White Feathers and Bloodied Hands - Feminism in WWI

Thorium Ð: The Suffragettes took their opportunity during the First World War, and are remembered for what they did for women, rather than what they did to men.


Links:

Emmeline Pankhurst Speech: http://archive.org/stream/newyorktime...

White Feather campaign: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_fe...

Karen Straughan on the draft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHvcF...

Boys committing suicide: http://theantifeminist.com/white-feat...

Feminism101 (male privilege): http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.c...

Poppy field: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUgbD...

*World War One footage taken from the BBC series 'The Great War'.

Partial transcript: (full transcript available upon request)

As November 11th approached, I felt compelled to put together a video on the First World War. Rather, not the war itself, but the conduct of Feminists - then referred to as Suffragettes - during wartime. Many of you will already be familiar with the Suffragette leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, whose words of unadulterated gynocentrism opened this video.

What I found most troubling about her speech, given fewer than nine months after GB had entered the war, was its complete disregard for male life in relation to female life. Her words, and I quote, "The least that men can do, is that every man of fighting age should prepare himself to redeem his word to women, and to make ready to do his best, to save the mothers, the wives, and the daughters of Britain from outrage too horrible even to think of".

Other than its expectation that men should sacrifice themselves for women as a matter of course, what both baffles and offends me, is that she considers German occupation of Britain and its women to be an outrage too horrible to even think of. The thought of men, young and old, wallowing in squalid trenches, deprived of food, water, medicine; being slaughtered in their thousands; dismembered, bleeding out; trench fever, trench foot; shellshock; forced to murder their fellow man on the whims of politicians; burying their best friends, their brothers in arms; and on, and on the horror goes. That thought was quite palatable to her, it would seem. Just so long as the women were safe.

If this seems like an exaggeration, consider another line from her 1915 speech: "if the unthinkable thing happened, and Germany were to win, the women's movement, as we know it in Europe, would be put back fifty years at least."

In August 1914, at the start of the First World War, Admiral Charles Fitzgerald founded the Order of the White Feather with support from the prominent author Mrs Humphrey Ward. The organization aimed to shame men into enlisting in the British Army by persuading women to present them with a white feather if they were not wearing a uniform.

The former were joined by prominent feminists and suffragettes of the time, such as Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel. They spoke at public rallies in support of the movement, handing out feathers to civilian men and encouraging other women to do likewise.

There was, I'm afraid to say, an even darker consequence of the White Feather campaign. Approximately 250,000 boys under the age of 19 - the legal limit for armed service - volunteered to fight. There were no birth certificates, and I should imagine the state was not quick to question eager young men. The vast majority of these boys enlisted in 1915.

In the year 14-32, King Henry VI of England decreed that only male owners of property worth at least forty shillings, a significant sum, were entitled to vote.

This remained the case until the introduction of the so-called Great Reform Act of 1832. This extended the right to vote to approximately one in seven men, subject to the value of their propertied land.

Further reforms in 1867 and 1884 increased the percentage of males eligible to vote to around 60% of the population aged 21 and over. Women were yet to receive suffrage.

Now we reach the First World War. No further legislation had been passed. If one allows for the number of British soldiers under the age of 21 who had volunteered, and the disproportionate number of recruits from the lower and middle classes, it would not be unreasonable to assert that more than half of the men fighting for Britain during World War One did not have the right to vote.

One can assume that the figure would have been similar across the Western world. More. Than. Half.

In January 1916, a military service bill was introduced rendering all men aged 18 to 41 liable to be called up for service. Similar acts introducing conscription were passed in The United States, Canada, and elsewhere. None of these bills placed any obligation upon women to contribute.

This all rather discredits the Feminist party-line that 'men are the privileged sex and have been throughout history'.