Tuesday 16 October 2012

A lesson in Herstory - Women as Property

There are some hilarious ways of saying women were chattel:

Example: a man’s goods and chat(t)els - hence the reason that widows were until recently described as chatelaines. That is, the wife and the kids were/are defined as ‘moveable property’.

And then there is the more serious way of saying women were chattel: they went from their fathers and brothers to their husbands and sons(see they moved!) with the involvement of wealth(and see property, patrimony, matrimony, QED bigot!), without the sex-in-the-city woo-girl lesbian-experimentalist phase that is a fundamental right of womankind.

The perspective that women were property sounds quite absurd when male resources is a common point in discussions of mate-selection. Property, wealth, money, doesn't exactly sound what men look for in a woman, isn't that what the 'strong and independent' women bewail about?

If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.

The lack of male prostitution, notwithstanding the "buying women" stupidity that feminists use, is another hint.

The existence of Coverture where the legal identity of woman was subsumed into her husband's when they married, the feme sole converting to feme covert, following which her earnings and whatever she brought into the marriage went to her husband and became his property and not hers, OMG patriarchy was really evil!

This state of affairs was to continue until a brave lady by the name of Caroline Norton appeared on the scene, rather disappeared from her husband's scene, much to his chagrin.



Wikipedia recounts her property grievance:


In 1836, Caroline left her husband.Caroline managed to subsist on her earnings as an author, but Norton claimed these as his own, arguing successfully in court that, as her husband, Caroline's earnings were legally his. 


and how unfair the law was towards wives, yet Mrs. Norton certainly gave back as good as she got:

Paid nothing by her husband, her earnings confiscated, Caroline used the law to her own advantage. Running up bills in her husband's name, Caroline told the creditors when they came to collect, that if they wished to be paid, they could sue her husband.

LOLZ patriarchy hoisted on its own petard!

Oh wait...

Why did the creditors could sue her husband and not her?

The answer is provided in stark contrast when one considers what Mrs Norton's orgy of tears led to. Married Women's Property Act,  a law by which married women could keep their property to themselves and only themselves like other women could, all is well and equal, innit? NOT!

As a successful lady litigant (May, 1896) remarked to her husband, "There is no law which compels me to obey or honour you, but there is a law that you must keep me." This woman tersely sums up the position. In the case of a man of property the Courts will expropriate him for the benefit of his wife. In the case of a wage-earner the Courts from police magistrates to Supreme Court will decree him to be her earning slave, bound to work for her or go to prison. A wife, no matter if rolling in wealth, is not obliged to contribute a penny to her husband's support, even if he be incapacitated from work through disease or accident.

or the ingenuity of suffragetes much like Mrs Norton's:

Under the married women property act a husband has no jurisdiction over his wife’s property and income. Under the income tax he is responsible for her taxes. If the taxes are not paid, the husband, not the wife, is imprisoned. Mrs. Wilks refused to pay her income taxes–$185–and her husband was locked up. He will spend the rest of his life in prison unless the wife pays or the laws are changed.

First wave feminist equality in full effect. FREEDOM from pater-archy!!

So the freedom that feminists want is a freedom from responsibility when it comes to interaction with men. And of course, the same rights that a man has. Logical contradictions are for the weak-minded.

Reason exists for those who cannot go on living without clinging to it. 
-Aizen Sosuke


thank god..err technology for photoshop (from manwomanmyth.com)

back to reality


Feminism and "Feminism is not a monolith" being just a power play where men are in the wrong regardless of what women do. If you are not a feminist, you're a bad person. Become a feminist and indulge yourself in the orgy of women-empowerment and the subsequent screeching amongst feminists as to how this empowerment can be attained(Note for phallus-bearers, keep your mouth shut so that women's voices could be heard!).




So men shouldered responsibility before too, but now are sent off to jail in the name of child support(so sad too badyou should have kept your dick in your pants, Mr. Oppressor!) and have no power/authority against that responsibility(and that's the way we do gender-equality, bigot!)times they are a-changing'!

Men were property, Men are property.


Addendum:

1.)The American husband, as Mrs. Houstoun wrote in 1850, was "merely the medium through which dollars find their way into the milliners' shop in exchange for caps and bonnets."

2.) Madeleine V. Dahlgren made a case against women's suffrage by pointing out that women were unsuited for military.

Establish the right of suffrage for women and it involves a common responsibility in the duty of bearing arms, for which we are absolutely unfitted. In the discharge of of this severest of all masculine duties we cannot bear a share. If forced to do so, inferior size and strength must make inferior troops. We may therefore sum up these objections by the consideration that the present movement proposes to make the whole range of duties common to the sexes instead of the present division of the duties of life, which assigns to each sex those most appropriate.

Of course that doesn't go very far when State is much more than mere military and almost a provider husband for many women, election issues can devolve into the inanity of "War on Women", and  in our enlightened brave new world in which women can be soldiers too, bigot, at least equal and sometimes better than men.

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