The anti-egalitarian title, by the way, is Fannie's synopsis of her own point ... not mine. How did she get so anti-egalitarian in her remarks? Well I'm not really sure.
In this post she is all over the map. See if you can spot the inconsistencies in this coupling for instance, because her readership (including Seda) couldn't... Or if they did see it, they never seemed to call her out on it.
On Lawn, being a Man Who Knows Things [...] relying on the weight of his Authoritative Male Voice.
[later...]
While the anatomical and physiological differences between men and women are (often, but not always) "obvious," the psychological, temperamental, and spiritual distinctions are hardly so. In On Lawn's statement, we see a clear argumentum ad gastrum- an argument from the gut. [...] as though that is some sort of universal truth observable in reality.
That little hypocrisy is rather petty, I know. While it is very telling of Fannie's belief system, it neither proves nor disproves either side.
But, not to worry, she undermines her own point with the evidence she presents (directly and indirectly). Not just her point, but Seda as well. Yes that Seda, who actually presented (in an attempt to discredit my thesis) urban myth as fact, and who was wrong on fundamental historic facts, congratulated Fannie's post.
Ah, Fannie, I love you! You say so well in this post what I was trying to say and screwing up because I was doing it in quick spur-of-the-moment comments - because that's all the time I have right now!
Unfortunately Seda, who couldn't even detect her own inconsistent claims, now couldn't tell when Fannie was disproving one of her claims. Seda had mentioned that,
Social activism and cultural change bring equality. Attempting to harness equality to marriage seems a stretch.
But that was just the quick spur-of-the-moment comments compared to Fannie's more thoughtful research...
Seneca Falls, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, the Men's League for Women's Suffrage, marches and parades that sometimes turned violent when angry male mobs "jeered, tripped, grabbed, and shoved" the marching women? All relatively meaningless. What women really needed to do to get the right to vote was marry men. (Oh, erm, let's just set aside the fact that many leaders of the women's suffrage movement were lesbians). It wasn't the tireless efforts of female and male suffragists that led to voting equality, it was marriage. Why? Because On Lawn says so, that's why.
I'll let it be up to the reader if Fannie was genuine or sarcastic in that quote though to me there is little doubt -- Fannie is more rarely genuine. Interesting enough, if for some reason what she said was genuine even though it undermined what Seda had said, the article she turns to in her post provides support for that statement (and my thesis which, though it didn't go anywhere near as far as she did in denigrating the usefulness of social activism):
In 1869, the territorial legislature of remote Wyoming granted its women access to ballot, followed in 1870 by the territorial legislature of neighboring Utah. This victories were stunning, both for where and how they occurred. It was not New York, nor New England, which housed the headquarters of the two national woman suffrage organizations, that led the nation in extending the franchise to women. Moreover, any suffragist activity in these two territories had been minor at best. This paradox has bewildered historians. All the more so, since the American West continued to lead the nation in the enfranchisement of women for the following forty plus years. ["Men, Women, and the Ballot: Woman Su rage in the United States"; Sebastian Braun and Michael Kvasnickay; Feb 23, 2009; page 6]
Surely a great mystery is held in history. Like I said, the article undermines her point and also supports my thesis. Even more funny is how Fannie provides the quote from this article to her readership. Given that I find marriage as a conduit for women to persuade men for equality,
"[W]ith women being a scarcity, the net benefit of adopting woman suffrage carried lower potential costs to men in terms of risks and devaluation of their political influence; and for legislators in the West, woman suffrage had the added benefit of potentially attracting female settlers."
I wonder if Fannie misses out on the power of male-female integration in marriage mentioned directly in that quote. To her credit, this author is not (in this particular quote) crediting existing (though my thesis does not rely solely on existing marriages), instead the authors rely on the basic need for marriage -- gender integration.
Its a given, its obvious.
But that isn't all. With a link she presents another historic point:
In fact, the legislator who cast the deciding vote for the 19th Amendment was said to have done so at his mother's urging.
Does that contradict my thesis? No. As I pointed out in the comment section (and she acknowledged tacitly in her post):
Sure, and I bet the vast majority of the education that influenced equality happened in the walls of their home in their marriages.
It is such an important conduit for those humanitarian values of love, tolerance, support and respect that we should recognize in each marriage the expectation of love, tolerance, support and respect of each gender that combined (or potentially combines) to create each child.
Marriage doesn't just share the value of integration with just the participants. It shares the opportunity for persuasion to the children also. And what Fannie provided shines light on that process pretty well.
On that line, Seda and Fannie both present real world situations where equality was not taught by married individuals. I think it is an effort to contradict that marriage always breeds equality. I would actually agree, marriage has great potential for teaching equality, I believe Fannie even agrees with that point. It also has great potential for harm where that potential is not realized.
In fact, the capacity in marriage to progress equality (or make it digress if the opportunity is not grasped) makes our understanding of marriage all the more urgent. Marriage equality has always been a banner against such actions. Marriage equality, especially to the politically active women at the time of woman's suffrage, would have been understood as the equal recognition of rights and responsibilities towards each gender in each marriage.
Now there were many aspects of Fannie's post that was petty. However, this is not. As Fannie said herself, her point was in short "Integration FAIL". That marginalizing integration (or in the past even the expectation of monogamy) in marriage is in and the vision of segregation as "equal" to marriage is the new equality. And that is her goal both as a lesbian and a self-proclaimed feminist.
One last note. Fannie seeks to find fault in my labeling the way men shared power with women as a bloodless revolution. She points to clashes in the streets between women and men mobs, rock throwing, etc... It seems she misses the meaning of the term. From Ghandi to MLK Jr, the doctrine of civil disobedience and non-violent activism never at any time guaranteed there would be no blood. In Ghandi's India, there were clashes that lead to many, many deaths. MLK Jr, was himself shot and killed. The point of the bloodless revolution is not that there wasn't a struggle, but that there is not by threat or intimidation that the power is re-dispersed. Or in other words, there is no need to kill or maim the incumbent to bring about the desired ends. Instead, it is by persuasion that the incumbent either resigns or more equally shares power.
It was in the spirit of their doctrines for non-violent revolution that I applaud woman's suffrage. The only problem with that seems to be with Fannie's ignorance.
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