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paper_turtle
- Paper Turtle
In response to
Paper Turtle posted by
BrianTubbs:
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Brian wrote:
I would, however, caution against any implication or assumption that spousal abuse was universal. I've seen many people make that claim and I think it's a tremendously unfair assumption to make. It's like our grandfathers, great grandfathers, great great grandfathers and so forth are PRESUMED guilty. I don't like that one bit.
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You pointed out that Prohibition was one of the motivators for the women's movement. This does not mean every single citizen in the nation was an alcoholic. I pointed out that *some* women might have been deterred because of abuse. This doesn't mean every single male citizen was an abuser.
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Never the less, I knew about that law--and other forms of abuse--because of the writings of the women in the movelemt. This was one point of identification with, and compassion for, those in slavery.
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In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if domestic abuse is worse NOW than it was in the 1700s and 1800s. There are some indications of this, but regardless...
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One of the first rules of abuse (spousal or child) is: don't talk about it. Although the stigma of shame is ever so gradually lifting, those being abused STILL may prefer silence. For one thing, they may have good reason to fear retaliation from their abuser if they DO speak up. Even so, women of that time did talk about their situations with other women, and some of them recorded these experiences in their diaries.
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Its possible that spousal violence only seems to be increasing because more women and children are willing to talk about it. On the other hand, times of intense stress often lead to an increase in violence of all kinds. We live in such a time. But so did the people of *that* time.
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If one studies the correspondence between the Founding Fathers and their wives, you don't see indications of and/or evidence of unhealthy, abusive relationships.
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Abigail and John Adams, for instance, have one of the storied romances in our history, and I really don't think they were exceptional or unique OTHER than the fact that they were both public figures and they kept copies of their letters deliberately for the benefit of history.
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Well of course you wouldn't find people writing about abuse in a letter--especially not if they were saving those letters for the ages. Even if they hadn't been saving their letters, there was the chance those letters could fall into the wrong hands. Such an admission could be damaging to their political careers.
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To the extent that their marriage was at all representative of that era (at least among society's leaders), then I think the image of tyrannical husbands holding back their wives is an unfair one.
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It was much more than a bit of petty holding back. The men held all the power, and hence controlled all resources. Power is very seductive. Why on earth would anyone wand to divest themselves of such power--espeically if women were espousing such "dangerous" ideas as the elimination of slavery and prohibition? One of the arguments against giving women the vote was that if women were in politics the men would have to behave themselves (stop swearing, smoking, and drinking).
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peace and love,
Paper Turtle
