The Trans Movement Just Hit Home.......

[Dill]

(05-05-2023, 12:11 AM)michaelsean Wrote: Liberals weren’t getting it right the first time. The first time would have been 1789. It happened 130 years later.   At one point in time we got it right, and we refer to the people who led the charge as liberal or progressive. The minute I supported gay marriage I became progressive. By definition. That’s why change is always accomplished by progressives. The movement defines  them. If you supported women’s rights and opposed equal rights for black people are you the conservative or the liberal of the times?

Why wasn't 1776 "the first time"? Or maybe I am missing the significance of 1789--the French revolution? 

Or do you mean liberals would have stood up for women's rights in 1789 in the U.S. Constitution? If that's what you mean then no, I don't agree that liberals "got it wrong" by not enfranchising women. That was not yet on the table.

What liberals "got right" then was popular sovereignty and a democratic government of checks and balances--for white males with property. That started in 1776. The "conservatives" of that period would have been those who opposed the Revolution and still thought the British king was ordained by God to rule.
Radical liberals were those like Paine who wanted to end slavery, but didn't prevail. Women's equality was envisioned very few feminists, like
Mary Wollenstonecraft in England and Olympe de Gouges in France. No one argued about that during the constitutional convention.

Time frame is important. "Progressives" supported women's rights in 1919. Not "conservatives."  Such support is not necessarily a progressive position now, if we are just talking about voting. Maternity leave and the right to abortion are the front line now.

In the 19th century, some black males supported suffrage for themselves but not women. I would say they were "progressive" until
those rights are normalized, no longer legally contestable. After that point they would no longer be progressive.  A black male with those
views in 1985 would not be progressive. Nor a black woman. 

A woman who supported equal rights for women in 1919 would be a progressive even if she did not support the same rights for blacks, yes. 
A woman in 2023 who supported the right of both women and blacks to vote would not automatically thereby be "progressive"--not in a society
where these have already been normalized for decades, and certainly not if she opposed a woman's right to choose or denied the reality of
systemic racism.