Today in Supreme Court History: August 18, 1920

8/18/1920: The Nineteenth Amendment is ratified

Comments

[AmosArch]

Aka one of the worst mistakes in history...

[apedad]

OK, I'll play.

Aka one of the worst mistakes in history…because?

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Ah, I see. You're playing the role of the naive innocent baptist. No doubt captcrisis will be along any minute to fill the rile of the bootlegger.

[Sarcastr0]

I've made the mistake before, but 19th is women's sufferage.

18th is prohibition.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You and your fancy "numbers" and "mathematics," and your elite "words" and "standard English . . ."

[Sarcastr0]

Easy mistake, especially if you assume AmosArch has normal views of society.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Right you are. I woke up (again) thinking that date had been wrong. It ought to teach me to not post when smoke and heat wake me up early, but I haven;t learned yet, probably never will.

Apologies to apedad and captcrisis.

[Sarcastr0]

I'd be interested in how low the polling is for neo-prohibition these days.
I'm guessing it's in the low teens.

[Dr. Ed 2]

When the country was founded, it was a *family* vote, cast by the husband, with the wife's full knowledge of what it was. She was either sitting next to him in town meeting, or other women who were would tell her.

Now issues that men cared about, such as the minister's firewood allotment -- which they had to cut, split, and deliver -- they'd vote on. But everything else was "yes dear, yes dear, whatever dear....

So women had the vote....

[apedad]

Thanks DE2.

I'm sure we can all agree how NONE of that applies in the Year of our Lord 6020.

[Dilan Esper]

"When the country was founded, it was a *family* vote, cast by the husband, with the wife’s full knowledge of what it was. "

Why would you ever assume this? And what about unmarried or separated women?

And if that was such a great system, they should have disenfranchised males instead of females. After all, it's the "family" vote. And yet nobody proposed that. Wonder why.

[Dr. Ed 2]

they should have disenfranchised males instead of females.

They did. There were property requirements for voting, and often surtaxes on unmarried men.

[Sarcastr0]

'Instead' is the key word in that sentence.

I mean, your scenario is also ahisorical about women and politics. Didn't you learn about separate spheres in school?

Did you ever see those anti-suffragette posters? Speaking of zero-sum thinking about demographics!
https://www.boredpanda.com/anti-suffrage-propaganda-voting-rights-postcards/

[Dr. Ed 2]

Trump to pardon Susan B Anthony.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-susan-b-anthony-to-get-posthumous-pardon

[QuantumBoxCat]

Didn't she commit voter fraud?

[Sarcastr0]

So far we have 2 posters coming out against women voting and one not taking a stand.

[apedad]

Is that because the Volokh Conspiracy is a heavily white, CIS, male dominated club and we're not hearing enough women voices?

Or is it because some of the (heavy?), white, CIS, males are ignorant?

Holy crap - I'm starting to sound like Rev. Kirkland.

[Sarcastr0]

Some of it is the demographics, but there's something ideological as well.
*Conservatives are often kinda retrograde - sometimes very much so.
*Libertarians and MRA have a lot of overlap. Something about contrarianism?
*Women vote liberal. The right has been pitching contractions of the franchise for the past 20 years.

[Aladdin's Carpet]

I mean, I would rather have an intelligent back and forth with someone than needlessly shout at idiots.

Taking the position that women shouldn't vote is something most people, including me, wouldn't engage with for the simple reason that that position is so obviously stupid and I would just be feeding trolls.

[Sarcastr0]

You are a better person than I.

I like intellectual discourse, but I also do like shooting fish in a barrel more than is probably ideal.

[Sarcastr0]

I recall you having at least anti-19th curious conversations with RestoreWesternHegemony, but I'm glad if you've mended your ways.

[Sarcastr0]

I hesitate to pontificate on the inevitability.

But I am quite happy to take the brave stance that the 19th was a good thing to do.

[Sarcastr0]

Historical counterfactuals don't interest me, so I again have little to say about that.

Similarly, I cannot separate my nature from my nurture, so I also have no idea what stances I'd take if I lived in a different time. All I can control is the stances I take here and now.

[Sarcastr0]

Sure; I'm no historian, but history already comes to us occluded through narrative, I'm leery about the utility of coulda questions.
We certainly can't a priori predict when there will be a revolution or an expansion of rights.

I can control the policies I advocate for, including addressing disparate impact. Generally you want to avoid addressing it directly, but rather identify the reasons for the bias and address them. E.g. addressing a lack of women applying to grants via a proposers guide for the program that makes it easier to lower barriers to applying both perceived and actual.

I'm skeptical of implicit bias studies; there is something there, but I don't think we're there yet. As you may recall, I don't really like implicit bias training.