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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21150 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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And that's the mistake that got you feminism/gynosupremacy in the first place- so instead of male abusers that beat you, you have female abusers who will [have] you beaten if you don't pay a pre-emptive penalty for the beating it's assumed you'll do.

Every time I start to feel that the he-man anti-women club section on here have a point or two, exaggerated messaging pops up and makes me go "Nope".

Oh gosh, gynosupremacy! Women Are Wonderful! Women have all the rights and men have none!

Congratulations, gentlemen, now you know what it was like to live, as a woman, in the world of androsupremacy, Men Are The Superior Sex, and women have no rights. That is why we got feminism in the first place.

It's better if everyone has rights and nobody gets turned into the inferior sex.

Why are women divorce-raping men, the bitches? Story published in 1904, set in 1897:

She shuddered and buried her face in her hands. As she did so, the loose gown fell back from her forearms. Holmes uttered an exclamation.

"You have other injuries, madam! What is this?" Two vivid red spots stood out on one of the white, round limbs. She hastily covered it.

"It is nothing. It has no connection with this hideous business to-night. If you and your friend will sit down, I will tell you all I can.

"I am the wife of Sir Eustace Brackenstall. I have been married about a year. I suppose that it is no use my attempting to conceal that our marriage has not been a happy one. I fear that all our neighbours would tell you that, even if I were to attempt to deny it. Perhaps the fault may be partly mine. I was brought up in the freer, less conventional atmosphere of South Australia, and this English life, with its proprieties and its primness, is not congenial to me. But the main reason lies in the one fact, which is notorious to everyone, and that is that Sir Eustace was a confirmed drunkard. To be with such a man for an hour is unpleasant. Can you imagine what it means for a sensitive and high-spirited woman to be tied to him for day and night? It is a sacrilege, a crime, a villainy to hold that such a marriage is binding. I say that these monstrous laws of yours will bring a curse upon the land -- God will not let such wickedness endure." For an instant she sat up, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes blazing from under the terrible mark upon her brow. Then the strong, soothing hand of the austere maid drew her head down on to the cushion, and the wild anger died away into passionate sobbing.

..."He was a good-hearted man when he was sober, but a perfect fiend when he was drunk, or rather when he was half drunk, for he seldom really went the whole way. The devil seemed to be in him at such times, and he was capable of anything. From what I hear, in spite of all his wealth and his title, he very nearly came our way once or twice. There was a scandal about his drenching a dog with petroleum and setting it on fire -- her ladyship's dog, to make the matter worse -- and that was only hushed up with difficulty. Then he threw a decanter at that maid, Theresa Wright -- there was trouble about that. On the whole, and between ourselves, it will be a brighter house without him. What are you looking at now?"

...She was an interesting person, this stern Australian nurse-taciturn, suspicious, ungracious, it took some time before Holmes's pleasant manner and frank acceptance of all that she said thawed her into a corresponding amiability. She did not attempt to conceal her hatred for her late employer.

"Yes, sir, it is true that he threw the decanter at me. I heard him call my mistress a name, and I told him that he would not dare to speak so if her brother had been there. Then it was that he threw it at me. He might have thrown a dozen if he had but left my bonny bird alone. He was forever ill-treating her, and she too proud to complain. She will not even tell me all that he has done to her. She never told me of those marks on her arm that you saw this morning, but I know very well that they come from a stab with a hatpin. The sly devil -- God forgive me that I should speak of him so, now that he is dead! But a devil he was, if ever one walked the earth. He was all honey when first we met him -- only eighteen months ago, and we both feel as if it were eighteen years. She had only just arrived in London. Yes, it was her first voyage -- she had never been from home before. He won her with his title and his money and his false London ways. If she made a mistake she has paid for it, if ever a woman did. What month did we meet him? Well, I tell you it was just after we arrived. We arrived in June, and it was July. They were married in January of last year. Yes, she is down in the morning-room again, and I have no doubt she will see you, but you must not ask too much of her, for she has gone through all that flesh and blood will stand."

Well, why didn't she just leave him? Under the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 You could only get divorce on the grounds of adultery, and if you were a woman seeking a divorce you also had to prove additional causes:

The act did not treat women's and men's grounds for divorce equally (largely on the grounds that women's adultery was more serious because it introduced doubt as to the paternity of possible heirs). Thus a husband could petition for divorce on the sole grounds that his wife had committed adultery, whereas a wife could only hope for a divorce based on adultery combined with other offences such as incest, cruelty, bigamy, desertion, etc.

More reform came later, but still grounds for divorce were limited:

Previously, before the Matrimonial Causes Act 1923, men could divorce women on the basis of adultery, but women were required to prove that their male partners had undertaken adultery and additional offences, such as incest, sodomy, cruelty (roughly equivalent to domestic violence) and other possible reasons.

The 1923 Act changed the need for women to prove additional causes plus adultery on the part of the husband, but it was not merely Women Are Wonderful alone that brought this about:

The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 included a double standard in its provisions. While a wife's adultery was sufficient cause to end a marriage, a woman could divorce her husband only if his adultery had been compounded by another matrimonial offense. The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1923 granted a wife the right to divorce her husband for adultery alone and thus removed the double standard with respect to the grounds for divorce born English statutes. Although the 1923 act was contemporaneous with other reforms extending the legal rights of women, an analysis of the public debates regarding divorce reform indicates that the statute was not based solely on a desire to provide equitable matrimonial relief for husbands and wives. The belief that male adultery contributed to such problems as prostitution, illegitimacy, and the spread of venereal disease was as significant in the passage of the 1923 act as the demand for equal access to divorce for men and women.

It wasn't until 1937 that grounds other than adultery were sufficient for divorce:

The Matrimonial Causes Act 1937 was a law on divorce in the United Kingdom. It extended the grounds for divorce, which until then only included adultery, to include unlawful desertion for three years or more, cruelty, and incurable insanity, incest or sodomy.

So in 1897 Lady Brackenstall would have been stuck, still married, to her abusive husband. She could have separated from him, but she would still be legally married and still technically under his power.

Now, gentlemen, it may indeed be no-fault divorce has gone too far, but imagine if today you were in an abusive marriage but couldn't get out because your spouse may be a drunk who beats you but they're not an adulterer. Would men put up with that?

Now, before anyone jumps in with "yeah but that's only a story, not all marriages in 1897 or 1904 were like that", no, they were not.

But a story demonstrates social attitudes. Some things have to be believable; to abbreviate a Chesterton quote, people might or might not believe a story that Gladstone was haunted by Parnell's ghost, but they would not at all believe that Gladstone slapped Queen Victoria on the back and offered her a cigar.

People reading that story would have gone "Yeah, that happens", the same way somebody reading a story today where the wife took the husband to the cleaners in the divorce would go "Yeah, that happens". The motive for the murder would be explicable to them: the wife was stuck in an abusive marriage and had no legal means of getting out, and if she ran off with her lover then she would be the one in the wrong and socially ostracised and blamed. And why couldn't she get out of this marriage? Because that was the law at the time. Men Are Wonderful effect. Men had the power, women didn't.

Some things have to be believable; to abbreviate a Chesterton quote, people might or might not believe a story that Gladstone was haunted by Parnell's ghost, but they would not at all believe that Gladstone slapped Queen Victoria on the back and offered her a cigar.

See also the "Would you be more surprised to find a walrus or a fairy on your doorstep?" debate from two years ago.

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