14. Women’s Suffrage Defies the Natural Order
This argument brings us around full circle, back to the “anti-feminism” surrounding the followers of Trump. Many people did not vote for Hillary Clinton, not because they didn’t agree with her policies, but because they just believed that there was a natural order, created by God, and according to that natural order, women need to remain at home. Hillary had violated that natural law; after all, her husband was known to have affairs and some believed he would have been faithful if she had been a good wife. Along with this same thinking, people feel Donald Trump should be supported, entirely regardless of his misogyny and emotional impulsivity, because men belong in politics and women belong at home.
Sadly, the concept of the “natural order” is one that generations of suffragettes and women’s rights advocates will have to fight in the future. It is one argument that will not go away. It finds its basis in different theologies that advocate patriarchy, in social theories that insist on the primacy of men, and even in biological sciences. The battle continues, not for the right to vote, but for the right for women to have equal rights, both at home and in the public sphere.