Feminism started as an organized movement in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention on Women's rights, which had an attendence of around 300 people. It was here that the Declaration of Sentiments put down the foundations of women's demands. It's principle author was Elizabeth Cady Stanton and it was signed by 100 people: 68 women and 32 men.I'm going to post this in full, since I will be referring to various aspects of it in later sections:
The Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls, N.Y., 1848
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When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
Sentiments:
1 - He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.2 - He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
3 - He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men - both natives and foreigners.
4 - Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
5 - He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
6 - He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
7 - He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.
8 - He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of the women - the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of a man, and giving all power into his hands.
9 - After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
10 - He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
11 - He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
12 - He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her.
13 - He allows her in church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.
14 - He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.
15 - He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.
16 - He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
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Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of
this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the
unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves
aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred
rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights
and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.
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. Despite being later known as the "suffragettes," at the time of the Declaration of Sentiment's signing, "the vote" was considered the most controversial of the sentiments, in-so-far as it even made some of the signers hesistant to endorse the document in its entirety.
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No, it wasn't really "misogyny" that was behind it - not entirely anyways. You have to keep in mind that this was 1848 and America's War for Independence had finished only 65 years earlier. It was about as fresh in the minds of the people as the Second World War is to us in the modern day. Many people's parents had lived through the American Revolution and their grandparents had fought in it. The people of that time were quite aware of the principles behind the Declaration of Independence and the nature of their rights under the framework of a Constitutional Republic.Thus, the very first of the sentiments - that man has never let woman exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise - is making a patently false claim.
Voting is NOT an "unalienable" (inalienable?) right - which means a natural right, or, what it means to be a person. Voting is a legal right, and nothing more - it's like being able to obtain a driver's license once you reach the age of 16.
"While natural rights are innately part of being human, and exist prior to any culture or society, legal rights are those that are acknowledged and protected by a given government. So, in the Founders’ understanding, natural rights would include the right to life itself, the right to think for oneself, the right to self-defense, and the right to keep what one has worked honestly for, among others. Legal rights would include the right to vote, the specific methods by which fair trials are conducted, and copyrights and patents–all of which might be defined and protected in different ways in different countries or states, based on their particular customs and beliefs." -- Documents of Freedom
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When the Declaration of Sentiments was created in 1848, universal man-suffrage wasn't even in place yet. Landless white men didn't get the vote until around the Civil War and black men got suffrage in 1870. In Canada, universal male-suffrage was granted in the 1850's, but then rescinded with property restrictions being re-introduced in the 1860's. Also, certain other groups were often denied the vote for a variety of reasons, such as Catholics (because of their allegiance to the Pope). Plus, some states had granted women the right to vote already - New Jersey, for example, allowed women to vote from 1790 to 1807, whereas in the colony of Canada, New Brunswick rescinded women's right to vote in 1848. This quite clearly indicates that women having the vote was not an unpracticed concept.
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"Voting was long a limited privilege, as Harvard historian, Alexander Keyssar shows in his book, "The Right to Vote." In 1790, most of the original 13 states restricted the vote to white males who either owned property or paid local taxes. Perhaps 60-70% of white men could vote, Keyssar says. By the Civil War, most property restrictions had disappeared.
But there was constant tension between the demands to expand the electorate and more restrictive pressures: selfish fears by ruling elites. But even in 1824, not all states allowed citizens to vote directly for president; some state legislatures still selected presidential electors.
Later, war often served to expand voting. Congress passed the 19th Amendment (guaranteeing women's right to vote) in 1919, partly because women had helped so much in World War I.
In the Vietnam War, Congress lowered the voting age to 18; it was hard to ask soldiers to die if they couldn't vote. After the Civil War, blacks received the right to vote via the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870." -- Robert Samuelson, "An Inalienable Right to Vote - Right?", Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, Oct. 28, 2004
The fact is, the USA was not founded as a democracy in the first place - and universal suffrage was certainly not the intention, although that's what we more or less have ended up with.
Shortly after the US Constitution was completed, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government they had created. His reply to her was, "A republic, if you can keep it."
Although a republic means government that derives authority from the people (res publica in Latin), it does so by the rule of law, not through democracy. In fact, America's Founding Fathers mentioned the word "democracy" nowhere in their founding documents - although they did discuss it elsewhere afterwards. Democracy is mob-rule and has only the majority's consensus to decide right and wrong - without lawful principles protecting the minority."It had been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience had proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity." – Alexander Hamilton, June 21, 1788
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." – Benjamin Franklin .
The Consent of the Governed
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Sentiments #2 and #3 are also directly related to the vote:
2 - He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
3 - He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men - both natives and foreigners.
These two charges are indeed true - although it must be noted that as shown above, many men also had to submit to laws in the formation of which they had no voice. And for that matter, you nor I had much of a say in the creation of the Constitution either, nor the plethora of laws that are on the books - I didn't vote to have murder and theft be against the law, did you?. If we had to have each person approve the law before we can expect them to submit to it, we would be holding referendums on a regular basis simply to keep laws valid that were in place before the current generation of people were even alive - and we don't do that, do we?
We have principles which are regarded to be timeless. Since we have the inalienable right to life, we don't allow murder. Since a man has the right to keep what he has honestly worked for, we have principles regarding private property and theft. We don't need to keep voting on these things because they are timeless principles. The reason why the Founding Fathers attached these inalienable rights to "the Creator" (The Absolute) is because what God gives only God can take away. If we ever remove "the Creator" from these documents, I sincerely hope they will declare I get my rights from the Easter Bunny rather than the State and its subjective laws, for that's how the constitutions of totalitarian countries are worded. In a free country, you don't need to have a vote to have inalienable rights - those rights are "higher truths" than the government's subjective truths and civil laws. The Founders framed things specifically to protect the people from the government's subjectivity, which it had used to overwhelm the American colonies with laws and taxes and bureaucracies which did not benefit them. In other words, it was a fundamental part of what America's War for Independence was about!
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed,
will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for
light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn,
that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are
accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." -- United States Declaration of Independence
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
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| "Yeah, alright. You can govern me... but if you piss me off... POW!" |
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"Were our state a pure democracy there would still be excluded from our deliberations [...] women, who, to prevent depravation of morals and ambiguity of issues, should not mix promiscuously in gatherings of men." -- Thomas Jefferson
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The Founding Fathers, remember, established their republic based upon the ideas of John Locke, who philosophised upon an ordering of truth inspired by the Absolute Truth of the Bible, where the lower truths must be contained by the higher truths so that we remain anchored to reality.
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| Click Pic to read "The Masculine Principle" |
2 - Natural Law/Objective Truth = Masculine Principle
2 - Civil Law/Subjective Truth = Feminine Principle
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If a natural law contradicts the Absolute Truth, it is a false law. And if a civil law contradicts a natural law, it too is a false law.
But a democracy, you see, is very much the political embodiment of the feminine principle. Like all things female - from herds & hives, to social proofing & harems, to attention to ever-changing fashions and a fixation with gossip, and even to co-ordinating the rhythym of their menstrual cycles to eachother when living in close proximaty to one another - they all derive their truth from opinions and consensus. And what better illustrates this than the mob rule of democracy and its subjective truth?
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"... When women hold the helm of government, the state is at once in jeopardy, because women regulate their actions not by the demands of universality but by arbitrary inclinations and opinions. Women are educated--who knows how?" -- G.F. Hegel
A republic based on universality and principles which are protected by laws, is the political embodiment of the masculine principle - the principle which created and maintains civilization. You can see this in the Constitution itself, which is designed to protect a citizen's rights regardless of what the populace votes for. The "principles" of the republic (masculine principles) are to be held in higher regard than the current voting whims of the day (feminine principles). Why would you "un-order" this at the outset by placing the feminine principle at an equal level to the male principle? You wouldn't base a republic on known successful principles only to immediately subject it to the very force that would remove such principles.
You can see from the very first of the sentiments, as discussed above, that the Declaration of Sentiments is already trying to subvert the objective truth with the subjective truth. As we go through this list of sentiments over the next sections, I'll be pointing out more falsehoods - all of which actually strengthen the case for not allowing women to decide with their subjectivity which objective truths society ought to follow.
A further reason for voting restrictions (including on the men) was so those who relied upon others for their very survival would be prevented from directing their actions legally. A welfare recipient, for example, should not be able to vote for the productive classes to give him more free benefits. When the parasite leads the host, it destroys both organisms. But when the host leads the parasite, both organisms can survive - it just takes an ordering, like the ordering of truth shown in the diagram of the Russian dolls above. .
We know from the research of John Lott and Lawrence Kenny's study titled, "Did Women's Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?" that indeed, women, who tend to vote for their collective security, grew the government far more than men did, who tend to vote for individualism and freedom.
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"Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one" ~ Benjamin Franklin
I regularly read financial and politically focused blogs and often it is pointed how, since the advent of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the dollar has lost 96% of its value. This is true - and a significant portion of the debt they created from doing this has gone to fund vast government bureaucracies and welfare entitlements that we simply can't afford, thus why we keep borrowing money from the Central Bankers to fund our defecits.
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"Democracy is the road to Socialism" -- Karl Marx
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What I rarely see pointed out, however, is this exponential rise in government spending also co-incides with women being given the vote in 1919. The majority of government bureaucracies, educational institutions and medical-care facilities are staffed by women - in fact, I've read that 70% of government employees (all earning 30% more than the private sector can afford to pay them - plus benefits!) are women. And, the majority of tax dollars spent on welfare programs, healthcare and other such government services also goes to women (something like 65% - aside from maternity issues). Yet, it's the dreaded, misogynist, racist, white males working in the actually productive private sector that are providing over 65% of the tax dollars to keep the whole system afloat. Doesn't that sound like the parasites leading the host to you?
"Give us suffrage and we'll give you Socialism," quipped Susan B. Anthony.
"Give us Socialism and we'll give you the vote!," replied Eugene V. Debs.
(Eugene V. Debs was a 5-time Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America)
How the framework for this was laid down by the suffragette movement's undermining of the nuclear family with points 4 to 8 of the Declaration of Sentiments' will be explored in the next section.
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“Remember, Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself! There never was a democracy that ‘did not commit suicide.’” -- Samuel Adams
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“...democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” -- James Madison
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“Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.” -- John Marshall, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, 1801-1835
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