From the pages of English Suffrage History:
Black Friday, November 18, 1910, London ... when a bill to allow at least 1 million wealthy women to vote as denied time for further consideration, a delegation of 300 women demonstrated in front of Parliament. In an attempt to run past police, at least 200 of the women were assaulted and arrested, and two women were dead.
While the Press was generally on the side of the women, many a politician distanced himself from the effort, even as the British public was generally against the enfranchisement of women.
It's been a hundred years since these terrible days in England, but sometimes I wonder - there is still within certain religious and political elements in America a deep resentment toward the rights of women, seen as a violation of "god's eternal decrees about the sexes, home and family values." And a certain romanticism: "If only women would stay home, be quiet, cook, sew and rear children, all would be well with America. Remember, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."
This, and a lot of other poppycock about the role of women in society, was written mostly by men who, I think, wrote this claptrap to quiet their conscience, even as they witnessed the women in their lives denied the basic rights of life and liberty enjoyed by every man. But shout a lie loud enough, and soon folks come to believe it, and even better if the lie is rooted in something so "sacred" as being a mother.
That we should still be fighting about these things strikes me as absurd, but, then, what do I know?
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