As I said, an impasse. You seem to basing your opinion on your personal experience with your grandparents while I base mine on my research into historical writing by and about women, and my personal experience growing up in the 60s during enormous societal transitions. WE arrived at different places.
At the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered her now-famous address, “A Declaration of Sentiments,” where she enumerated a list of grievances held by American women. In this Declaration of Sentiments, Stanton carefully enumerated areas of life where women were treated unjustly. Stanton’s text read, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.” Then it went into specifics:
• Married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law.
• Women were not allowed to vote.
• Women had to submit to laws when they had no voice in their formation.
• Married women had no property rights.
• Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they could imprison or beat them with impunity.
• Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women.
• Women had to pay property taxes although they had no representation in the levying of these taxes.
• Most occupations were closed to women and when women did work they were paid only a fraction of what men earned.
• Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law.
• Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university would accept women students.
• With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to participate in the affairs of the church.
• Women were robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect, and were made totally dependent on men.
Now, there have obviously been many gains made over the past 100 years, but, Brumar, it took committed, brave women to call attention to these injustices and demand attention.
Even as late as the 60s when I was in college, women still faced enormous barriers in entering certain professions. I am amazed you see voting as the only right women didn't have. First off, voting is power. Without a vote, women had no voice in the system that controlled the factors of their life. Work? Sure, for inferior wages in inferior jobs. Own land? It wasn't until the 1800s, and then it was with her husband's permission. Information about birth control was considered an obscenity. Women had little control over their own bodies, even when their health was threatened.
YOu know, your whole post for me validated the women's movement. Picking daffodils, canning fruit for patients, selling walnuts. I admire them for doing what they could within the existing system, but what if they wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer? Did you know the Supreme Court once ruled that a state could prevent a married woman from practicing law?
This mentality was ingrained in the male gender, even in the kindest and best-intentioned. Without women fighting for these gains, your relatives wouldn't have been able to get educated or own land, or vote.
Do you see these changes as having some bright line where they suddenly became destructive? I assume that many men saw allowing women the right to vote, or to practice law, or toserve on a jury, was a terrible thing. It takes time for change to shake itself out, and it is difficult to accept something that alters one's own perceived vision of "the way things should be". Some of these changes have definitely been negative, but rather than condemn them, we should be trying to address new ways to fix them... the way Eleutheria did in her post farther back.
Well, enough.
We had a great concert. The kids were very good- even if one did have on the strangest Goth kind of attire. She at least took out her piercings.
I am trying to be openminded.
I had to wear skirts to school. |
