view prejudiced; but I violently deny that any democrat has a right to override such prejudices, if they are popular and positive. Thus he would not have a right to make millions of Moslems vote with a cross if they had a prejudice in favor of voting with a crescent. Unless this is admitted, democracy is a farce we need scarcely keep up. If it is admitted, the Suffragists have not merely to awaken an indifferent, but to convert a hostile majority.
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von
Links
Poems
Posting and analysing some important poems.
Rudyard Kipling
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
The Benefactors
The Female of the Species
The Benefactors
The Glory of the Garden // Podcast Version
Edgar Guest
Keep Going
One More Turn // Podcast Version
The Glory of the Garden
It Takes a Heap O’Livin // Podcast Version
Sue’s Got a Baby
Only a Dad
Is Anybody Happier?
Can’t
On Quitting
Hard Luck
Courage // Podcast Version
Thomas J. Williams
Once to Every Man or Nation
JRR Tolkien
I Sit Beside the Fire and Think
Doug Wilson
The Vineyard of En Gedi
Quotes
A bunch of fun and significant quotes: