Good Manners

[callinectes2]

I was raised on PG Wodehouse too and I still read him avidly and often cry with laughter. I see no similarity between Wodehouse and anything ever done by Lenny Henry!

That said, I'm glad SOMEONE enjoys his work!

I loves me some Jeeves and Wooster. I tore through the books years ago and was thrilled when the BBC series was made. Stephen Fry channeled the Jeeves of my imagination.

 

[RJMasters]

So I am interested in hearing what some of you think it was like to be a woman in the past, and I mean 50's and going backwards 100 or so years.

What was it like being a woman back then. Some say the change from then to now is choice. Based on what everyone has said I gather back then women had less or even no choice.

So how bad was it? Was it really bad? Really really bad? OMG it was fucking really really really bad.

What was it like from your point of view?

 

[IrisAlthea]

So I am interested in hearing what some of you think it was like to be a woman in the past, and I mean 50's and going backwards 100 or so years.

What was it like being a woman back then. Some say the change from then to now is choice. Based on what everyone has said I gather back then women had less or even no choice.

So how bad was it? Was it really bad? Really really bad? OMG it was fucking really really really bad.

What was it like from your point of view?

Difficult question.
Having little control and choice in life, will be more or less hard on you depending on your personality. How much contol they had would also depend a lot on the personalitys around them and other circumstances. I would guess that it was ubearable to some, a good life to others and just life to most.
If you look at the big picture though, I think it was harder for people who didn´t want to live a traditional life, back then. I think that was true for men too. Even if they had more options than women and more control over their own destiny, they were still limited by the role they were expected to fill.

 

[where]

So I am interested in hearing what some of you think it was like to be a woman in the past, and I mean 50's and going backwards 100 or so years.

What was it like being a woman back then. Some say the change from then to now is choice. Based on what everyone has said I gather back then women had less or even no choice.

So how bad was it? Was it really bad? Really really bad? OMG it was fucking really really really bad.

What was it like from your point of view?

how bad would it be for you to have no choice? No choice of who to marry, possessions from prior to marriage becoming the property of your spouse, having no say in who runs your country. getting paid a fraction of what the opposite sex gets paid for the same work.

 

[FurryFury]

So I am interested in hearing what some of you think it was like to be a woman in the past, and I mean 50's and going backwards 100 or so years.

What was it like being a woman back then. Some say the change from then to now is choice. Based on what everyone has said I gather back then women had less or even no choice.

So how bad was it? Was it really bad? Really really bad? OMG it was fucking really really really bad.

What was it like from your point of view?

Though I sometimes romanticize the whole 50's housewife thing, I think it was really bad.

I've been there sort of. I've tried to be that woman who does EVERYTHING to please her man. He never sees her looking less than tip top. She gets up to prepare his breakfast even if she could have slept in. She keeps the house. Always she wears something sexy and lovely to bed.

In my case, that man was abusive. It was bad. I gave up on being the "perfect wife" for him within a month or so and instead began wanting to die.

I had choices. 50's housewives in societal mores, didn't. Some knew they had choices all along and didn't give a flying damn what people thought, they took them.

Anyway, being the perfect wife to a husband that treats you like garbage or worse is just pure hell. It kills your spirit.

When someone asks me what time period I'd most like to live in, it's not any time in the past when women had less rights. It's now or the future.

FF

 

[JMohegan]

So I am interested in hearing what some of you think it was like to be a woman in the past, and I mean 50's and going backwards 100 or so years.

What was it like being a woman back then. Some say the change from then to now is choice. Based on what everyone has said I gather back then women had less or even no choice.

So how bad was it? Was it really bad? Really really bad? OMG it was fucking really really really bad.

What was it like from your point of view?

My father has an older cousin, a woman who graduated from Pembroke in the early '40's. (Pembroke = the women's college affiliated with Brown, before Brown went co-ed.) Let's call her "N."

When N graduated, she moved to NYC to work as a journalist. Wrote articles for a newspaper, did a great job, and loved it. Got promoted to junior editor. Lived in her own apartment, paid her own bills.

When the war was over, she was literally told - thanks for helping out, you were great, now you can go home, get married, start a family. She loved her job, didn't want to leave it, and said so. But her boss said she had to go, or it wouldn't be fair to the men.

She describes her available options, post-war, as being a secretary or elementary school teacher. Neither paid enough for her to live on her own, so she moved back in with her parents. Taught for a while, hated it, and got married a few years later. Loved her husband, hated keeping house, found an outlet for her journalism skills writing newsletters for various local charities. That's not nothing, but it's a long, long way from writing & editing for a newspaper in Manhattan.

How bad was that, really? On the scale of no big deal to monumental tragedy, it seems closer to the former than the latter. Particularly when put in the context of human misery, the world over. But does that placement on the scale mean the injustice in hiring practices should never have been remedied? I don't think so.

Shifting now to a different perspective - my grandparents employed a housekeeper, "M." A woman born in 1915, who started working for the family when she 16 years old, and stayed until she retired at age 70. (My grandfather paid the difference between her old salary & her SS check until she died.) As far as I know, there was never any question as to whether M would be working, for as long as she was able. She just did. Different choice issues exist, from that perspective.

 

[JMohegan]

how bad would it be for you to have no choice? No choice of who to marry, possessions from prior to marriage becoming the property of your spouse, having no say in who runs your country. getting paid a fraction of what the opposite sex gets paid for the same work.

Where and when did the "no choice of who to marry" stricture apply? My mother and both grandmothers chose on their own, so I'm just wondering.

 

[Keroin]

Birth control.

Imagine knowing that every time you had sex it was like a game of Russian roulette. That if you lost, and you were unmarried, and the man didn't "do the right thing", you would have the option of either being a social pariah or risking your life for an abortion.

I cannot overestimate the power of choice and freedom that reliable female contraception has given women, post 1950's.

Oh, and when the pill first came out, doctors were only allowed to prescribe it to married women. (They found ways around that, of course, but it goes to show you how female sexuality was viewed).

 

[JMohegan]

Speaking of fucking, check this out.



MARITAL RAPE: DRIVE FOR TOUGHER LAWS IS PRESSED
By J. C. BARDEN
Published: May 13, 1987

A month after Rosanna Hawkins filed for divorce in Michigan in 1981, her estranged husband broke into the house where she was staying and in more than an hour of what she said was total terror, raped her. Her husband, Eugene, who had been armed with a six-inch knife, was convicted in Oceana County Circuit Court in 1982 and sentenced to 27 years to 92 years in prison.

Last February, however, the Michigan Court of Appeals voted 3 to 0 to overturn the conviction.

The court ruled that, legally speaking, Mrs. Hawkins could not have been ''raped'' by her husband because in Michigan it is not a crime for a man to sexually assault his wife unless they are living apart and one has filed for divorce. And Mrs. Hawkins's divorce filing was not valid because Michigan requires that a person be a resident for at least six months in order to file for a divorce; Mrs. Hawkins had moved back to the state only a week before she filed.

The appellate court's opinion has made Michigan the most renowned battleground today in the drive by women's groups against state laws that they say subject some wives to humiliation, pain, injury and emotional turmoil. The laws prohibit husbands from being prosecuted for sexually assaulting their wives, or set severe limits for pursuit of such prosecution.

It is a battle the women are winning, but the victories have not always been total and triumphs are sometimes gained only after a particularly outrageous sexual attack on a wife by her husband.

It is now a crime in 25 states for a husband to rape his wife while the two are living together. In 1975, South Dakota became the first state to make the rape of a spouse a crime.

 

[JMohegan]

So how bad was it? Was it really bad? Really really bad? OMG it was fucking really really really bad.

With regard to a husband's legal right to take his wife by force, at any time, regardless of objection or resistance..... as a certain type of guy I find the idea exceedingly hot.

But as a son, brother, and uncle, I find it totally unacceptable. OMG fucking really really really bad, to borrow your wording.

Do I want my mother, my sister, my niece to have the legal right to say no? Any time, any place, to ANY person? You're goddamn right I do.

 

[Keroin]

Oh, and for my best friend, who is a black woman, (who I likely would/could not have been friends with pre-1950's), her choices would have been even less than mine. Not to mention her legal rights, or lack thereof.

We are talking about life pre-1950's for *all* women, right? Not just white women?

 

[Stella_Omega]

So I am interested in hearing what some of you think it was like to be a woman in the past, and I mean 50's and going backwards 100 or so years.

What was it like being a woman back then. Some say the change from then to now is choice. Based on what everyone has said I gather back then women had less or even no choice.

So how bad was it? Was it really bad? Really really bad? OMG it was fucking really really really bad.

What was it like from your point of view?

I can tell you what it was like for me, as a girl in the 1960's.

I sat on the benches during school recess and watched the boys play touch football.

There were girls that played sports with the boys-- they were all of them big strpping tomboys, which I was not. I was a teensy skinny thing, and it makes sense that I didn't join in-- except that the teensy skinny boys played touch football and were encouraged to Man Up and get bigger and stronger. For some of them, it was as bad as it was for me.

The climate of the times was such that it never, ever, occurred to me that I could make myself stronger and more aggressive in order to feel more like myself. My battles since those days are part of why young women do know that nowadays.

___

My middle school had a ton of vocational electives. I had been doing some simple wood work with my father, and of course I wanted to take shop class.

I was not allowed. Girls were held to a dresses and skirts dress code, and I STILL a skinny thing. The shop classes were full of "juvenile delinquents," and my innocence (I.E. virginity) was at the highest of all possible risks if I stepped into those terrible rowdy rooms, right?

Not to mention that a skinny thing could get badly hurt on power tools. Of course, skinny boys were simply expected to strengthen up and also put up with any incidental scars -- scars could ruin a pretty girl's looks!

My parents went to the school to argue with the policy, but they didn't get anywhere either.

I took cooking and sewing electives and also "art production" which let me have access to a tablesaw and some scraps of plexi and wood-- and all the paper and glue and tempera a girl could want... Anything they would let me take that entailed hands-on production.

I have spent the rest of my life learning the things my middle school didn't want to let me learn.

My stepdaughters, a decade younger than I, took high school wood shop in the 80's, and metal shop, and when the younger girl-- another skinny little thing-- burned her foot wielding, nobody mourned her ruined beauty (and that girl is beautiful!)

I still have the three-panel folding screen she made...

___

There was the struggle to be allowed to wear pants instead of dresses. Once that was accomplished, the struggle became about wearing jeans instead of "culottes" and "nice slacks" which I could not afford-- I lived in navy surplus jeans, and the bell-bottom fashion was a godsend because I could find them at affordable prices. I sewed gingham ruffles at the hem as I grew out of them, hehe...

My point is that the lack of choice wasn't only about sex and marriage. Women and men both, had very little choice about how they defined themselves. Racial definitions were pretty inflexible-- most social roles were well-defined and well-understood-- or else they simply didn't exist.

(ETA)
JMohegan talks about the "right to say no" but the right to say "Yes" or be the one asking the question-- That was a battle I fought as well. To the many folk here who talk glibly about "sluts" -- I cordially invite you all to go fuck yourselves. Seriously.



It took an extraordinarily self-sufficient person to buck those definitions. I learned to be extraordinarily self-sufficient-- nowadays my sister is convinced that I am Asbergers' but I don't think so. I think I am battle scarred.

 

[Keroin]

RJ, let me throw this question back at you. What kinds of things have you passionately wanted to do in your life that you have either been denied or actively opposed from doing specifically because of your gender?

 

[JMohegan]

RJ, let me throw this question back at you. What kinds of things have you passionately wanted to do in your life that you have either been denied or actively opposed from doing specifically because of your gender?

My answer to that question is: nothing.


ETA: That's not exactly correct. I mean nothing, in the tangible sense. Sometimes it does feel as if only women are allowed the full range of emotional expression. As if all males must be all John Wayne about everything, for ever and always amen, no matter what happens.

I don't mean to compare this to being denied the vote, or living as a wife with no marital rape laws, or being denied the full professional or personal expression of ones talents and proclivities. Clearly there is no comparison. Particularly since this is largely self-imposed, I guess. I'm just saying that at times it feels... I don't know, I'm searching for the right word here. Crushing. Sometimes the weight of it feels crushing. I don't know how else to describe it.

 

[bhndblueyes88]

It took an extraordinarily self-sufficient person to buck those definitions. I learned to be extraordinarily self-sufficient-- nowadays my sister is convinced that I am Asbergers' but I don't think so. I think I am battle scarred.

You certainly don't converse like a couple of the people I know who DO have Asperger's.

 

[Keroin]

My answer to that question is: nothing.


ETA: That's not exactly correct. I mean nothing, in the tangible sense. Sometimes it does feel as if only women are allowed the full range of emotional expression. As if all males must be all John Wayne about everything, for ever and always amen, no matter what happens.

I don't mean to compare this to being denied the vote, or living as a wife with no marital rape laws, or being denied the full professional or personal expression of ones talents and proclivities. Clearly there is no comparison. Particularly since this is largely self-imposed, I guess. I'm just saying that at times it feels... I don't know, I'm searching for the right word here. Crushing. Sometimes the weight of it feels crushing. I don't know how else to describe it.

I don't know if what you describe is entirely self-imposed. If you were twenty years old I might say otherwise but you were raised in an era when society's expectations of males still dictated that kind of John Wayne-esque stolid behaviour.

Watching my dad try to grieve my mother's death without showing too much emotion was a painful process for me. I can only imagine what it must have been like for him.

No, it's not the same as being denied the right to vote but that doesn't render your feelings invalid.

 

[Netzach]

Where and when did the "no choice of who to marry" stricture apply? My mother and both grandmothers chose on their own, so I'm just wondering.

My grandparents didn't and we're talking late 30's. It was a family arrangement of some kind. Not quite Pakistan Country style, but old world Euro style.

Considering that I was raised as much by them as my mother you can imagine how much risk a woman is supposed to take on in life. There was a pathological fear of physicality, much like what Stella described, for me. But this was nineteen seventy late. Making that weird.

How much is dysfunction and how much is old-world sexism is kind of confusing in the post game analysis, I have to admit, but gender role made it so that my grandmother was able to be completely strategically helpless her whole adult life (raising 3 kids while being unable to go further than the mailbox without a panic attack at times) and my grandfather was unable to consider the slightest possibility of stopping the enabling or life without this.

If I look at gender and my family as a case study it argues the best for men AND women to unlock themselves a bit from expectation.

He's in the ground, she's not, my mother is now playing his part.

No, the lack of intellectual outlet for her (she's smart) , and the fact that I would have avoided psychiatrists in the 50's and 60's too has nothing to do with anything.[/sarcasm]

She did work for a while and liked it and I'm not sure what happened. This was when the kids were little. So at some point she found the drive and the self-fortitude to go out and get downtown and still get dinner on the table and all that, at least several times a week. And that stopped before I was born for some reason.

The irony is that I'm so much like her, but with education and mental health care that doesn't pathologize being a woman and medicate you for it.

 

[Netzach]

My answer to that question is: nothing.


ETA: That's not exactly correct. I mean nothing, in the tangible sense. Sometimes it does feel as if only women are allowed the full range of emotional expression. As if all males must be all John Wayne about everything, for ever and always amen, no matter what happens.

That's pretty fucked up.

The fact that we collectively have no fucking idea how to replace that without making fun of it is even more fucked up.

 

[where]

Where and when did the "no choice of who to marry" stricture apply? My mother and both grandmothers chose on their own, so I'm just wondering.

well I was doing the going back 100 years or so. My grandmother eloped to marry, and as a consequence was completely ostracised from her family. Even when the legal right was in place, socially it was very difficult pre-war, at least in the UK.

 

[Netzach]

So I am interested in hearing what some of you think it was like to be a woman in the past, and I mean 50's and going backwards 100 or so years.

What was it like being a woman back then. Some say the change from then to now is choice. Based on what everyone has said I gather back then women had less or even no choice.

So how bad was it? Was it really bad? Really really bad? OMG it was fucking really really really bad.

What was it like from your point of view?

I don't even really see why this needs to be explained.

If you can't see the benefit of these changes, look at the economy of Afghanistan or Burkina Faso, or any country where being a woman is exceptionally bad on all the indices.

Is it possible that cart is before horse to any extent, and the participation of both sexes in the culture and economy on more level footing actually builds a society?

 

[Stella_Omega]

How much is dysfunction and how much is old-world sexism is kind of confusing in the post game analysis, I have to admit, but gender role made it so that my grandmother was able to be completely strategically helpless her whole adult life (raising 3 kids while being unable to go further than the mailbox without a panic attack at times) and my grandfather was unable to consider the slightest possibility of stopping the enabling or life without this.

This is a good demonstrations of how the social expectations for the genders fostered and enabled certain dysfunctions, different for each sex.


Now, we have to build new ways to assign roles between individuals, and it's really difficult, like building the wheel all over again-- so we get people like WD complaining about efeeminate males and osg wishing the world would pat her on the back for her hyper-'feminine' traits, as she interprets them.

And I watch my "efeeminised" daughter negotiate endlessly with her "efeeminised" boyfriend, both of whom are stuck in this half shadow of revamped gender expectations. She has to fight the desire to get knocked up and be taken care of because she's a mommy, and her self respect won't let her do that. She feels that there is more in her than mommyhood. He wants to fix things for her that he knows damn well are not his responsibility to fix, and also that he knows damn well he would cock up if he tried it.

In the old days he'd have married her, cocked it up, assumed all the blame. in the old days, she would have married him, had her first kid, and be wishing there was something more to her life.

there are no consequence free choices. But at least now-- there are more choices.

 

[JMohegan]

well I was doing the going back 100 years or so. My grandmother eloped to marry, and as a consequence was completely ostracised from her family. Even when the legal right was in place, socially it was very difficult pre-war, at least in the UK.

This is making me realize that I should amend my earlier comment.

My mother and grandmothers each described how they met, started dating, and fell in love with their future husbands - all without parental instruction.

But I actually don't know what would have happened if their families had found their mates lacking or inappropriate for some reason, because they didn't. As far as I've been told and can ascertain, everybody, in all cases, was thrilled.

Come to think of it, I don't even know if the males went to the corresponding parents with the old "I'm here to ask for your daughter's hand" thing. I'm guessing that, as a matter of formality and tradition, they did.

 

[Keroin]

Speaking of real life examples...

My grandmother on my mother's side married a man who turned out to be an abusive alcoholic. My mom told me tales of nights that Gram had to literally flee the house with her and her sister, (my aunt), for fear of her life. They spent more than one evening hiding in alleyways, behind dumpsters, terrified.

Divorce was not easy back then and for a woman with two young kids and no job? Fuggetaboutit.

When she finally found the courage and resources to leave him and seek a legal divorce, he fucked her over but good. The law was not on her side, to say the least. So it wasn't enough that her husband beat her black and blue, the legal system also smacked her around too. But being poor and female, that's what you got.

I'd say that qualifies as OMG really, really, really bad.

 

[Stella_Omega]

This is making me realize that I should amend my earlier comment.

My mother and grandmothers each described how they met, started dating, and fell in love with their future husbands - all without parental instruction.

But I actually don't know what would have happened if their families had found their mates lacking or inappropriate for some reason, because they didn't. As far as I've been told and can ascertain, everybody, in all cases, was thrilled.

Come to think of it, I don't even know if the males went to the corresponding parents with the old "I'm here to ask for your daughter's hand" thing. I'm guessing that, as a matter of formality and tradition, they did.

In an office situation one day, a nice liberal guy was talking about how liberal he was-- his daughter, he said, could bring home a black boyfriend and it "wouldn't bother him." (Being in Chicago, there's a very good chance that this boyfriend would be solidly middle class, though black, which we did NOT get into)

I responded that my SON could, theoretically, bring home his black boyfriend and not only would I "not mind" I would be HAPPY for them.

I do have a gift for shutting down conversation in offices...

 

[where]

This is making me realize that I should amend my earlier comment.

My mother and grandmothers each described how they met, started dating, and fell in love with their future husbands - all without parental instruction.

But I actually don't know what would have happened if their families had found their mates lacking or inappropriate for some reason, because they didn't. As far as I've been told and can ascertain, everybody, in all cases, was thrilled.

Come to think of it, I don't even know if the males went to the corresponding parents with the old "I'm here to ask for your daughter's hand" thing. I'm guessing that, as a matter of formality and tradition, they did.

well apart from grannie marrying out of her class, she also married out of her religion. I suppose you could argue that even today there are many restrictions on trans-cultural marriages.

Speaking of real life examples...

My grandmother on my mother's side married a man who turned out to be an abusive alcoholic. My mom told me tales of nights that Gram had to literally flee the house with her and her sister, (my aunt), for fear of her life. They spent more than one evening hiding in alleyways, behind dumpsters, terrified.

Divorce was not easy back then and for a woman with two young kids and no job? Fuggetaboutit.

When she finally found the courage and resources to leave him and seek a legal divorce, he fucked her over but good. The law was not on her side, to say the least. So it wasn't enough that her husband beat her black and blue, the legal system also smacked her around too. But being poor and female, that's what you got.

I'd say that qualifies as OMG really, really, really bad.

not sure of your age but my mother was constantly battered. when she managed to get away (after the umpteenth hospitalisation which also included my half-sister) she finally managed to get a divorce. she set up refuges for women who were subject to domestic violence and they are still in use to this day. not much has really changed on that front.

I do have a gift for shutting down conversation in offices...

no way! really?