Eleanor Holmes Norton Quotes

Mrs. Roosevelt thought that with the rate of improvement in society’s perception and treatment of women was improving so steadily that women in America were not far from equality. Because of the shortage of men on the home front in WWII women had performed well in virtually all occupations including welding, heavy construction and management and it was just a matter of time to reach equality of pay and parity. However, she and most feminists did not take into account the 2 million men returning from military service who wanted their jobs back. Sexists, who had been suppressed during the war when they objected to women in non traditional occupations, were no longer silenced by national necessity. An occupational backlash developed. Then a sexual one regarding contraception and family planning, (Condoms for example were illegal up to 1963 as birth control device). Each major step forward was accompanied by its own backlash and even in the Presidential Campaign of 2012 contained debate on women’s control over their own bodies relative to abortion and contraception.

Essentially this quotation led to a major war and yhrn a later war of independence for Blacks in South Africa. Porter was the Attorney General of the English Cape Colony in South Africa. In an early legal ruling he observed that South Aftica was a colony under English law which did not permit discrimination on the basis of skin color. However, there was a large proportion of Afrikaners—whites of Dutch Ancestry who were culturally strong racists and saw the Blacks as a combination of potential rivals for land and a potential subjegated labor force. They tended to leave the Capetown area and English law. The Afrikaners ended up in a major war—the Boer War—against the English and although the English won the war, the Afrikaners won the political peace and ended up dominating South Africa and imposing apartheid. The Blacks of the mid 20th century had if nothing else, the 100 year old legal and moral precendent from Porter’s opinion which justified the ANC leading the attack on apartheid which finally succeeded. It took 100 years and millions of suffering and dying people but finally, the law of South Africa was as Porter had stated it, and since the Blacks were in the great majority, the Whites became the minority, but due to the ANC leadership of men like Nelson Mandella, the Blacks did not seek revenge on the Afrikaner whites although there was resentlent for generations.

Schafly is an inveterate anti-feminist who has made statements like these on the quotation throughout her career. There are no feminists who agree that their objectives include what Shafly claims they are. And feminists do not urge sexual promiscuity. They do urge that women have the same right to sexual promiscuity as men. In some cultures women’s adultery can be grounds for divorcing her and her losing her rights to her children, and in Muslim cultures death by stoning is the consequence. However, adultery on the part of the male has few if any legal consequences. When feminists object to that patent differentiation, they do NOT advocate that women commit adultery, but that the law treat men and women equally and fairly.

Marcus Porcius Cato. This quotation has had two different interpretations over time. One was that women if they received equality of treatment and voting would have an advantage for they also had their traditional “feminine wiles” and their sexuality, hence would dominate men. The second was a also a warning but based on the fact that women were superior in many ways, and given an equal chance, would excel men. The later interpretation is argued by some who point to the 2011 American data that shows more females than males graduating from high school and college, and females outnumber males in medical, law and several other professional schools. With the exception of a few Roman men, most heeded Cato’s warning and never took a chance on female equality.