Quote:
Originally Posted by No_Recess
Rape, incest, and back room abortions were rampant back then. Never reported because women were treated poorly.
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Rampant as in just as rampant as today? Or rampant as in more rampant than today? Can you prove your assumptions? Or do you just assume that if it wasn't illegal, that it must have been happening all the time?
Look, to make such an assumption is to believe that people were evil. That for whatever reason, fathers and brothers and uncles didn't care at all about their wives, sisters, daughters, and nieces. That somehow, chastity wasn't a virtue. And this coming from a time when the old "shotgun wedding" was still common. And women were still supposed to have "honor".
When people complain about the past, it wasn't that these things were happening more often. It was that there were very few protections for the women it actually did happen to.
It is true that men were able to "spank" their wives. But the idea that men were able to just outright abuse their wives is basically non-sense. If you look at the women who were abused. In every case, it was women who were basically taken away from their families.
A woman who was being beaten or sexually assaulted by her husband, who was regularly in contact with her family, usually meant one dead husband.
Where the misunderstanding comes from, is the view of men and women in marriage. The way marriage has been seen for thousands of years, is that once a man and a woman are married, they effectively become the same person. Which on the surface, it means women and men have exactly the same rights and obligations to each other.
For instance, the bible says,
"The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.".
Marital rape - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Of course, in actual practice, the relationship between a married man and woman has been more the relationship between a parent and a child. The man had the final say in all decisions. The reason is, although the idea was that the man and woman would come to a decision together. The problem was, what if the husband and wife cannot come to an agreement? Someone has to make a decision, and the right to make a decision was granted to the husband(the only alternative would be to hand that right to the woman).
A good example of this is abortion. Many have argued that the way the law worked in the past allowed men to control his wife's body by denying her access to an abortion. But keep in mind, from a legal point-of-view, the husband and wife were considered the same person who made decisions about "their" body together. Which creates the legal question, if the husband and wife couldn't agree, then who gets to decide? That right was given to the man.
Most cases of actual marital rape/abuse then were most likely just like they are today. It is a woman who has been taken away from her family. Her husband has basically emotionally traumatized her where she feels so dependent and so ashamed that she doesn't even try to tell anyone or get help. If she was bruised, she would use makeup or other means to hide it.
That is so common, that even once people knew about the abuse, the woman would refuse to even file charges against her husband. This finally caused the law to be changed where the government can charge the man with abuse, even when the woman refuses to(this goes for all types of domestic abuse).
And all of this ignores the fact that today, women are more likely to be the perpetrator of partner abuse than men. I am sure it happened in the past as well. But it is always difficult to see a man as a victim.
CDC Study: More Men than Women Victims of Partner Abuse » SAVE: Stop Abusive and Violent Environments
As for incest, it may have been more common, but it was also more "socially acceptable".
For instance, in most states first-cousin marriage is illegal. But in most of the world, and through most of the history of the world, first-cousin marriage hasn't only been legal, but it was incredibly common. In fact, the "father of evolution" Charles Darwin married his first-cousin.
An even closer type of marriage "Uncle and niece" was also incredibly common in the past. And is still legal in many parts of the world(including the Netherlands and Belgium).
Incest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Avunculate marriage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Point is, I think it is dangerous to vilify the past based on merit-less assumptions. On the whole, I think people were far better in the past than they are today. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. Were there things that needed to be fixed? Absolutely. But I think we overreacted and over-corrected by turning everyone into victims. The word "respect" has all but been lost these days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Futurist110
Depends on which people.
Conservatives? Possibly. Black people in the Southern U.S.? Probably not.
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Well, I don't know if being black in the north was any better than being black in the south in 1950. If I recall, Civil Rights sprang originally out of the northern cities. Where blacks had migrated to in huge numbers during WWII to support the war effort. And then faced discrimination in employment(much like women) once the white men came back home after the war. The south was still largely agricultural at that time but did have a much larger percentage of blacks. Which made their actions much more impactful(such as the Montgomery bus boycott).
If you look at forced busing for instance. The first area to have major opposition to the new busing schemes was in the mostly Irish area of South Boston, Massachusetts.
Boston busing crisis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
With that said, I would agree that blacks who lived in the cities were probably less happy then than today. I don't necessarily know whether blacks who lived in rural areas were any less happy than today. They probably wouldn't have come into much contact with racism since they would have lived in largely black communities and wouldn't have ever gone far from home.
A crappy life? Maybe. But less happy? Difficult to say.
Here is an interesting statistic though...
"At the dawn of the twentieth century, for example, African-American farm operators worked a full third of the farms in the eleven former Confederate states; in three states--Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina--black operators worked more than half of the farms. A hundred years later, less than four percent of the region's farms are operated by black farmers."
https://networks.h-net.org/node/512/...outh-1900-1950
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