Q18

[snoopy]

Not sure how A is correct. Isn't it a jump to say that if women had developed their own political vocabularies, then they would have been more successful? I guess if their usage of vocabularies akin to violent radicalism hurt their movement, then the logical opposite would be "if they had adopted another vocab, they might have been more successful"? What if adopting their own vocab damaged their movement more? I chose C because I felt that if men and women were confining to the male/female role traditions of Jean-Jacques Rosseau, then the women could have chosen a Rosseauist vocab.

[ohthatpatrick]

I see your concern, but this is a common type of correct answer so you should definitely learn it and embrace it (so you can start collecting these points).

When LSAT authors identify that X is the reason for Y,
then it suggests / supports the idea that "if X hadn't happened, Y wouldn't have happened"

Is that bulletproof must be true logic? Not at all. But the question stems where this appears as a correct answer aren't "must be true" question stems. They're "most supported".

If we say "Linda is crying because her best friend Reggie didn't come to her party",
it suggests that "Linda might not be crying had Reggie come to her party".

The soft language of (A) is part of why we can feel fine about it. It's not GUARANTEEING things would have been different; it's only saying they "might have been different".

Since "the necessity of women's having to speak in the established vocabs ... diminished the ability of the women's movement to resist suppression", it suggests that "Had they been able to use a different vocab, the women's movement may have fared better".

(B) This goes against the passage, since Jacobin and Roussean vocabularies were each bad news for the women who were forced to use one of them.

(C) This goes against the passage, since "the NECESSITY of women's having to speak in established vocabularies" did not give them a GREAT deal of choice in choosing the tradition of Rousseau. They had some choice (to go Jacobins, but that was deemed even more damaging)

(D) This has the same form as (A), but this one is much more definitively worded, and it doesn't have the same textual support the other one had (i.e the author never said "military suppression is what kept the movement from triumph")

(E) This goes against the passage since most people in the movement chose the Rousseauist tradition


Hope this helps.