JOHN PURDY writes:

That is a fine article you posted [about women’s suffrage.] I can’t help chuckling, thinking about how Nancy Pelosi would respond. The elephant in the room that set the stage for Women’s Suffrage was the extension of the franchise to all male citizens. One can’t help wondering how things might have turned out if it had remained restricted to male property owners.

Laura writes:

Thank you.

Yes, one can’t help wondering.

The fact that women were categorically denied the vote was a privilege. They were also excluded from other sordid tasks — garbage collection, sewer repair and military service. Women were given the honor of being non-partisan participants, elevated above the fray, extending their influence in countless ways both public and private.

What we see in politics today confirms all the dark warnings of the many, many women who were opposed to the female suffrage. They thought women would be degraded. And haven’t they been?

Here’s G.K. Chesterton:

A husband would be pleased if his wife wore a gold crown and proclaimed laws from a throne of marble; or if she uttered oracles from the tripod of a priestess; or if she could walk in mystical motherhood before the procession of some great religious order. But that she should stand on a platform in the exact altitude in which he stands; leaning forward a little more than is graceful and holding her mouth open a little longer and wider than is dignified–well, I only write here of the facts of natural history; and the fact is that it is this, and not publicity or importance, that hurts. It is for the modern world to judge whether such instincts are indeed danger signals; and whether the hurting of moral as of material nerves is a tocsin and a warning of nature.

Modern women despise this idea of exalted femininity. They also romanticize politics. They fanatically exaggerate its importance.

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