I don’t write much these days about national politics. In some aspects I think women have to be careful because we’re being targeted. That sounds paranoid, but is it really?
So there’s a headline that’s been bothering me and it concerns the seemingly pickled Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
It started with a sub stack post by Heather Cox Richardson.
Then I followed her links to NPR and The Guardian.
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/09/nx-s1-5497226/women-pastor-pete-hegseth-vote
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/09/pete-hegseth-video-pastors-women-voting
So Hegseth has reposted and shared an interview from some Christian Nationalist pastor or minister of some militant Christian church who says women shouldn’t be able to vote. Essentially it should be up to our husbands. And there are other cuckoo ministers who seem to agree with this man.
OK, I’m going to curse here and if you don’t like it, turn away from this blog now, but what the actual F people?
None of this is OK. Even having to talk about it is not OK for all that the suffragettes went through with all of the people involved in the suffragist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries I can’t even believe we are here again? This guy actually has said out loud in an interview for CNN that women shouldn’t vote and the Secretary of Defence for the United States of America in 2025 re-shared this which is his implied agreement and consent.
And this tool also says things that women are people that people come out of, yet apparently according to him we all shouldn’t do that either because I guess he must have parameters on how women should spawn?
It doesn’t really matter what your political persuasion is. I think we can all agree that we all should have the right to vote in this country as US citizens.
Until the National Park Service is forced to take it down, they have a nice list of suffragists we should know. (CLICK HERE)
People we are not all Mississippi on this bus. Why do I mention Mississippi? Simple – Mississippi didn’t ratify the 19th Amendment or woman’s right to vote until 1984!
I guess people take for granted that English common law saw a woman with no legal status of her own and women was legally considered indistinct from their husbands.
The demand for women’s suffrage has roots in the 18th century, but it really didn’t take hold until the 19th century.
The first women’s rights convention was around 1848. It was called the Seneca Falls convention and was an upstate New York in the finger lakes region. Then there was the Rochester Women’s Rights convention the same year also in New York State. In 1850 there was the Ohio Women’s Convention. Also that year there was the first National Women’s Rights Convention in Massachusetts.
The Civil War interrupted suffrage movements in the United States. After the war was over, there was another National Women’s Rights Convention. In the 1870s the suffragist movement grew.
In the 1870s Susan B Anthony was taken to court for trying to cast her vote in a presidential election. Susan B. Anthony was arrested for violating the Enforcement Act of 1870 by casting a vote in the 1872 presidential election.
During Susan B Anthony’s trial, the judge apparently instructed the jury to find her guilty.
According to a Wikipedia page on women’s suffrage:
When [the judge] asked Anthony, who had not been permitted to speak during the trial, if she had anything to say, she responded with what one historian has called “the most famous speech in the history of the agitation for woman suffrage”.[120]She called “this high-handed outrage upon my citizen’s rights”, saying, “… you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored.”[128] The judge sentenced Anthony to pay a fine of $100, she responded, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty”, and she never did.[120]However the judge did not order her to be imprisoned until she paid the fine, for Anthony could have appealed her case.[126]
So how ironic is it really the Donald Trump during his first administration pardoned Susan B Anthony? Yep it’s true, On August 18, 2020 he pardoned her on the anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment. The ones so-called women’s suffrage amendment was introduced Congress in 1878. It was not ratified until it became the 19th amendment in 1919.
So now Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is supportive of a minister who wants to roll back the clock on women? Is this a drinking game or something?
No one should be OK with this.
For more information on what it took to get women the right to vote I found many interesting pieces to read. Here is one that’s stuck with me:
#Suffragettes2025