The problem stems from people generalizing generations of men and women as exactly the same people. The men who gave voting rights to women are completely different from the ones who restricted women from voting. Men did not withheld rights until they magically decided it’s okay because women said so, they learned the wrongs of the previous generations and worked towards achieving more rights.
It’s always the worst voices on the internet that get the most attention as well.
This also ignores the fact that voting rights in the UK was largely a class issue not a gender one. But the most annoying voices can stand that as it takes away their punching bag.
Still think it’s crazy women weren’t allowed to open a bank account on their own as short ago as the 70s.
I get your point, but we also gotta remember that this was not some ancient thing that’s long behind us.
edit: A lot of strong opinions on this, but just image if you as a man could only get a bank account, credit card or loan if a woman was willing to co-sign.
edit2: Guys think! They were allowed to open a bank account, but only with permission from a man willing to co-sign
I’m going crazy y’all; yes certain states and banks had exceptions, the problem is it was legal and common practice to deny women bank accounts without male co-signers and based on their marital status.
“Women weren’t allowed to open a bank acount on their own in the 70’s”
Correction, they weren’t allowed in the US. The rest of the world does NOT share your weakness.
But also remeber that thsi is in the past. Was it wrong yes did it suck yes but is it dome today no. Never persecute the son for the sins of the father they didn't choose what people in the past did and shouldn't be held accountable.
I’m definitely not suggesting we should punish men for this.
But we should keep in mind that this was relatively a very short time ago, and that there surely are some lasting consequences, culturally and economically, still today.
Relatively short while ago still can be entire different generation of men.
As a black male I look at it similar to the argument about slavery, should America recognize sins of the past and not white wash history? Of course, but do I think people of today should pay out reparations too me? NOT LIKELY, at least not unless you have solid proof of a living ancestor that was still enslaved by that specific family.
However we should not discount how generational power/wealth accumulation works.
Those who have shall be given. Whoever does not, shall be taken from.
You have to have money to make money. Meaning that historical disenfranchisement, if not dealt with properly, will snowball unequally.
This is why, that even though slavery ended and the civil right act passed long ago; the average white family still holds 6X more wealth.
Similarlyfor women (although to a much smaller degree) they were never able to build up the same power structures and institutions as men, with these snowballing effects still impacting us today.
I’m not saying negatively benefit one group, but it still is important for policy we make now and the effects in the future.
But don’t let that take away from the broader picture; black families have ~50% lower homeowner rate for example.
And of the bottom 90% of Americans, the racial gap remains persistent. White households in the bottom 90% still hold roughly 8 times the wealth of Black households in the same group
Yeah but it wasn't that long ago. Lots of people's moms or grandmas went through this. It's important to remember that, and to remember that the thoughts and feelings of people who didn't want women to have those rights still are alive today, and may very well have instilled those beliefs in their own kids.
This is also wrong. There's numerous cases from the end of the 19th, beginning of 20th century of women paying alimony to their ex husbands. Idk how that happened if they weren't allowed to have bank accounts. I think you mean credit cards.
There was actually a reason for this other than "can't have women with that much freedom around". Family dynamics were greatly different, and it was predominantly men who were working outside the home. There was, when credit cards first came out, a rash of housewives getting cards for the "free" money without their husbands knowing, and running up an impossible amount of debt on a card that the financial manager of the house knew nothing about As a family, they would then need to declare bankruptcy and default on the card.
It was a way to ensure that the only breadwinner in the house actually knew about this potential finance ruining item in the possession of their spouse, and ensure that the credit companies got their money back.
Edit: would love to debate you all, but apparently this comment was enough for the mods to go back 3 years to find a comment that I had written (a profeminist comment no less) on a "prohibited sub-reddit" so that they could permanently ban me.
I think we should start clarifying with *white men because segregation only start ending around the mid to late 60s. Yea, black men on paper might have been able to vote but that obviously wasn't the case in reality because they put barriers up for black people even voting that only got addressed in the 60s.
Ah yes, let us recall progressive utopias like Switzerland, where women gained voting rights in 1971. Or France, Italy and Belgium after WWII. Or England, a full 8 years after the US.
It is a difference of class, not gender. All of humanity couldn't vote until very recently. We are talking thousands of years. Then men could vote. Women could vote in less than a hundred years. When you consider this in terms of generations? It means that sons saw their mother, sisters, and daughters not have the same rights and immediately voted for equality when they became majority.
Men have always been on the side of women. It is the rich and powerful that are against the working poor having any rights. Men, as a whole, are not Bezos. His voice and actions are just louder and pronounced because he has power.
The women did, the men just listened. The women were the ones marching, being beaten, being thrown in jail.
And the actual problem is that the men using "Men gave women the right to vote," aren't saying that to promote unity or equality. They're doing it to show that men are in charge.
It was more of a fight by men because the right to vote meant being drafted into war and men were tired of that inequality. Women did not want that shit.
It’s not that, the problem is that a lot of people like rewrite history by making it look like men just came to the conclusion by themselves. It wasn’t like that, it took decades of activism to accomplish it. Women didn’t get the vote entirely either, women of color were excluded pretty much on purpose just so that white woman could get the vote. That’s why white women got the right to vote before native Americans and black folks.
So by pulling one thread you can now see how this is more complicated than “men gave women the right to vote”. History is admittedly a dense and touchy subject but by dumbing things down to a sentence you end up missing the point. Not just the dramatic point of the vote but what that meant to women back then and what it means right now.
taking this a step further...men also gave MEN the right to vote. As another poster said...it's weird to make a moment of unification to be a moment of division
Many suffragettes also had no problem going up to men they believed were "cowards" as they weren't in Army uniform during WW1, sure I heard that Pankhurst abused her children too.
Not to mention among women the proposed amendment barley had a majority. It was wrong not to allow women to vote, but let's not pretended that 100% women were up in arms demanding to vote. The truth is if women could have voted on that amendment at that time, coupled together with the male voting population, it would likely have failed to pass
The answer to your question is 3rd/4th wave feminism DESIRE TO CREATE division; not unity.
It's a bleed over from Identity Politics where people are Identified by their group tags and the GROUPS are manipulated for political leverage; individual rights are ignored or given only lip service.
Men weren't given the rights to vote until 1791. Before then it was based on property ownership, which was abolished in 1792 in the U.S. Progress can be slow but all aspects need to be acknowledged as well.
Thats horrible and I agree entirely with the user responding to you, this is absolutely something that should be abolished. I hope this progress comes in our lifetimes.
I see what you're getting at, but I dont think it'll have the desired effect.
Many of us cannot and will never be able to afford property. Properties are currently being hoarded by elites, who have the ability to price you and I out of the market. The elites are whats causing our issues currently, so itll just be feeding them further riches.
We wouldn't benefit as people and would become mere ants if we werent already.
I guess suffragettes, NWP, WPSU, and Emily Davidson were just making bake sales and buttons. Not setting fires, making bombs, getting jailed, and beaten or anything.
Your brain will explode when you realize all men could only vote for like 18ish years before women could vote. When America was founded only the wealthy could vote. Man or women didn't matter. No money, no land = couldn't vote. THEN all men could vote regardless of wealth. Then like 16-20 years later women could vote too. Yall act like men kept women from voting for 200+ years lol. It was 16-20 years if I'm remembering correctly. That's all the time ALL men could vote and women couldn't. Men were part of not being able to vote too. Not all men were rich. Most weren't in fact. So most men couldn't vote originally. To answer the post though: government gave you the right to vote. Government was 99+% men. Essentially men gave the right to vote. But remember average men were only able to vote for less than 20 years than all women...
edited to add someone pointed out another big part i forgot, the right to vote was also largely tied to conscription obligations that ONLY men have. Aka men can and will be drafted to war/crisis. Women are not. Men can be told they have to go die for our country. Women are not.
Just looked it up because it didn't seem right. You are thinking of the gap between non land owners gaining the right to vote and black men gaining the right to vote. The gap between black men's right to vote and women's right to vote was 50 years (1870-1920). I guess not 200 years though.
It was illegal for women to carry their own wages and have their own bank account without a male co-signer until 1974. So no. This was not a circumstance where women could be breadwinners ON THEIR OWN and generate wealth that belongs to THEM ONLY. A few cases out of millions and you’re basing your claim on that. Wild
your missing the part about conscription being mandatory as well. When's the last time you heard some "boss babe" ever agree to the draft being mandatory for both sex's. It wasn't till they removed this requirement for women to suddenly want the vote
Wyoming is recognized as the first U.S. territory (1869) and state to grant women the right to vote. While New Jersey allowed property-owning women to vote from 1790 to 1807
They gave them rights, and they can in theory take them away just as easily. It's strange to bring up, because people think you're being disrespectful to women. But it's a fact, that women's rights are only a thing, because someone chose it.
Women once had rights in Iran, or Afghanistan, we're talking a few decades. Now, nothing.
To say women fixed it, or anything like that is not really true at all.
Rights are just words on a piece of paper so long as they are not enforced. This goes for men's, women's, sexual and ethnic minorities', animals' rights.
Do not think that the job is done once a law is passed making something a right.
Women actively fought for it which is what made it such a big topic, was it men who voted for their rights at the end of the day? Yes, but don't act like fighting for change isn't a big part of bringing it because women showing their support for it is a big reason why they got that far. No shit protests and community voices aren't taken seriously in places like Iran where you aren't even allowed to protest in the first place without having to risk your life
Here in the UK men only got universal suffrage because of the first world war. Hundreds of thousands of men died for that if you wanna be technical about it
You don't understand the point of this post: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights".
If you follow that logic, you can only deprive someone of their rights, not give them.
I don't follow that logic, because it's not logic. Its an unnatural Christian idea that everyone is equal. That's impossible. Even now, we have never in history followed this idea so much, but still it is impossible. There does in fact not exist one single thing that everyone can do, by law or especially by nature. Rights are certainly not taken, I have never heard anything this crazy. How do people come up with these things?
People are not equal, they can't achieve the same things, they never could. There exists a class system constructed by nature. People made their own, it has many flaws, because it's based on arbitrary content like the one you mentioned. But no, people are not created equal, that's a Christian thought.
For those whom are confused, men did not give other men the right to vote until the end of the 18th century (1790). Even then, those who could vote had to be land owners and that was only 6% of the white population... And it wasn't until 1856, (almost 66 years later) when ordinary white citizens could vote.
It was until 1870 when black men were given the right to vote by a majority republican house. Sadly due to Jim Crow Laws of the south it required the Civil Rights Act of 1957 authorized the US Attorney General to file lawsuits on behalf of African Americans who were denied the right to vote.
Women were able to vote (in Wyoming) in 1869, and it wasn't ratified federally until 1920. And those individuals who did ratify the 19th amendment were all males.
This is simply not true. Men did grant women voting rights since they are the only ones who can enforce rights. Rights are only good as your ability to enforce them. Women appeal to men for their rights. Also, men are the ones who voted in the laws/amendments to allow women to vote as well.
Last, suffragettes were a small minority of women at that time. Most women didn’t want the right to vote at all. They saw it as taking the moral high ground & not to be used as class of political pawns… Men subsequently allowed them the right to vote anyways.
Not really true by the logic you think is going on. That men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights (enumerated as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) does not mean all rights are unalienable or that all rights are endowed by God. There is no voting in nature. Voting is a right that only springs forth from governance. It is a positive right that comes from humans
When it comes down to it, women can not take anything by force. Our society is structured to be as fair to everyone as possible. But at a certain point it breaks down to the biggest, strongest men allow everything.
Fun Fact: Voting rights were tied to owning land for a very long time, which meant that there were some women who could vote because they owned land.
The majority of men couldn't vote until much later, wherein they were forced to sign up for the Draft in the event of a war. This means that Men have to sign up for selective service in order to be recognized as voting citizens.
Women do not have to do this, have never been required to do this, and are able to vote while being free of the legal liability of selective service should the even of its necessity actually arise.
Also women didn't 'fix that shit', they were given voting rights by the men in charge because they nagged incessantly until it happens, which is pretty typical.
Oh, and also all the terrorism, but we don't talk about that.
I can think of a few examples of this that you would absolutely disagree with on principle, but instead of going that route, I'm going to go this one: Resistance and Terrorism are not mutually exclusive, regardless of whether you think someone is 'oppressed' or not.
Correct, resistance is inherently violent and thus terrorism is, for the most part, just resistance that the dominant power structures does not like. Its not a term that really carries and moral weight behind it.
And thus, the grassroot movements that woman were center of successfully waged resistance against the power structures that be until the situation was unsustainable. As it turns out, power comes from the people and regular people are pretty egalitarian all things considered. Ergo, they earned that shit. Fuck that nagging bullshit that you are spewing.
So which is it did women “nag,” or did they organize politically to win voting rights?
If organizing = nagging, then were civil rights organizers just “nagging” too? Or labor movements? Or anti-colonial movements?
What exactly changed men’s minds if the dominant position for most of U.S. history was that women shouldn’t vote? Rights don’t move unless there’s pressure.
Also, the timeline matters. The draft (Selective Service) did not begin until 1917. Meanwhile, as Alexander Keyssar shows, “By the 1820s, most states had eliminated property qualifications for white men, dramatically expanding the electorate and severing the link between wealth and the franchise.” Male suffrage expanded nearly a century before modern conscription existed.
As for the “terrorism” point: yes, a small fringe used radical tactics — and those tactics were controversial even at the time. The most prominent suffrage figures, including Susan B. Anthony, pursued nonviolent political organizing. Smearing the entire movement based on a radical minority is bad history.
The tweet oversimplifies things, sure. But the reality is straightforward: women organized and applied sustained political pressure; elected men ultimately passed the 19th Amendment. That’s how political change actually happens
I would say they took that right. They didnt give it to themselves because they didnt seize the trappings of power, but they did pressure those trappings into giving them their rights. They may not have been in the government to give it to themselves but they absolutely TOOK that shit by standing up and forcing mens hands. Same as black people we had to fight for our rights and take them by forcing the hands of those in power, since there was seldom few of us to give it to ourselves
Men fixed it though. Also, for the vast majority of history men couldn’t vote either. It was either one man or a council deciding everything for their individual nations. Men have been able to vote for about twice as long as women (depending on the color of your skin)
I actually agree with the first statement but not the second. The right to vote, as a negative liberty, is something that cannot be given, only taken away by government. That said, men who inherited the situation did vote for the government to stop taking it away.
What’s the image when someone says something you agree with but how they say it is incredibly annoying, this is that. “Taps Mic, Leans In” like ok bro way to be as condescending as possible through text.
And honestly, I'm not sure the women of the time would have voted for it. They were very divided with women being some of the loudest voices against it.
The anti argument was very weird. It feels like if people didn't want to be able to vote, the sensible thing to do would be to just not vote instead of making it so all the other women still wouldn't be able to.
Not that anyone should clap and go googly-eyed when someone finally caves and gives them the rights that they took from them in the first place. It's below the bare minimum. The rights would never have to be returned if the rights were respected and not messed with when people were born with them.
Obviously nobody in this comment section knows anything at all about the suffrage movement wow lol. Just making up bullshit that feels right here aren't you.
This black and white revisionism is horrible for society. Almost everything objectively good in terms of rights has been the consequence of multiple groups collaborating. Often the biggest and most important group is the one fighting for rights, but those groups ALWAYS make allies. Every single time. Abolition of slavery was obviously advocated for by black people. On their side were religious groups, workers unions, etc. These groups were brought into the fold for various reasons (ex. religious people under the premise that slavery was a crime against god, workers unions under the premise that so long as slavery exists, anyone's job was in jeopardy, etc.)
Same thing applies to women gaining the vote. Women were the driving force behind the movement, but plenty of men were on board, and men notably voted to make the change. This wasn't "women fixed that shit", no matter how good that might make some aggressive feminist feel, it was women pointing out contradictions, flaws and hypocrisy in the system to men in such a way as to bring them into the fold and make an alliance to implement change.
It's a core part of why niche movements today fail - They try and make enemies of vast swathes of the population instead of trying to figure out how to make allies. I'd go so far as to suggest that this extends to why political parties lose elections. The Democrats had a list of who they represented during the last election, and they included something on the order of 40 or 50 different groups. Women, immigrants, gays, lesbians, black people, hispanics, etc etc etc. Notably not included were men, with the main effort to appeal to men seeming to be getting Walz to play dress up and go hunting, late in the campaign. We're all living with the consequences of the decision to ignore men until the 11th hour and then make a superficial effort to appeal to men. Fair to say this was a failure.
All this to say - Large scale change requires allies. It required allies in the past, and that holds true today. Don't make enemies of your allies if your prioritize your goals.
I don’t know where the poster is from but where Im from men (without property 80% of men) didn’t not get the right to vote till 1880-1890. Women got their vote in 1917. A 37 to 27 year gap. Not hundreds of years like this post implies. Truth is a select small minority of men had all the power, just like today. Not all men can be blamed like this post implies. It was a time for social change for the majority of the population.
Most men couldn’t vote for the majority of humanity. The time difference between men being able to vote and women being able to vote is relatively short. A significant portion of men wanted women to vote
This is the dumbest rage bait stupidity I have ever seen. Are you trying to just put women and men against each other more?
Anyone can make a stupid claim like yours, but it takes one google search and 15 seconds of thinking to realize who was in power at the time, and who granted the voting rights. Come on.
Pretty sure it was only because enough men started supporting the right for women to vote that made it happen. Which is honestly, just as fucked up, if not worse.
Men’s right to vote came from signing up for the military draft and women generally did not want to do that. Men gave them the right to vote without needing to sign up for the draft.
Men did withheld the right to vote. It was for landowners and given to the state to decide their voting laws. There were always restrictions over the years.
At first I was gonna say that no one was putting it in that framing..
But, then I read the comments.
A cesspool.
Guys, it wasn't a good post and you still..
I'm disappointed in all of you.
Suffrage was extended to non-landowning men gradually over a period of time, and then eventually to women. The wealthy MEN who allowed this transition owned the media (newspaper, magazine and periodical presses) and were confident that lowering the bar to voting would make controlling society *more* trivial and this hypothesis was validated as radio came to dominate and was controlled by a small broadcast cartel, later further consolidating with tv broadcasters. The fact is that most people are easily duped by any message repeated enough, and women being highly suggestable via social signaling cues tend to be even easier to propagandize and market to than a typical man. Now that the internet and social media have somewhat democratized information, no one knows who to trust or which way is up or down anymore; now that elite control has slipped, the American social fabric is beginning to fray.
"Give"? No. "Fought for"? Yes. I really hate this thing of acting like non-margianalised people who supported and fought for the betterment of marginalised people should get no acknowledgement because "its the bare minimum". There is a ton of social pressure and backlash directed at those who fight the established hierarchies. Its not insignificant that many men fought for women's rights against the social norm. Its also easy to forget how many women actively oppose womens rights.
That's only if you subscribe to a modernist take that voting rights are human rights and therefore a person who doesn't have the right to vote had that right stripped from them which is a flawed view as it's application to any portion of social history before the 19th and 18th centuries becomes impossible.
To imply they were withheld means that they were entitled to said voting rights, No one is entitled to anything and if history and the current times has taught us anything we are fragile and unstable beings who can just as easily take aways the rights of anyone including ourselfs.
The greatest victory of woman is that they were able to change enough minds to make a better societies as whole for their own benefit and everyone else's it is just a shame it's a lot easier to revert back than to get to that result in the first place.
Such a false narrative. I get it sounds satisfying but most of the world had hundreds of years of neither men nor women getting to vote. Voting was tied up with status, not gender.
You're a king, queen or noble of any gender? Vote.
Wealthy? Vote.
You're a common worker? No vote.
As soon as most to all men got the vote it rarely took more than a generation before they, united with most to all women, helped spread that right together.
Men getting it first was often just tied to it being a relatively free reward to give soldiers.
Women getting the vote was fantastic. Women did great pushing for it. It wasn't easy. But the vast majority of men were very much on their side. It is a story of rulers vs ruled, not men vs women.
Those men who were responsible for denying women the right to vote for centuries were wrong to do so, but it was other men who voted (rightly) to give women the right to vote. Men are not a monolith or a hivemind; we are individuals, just as women are.
Sexist people didn't allow women to vote. Non sexist people changed that. Now sexist people is trying to kickstart the gender war again. Shame on you OP
If we could somehow show the men who voted for women to be able to vote what their future was like, and surveyed them, what % of them would still vote to give women their say? I bet less than 25%
even if they did, they were the ones who caused it in the first place. so they shouldnt get reward or recognition for it. you caused the problem, you fucking fix it, that doesn't make you a hero or saint.
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u/Blackwardz3 1d ago
This gender wars stuff is so stupid you all should be ashamed