Sunday, April 01, 2012

[muliqyuf] Suffrage and Temperance

It is fascinating how women's suffrage and Prohibition are intimately historically intertwined, with both constitutional amendments passing at approximately the same time.

One wonders whether the political support for suffrage would have ever materialized had we been a country either with more responsible drinkers, or in which the acceptability of uninhibited drunken behavior were more deeply ingrained in the culture (e.g., religiously justified in Dionysus).

This might be a chapter of history Americans are not entirely proud about, that the right thing happened for extremely the wrong reasons.  It does help put into perspective the difficulties being encountered by women trying to achieve first-class citizenship in Islamic countries where alcohol is already forbidden.

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