women not being able to vote is not an example of authoritarianism in the US. Neither is the 18th amendment. These were democratically selected and the US did not appear to resemble an authoritarian regime at the time. Note that using authority is not the same as being authoritarian. The examples you gave from 1942 onward are though. It should be noted that the FBI was also famously involved in a number of illegal activities[1] See [2] for authoritarianism.
If a country undemocratically restricts the right to vote then any decisions subsequently voted on aren't democratic.
Women didn't vote to not have the right to vote.
Just because something is democratically voted on doesn't mean it can't be authoritarian. A majority can democratically vote to repress a minority. Note that the comment I'm replying to is (correctly) calling potential laws the Senate might enact authoritarian.
Athens, the poster child of democracy, didn't have voting tights for women, and was generally pretty misogynistic. (OTOH Sparta, with its clear fascist tendencies, had very advanced women's rights for the time.)
Authoritarianism is not when citizens vote for things we currently find unpalatable. It's when elected, and especially unelected rulers oppress the populace, with the populace having little recourse, or ways to protest.
Athens is a significant example of an early democratcy. They were still working the bugs out back then.
It's authoritarian to enslave people, and it's authoritarian to deny people rights on the basis of sex. They did both.
> It's when elected, and especially unelected rulers oppress the populace, with the populace having little recourse, or ways to protest.
Yes, but the critical point is it doesn't have to be 51% of the populace. If rules oppress 10% of the populace that can still be authoritarianism.
Suppose I agreed with your definition though. That could explain away Japanese internment, but I don't see how it justifies disenfranchising women. They made up close to or even an outright majority of the country. Unless they aren't people, and thus not part of the populace? Surely a minority can't declare everyone else doesn't count and thus claim to be the majority position?
I agree with your points! My point is that democracy by itself is not sufficient for what we'd now call a civilized society. It also takes certain values to be shared by most of the society. And these have changed significantly since the times of Pericles.
This is of course an extremely modern view of democracy. If you think everything other than our system today is authoritarian, you are going to find a lot of authoritarianism in every place you look. It isn’t a very useful definition of authoritarianism. It reminds me a bit of the word “heretic” the way you are using it.
women not being able to vote is not an example of authoritarianism in the US. Neither is the 18th amendment. These were democratically selected and the US did not appear to resemble an authoritarian regime at the time. Note that using authority is not the same as being authoritarian. The examples you gave from 1942 onward are though. It should be noted that the FBI was also famously involved in a number of illegal activities[1] See [2] for authoritarianism.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism