Should women be allowed to vote? Should they even vote? And is it even possible for women to vote at all? Today's guest, leftist Blondie, and conservative commentator Priya Patel join host Rachel Maddow to debate these questions and more.
00:01:13.840Should I even be allowed to have an opinion on that?1.00
00:01:17.040I have answers to both of those questions,1.00
00:01:19.000but I brought women on to give me political cover.0.98
00:01:21.360I'm very excited to have back to the show1.00
00:01:24.360one of my favorite libs I've ever had on any of my shows. That would be Leftist Blondie,0.99
00:01:29.840who you can catch in one of my Bar Fight episodes just a few weeks ago.1.00
00:01:34.160Returning once again, Melanie Mack, along with Emily Saves America. This is a nice reunion and
00:01:41.980an introduction to the show, Priya Patel, a conservative commentator. I'm going to tell
00:01:48.520a little tale out of school before we delve into the question, ladies. I've wanted to have this
00:01:52.920debate for a while because I found I was doing public events and people were asking me seriously
00:01:57.200if we should work to campaign to repeal the 19th amendment. I said, it doesn't seem totally
00:02:04.660realistic. I don't know, but they kept bringing it up and it wasn't just a bomb throwing kind
00:02:09.220of thing. They were very serious about it. So I said, okay, well, let me see. Let's have a panel
00:02:13.120about it. Let's get some libs and some conservatives, people who support women voting,1.00
00:02:18.120people who oppose women voting. I couldn't find a conservative woman who supported women's0.99
00:02:25.480suffrage. The number of women who were conservative in the year of our Lord, 2026, who actually think0.98
00:02:32.840women should vote is vanishingly small. So I said, man, the culture really shifts real fast,
00:02:39.940doesn't it? Could we just go around the horn real quick? It may be an order of introduction,
00:02:44.780leftist blondie melanie emily and priya do you just real quick do you think women should vote
00:02:51.100yes of course i think that women should vote it is in their best interest
00:02:55.380next up i'm fine if we do or if we don't melanie i think if we had the right infrastructure we
00:03:02.860wouldn't have to but in our current infrastructure yes we need to vote okay priya um i think it
00:03:09.960would be a near impossible move for our country to make. But I mean, women's suffrage goes against1.00
00:03:15.340essentially what the founders established in our country. So. See, this is what I'm saying. So I0.70
00:03:20.680get this was the most diverse panel I could assemble. And you've got two conservatives who
00:03:26.220say now women probably shouldn't vote or maybe I don't really care, whatever. One woman says1.00
00:03:31.260definitely shouldn't vote. And then we have leftist blondie out there who says, yes, it's in1.00
00:03:35.100their interests. So without revealing my perspective on this just yet, leftist blondie,0.89
00:03:41.300you're the odd man out, odd lady out. Why should women vote? Something in between.1.00
00:03:47.140Yeah. So I think there's a few different arguments. You can look at political
00:03:50.320philosophy that has a lot of arguments regarding voting and why citizens in general should vote.
00:03:55.700And if those arguments extend to women, then women also have a duty to vote. You can look at things
00:03:59.920like people who opt into a social contract, whether tacitly or actively, have a moral
00:04:04.780obligation to vote. If women are included in those people who have opted into, you know,
00:04:09.520a social contract in a society where they benefit from voting, then they should be able to vote.1.00
00:04:14.120Okay. Well, let's say they benefit from voting. But as you point out, the social contract,
00:04:18.160this premise of liberal government says that people get certain rights from the government
00:04:24.840and they have certain responsibilities toward the government. And so one of the arguments made by
00:04:28.980people who oppose women's suffrage is that men have many more obligations than women do. Most
00:04:35.220notably, perhaps the draft. They've got to go out there and fight in wars. The government can
00:04:39.760compel them to do so. Women, at least for now, don't have that obligation. So if men have more1.00
00:04:45.540at stake, is more on the line for men, shouldn't men have more say over when we do and do not go
00:04:51.420to war? Well, that question wouldn't make it such that women should no longer be able to vote or0.93
00:04:57.040shouldn't vote. It would just mean something like maybe men have, you know, more of an obligation
00:05:01.600to vote or maybe men, um, who their roads should weigh more or something crazy like that. Um, but
00:05:07.240that's not, um, with women voting, I don't think that the draft should be a thing. So I think that1.00
00:05:14.080saying like, well, men just have these greater obligations that kind of assumes that they should
00:05:18.220be. So we have a draft now at the very least we are, we have selective service.
00:05:23.800Well, presumably we're not here to talk about like what currently exists.
00:05:26.560We're here to talk about like what people should do.
00:05:28.820No, but I guess your point is, so right now, year of our Lord, 2026, where a ton of conservative
00:05:33.300women now are anti-women suffrage.0.63
00:05:34.920You say that we're all in this social contract together and that's why women should vote.
00:05:38.680I'm just pointing out right now, men have certain obligations that women don't have.
00:05:43.920And so doesn't that contradict your argument?0.95
00:05:47.360No, it doesn't actually contradict my argument.
00:05:49.240In fact, there's other supplemental arguments that could motivate women to voting.
00:05:53.460So I think that just because people have certain moral responsibilities doesn't mean that they somehow should get a more political say in something.
00:06:02.240And once again, we're here to talk about what people should do.
00:06:06.500If we want to talk about like, oh, OK, well, there's currently people in our justice system who are wrongfully incarcerated.
00:06:13.060Well, that's just the way it is. I guess they'll be wrongfully incarcerated.
00:06:15.700Well, we should talk about what kind of society that we want to see.
00:06:19.240No, but I guess there might be some confusion here.
00:06:21.820I mean, we're not talking about morality necessarily in this question.
00:06:25.800You said that the whole premise of your argument is that we have a certain civic setup and we have certain benefits that we get from civil society and we have certain obligations.
00:06:34.900And so if certain people have more civic obligations, then shouldn't they have more rights within the civil society?
00:07:14.860The founders believed in universal suffrage. And I mean, I think that self-governance comes with a moral responsibility, but also, I mean, some sort of stake in the game.
00:07:25.560And today we have a mass movement of people that are hyper dependent on the government that don't have any personal property that they own.
00:07:33.600They're not married. They have nothing that they're actually voting for other than emotional and and short term.
00:07:41.540I mean, essentially incentives, right? And of course that ties into the 19th amendment,
00:07:47.280but it's not necessarily an argument to take away women's rights altogether. But I mean,
00:07:53.200I think that the problem was, is destructuring exactly what the fundamental political unit is,
00:07:58.180and that's the family. Yes. Cause look, when you say essentially that women are just more
00:08:03.700emotional and they're, I say, well, sure, maybe that's true, but also, you know, there are plenty
00:08:07.600of men who are low information, who are emotional. There are plenty of men who in an ideal regime
00:08:11.380probably wouldn't vote either. So I think you've really hit on the point here, which is when the
00:08:16.200country was founded, the fundamental political unit was the family. And then the 19th Amendment
00:08:21.460says, no, no, the fundamental political unit is the individual. And this is why there were so many
00:08:25.880women, I think it was the majority of women, who opposed women's suffrage, who opposed the 19th
00:08:29.900Amendment. And it's not just that they were self-hating women or they were misogynists or0.92
00:08:33.900something. There actually is a deep political philosophical question here, which is, well,
00:08:38.340hold on, what's going to be the basic unit of society? Is it going to be the family or is it
00:08:41.000to be the individual. Exactly. And it was the family when the founders, I mean, wrote up the
00:08:46.460constitution and I mean, essentially founded our country. But now we have a society of hyper
00:08:52.320individualism and that's not only tied to women and feminism, it's obviously spread throughout0.95
00:08:57.220society. But I mean, right now it's nearly impossible for young people to actually gain
00:09:01.900ownership of anything. And they're voting for more government dependence, honestly,
00:09:06.980and punishing people that actually make society that vote in the interest of the person and the
00:09:11.800ability to move upward in society, upward mobility, essentially. They're voting against
00:09:18.240that. They're voting for more government spending and punishing the people that actually helps
00:09:22.180society run. But that's not just a woman thing. I mean, there are male libs. They're one of the1.00
00:09:27.560most odious groups in the world. And so, you know, specifically, if you could wave a magic wand
00:09:34.500right now, would you repeal the 19th amendment? I would. I think it's better for, I think it would
00:09:40.380be better for the country overall. And I would gladly give up my right to vote for, um, for the
00:09:45.380betterment of the, of the nation. But do I think that that's a realistic thing that would happen
00:09:49.560today? No, but I think that we could go back to something in terms of, um, I don't know exactly
00:09:54.700how you'd structure this, but something of a, um, a single family vote, but there'd have to0.81
00:10:00.360be some sort of stipulation because, of course, the individuals that are unmarried and don't own
00:10:05.500property would vastly outnumber those that are married. But we'd have to structure it somehow
00:10:11.600to where maybe you're married or you're a property owner or you're a business owner,
00:10:15.060because I think that's the only way that we get back to a society that's actually voting for
00:10:19.720the betterment of the people. And that's how you earn self-governance, I think, at the end of the
00:10:23.800day. People who have a stake in society. Emily, you said you don't care. You don't care. You're
00:10:28.140being so flippant about your right to vote that your feminist, I can't say your feminist ancestors1.00
00:10:33.660because a lot of the feminists didn't have kids, but like your great, great aunt, you know, was0.96
00:10:37.800marching forward with the suffragettes and you're just spitting in her face and saying, you don't1.00
00:10:42.300care that she won you the sacred right to vote. How dare you? Uh, yeah. I mean, a lot of men helped
00:10:50.600out as well. And maybe she wasn't doing that. Maybe she was sitting at home and she was very0.96
00:10:55.400happy and she didn't want to go work because it sucks. And I've never met a woman that really0.97
00:10:59.180wants to go to work. Um, I feel like it's kind of like, we have to treat women now almost like1.00
00:11:03.680children. It's like, we gave them too much. Now we need to reel it back in a bit. You kind of0.99
00:11:08.160have to teach them a lesson the hard way. And I don't understand people are voting and they have
00:11:11.860no stake in the game. They're voting for more government. They want more free handouts. And
00:11:16.320then women really just vote. I mean, especially on the left, just for abortion. That's the only1.00
00:11:19.960thing they care about. They want the right to, um, kill innocent babies. And so I'm like, I don't1.00
00:11:25.060know, maybe we gave you guys too much, and maybe we need to just reel it back a little bit. Is that
00:11:30.060going to happen? I hope it would. Leftist Blondie, are you a child who only cares about
00:11:34.940slaughtering infants? And do we need to teach you a lesson, Leftist Blondie, per Emily?0.99
00:11:41.180Well, I mean, if we want to talk about unjust slaughtering in the United States, I think we
00:11:45.580should address factory farming first. So I'm more considerate about that type of issue if we're
00:11:49.620talking about lives unjustly being taken. So we can go into that kind of thing if you really want
00:11:54.420too. But I don't think that the abortion, of course, there's a fundamental disagreement that
00:11:58.840the taking of the fetus's life before sentience is unjust. So I think there would be an argument
00:12:03.560given for that. Not nearly as unjust as killing the chickens, you would say.
00:12:06.120I was going to say, I agree. No, you're right. Yeah, no, killing a fetus that's not sentient
00:12:11.800is less unjust than killing an animal that is sentient and can feel pain and desires to live.
00:12:17.600So yeah, I think that's a, it's a pretty moral grave wrong. But there's going to be pretty
00:12:21.040I'm starting to go into one camp on the 19th Amendment now.
00:12:24.320That answer is pushing me much further.
00:13:17.520this april pre-born aims to share that hope in 11 000 gospel conversations across their clinics
00:13:23.020you can make that happen for 28 bucks you can sponsor one ultrasound when a woman sees her
00:13:26.900baby for the first time on ultrasound it increases the chance that she chooses life 80 okay every
00:13:31.960dollar you give to pre-born is going to go towards saving babies they fundraise for their admin costs
00:13:36.320separately this is an amazing investment i strongly recommend you give what you can to donate down
00:13:40.980pound 250 say keyword baby that's pound 250 keyword baby or go to pre-born.com slash knolls
00:13:45.900freeborn.com slash knowles so you want to take away rights for 51 of the country because one
00:13:53.700percent of the population is vegan preferably more is that yeah but i mean that's what michael
00:13:59.140was saying or he's over here for me but um also now they came out with that plant can feel pain
00:14:05.080but technically if you eat vegetables kind of evil that's just incorrect well if plants have
00:14:10.180feelings and plants can feel pain then you should eat vegan because then you're eating less plants
00:14:14.000But anyways, so to address what Mike said, I know this is getting a little far afield, but if you're not eating plants and you're not eating meat, are you eating rocks?
00:14:22.180Certainly you're eating organic matter, I think.
00:19:46.680where are the white women the happiest i want to know the the countries where white women are the
00:19:54.680happiest are the countries where women are more equal to men and they also have greater
00:19:58.660reproductive rights, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, uh, all the Nordic countries.1.00
00:20:03.820Humanically white countries. Okay. All right. Well, I don't look, I don't want to touch that.1.00
00:20:08.260Where are we talking about great replacement or are we talking about voting and whether or not
00:20:12.680you should vote? You brought in rights. You're the one who says white women are only happy in
00:20:15.880the whitest countries in the world. I didn't, I wasn't, I was just talking about voting.
00:20:19.020I didn't say, wait, wait, wait, this is a straw man. I think that's incredibly dishonest coming
00:20:22.800from the right. Oh, that's what I'm claiming is that white women are only happiest in the0.95
00:20:27.160in these white countries i'm not saying that they're only happy in those countries i'm saying
00:20:30.620that the correlation with women being able to vote and have reproductive choices makes them happier
00:20:35.860and that's backed up by data that's actually women can vote in a lot of countries you're the one who
00:20:39.960said they're only happy in the white country do you think that i think that women in afghanistan0.80
00:20:47.300are happy no because you think they're only happy in the white countries okay so on women's
00:20:51.880happiness. I want to, I want to make this, hold on. I just want to point out. So over the 20th
00:20:57.280century, you had this rise in feminism. In the early 20th century, you get the 19th amendment1.00
00:21:01.800and the first wave of feminism. Then you get the second wave of feminism, this explosion in the
00:21:05.6001960s. Then we had the third wave in the 90s. Now we're in like the 57th phase or something.
00:21:09.940But there was a strange study apropos of our conversation about women voting and whether
00:21:15.060these supposed rights have actually made them better off. There was a study that came out of
00:21:19.000Yale, I think it was 2008, it was called the paradox of declining female happiness. And it
00:21:24.340found that during the rise of feminism, women became less happy. Now, men also became less
00:21:30.360happy, but women became even less happy than the men did. So the Yale study viewed this as a
00:21:36.560paradox. They said, women should be so much happier because feminism's on the rise. And now1.00
00:21:40.220they're single and they work in the widget factory for Mr. McGillicuddy and they vote and they sleep0.87
00:21:43.960around and they can kill their kids and it's all, it should be so great. But then it turned out
00:21:47.800they got really unhappy during exactly that period of time. So wouldn't that be an argument
00:21:52.740against the various feminist policies, potentially all the way up to including suffrage?
00:21:59.440Well, there's a problem here with correlation and causation, and I'm sure you understand that
00:22:02.960as a college graduate yourself, that not only like something just existing at the same time
00:22:07.820doesn't mean that that thing causes the other thing. It doesn't mean it, but it does raise
00:22:11.360your eyebrows. It doesn't mean it. It doesn't mean it doesn't. Okay. Should. Okay. Well,
00:22:15.580Well, then take this example and raise your eyebrows at this. Ice cream sales go up in the summer. So does violent crime. Is ice cream sales correlated now with violent crime? Of course not. These things are separate.
00:22:23.260No, but I guess the distinction between this comparison of violent crime and ice cream and the point that I'm making is that we're studying, on the one hand, additional political licenses and rights given to women and new social opportunities given to women and how women are feeling about their state in life.
00:22:41.820So those two things are intrinsically related, whereas violent crime and ice cream have nothing
00:22:47.300to do with each other. Intrinsically related? Yeah. What women do and how women feel are
00:22:53.300intrinsically related. All you're doing is begging the question. I'm not begging the question. I'm0.94
00:22:57.280making an observation that habit and feeling relate to each other. You are assuming that that is true
00:23:00.800when that's what's in dispute. You're assuming that that's true when that's what's in dispute.
00:23:04.020I'm not just assuming that. I'm explaining why those two things are related. The things that I
00:23:07.600do during my day uh are directly related to the way that i feel whereas uh an ice cream cone and
00:23:14.420a murder are are very likely not related at all you can get an ice cream cone and then go commit
00:23:19.460a murder what the are you talking about ice cream does not make people commit murder that's my case
00:23:24.680i don't want to be guilty and i disagree that feminism causes people to be unhappy
00:23:29.080okay melanie what do you think i feel like she was just going on about how oh women in countries0.98
00:23:35.320where they can have abortions are happier. And I feel like that's a, you know, that that's
00:23:40.560inaccurate as well. It's not the abortions that are making these women happier. Women who have
00:23:44.360abortions, most of them experience trauma and it messes them up. So this is a whole psyop to make,
00:23:50.540to make women vote for something that actually hurts them. And that benefits men who can sleep0.70
00:23:56.200with women without committing to them and without marrying them or taking care of them. So all it is,0.78
00:24:00.500benefits men i mean that's just benefits women for their bodies that's all it's about and
00:24:09.000especially if you look at the history of abortion and all of that kind of stuff like a lot of it
00:24:12.880was was because men wanted to wanted to be able to sleep with women and then they somehow were
00:24:17.360able to manipulate women into thinking that it's good for women to abort their babies because these
00:24:22.380men don't have to take responsibility for sleeping with women and using their bodies0.98
00:24:25.680Fact check true. That's look, we can, we can paint, we can paint abortion out to be this0.94
00:24:30.120thing that traumatizes every single woman that, and that no woman should ever do because some
00:24:33.700women experienced trauma out of it. But 95% of women think that the abortion after the fact
00:24:39.060was the right decision for themselves. But that number is different from abortion regret. It's
00:24:43.280true. You're right that a very high number of women who have abortions go on to say,
00:24:47.380I stand by my decision. I think it was the right decision, but, but a, uh, much, a very large1.00
00:24:52.580number, I think it's in the 60s, but I don't know the exact statistic, do say they experienced some
00:24:57.140form of regret or trauma or difficulty. So those two things can be true at once. You can say,
00:25:01.680I found this very dramatic, but it was still the right decision. That's how the statistics kind of
00:25:06.020lie about it. Regardless, though, to Melanie's point, what she's saying is, look, women have1.00
00:25:11.120voted for all these things. Women got the right to vote. They voted for all these things like
00:25:15.260abortion. These things have made them unhappy at a personal level. And I mean, unless you're
00:25:21.080unwilling to say that any social phenomena can, can have a causative relationship. I think we
00:25:26.680would have to say that probably there's a little bit of causation there. And so therefore you'd
00:25:31.360say, what's the good of voting? What's the good? If it's, if it's made even the women,
00:25:35.360the people who was intended to help unhappy, what's the point? What good did you get out of
00:25:38.880it? You got to pull a lever in a voting booth. This is still a classic question begging. I don't
00:25:45.300agree to the conclusion and you're assuming the conclusion. I'm not, I'm again, I'm so, okay,
00:25:50.440let me let's let's step back because i'm not begging the question but you are is it the case
00:25:56.680that women have become less happy over the last 60 years yes but that's not sufficiently explained
00:26:04.000by feminism why have they become less happy i we actually talked about this already i think it's
00:26:10.600social and wealth inequality why are they less happy and the rise of hyper individual why have
00:26:15.740they become even less happy than men? Men just don't care. Why have men become unhappy? That's
00:26:20.920a more important question to look at is why have men also become more unhappy? But that's not the
00:26:24.480question I'm asking. Is it also feminism? That's not the question I'm asking. Is it also feminism?0.97
00:26:27.580Why have the women in particular become unhappy coincidentally exactly over the period of the0.99
00:26:34.180rise of feminism? Why do you, you, you reject my answer, which is that it probably has something
00:26:38.580to do with feminism. So what's your answer? Why would feminism disproportionately make women
00:26:44.160unhappy. I'll answer your question because it's a false anthropology that makes mistakes about1.00
00:26:52.120human nature. And it tells women that the only way for them to flourish is to pretend to be like men1.00
00:26:57.440with whom they are indiscernible. So it says that men and women are identical and indiscernible
00:27:02.020rather than what they actually are, which is complimentary. And so by telling women to1.00
00:27:06.940behave exactly as men, you are acting contrary to nature. And because of that, women will flourish1.00
00:27:13.020less and be less fulfilled. I bet you can do something like look at modern feminist philosophers1.00
00:27:18.440and ask them if they truly think that there's zero differences between men and women, which we've0.52
00:27:22.320already also talked about. I don't think that there's zero differences between men and women,
00:27:25.680nor do I think men are women. So I think that you do this where you cherry pick certain feminists,0.93
00:27:31.000and then you go, cherry pick certain feminists, and then you go, oh, well, it's part of a core
00:27:35.540thing about feminist philosophy that you must think that men and women are the same. And then0.92
00:27:39.040this is the thing that causes women to be somehow more depressed or more unhappy than men are,
00:27:44.660well, wouldn't that also work the same way and apply also to men?
00:27:48.040Yes, men have also become less happy, but because...
00:28:10.960You really think that because I hear this from you conservatives all the time that you think that feminism is the thing that caused the feminization of men over the last 50 years.