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respectmen -> Refutation of "Women's Historical Oppression" (5/25/2016 3:13:44 AM)
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It is often alleged: - that women have been historically oppressed for millennia - that (at various times) women could not leave the house, hold accounts, etc. - that any excesses by modern feminism are simply a backlash against historical oppression, etc.
Ample material exists in refutation:
1. History Professor Martin van Creveld has written a volume, "The Privileged Sex," in which he documents the female privileges (and male disadvantages) which historically have accompanied ostensible disadvantages to the female role. His volume is thorough and well-annotated.
2. Historian Joanne Bailey, Professor of History at Oxford Brookes (not Oxford University), has written a monograph here: http://www.academia.edu/746242/Favoured_or_oppressed_Married_women_property_and_coverturein_England_1660_1800 https://jbailey2013.wordpress.com/tag/coverture/ http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=151611 http://history.brookes.ac.uk/research/Social-and-Cultural-History/prof.asp?ID=592
The monograph shows that married women held more or less power of attorney to the marital property, only nominally recorded in the husband's name.
3. Further many jurisdictions required by law that the household expenses be borne entirely by the husband, with the husband forbidden access to the wife's assets, rendering the husband an "asset slave".
4. Many jurisdictions would jail the husband for failure to support (often at sole whim or complaint of the wife), thus rendering the husband an "income slave":
5. At least one front-page article detailed first-wave suffragettes deliberately contracting debts in order to cause their husbands to be jailed.
6. One immigrant newspaper circa 1910 contained a pitiful letter from husbands jailed for non-support, begging their wives to let them out just for the upcoming holiday: https://books.google.com/books?id=lfoJPscpt2QC&pg=PA110 (bottom of page, continued on next two pages) https://books.google.com/books?id=bNGpnN_AbWAC&pg=PA112 The Editor responds that they have committed a crime and deserve to be punished.
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