Why Women’s Suffrage Destroys Democracy – Investigating TFH’s Claim

The Fifth Horseman (TFH) is one of the Manosphere’s most prominent and insightful writers. He is the author of the now famous ‘Misandry Bubble‘. One of the claims he has often made is that female suffrage inevitably destroys democracy. Concretely he posits:

Democracy means that politicians gain power by giving feminists what they claim to want. Also, while men vote for what benefits all people, women vote for what benefits women only. This is also what makes religious institutions feminist, when the country they reside in happens to be a democracy.

That is why democracy, over time, means a two-parent family erodes away. Democracy, thus has a life-cycle, after which it is followed by a feminist police state. No other outcome is possible after 3-4 generations of female suffrage.

I share his opinion and as such have decided to look into to the matter and try to dig up some research to back up this claim. And interestingly enough there are a few studies that – taken together – would corroborate his thesis.

Firstly, we need to adress the question of female own group preference. Common sense alone would strongly suggest that is the case. In social settings, in wartime, in work and in emergencies women (and by extension society) look at men for support and sacrifice. Arguably, this expectation of male disposability is so entrenched that people oftentimes aren’t even *aware* of it any more. ‘Women and children first‘ is a rallying cry that was uttered not just on the Titanic in 1912 but also after the ‘Costa Concordia’ sunk in 2012. In fact there was widespread outrage that men dared to look out for themselves first during the Costa Concordia Incident. It was venomously bemoaned in this discussion of whining White Knights. Anyways, if there was any remaining doubt as to the claim of women having an owngroup preference it is settled by this study:

Four experiments confirmed that women’s automatic in-group bias is remarkably stronger than men’s and investigated explanations for this sex difference, derived from potential sources of implicit attitudes (L. A. Rudman, 2004). In Experiment 1, only women (not men) showed cognitive balance among in-group bias, identity, and self-esteem (A. G. Greenwald et al., 2002), revealing that men lack a mechanism that bolsters automatic own group preference. Experiments 2 and 3 found pro-female bias to the extent that participants automatically favored their mothers over their fathers or associated male gender with violence, suggesting that maternal bonding and male intimidation influence gender attitudes. Experiment 4 showed that for sexually experienced men, the more positive their attitude was toward sex, the more they implicitly favored women. In concert, the findings help to explain sex differences in automatic in-group bias and underscore the uniqueness of gender for intergroup relations theorists.

Secondly, we need to analyze the relationship of women’s suffrage and the expansion of the state sector. Is it just a coincidence that the state sector in *all* countries with female suffrage started to dramatically expand after the 1920s (i.e. the begin of female suffrage)? If we look at the US, the UK, Germany, France and all the other western countries we see a remarkable trend: in all these countries the state sector was ever increasingly expanded and the tax rate dramatically increased over time. There are *no exceptions*. There is no democratic country with female suffrage that has not behaved in this manner. As such it seems highly likely that female suffrage tends to expand the scope of governmental intervention into erstwhile private affairs. Notice also the *fact* that during male only suffrage in these exact same countries the government sector tended to be small and taxes tended to be low while free market competition and individual agency tended to be maximized. Notice also that the *golden era* of economic progress was in the later 19th Century (i.e. *before* female suffrage).

Further corroborating this is a study I have found that unambiguously indicates that female suffrage automatically leads to dramatically more governmental intervention. In its own words:

This paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote. Using cross-sectional time-series data for 1870–1940, we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by U.S. House and Senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives, and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise. Contrary to many recent suggestions, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s, and it helps explain why American government started growing when it did.

Finally, I have found one more tidbit that is relevant to the issue at hand. It is the fact that women in aggregate have a lower, more superficial grasp of politics than men do. And this is the case regardless of feminist policies, female empowerment or other measures. This study here conclusively proves that women know less about politics than men do in *all the 10 sample countries*. From the Guardian article that discusses foresaid study:

Women know less about politics regardless of gender equality, according to a survey by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

The report focused on ten nations, both developed and developing, where men and women were asked questions about domestic and international news. Despite the diversity of the ten sample countries – Australia, Canada, Colombia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, the UK, and the US – women answered fewer questions correctly than men in every country.

10,000 participants took part in the study, which tested their knowledge of broadcast, print and web journalism. They were asked a combination of questions based on hard and soft news reports including recent international events. The hard news questions pertained to topics such as national unemployment, while soft news related to sports personalities and celebrity scandals. The level of gender equality in the nations surveyed was based on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap index ratings.

Professor James Curran, Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre at the University of London, was surprised to find that gaps in political knowledge are wider in countries that have done the most to promote gender equality. These gender gaps in Norway, the UK and the US are as large, or larger than gaps in South Korea and Japan. Women’s scores in the UK, the US, and Canada were more than 30% lower on average than men, whereas in Greece, Italy and Korea, women’s average score was only 20% lower. The UK is positioned at 18/135 in the WEF gender equality rankings, while Korea is placed at 108.

Conclusion:

If we now take all these findings together and consider that a.) women have an owngroup preference (i.e. vote for their own, exclusive interests), b.) enjoy furthering their exclusive interests by expanding the state sector (thus transferring wealth from men to women via the government as proxy) as well as valuing state expansion intrinsically (because women prefer security over freedom) and c.) have a substantially lesser and more superficial grasp of politics and a tendency to focus on ‘fancy antics and faces rather than facts’ the conclusion is inevitable that women destroy democracy.

Why is this?

1.) Due to their own group preference women vote far more homogenously than men do. Essentially, the party that bribes women the most gets the (majority) female vote (there are always outliers). So politicians have an *incentive* to tailor their politics towards female interests at the expense of men and society at large and long term orientation.

2.) Moreover, it is the very nature of these bribes that continuously expand the state sector which – in turn – increasingly asphyxiates individual freedom and agency. Thus a vicious circle is set in motion that lets from democracy via “pink socialism” ultimately to totalitarianism. Because democracy cannot exist without liberty and liberty cannot exist without individual rights and agency (something increasingly removed by female voting).

3.) Finally, this dynamic – the devolution from democracy to tyranny – is expedited and augmented by women’s limited grasp of politics and essentially short time orientation. If women do not understand the background and details of complex political issues and, more importantly, also don’t care about the content because they are more focused on the superfical ‘razzle dazzle’ (the Obama Effect) they are more easily conned by unscrupulous politicians that have, of course, their own agenda as well.

Any country that thus gives women the vote is *inevitably* doomed to devolve into tyranny ere long. There is no other possibility. This is a sad conclusion but unfortunately I believe it to be God’s honest truth.

Sources:

Rudman L.A., Gudman S.A. (2004) : “Gender differences in automatic in-group bias: why do women like women more than men like men?“. Department of Psychology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ, USA.

Lott, John R., Kenny, Lawrence W. (1999) : “Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?”. Journal of Political Economy, vol. 107, no. 6, pt. 1

Economic and Social Research Council (2011): “Media System, Political Context and Informed Citizenship: A Comparative Study“