Fun Times - LEGAL ISSUE ONLY

[U-505]

GAAAAAAA!!! You just made like 12 claims and didn’t give a reference for any of them. Now I have to go do a bunch of research to refute them.

You’re right. There were white people in Illinois in 1699. But they were French missionaries and explorers and not the familial settlers you suggest. But, the forts and missions in Illinois in 1699 were a FAR cry from the settlements on the East coast at that time. Illinois didn’t even become a state until 1818 and before that it certainly wasn’t teeming with colonists until after it was taken over by the British in 1763. 300 years ago, Illinois was little more than frontier.

And I notice that you decided to refute largely irrelevant details and not my point that it wasn’t until well into the 20th century that most people would agree that it possible for a man to rape his wife.

However, I will go along with you. You are right again that in the late 15th and early 16th centuries not everybody saw women as property. But, lets get a little perspective on this time in history.

Women were still being accused of witchcraft.

And just so you know, women didn’t go to the ballots because only an adult male was allowed to vote. By your reckoning that it was a family vote, a family with a single mother would be allowed to vote which is not true. Women didn’t have the universal right to vote in the US until 1920.

Women were NOT in command of the home. Tell me what would happen if a 16th century husband told his wife to do something while he was out and the wife refused to do it. What do you think would happen when he got back? Do you think it would involve violence of some sort? Not always, but sometimes. And would that violence be accepted by the general public? Absolutely.

Women were not only restricted in the types of jobs they could do but also in the level and quality of their education.

Women weren’t considered pious enough to conduct a church service. In some cases they STILL don’t.

And I don’t care what the Bible says. What matters is what people were doing in the 16th century.

So maybe women in 1699 weren’t considered to be property by most people. But they were nowhere near equal to men and they certainly didn’t live in the rosy picture you’re trying to paint. And here comes the point I was making in the last post. You would be lucky to find a person in 1699 who would agree with you that it is possible for a man to rape his wife and even less who would believe that he should be prosecuted for it. And that frame of mind continued well into the 20th century. I challenge you to refute THAT.

[Jennifer]

Actually, U-505, in Faragher there are quite a number of court rulings showing that single mothers did have the right to vote for the family assuming they were single because the courts decided their husbands were inept or because their husbands had died.

However, single white females did not have the right to vote.  Their father voted in their stead (as well as in the stead of any unmarried, unlanded son mind you) for the family.

Also, it is quite well documented in historical texts, and I’m not going to go scrounging around the internet to find them, you’ll have to go to JSTOR or similar like I was forced too when writing all these frazzin papers for IL History Class, that ANY violence towards women EXCEPT rape was illegal.  Not only was it illegal, but common law said that brothers and fathers of abused women had the right and the duty to stop the abuse in any way possible without killing the husband.  So I wouldn’t exactly say it was “tolerated” by the community.

Now, it is interesting that the Bible does say that a woman should not withhold sex from her husband.  It does not say a husband should not withhold sex from his wife.

As for the witchcraft thing, seems unrelated.  Men were accused of being demon-worshipers and women were accused of witch craft in some communities.  The most famous is Salem, MA but, while I don’t have any evidence to support it, I’m sure it happened everywhere.

And women were in command of the home.  In every documented divorce, even when the woman was at fault, if children were present, the woman got the home and the land.  If they were not in command of the home, they would not have gotten it.

And woe betide the man who disobeyed his wife!  Besides poisoning his food and killing him violently in his sleep, women had a much larger support network then men did.  For one thing, a man was expected to make it on his own, a woman was expected to work with the rest of the women in the extended family and community.  It was the women who went to the mills to get the grain prepared, and the miller’s wife who sold them the time at the mill.  It was the women who taught the children and raised the children and nursed the children, and let me tell you, when your mother fills your head with vitriol about your father, poisoning your heart and mind against him, it is not a pretty site.

However, we can agree again that women were restricted in the types of jobs they could have.  Then again, the jobs they were usually restricted from had religious or physical/genetic reasons.  Women couldn’t be in the army, but back then, the army had to walk from Washington DC to Florida, there were no buses and airplanes.

Women could be farmers, and many had to become farmers because their husbands died.  Women could be heads of households (if they remained unmarried and had children and their husband had owned land before ceded in the divorce or his death gave it to her) and as heads of households they had the legal right to vote.

Women could run the mill, even without a husband.

Women could run a store, even without a husband.

There is evidence of women studying law and medicine, some even becoming lay-doctors and there is at least one case in Illinois of a woman in the late 1790’s who represented herself in court and won against her husband AND his lawyer.

As for women conducting church services, they still are not permitted to do so.  The Bible here is only important because of how it affected the men and women and children of the time.  Since it has a greatly diminished affect today, it is no longer important.  Back then, however, you could be incarcerated for lying.  Just try to enforce that law today!  Hell, we’d be government less, every last one of those liars would be in jail!

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In parting, equality is a very poor measure to use in adjudicating value.  Four apples are equal.  But four apples are not a square meal.  An apple, a chicken breast, broccoli and a glass of milk are not equal, but together they are a square meal.

Likewise, a woman can never be equal to a man.  A man can never be equal to a woman.  But a man and a woman together are stronger than either can be apart.

Sorry, it just really irks me when people say women were helpless little btches who were owned by their husbands and were told to enjoy it as slaves to the man.  There is just absolutely NO historical evidence to support that or any watered down version of that history.  That history was created by a bunch of shriveled up, dry, barren btches so they could play the victim card and curry unwarranted favor from the government.  It’s fiction.

To sum up my opinion, the fiction that women were wholly owned pieces of chattel by their husbands is about as accurate as saying that the Winter Tournament Championship game is an accurate representation of how World War II occurred.

Sure, there are somethings that are similar, but I wouldn’t go printing off history books!

[a44bigdog]

Ya might want to research that"wife as property" thing a bit more Jenn.

I can’t speak of Illinois history, I have never been there and honestly have not researched it much historically.

Now here in the deep south their are some religious sects that do treat their wives and daughters as property. There are no stores selling them per say but in some of the more whacked out sects they are bought and sold.

And for what it is worth I can beat my common law wife on the courthouse steps on Sunday with a rod less than 1" in diameter. Actually that one may be off the books now but with some of the out dated laws on the Alabama constitution I doubt it.

Its a good thing you are married other wise you would have to call your man “master” while out on a date.  :-D found that stupid Illinois law while looking to re-verify the above.

[U-505]

http://www.usconstitution.net/sentiments.html#res

http://encarta.msn.com/text_761577595___0/Woman_Suffrage.html

[Jennifer]

@U-505:

http://www.usconstitution.net/sentiments.html#res

http://encarta.msn.com/text_761577595___0/Woman_Suffrage.html

As to the second, I already stipulated that men and women are not equal.  Until all humans are uni-gendered, they cannot be equal.  Men are incapable of growing new humans in their wombs, probably because they do not have wombs.  Women are incapable of impregnating men (probably because they don’t have semen and men don’t have ovaries that produce eggs that travel to the womb to grow.)

Men and women are not equal.  This does not mean that men abused their wives, treated them like furniture, raped them routinely and that women had no rights at all and thus were chattel or slaves.  It’s simply not true.

Women and men formed a partnership.  Women handled all the day to day home-economics type stuff.  They were in charge of teaching children.  They were in charge of cooking, cleaning and nursing.  They were in charge of mending, repairing and maintaining.  They were in charge of shopping, preserving, making social connections with other families.

Men were in charge of what they were good at.  Farming, heavy lifting, defending and, since they had all kinds of free time, managing family politics.

To be truthful, it could be seen as women buying a husband and ridding herself of defective property more than it can be seen as a man purchasing a woman for his bed.

1)  Men who did not perform well enough to provide for their family could be divorced in a court of law.  There is no such provision for women during this time.

2)  Men who abused their wives or their children would be arrested and divorce would be a formality.  Women would inherit the farm, the legal rights of suffrage, the legal rights to enter into contractual agreements for the family, and all other rights and privileges reserved for the head of the household.  No such provision existed for men.

3)  It was women who made monetary payments in the form of Dowries to purchase the best husbands possible.  Even the domestication of animals is called HUSBANDRY because it is like purchasing a husband and training him to perform in the manner and of the services required.

Note, I am not attempting to claim that men were property of women.  I am only pointing out, that if you want to take facts out of context (in this case out of society and social beliefs of the time) you can skew them to show anything you really want too.

---

A44:

I will stipulate that there are some regions of the world and some social practices that do treat women as property.  Generally speaking, these areas of the world require a man’s family to purchase a wife long before either man or woman is of age to marry.  These regions generally follow a different set of morals and ethics than found through the history of the United States.

The fact of laws such as the “Rule of Thumb” (which you quoted) does not mean that women were considered the legal property of their husbands.  It was a law to establish that women are not animals that can be beaten, but human beings of equal worth to the family and should be treated with respect.

Remember, I am not stipulating that women were in charge of the family.  What I am saying is that society at this point in history, in this part of the world was very religious and followed the Bible regularly, many read it as their only book ever and most children were taught to read from the Bible.

So we really have to look at what the Bible - which is what everyone believed was the way to run a family - says about running a family.

1)  Men are to love their wives and place their needs before their own.  (Sounds like listening to your wife and voting the way she wants to me.)
2)  Women are to obey their husbands, but to make their opinions and needs known. (Sounds like telling them who to vote for to me.)

Notice a few things, women are never told to love their husbands just as husbands are never told to obey their wives.  This cannot be mentioned enough, it is HUGE!  It is significantly harder for one to LOVE another than it is to OBEY someone who LOVES you.

Think about your own lives.  When you are in love with a woman, do you not try to do nice things for her just because?  As long as you are doing nice things for her, and doing things in what you think is in her best interest and what she desires whenever possible, do you find it hard to get her to go out, even when you are making the decisions of where to go and what to do?

That’s pretty much the basis of a successful relationship, right?  She does what you want, you do whatever you can to make her happy.

So I have to ask, why do you think that husbands who do whatever they can to make their wives happy, fat and content back then treated them like furniture or family pets?  It’s not only incorrect, it’s kind of silly when you think about it!

If you add to that the very fact that it was women who raised men, and it was the morals and ethics being taught to the men by the women that they ingrained into their personal being, why would you think women would raise men to treat women like property?  Think about it!  Gentlemen learned their manners and mannerisms from women, they were raised to treat women like royalty, even when they were not rich and powerful.  That’s what it means to be a gentleman.

Were there some husbands that treated their women like furniture or pets?  Sure.  There are some of those today, are you trying to say women are inferior slaves today?  No.

[U-505]

Look. I provided you with 2 documents that disputed every point of your argument and you have given me nothing but specious claims and heresay. Your “I’m right because I say I’m right” policy doesn’t work here. If there is so much voluminous evidence to support your side of the argument then it should be so easy to provide some that it should virtually fall into your lap.

And this whole humans can’t be equal unless they are androgynous argument is garbage. You are trying to argue that because women and men are genetically different that they should be different in every way which is pure bull***t. They can be equal in jobs, pay, voting rights, property rights, legal rights, among other things. And in 1848(according to the first document), they were NOT. They were so unequal that people(men also) had to begin a movement and craft a document to declare their opposition to the poor treatment women were receiving. What makes you think that in 1700 AD things were any better?

I am only pointing out, that if you want to take facts out of context (in this case out of society and social beliefs of the time) you can skew them to show anything you really want too.

Absolutely correct. You have been doing that since this discussion began. You’re very good at skewing out of context facts.

And I will take your voting rights argument as an example.

Women from property owning families were not allowed to vote, except in the rare instance that the male head of household was incapacitated. Single women were not allowed to vote unless they owned property. And only if they lived in Massachusetts. From 1691 to 1780. These are nothing but rare, specific, exceptions to the rule and you a trying to make them into the rule.

1)  Men who did not perform well enough to provide for their family could be divorced in a court of law.  There is no such provision for women during this time.

2)  Men who abused their wives or their children would be arrested and divorce would be a formality.  Women would inherit the farm, the legal rights of suffrage, the legal rights to enter into contractual agreements for the family, and all other rights and privileges reserved for the head of the household.  No such provision existed for men.

Prove this.

3)  It was women who made monetary payments in the form of Dowries to purchase the best husbands possible.

This couldn’t be more wrong if you tried.

It was the family that provided the dowry to prove that the family could provide for the woman in the event that the marriage failed. And, in most cases, the dowry was the only thing that the woman could back take with her.

[Jennifer]

I did back up my arguments.

Faragher: Sugar Creek and other writings

Forgot the author, but “Nature’s Metropolis”

You have the guy who wrote “Democracy in America” who I also cited.

Just about any historical study from this time period, if you actually read it without pre-conceived notions, will show you that women held a lot of power in this time period.  Men were ostensibly the heads of households, but they could be dropped very quickly in the American courts with everything the family owned going to the woman.  Women purchased husbands with a dowry.  Men were responsible for all manual labor and for any job that was either dangerous or physically discomforting with the minor exception of child birth, and only because they did not have the genetics for it.

Blind denial of my sources does not mean they are not provided, 505.  I know I am debunking all the myths taught to you from school, but that also does not mean it is untrue.  It just means that the historical revisionists did a very good job in changing how history is portrayed instead of allowing the truth to resurface.

[U-505]

@Cmdr:

I did back up my arguments.

Faragher: Sugar Creek and other writings

Forgot the author, but “Nature’s Metropolis”

You have the guy who wrote “Democracy in America” who I also cited.

THIS is backing up your arguments? You can’t even name the author’s of books that supposedly refutes my evidence. Please. Could you do any less work?

For the record, I provided you with a document written 150 years ago by a famous suffragist and women’s rights activist and endorsed by over 300 of her peers(women AND men). Her name was Elisabeth Cady Stanton and she as well as the document(The Declaration of Sentiments) are well know and well respected reflections of their time period and before.

This is an excerpt from her wikipedia entry AND the reference for it’s proof:

Even as a young girl, she enjoyed perusing her father’s law library and debating legal issues with his law clerks. It was this early exposure to law that, in part, caused Stanton to realize how disproportionately the law favored men over women, particularly over married women. Her realization that married women had virtually no property, income, employment, or even custody rights over their own children, helped set her course toward changing these inequities.
-Stanton, Eighty Years & More, pp 31-32, 48

Just about any historical study from this time period, if you actually read it without pre-conceived notions, will show you that women held a lot of power in this time period.

Prove this. Shouldn’t be too hard since it encompasses, as you say, “Just about any historical study from this time period”. Here’s my proof that you are wrong:

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to law in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men, both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He allows her in church, as well as state, but a subordinate position, claiming apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the church.

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

-Declaration of Sentiments 1848

Men were ostensibly the heads of households, but they could be dropped very quickly in the American courts with everything the family owned going to the woman.

Wrong again. But you keep ignoring the truth and maybe someday you’ll be right. Again, my proof:

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master — the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes and, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of the women — the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

-Declaration of Sentiments 1848.

Women purchased husbands with a dowry.

Just admit that you don’t know what a dowry is. I told you what it is in my last post yet you stubbornly refuse to believe me. For the love of God, please look it up, already.

What you are referring to is a “bride price” which is what a man paid to a woman’s family to secure her hand in marriage. Not only do you not know what a dowry is, but you also have it mixed up with another custom AND you have it backwards.

Men were responsible for all manual labor and for any job that was either dangerous or physically discomforting with the minor exception of child birth, and only because they did not have the genetics for it.

Yeah, and men were responsible for all positions in government as well as all of the highest paying jobs such as lawyers and doctors. And in ANY case where a woman did the exact same job as a man, she was paid less. Sometimes much less.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

-Declaration of Sentiments 1848.

Blind denial of my sources does not mean they are not provided, 505.  I know I am debunking all the myths taught to you from school, but that also does not mean it is untrue.

You aren’t debunking anything. You are flat out lying and saying it’s the truth.

And I am not denying your sources. You just haven’t provided any information from them that refutes my evidence. It isn’t my job to read all of those books to find the nuggets you say are in there. It is YOUR job to provide those nuggets in an easily digestible form for the benefit of everyone here who is reading this. Saying they exist and then not providing them isn’t proof. I can say Santa Clause exists, too.

It just means that the historical revisionists did a very good job in changing how history is portrayed instead of allowing the truth to resurface

This is my absolute favorite.

Are you saying, that even now after all these years of freedom of information, that there is still some conspiracy to prevent some parts of history from being told truthfully? By whom? Radical historians bent on gaining absolute power for women by falsely guilting us into believing that women were mistreated in the past when they were clearly in control of their lives.

OMG! It’s true! Women have been in control of the western world the entire time! And now they want the WHOLE world! And the only people who can stop it are the Commander and some guy who wrote a book, I think.

[Jennifer]

I’ve read the Stanton letter before.  It is not exactly Germaine to the discussion considering she was not from Illinois and we are discussing the role of women in Illinois.

Of course, I could go back through time and cherry pick a letter written by someone somewhere in the world, claiming something.  But it too really wouldn’t have any relation to what was going on in Illinois in the 16, 17, 18 and 19th centuries, would it?

[Jennifer]

Nature’s Metropolis: William Cronon
Sugar Creek: John Faragher

Both of those have quite a lot of primary sources in them.  Actual photocopies, and sometimes they are a bit hard to read since the handwritting back then is not what we are used to reading.

You may also feel free to read up on Kennecott Journey by William Cronon;  Iseminger’s “Culture and Environment in the Ameircas”; White’s “The Middle Ground” I’d focus on the first few chapters, but feel free to read the entire book if you want.

As for “Democracy in America” I just had a brain stumble and forgot the name of the author.  However, a brief search would have immediately gotten it for you, Alexis de Touqsville.  He’s kinda famous you know, and he very specifically states in numerous sections of his novel (which is a good read, but very long!) that women had universal sufferage even though they did not have the right to go vote if they were married.

In fact, my entire thesis on women being equal to men, in society if not genetically, is almost a carbon copy of his arguments.

After you finish all that, if you want more sources, let me know.  Just about anything written about history of the area (either Illinois itself or the United States) from non-biased sources before 1940 will reinforce my argument (and Mr. Toucquville’s.)

Gee, btw, all that took roughly 1 minute.  I’m surprised you couldn’t go find those sources yourself given the information I gave you (you know, the titles of the books and all.)