all 2 comments

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Some more interesting bits:

"As against her husband, the law confers on a woman who has married him the unilateral privilege of main- tenance. The earlier law made this privilege dependent on her obedience, cohabitation with her husband, and her observance of outwardly decent behaviour. The present law has set her free from all these restraints. Since 1857 the Secular Courts which then assumed juris- diction in matrimonial matters, has given up all attempt to enforce obedience, but' the most violent methods, in- cluding imprisonment and sequestration of the property of the husband are employed to enforce her claim to maintenance. By a recent Statute (the Act of 1884) the process of imprisonment to make a wife obey an order to return to her husband was abolished. By the famous decision in the Jackson Case the husband was prohibited from himself using force to compel her to return. But the deserted wife by magisterial order can get her desert- ing husband sent to gaol. And neither legislature nor the Courts, which took away her duties of obedience and cohabitation, ever dreamt of depriving her of her privilege of being maintained by the man whom she can flout and insult with impunity. 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."

Is it really that obvious that one gender was oppressed at the expense of the other? A deeper reading of history makes it less obvious the more you read.

It also does not matter what opinion you have on the particular source of these laws. All of them can be independently verified and where they are misrepresented, you are welcome to comment your corrections. Many other countries have -- or still have, in the case of India and others -- similar laws on the books.

I am neither on the side of people who say women were oppressed, nor am I that sure that the people who then run to the opposite extreme are correct. As a man, you have an amount of body strength that is easy to abuse against the vast majority of women. As a woman in society, you have many social protections in place that men have a harder time accessing. Patriarchy theory pretends that the supposed oppression of women is a modern thing and that we used to live in a state of egalitarianism in times prior. This could not be bigger nonsense. If anything, before modern society the biological advantages of men over women, which are some of the most obvious among all sex differences, would have been exacerbated. It is with modern society that women have been able to join a relatively equal footing with men, in an increasing range of occupations and social functions. Patriarchy theory, as most of feminist bullshit, is a complete inversion of history, putting common sense and facts on their head. It contradicts everything we know of history and it contradicts everything we know about biology or what we can intuit from everyday knowledge about men and women. The only women, and feminist men, who could be this far removed from reality are the ones so deranged from healthy social interaction that they probably rarely witness normal interactions between men and women.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A woman simply to be believed in court?! What an outdated notion! Surely, we would have progressed from such gendered discrimination in our modern and enlightened times.

What do I hear? "Believe all women?" #MeToo

Well, see that is only to compensate for the evils of men of PRIOR generations. See, we need to be biased in favor of women NOW because we have been so calloused towards their plight previously, see? It's all justice. Sure, we don't usually hold children accountable for the crimes of their parents -- what an outdated notion of injustice -- but in this case, you see, the inherent discrimination in our system continues to this day, and in order to right this wrong we just need to tip the scale into the other direction for a while, sort of like with black Americans, you see? Under patriarchy and in prior times, we never believed women! We simply believed men, you see? So now, in order for justice to be served, we just have to believe women for a while. I am glad you understand, now accept your sentence and go to prison for the next ten years. Several women have credibly accused you and surely you would not smear the name of these fine ladies.