Forum Topic

Freedom comes with responsibility. The right to vote is a recent one. What does fantasising about owning slaves mean? It means wanting to deprive a section of society of rights, so you can exploit and abuse them. Black people in America only got the right to vote in 1870, although the "Jim Crow" laws effectively blocked all black people from voting until 1965.It was legal in the UK to pay black people less than white people up to 1968.Women in England didn't get to vote until 1928. They couldn't get a mortgage without a male guarantor until 1975. At the same time women gained the right to earn the same pay for doing the same job as a man and the right to a pension from their employer. Rape in marriage became illegal in 1991.Is that what some white men are nostalgic for, the Shangri La they want to return to?. A time when they had privilege and rights over women and non whites. It certainly gave them advantages. A woman needed to marry to have a home and some security. Black and brown people had to step back and accept abuse, discrimination and lower pay.In the early days of voting, people who acquired the right wanted a more progressive world. The memory of what it meant to have no rights was close and painful.Certainly some men on the far right want to erode women's rights. The incel movement believes men have an entitlement to sex with women. Women's right to abortion has been removed in some US states.What would people who fought hard for those rights and a fairer world think about the flirtation of so many, including black people and women, with parties that want to turn the clock back.

Kathleen Healy ● 2d