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This ignores the actual historical justifications for household voting. You can’t really justify universal male suffrage, something had to give- either revocation of some male suffrage of expanding the suffrage to women.
I mean you can also argue that women have some defect which prevents them from exercising the franchise wisely, but we allow idiots to vote, we allow 18 year olds, we allow drug users, etc, etc.
It would have to be a pretty big defect, is what I’m saying, at least if you wanted to use it to justify universal or near universal male suffrage.
There’s also the fact that your argument is predicated on women being as a group less conservative than men, but that’s not a historical or cultural universal and the best way to ensure conservative electoral victories by changing the franchise is to impose a religious test, not disenfranchise women. I suspect that this would disenfranchise you because the motte is what, 90% atheist? But in terms of ensuring right wing electoral dominance it is the most effective and long term way.
It's justifiable. The best argument for democracy does not view it as the ideal decision-making process, but as a conflict-avoidance process, the sublimation of a battle. An 18 year-old idiot junkie is just as capable of using a gun as a family man (perhaps more), therefore he gets a vote. Women, as long as they refuse to wield weapons through conscription, violent revolution etc, do not get a vote. Not because they're unwise or 'vote wrong', but because ignoring them does not result in conflict. Pacifists, jehovah's witnesses etc, fall in the same category. Now I think they should be given the vote anyway, because they still have some amount of power and a theoretical capability for violence, but their case is far weaker than men's.
...can still make weapons. Or other supplies for the people fighting. Or bring supplies to the fighters.
Not all the Suffragists were entirely peaceable.
You're not contradicting me. I said they had some power, so yeah they can help a little in war, annoy a little in peace, and their case for suffrage is correspondingly weaker.
It’s not specific to them. By the same principle, a man (or woman), who’s powerful, rich, or with military training has a stronger claim to the franchise than your average man. The problem with oligarchy or a limited wealth-based franchise is not primarily that they make poor decisions, but that they leave disenfranchised a faction with enough power and will to challenge the rest, thereby causing civil wars. Women are a relatively weak faction in this game, due to a collection of character traits that effectively amount to pacifism.
But if you disenfranchise women on the grounds that 'they're weak enough that I can get away with it', you signal to other groups that you would deny them the franchise, given the opportunity; they might then be less inclined to co-operate fully in circumstances in which they can get away with not doing so.
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