Point: Let Women Vote/ Counterpoint: What’s Next, Letting Women Tie Me to a Billiard Table and Pour Mercury on My Genitals?
Point: Let Women Vote
by Louisa B. Martin
CONNECTICUT, 1918: Every day, the women of America in their millions grow louder and louder in their defiant cries that they will no longer be denied their inalienable right to an equal share in the governance of this country. If America is to stand before the nations of the world as a creditable apostle of liberty and democracy, it is indispensable that all her citizens shall be truly said to partake in these blessings, no matter their sex. The present full or partial disenfranchisement of one half of the adult population in thirty states in this union sullies the names of these high ideals in the eyes of humankind. There is only one remedy: Congress must pass the suffrage amendment now before the Senate, and those who hold power throughout the states must have the courage and good faith to grant their sisters a justice long overdue.
Counterpoint: What’s Next, Letting Women Tie Me to a Billiard Table and Pour Mercury on My Genitals?
by Ernest G. Wickham
RHODE ISLAND, 1918: Oh, I see where this is going. Yes, I see all too clearly. First we give women the right to vote. Then we let them wear trousers, is that it? And then what, we let them become priests? And then, before you know it, well, they’ll be stripping me naked, binding me spreadeagle to a billiard table, and pouring an entire gallon of liquid mercury onto my exposed genitals?
Yes, that’s what these suffragist harpies are planning, isn’t it? I bet a group of seven tall, muscular ladies dressed in luxuriant furs are going to hold me down and pour a whole gallon of quicksilver all over my helpless little “eggs and bacon.” That’s the logical endpoint of all this “progress” isn’t it? I see it all too clearly now. They’ll probably gag me with one of their stockings while they take turns coating my poor, defenseless manhood in mercury, pointing and laughing at me all the while. One of them will wear a cardboard mask of Susan B. Anthony, too, no doubt. Another one will be Mrs. Andrews, my high school English teacher. My loins are quivering with disgust at the very thought.
It won’t end there, though, will it? No, pretty soon President Wilson will be coming to my door dressed up as a stern, bosomy governess, his lips a sultry crimson, his ankles just barely peaking out now and then beneath the hem of his skirt in a furtive tease. He’ll bend me over his lap and beat my buttocks till they blush until I apologize for what a bad boy I am for opposing the Nineteenth Amendment and promise to be good.
Yes, we all know what’s going to happen if the suffragists get their way.
Chicago Shady Dealer Newsdesk
