97% of the male population got zero votes. What percentage of the women got zero votes?
Somewhere within a 3% difference from the males, I'd suspect. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's exactly why it's misleading to compare the percentages in such a way. You could make the exact same argument that ancient Rome wasn't sexist. Let's guesstimate the population of Rome as a million, during a time when there were maybe 500 senators (based on some lazy searching). That means only .5% of Roman males were in the senate.
How many Roman females were in the senate? You could say "within a .5% difference from the males".
A few cases of women getting the vote, in England, during a specific time (originally unspecified until Reelya literally quintupled the size of his post with edits) don't invalidate my point. There were entire tribes lead by women in some places, at some times.
My claim was that women won the right to vote about a hundred years ago:
Why is it like life-and-death to these groups, anyway?
I mean, it is. Women only won the right to vote about 100 years ago (not quite that in the US), and it was a fight.
I stand by that. The fact that some people managed to vote earlier than that does not mean that "women had the right".
And Reelya is correct that only the elites had the vote... historically. Though that wasn't his original point:
You do know that universal male suffrage was only a couple of decades earlier than female suffrage don't you? It's kind of misleading to state that.
I'm not sure what you even mean? Suffrage independent of race (the 15th Amendment) was 1870, women got the right to vote at all in 1920 (the 19th Amendment).
Keep in mind that this was his *entire reply* at the time. He started with that vague sarcastic quip, and later built an eloquent and technically accurate explanation which doesn't actually counter what I was saying.
His posts age well, but it's impossible to have a productive argument with someone who keeps editing literally for hours, adding substantial paragraphs. If I argue with a snapshot, it looks like I'm the asshole for ignoring all his strongest arguments. I know this is a sore subject, and I don't believe it's done maliciously, but I have to agree that it's a frustrating and unfair tactic.
In conclusion, women won the right to vote in the Western world about 100 years ago. Also, elites have historically ruled the world - nearly always male elites.
Being LGBT is no longer a crime in itself, but it's still a fireable offense in many states. About 15 US states have left their "sodomy laws" on the books despite the federal government ruling them unenforceable.
These are threats to people's ability to exist as citizens. Voting, pursuing happiness, in some cases even living. That's why some people get very defensive about it. Some people go way too far. It's hard to remain rational when the stakes are so high. It's easy to become exasperated when people don't see the big deal.