Bitchy History - Episode 6： How Did America Get Here - The History of Women’s Autonomy and No-Fault Divorce

00:00:00.020 Welcome to Bitchy History, the American History podcast that would really like to remind men 0.99

00:00:04.840 that before we had no-fault divorce, women had aqua to fauna and really well-fertilized rose bushes. 1.00

00:00:11.260 And we can always bring that back. 1.00

00:00:18.920 Welcome back to Bitchy History. We're now on episode 6, in case you're keeping count. 1.00

00:00:23.200 In case you haven't noticed, America is kind of going through it right now

00:00:27.000 when it comes to issues of the rights of women, people of color, the LGBTQ plus community,

00:00:32.700 basically just anyone that isn't a straight white male.

00:00:35.700 A couple of weeks ago on this show, we delved into the history of abortion laws in America,

00:00:39.340 but now I'd like to talk about something related, no-fault divorce, and how it relates to women's right to autonomy.

00:00:45.200 But first, let's define what we're talking about.

00:00:47.960 No-fault divorce is the ending of a marriage that does not require a showing of wrongdoing by either party.

00:00:53.340 California was the first U.S. state to enact no-fault divorce law.

00:00:56.580 It was signed into law by Governor Ronald Reagan and went into effect in 1970. 0.85

00:01:01.000 Prior to this, divorce was much harder to get.

00:01:03.480 A divorce could only be obtained if you could show the fault of one and only one party in the marriage.

00:01:08.920 This meant that one spouse needed to plead that the other committed adultery, abandonment, a felony, or some other act that violated their marriage.

00:01:16.220 However, simply pleading that wasn't enough.

00:01:18.440 The guilty spouse could plead innocence, or they could claim that the complaining spouse also violated their marriage vows.

00:01:23.940 if a judge accepted that they could deny the divorce meaning that regardless of your wish

00:01:28.880 a judge held the ultimate control over your legal status as a married person

00:01:32.520 that very nearly happens in this scene from the marvelous Mrs. Maisel and I see no indication

00:01:39.320 that Mr. Joel Maisel is contesting this that's right your honor I asked for silence I'm sorry

00:01:43.700 your honor I'm Mr. Maisel and I was just sorry about the tie Mr. Maisel your husband I am yes

00:01:52.740 What are you doing here? Are you contesting?

00:01:54.080 No, sir, I'm not contesting.

00:01:55.140 Then why are you here?

00:01:55.980 Just moral support for my wife. 0.58

00:01:58.100 Well, she divorces you. 0.97

00:01:58.900 That's right. 1.00

00:01:59.380 For adultery.

00:02:00.000 That's right.

00:02:00.420 It's very modern. It's almost French.

00:02:03.120 But now all this seems a little less straightforward.

00:02:06.160 Your Honor, the arrangement between Mr. and Mrs. Maisel is completely amicable.

00:02:10.200 That'll be a first.

00:02:11.220 Well, they are ready to move forward.

00:02:13.000 I'm not so sure of that.

00:02:14.120 The couple before you, they were at each other's throats. That's the norm.

00:02:17.780 It seems like the two of you are something different,

00:02:19.280 and I want to make sure you're not making a mistake here.

00:02:20.880 now in this case she's granted the divorce but the judge is confused and perplexed that they

00:02:25.400 would want a divorce when they clearly don't have any ill will toward one another he just as easily

00:02:29.820 could have decided that their claim for divorce was not valid which is kind of infuriating right

00:02:34.840 the idea that a judge or your former partner could make it nearly impossible to legally extricate

00:02:40.540 yourself from a legal contract based on i don't know the vibe of your interaction with your spouse

00:02:46.480 or something along those lines, it's totally absurd.

00:02:49.500 And you have to keep in mind that depending on the situation,

00:02:52.280 anything from one spouse having a better education in finances

00:02:55.260 or having an in with the local courts or judge

00:02:57.840 could trap a partner in a relationship.

00:03:00.200 This can still be a problem now when we do have no-fault divorce,

00:03:03.460 but it was a much larger problem in the years prior to that.

00:03:06.800 Consider this quote from a 2010 debate over legalizing no-fault divorce in New York.

00:03:11.320 Yes, they didn't have no-fault divorce in New York State until 2010.

00:03:15.020 Let that sink in while I read this from lawyer L.M. Fenton.

00:03:19.100 Imagine an abusive marriage in 1968 when the court-savvy abuser could actually force the victim to stay in the relationship forever.

00:03:26.800 Imagine that now, and you know why domestic violence attorneys are in full support of introducing no-fault divorce to New York.

00:03:33.440 And the judges aren't the only problem.

00:03:35.440 I've practiced in two states with radically different no-fault laws,

00:03:38.700 and I can tell you how many times I've told a controlling, psychologically abusive spouse,

00:03:42.880 No, Mr. Jones, you can't make her stay married to you if she doesn't want to be.

00:03:47.760 Fault-based grounds usually include mental cruelty,

00:03:50.400 but true mental cruelty has a psychological component

00:03:52.920 that can make it very difficult for the abused spouse to articulate that abuse.

00:03:56.840 More to the point, the abused spouse may be terrified to describe the relationship on paper

00:04:01.180 and testify about it in court. 0.98

00:04:03.260 Of course, no-fault divorce doesn't just benefit women. 0.91

00:04:06.280 Men also benefit from this legal system, 1.00

00:04:08.320 which is actually why some feminist groups like now have opposed it in the past. 1.00

00:04:12.880 So why am I setting this up as a discussion of women's autonomy? 1.00

00:04:16.180 Well, the reason is that issues like no-fault divorce, abortion access, birth control access,

00:04:21.400 the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, Equal Employment Opportunity Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act,

00:04:26.300 and many others were part of an era of legal decisions starting in the 1960s and 1970s,

00:04:31.620 which were meant to reverse some of these systemic equalities in our government that favored men over women.

00:04:36.860 They legally gave women autonomy.

00:04:39.560 The right to autonomy is all about a person's ability to make his or her own rules in life

00:04:43.620 and to make decisions independently. 1.00

00:04:45.720 Prior to these second-wave feminist legal changes, 1.00

00:04:48.140 women faced a system which did not grant them equality in their day-to-day life. 1.00

00:04:52.240 Men were always at the top of the heap, 0.99

00:04:53.740 and women were expected to clean up after them, 0.99

00:04:55.680 mind the children, and have a nice dinner ready at the end of the day. 0.99

00:04:59.080 And that social expectation was enforced by an entire system 0.52

00:05:02.200 which prioritized men in the legal and financial world.

00:05:05.480 And that preference has been baked into our culture

00:05:07.580 since long before the United States even existed. 0.71

00:05:10.700 So today I want to visit the history of women's autonomy in American history, 0.89

00:05:14.340 so maybe we can understand how no-fault divorce, being the focus of attack,

00:05:18.000 fits into the overall culture war that's coming from conservatives in America today.

00:05:22.680 To start out, we're going to look all the way back to English common law,

00:05:25.780 just like we did in episode two with the history of abortion.

00:05:28.520 In this case, we're looking at a legal doctrine known as Kovachur.

00:05:31.940 Kovachur was a legal fiction that declared that after marriage,

00:05:35.200 man and wife were legally one person, with the husband acting as a representative for both.

00:05:40.540 After marriage, a woman became a femme covert, a covered woman, wearing the shadow of her husband's 0.66

00:05:45.980 legal existence. Femme coverts were unable to convey property, sign a contract, or execute a 1.00

00:05:50.960 will on their own. Only women who were never married or were now widowed could take on the 1.00

00:05:55.280 role of femme sole and be allowed to engage in legal transactions. Married women gave up their 1.00

00:06:00.200 legal identity and merged with their husband's legal existence and gave up her name, hence the

00:06:04.520 old-fashioned practice of introducing the bride and groom at the end of a marriage ceremony as

00:06:08.820 may i present you mr and mrs john smith as if the woman's identity no longer exists because

00:06:15.040 legally it didn't blackstone's commentaries on the laws of england goes into an extensive

00:06:20.300 explanation of this concept and what it entailed legally by marriage the husband and wife are one

00:06:25.980 person in law that is the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the

00:06:31.180 marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband, under

00:06:35.820 whose wing, protection, and cover she performs everything. It is said to be under the protection

00:06:40.780 and influence of her husband, her baron, or her lord, and her condition during her marriage is

00:06:46.540 called her coverture. The husband, also by the old law, might give his wife moderate correction,

00:06:52.200 for as he is to answer for his misbehavior, the law thought it reasonable to entrust him with

00:06:56.940 the power of restraining her by domestic chastisement in the same moderation that a man is allowed to

00:07:02.200 correct his servants or children for whom the master or parent is also liable in some cases

00:07:07.160 if the wife be injured in her person or property she can bring no action for redress without her

00:07:13.100 husband's concurrence and in his name as well as her own neither can she be sued without making 0.70

00:07:18.000 her husband a defendant in criminal prosecutions it is true the wife may be indicted and punished

00:07:23.560 separately, but in trials of any sort, they are not allowed to be evidence for or against each

00:07:28.360 other, partly because it is impossible their testimony should be indifferent, but principally

00:07:33.240 because of the union of person. As you can see, there's another piece of modern legality based on

00:07:38.640 this, the concept of spousal immunity. Only today, that spousal immunity says only that spouses

00:07:43.940 cannot be compelled to testify, whereas under Kovacier, neither spouse was allowed to testify

00:07:49.140 because of the legal fiction that they were the same person and therefore could not legally offer

00:07:53.420 testimony that contradicted their spouse. This would inevitably create a bias against women, 0.91

00:07:58.480 especially if they were seeking to accuse their husband of adultery or abuse. And it's not only

00:08:03.260 in English law that this concept exists. If you watch the 2021 Ridley Scott film The Last Duel,

00:08:08.420 which is based on a real legal case in 14th century France, you'll catch this reference in

00:08:12.940 one section.

00:08:13.540 Sean I intend to speak the truth I will not be silent

00:08:20.380 I have no legal standing without your support

00:08:30.400 and you shall have it this makes sense when we realize the concept of coverture developed in

00:08:45.960 england in the high and late middle ages as part of the common law system imposed following the

00:08:50.400 norman conquest in 1066 spanish law differed quite a bit on how women's autonomy and legal 0.63

00:08:55.880 personhood was dealt with but for the sake of this show being about the origins of what's

00:08:59.800 happening in America today, we will be sticking with English common law on this topic. We see this

00:09:05.360 legal bias in other areas as well. Under English law from 1351 to 1828, a woman accused of killing 1.00

00:09:12.080 her husband was liable to be indicted, not for willful murder, but for the aggravated offense

00:09:17.120 of petty treason. And until 1790, she faced public execution by burning if convicted. As Thomas Hobbes

00:09:23.860 put it, the family unit functioned as a little monarchy in which the husband and father was the

00:09:28.720 sovereign. As you might imagine, divorce was exceedingly rare in English society in the years

00:09:33.580 prior to the American Revolution. In England, it wouldn't be until the Matrimonial Causes Act of

00:09:38.420 1857 that divorce became at all accessible for the majority of people. And even then, men were 0.88

00:09:43.920 able to petition the court for divorce on the basis of their wife's adultery, while women who

00:09:48.440 wanted to divorce their husband needed to prove an aggravating factor of the adultery, such as

00:09:53.280 rape or incest. Divorce proceedings were held in open court, and it was a highly scandalous affair

00:09:58.280 with all the couple's dirty secrets being aired for anyone who attended,

00:10:02.080 or anyone who read the papers if the couple was important enough to justify that kind of attention.

00:10:07.020 But that's in the 1850s, and that's well after America was formed, 1.00

00:10:10.560 so let's move away from England and get back to American views on women's autonomy.

00:10:15.380 American law, as I've mentioned before, was very much based on English common law, 0.55

00:10:19.420 meaning that Kovachur was still practiced in the colonies.

00:10:22.800 If you've ever studied Abigail Adams in your history classes prior to this podcast,

00:10:26.500 you may recall her famous remember the ladies letter which she wrote to her husband john in

00:10:31.140 1776 in it she says in the new code of laws which i suppose it will be necessary for you to make i

00:10:37.920 desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors

00:10:43.080 do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands remember all men would be tyrants if

00:10:48.780 they could it's not the right to vote that she's referring to it's the concept of coverture she's

00:10:54.240 asking for the autonomy to have legal personhood as a wife John's response was flippant to say the

00:11:00.220 least look he's my favorite founding father mostly because he's the only one that hasn't

00:11:04.620 horribly disappointed me by being a hypocrite as many times as say Thomas Jefferson but even I can

00:11:10.280 admit his flaws but despite his response which was as to your extraordinary code of laws I cannot but 0.87

00:11:16.600 laugh we have been told that our struggle has loosened the bands of government everywhere but

00:11:20.900 your letter was the first intimation that another tribe, more numerous and powerful than all the

00:11:25.220 rest, were grown discontented. This is rather too coarse a compliment, but you are so saucy,

00:11:30.280 I won't blot it out. However, he did seem to actually take her words to heart and consider

00:11:35.180 the issue, which makes total sense, as he clearly respected his wife's mental acuity and her advice

00:11:40.360 on political issues. In May of 1776, he engaged in a debate over the question of who had the right

00:11:45.980 to vote with James Sullivan, a Massachusetts lawyer. Sullivan was concerned with the current

00:11:50.720 requirements that only allowed landowners to vote. Adams' response is that men who were not landowners

00:11:56.080 as well as women were too little acquainted with public affairs to form a right judgment and too

00:12:01.140 dependent upon other men to have a will of their own. He also mentions that he sees women as having 0.92

00:12:05.980 good judgment just as much as men who do not own property, but sees both groups as equally unsuitable

00:12:11.400 to vote as a result of their dependence. Adams had a solution to the contradiction of declaring

00:12:16.100 all equal, but not allowing all to vote. He wanted to turn the multitude into landowners,

00:12:21.140 making them more independent, which is a sound idea, but of course it's highly complicated by

00:12:25.720 the fact that women under Kovachur could not own property if they were married. Them's soul, 0.98

00:12:30.540 the state of being unmarried or widowed, would free a woman from that restriction, though, 0.98

00:12:34.180 and in some of the new states, like New Jersey, women who owned property were allowed to vote 0.81

00:12:38.680 all the way up until 1807.

00:12:40.940 But we'll get into the history of women's suffrage

00:12:42.600 in another episode,

00:12:43.720 especially as some conservatives with podcasts

00:12:45.880 have been seriously saying

00:12:47.100 that they think women having the vote is a terrible idea

00:12:49.800 and they'd like to do away with it. 1.00

00:12:51.840 The concept of coverture would become 1.00

00:12:53.580 the first major concern of the women's rights movement.

00:12:56.620 John Neill, one of the earliest lecturers

00:12:58.420 on women's rights in American history, 1.00

00:13:00.320 attacked coverture in a speech in the 1840s saying, 1.00

00:13:03.020 how long shall women be rendered by law

00:13:05.620 incapable of acquiring, holding, or transmitting property? 1.00

00:13:08.680 except under special conditions like the slave. 0.58

00:13:11.980 Lucy Stone, an American abolitionist and suffragist,

00:13:14.820 criticized Kovachur, saying,

00:13:16.600 the common law of marriage gives custody of the wife's person to her husband

00:13:20.240 so that he has a right to her even against herself.

00:13:23.540 Kovachur protected men who abused their wives

00:13:25.720 and relegated women to a position where they had no right

00:13:28.120 to deny their husband anything, even sex.

00:13:30.840 Marital rape was considered absolutely legal in the United States

00:13:33.920 and many other countries until, you guessed it, the 1970s.

00:13:38.680 It also prevented women who did manage to find work, whether inside or outside the home, 0.60

00:13:43.080 from having the right to their own wages, and in some cases it prevented their ability to work at

00:13:47.160 all. In 1869, Myra Bradwell was refused permission to practice as a lawyer in Illinois, specifically 1.00

00:13:53.060 because of coverture. The legal reality of coverture and social expectations created a 0.95

00:13:58.420 society in which women were very much infantilized, and it continued the long history of men being 0.89

00:14:03.840 given access to the public sphere, while women were relegated to the private sphere inside the 1.00

00:14:08.560 home. However, even with this public versus private divide, the realities of life in a new

00:14:13.640 country would begin to upset the power balance, specifically the notion of Republican motherhood,

00:14:19.060 which began to take hold at the end of the 18th century. As a new nation, many fear that the ideals

00:14:24.100 of American republicanism would be lost without conscious effort. Therefore, it became women's 0.98

00:14:28.900 responsibility to foster Republican values in her children. And as a side note, when I say

00:14:34.200 Republican here, it's the one with the small r, not meaning the GOP. Republican as in by the people,

00:14:40.040 for the people. Just wanted to clarify because that always trips up my students in my Intro to

00:14:44.360 American History class. Here I'd like to read from Linda Kerber's Women of the Republic on the topic

00:14:50.080 of Republican motherhood. In the years of the early Republic, a consensus developed around the idea 0.97

00:14:56.340 that a mother committed to the service of her family and to the state might serve a political

00:15:00.620 purpose. Those who opposed women in politics had to meet the proposal that women could and should 0.99

00:15:05.800 play a political role through the raising of a patriotic child. The Republican mother was to 1.00

00:15:10.500 encourage in her sons civic interest and participation. She was to educate her children 0.69

00:15:15.140 and guide them in the paths of morality and virtue, but she was not to tell her male relatives

00:15:19.620 for whom to vote. She was a citizen, but not really a constituent. Western political theory,

00:15:25.060 even during the Enlightenment had only occasionally contemplated the role of women in the civic 0.99

00:15:29.280 culture. It had habitually considered women only in domestic relationships, only as wives and 0.73

00:15:34.520 mothers. A political community that accepted women as political actors would have to eliminate the 1.00

00:15:39.860 Russoistic assumptions that the world of women is separate from the empire of men. The ideology of

00:15:45.600 republican motherhood seemed to accomplish what the Enlightenment had not by identifying the

00:15:50.160 intersection of the woman's private domain and the polis. So women became players in the political 0.99

00:15:55.380 sphere, despite the best intention of the law and social order to keep them out of it. In fact, 1.00

00:16:00.080 women began to get more education themselves, because how could they be expected to be in 0.90

00:16:03.960 charge of their son's education without first having an education themselves? The literacy 0.95

00:16:08.980 rate for women and girls in the middle class during the early 19th century would increase

00:16:13.020 immensely. And when you can read, you can write. And women began to do just that. They wrote fiction.

00:16:18.560 They wrote nonfiction. Women like Margaret Fuller would write books like Women in the 19th Century, 0.92

00:16:23.680 one of the first major feminist works in the United States. 0.52

00:16:27.220 Women's education also began to grant them more freedom outside the home, 1.00

00:16:30.860 as demand for school teachers greatly outstripped the availability of male teachers at the time.

00:16:35.880 Of course, women were not paid the same as men for this job.

00:16:38.760 Superintendents around the country openly bragged about the productivity of female teachers,

00:16:42.880 who worked for less than half of the income of men.

00:16:45.840 For instance, in 1838, Connecticut paid $14.50 a month to male teachers.

00:16:50.460 They only paid $5.75 a month to women.

00:16:53.620 And of course, again, with the concept of coviture still in place, 1.00

00:16:56.560 women who taught and were married had no right to their own income. 0.99

00:16:59.780 Their finances were still controlled by their husbands. 0.58

00:17:02.100 Also, married women were not usually encouraged to work in the first place.

00:17:05.860 Most of these jobs were for unmarried women, or at least women without children.

00:17:09.600 Women would be strongly encouraged to quit or simply fired when they became married or pregnant.

00:17:15.040 And now we've gone a bit off topic here,

00:17:16.720 but my point is that women had little autonomy during this period,

00:17:20.000 and that did not change throughout the later 19th century. 0.75

00:17:23.260 The cult of domesticity was an ideal of womanhood

00:17:25.860 that becomes prominent during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. 0.98

00:17:29.780 This value system offered a distinct image of femininity 1.00

00:17:32.720 that placed women within the homes and as the center of their families. 0.93

00:17:36.440 True women, according to this idea,

00:17:38.320 were supposed to possess four cardinal virtues, 0.75

00:17:40.960 piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. 0.98

00:17:44.320 True women were supposed to devote themselves to unpaid domestic labor and refrain from paid, market-oriented work. 0.98

00:17:51.080 Consequently, by 1890, only 4.5% of all married women were gainfully employed, compared to 40.5% of single women.

00:17:59.820 Legal precedent only served to further enforce this issue, with Supreme Court rulings such as Mueller v. Oregon in 1908

00:18:06.440 being based on the assumption that women's primary role was that of mother and wife,

00:18:10.500 and that women's non-domestic work should not be allowed to interfere with their primary function.

00:18:15.660 As a result, women's working hours were limited and night work for women was prohibited,

00:18:19.940 essentially costing many female workers their jobs and excluding them from many occupations.

00:18:24.680 And specifically, women were defined as having the right to have maternal gender roles, 0.99

00:18:29.080 which necessitated them losing some of their other liberties.

00:18:32.200 Here's a few quotes from that case that I find particularly galling. 1.00

00:18:36.240 Woman has always been dependent upon man. 1.00

00:18:39.560 Yeah, because you made her be. 1.00

00:18:42.120 In the struggle for subsistence, she is not an equal competitor with her brother.

00:18:46.660 Yeah, because you won't let her be.

00:18:49.260 Though limitations upon personal and contractual rights may be removed by legislation,

00:18:54.140 there is that in her disposition and habits of life which will operate against a full assertion of those rights.

00:19:00.920 So you're saying that there doesn't need to be a legal restriction? 0.92

00:19:04.600 She would just do this anyway of her own choice? 0.98

00:19:07.900 then why do we have a legal restriction? That doesn't make any sense. The limitations which

00:19:14.060 the statute places upon her contractual powers, upon her right to agree with her employer as to

00:19:18.760 the time she shall labor, are not imposed solely for her benefit, but also largely for the benefit

00:19:24.140 of all. A good part of this was keeping women out of the workforce so that men could have those jobs. 0.99

00:19:30.740 The cult of domesticity privatized women's options for work, for education, for voicing opinions, 1.00

00:19:36.200 or for supporting reform. Arguments of significant biological differences between the sexes, and often

00:19:41.840 of female inferiority, by the way, led to pronouncements that women were incapable of 0.93

00:19:46.640 effectively participating in the realms of politics, commerce, or public service. And despite all of

00:19:52.000 this, women during the 19th century and early 20th century would still mobilize to work for abolition

00:19:57.060 and women's suffrage, eventually winning major victories on both fronts. But both of those

00:20:01.740 topics are something that we'll cover later in their own episodes. But even with the gaining of

00:20:06.160 the vote, women were not on equal levels with men in American society. Those systemic issues

00:20:10.860 continued throughout the 20th century, with women being relegated to pink-collar jobs, 0.98

00:20:15.160 even after serving in traditionally male jobs like bomb making, factory work, spy work, and

00:20:20.520 even serving in the military during World War I and World War II. As men returned to the labor 0.73

00:20:25.380 force after World War II ended, many women were reluctant to give up the independence that work

00:20:30.100 outside the home had granted them. A conservative cultural backlash began to build, with proponents 0.84

00:20:35.060 encouraging women to return to the home and to more traditional domestic gender roles so that

00:20:39.680 men could reassume the role of financial provider and family protector, the natural order. In 1947, 0.76

00:20:46.700 Ferdinand Lumberg and Dr. Mariana Farnham wrote a book entitled Modern Women, the Lost Sex,

00:20:52.160 which argued that contemporary women in very large numbers are psychologically disordered and that

00:20:57.300 their disorder is having terrible social and personal effects involving men in all departments

00:21:01.900 of their lives, as well as women. The book became a national bestseller and contributed to both the

00:21:07.160 return to domesticity in the post-World War II decade and the psychoanalytic anti-feminist

00:21:12.480 movement. During this period, we also see a very strong push back towards that divide between

00:21:18.120 public and private spheres from the 19th century. Childcare experts, television, magazines, and

00:21:23.780 politicians all propagated the notion that women should leave the work world and return home.

00:21:28.840 According to many psychiatrists, caring for children was not simply a task, it was meant

00:21:32.980 to be the central focus of women's lives. For the women who did remain in the employment sector,

00:21:37.820 there was an increase in occupational segregation between the sexes. For the most part, they worked 0.94

00:21:42.320 as secretaries, teachers, nurses, and waitresses, service and nurturing jobs that were considered 0.97

00:21:47.380 feminine, and also happened to pay less. Most of these pink-collar jobs also offered very few 1.00

00:21:53.240 possibilities for career advancement. In the 1950s, the cult of domesticity and the true woman from 0.93

00:21:59.220 the Victorian era gave way to the new ideology of the ideal woman. The creation of the ideal woman

00:22:05.220 gave a clear picture to women of what they were supposed to emulate as their proper gender role

00:22:09.480 in society. In effect, women began to construct their identities around this image. Popular since 0.97

00:22:15.240 the 1950s, this tenacious stereotype conjures mythic images of cultural icons. June Cleaver, 0.99

00:22:21.100 Donna Reed, Harriet Nelson, the quintessential white middle-class housewives, the ones who stay 1.00

00:22:26.300 at home to rear children, clean the house, and bake cookies. A high school home economics textbook 0.64

00:22:31.920 from 1954 gave guides on how to be a good wife. Have a good meal on the table, make yourself look 1.00

00:22:37.400 nice, make sure the house is clean and the children well-behaved and dressed nicely.

00:22:41.880 Fluff his pillows, take off his shoes, speak with soothing tones, don't complain,

00:22:46.300 make everything about his comfort. I don't know about you, but that sounds more like the job

00:22:50.360 of a servant, not a wife. Also from 1954, the Victoria Medical Guide speaks about what traits

00:22:56.340 a man wants in a wife. Men placed considerable emphasis on wanting a wife that was a good cook 0.98

00:23:01.320 and housekeeper, had good looks, and had a desire for home life and children. There was tremendous

00:23:06.500 societal pressure for women to get a ring on their finger. The U.S. marriage rate was at an all-time 0.84

00:23:11.100 high, and couples were tying the knot, on average, younger than ever before. Getting married right out

00:23:16.160 of high school or while still in college was considered the norm. If a woman wasn't engaged 1.00

00:23:20.500 or married by her early 20s, she was in danger of becoming an old maid. Not only did most married 0.99

00:23:25.660 women walk down the aisle by age 19, they also tended to start families right away, and they 0.95

00:23:30.620 usually had more children than their mother's or grandmother's generation had before them. 0.84

00:23:35.240 But for all the glamour of the 1950s in television, the June Cleavers and Donna Reeds,

00:23:40.320 life was far from ideal. I'll likely do another episode on women's lives during this period,

00:23:45.260 which we'll delve into this in more detail, but suffice to say that the traditional home of the

00:23:49.740 1950s was not as ideal as the sitcoms make it look. They still had domestic violence, both physical 0.93

00:23:55.600 and verbal, and because of the way the system was rigged, women had few options to leave their

00:24:00.160 abusive spouses. New York State did not list beating as a cruel and inhumane treatment that

00:24:05.600 was grounds for divorce until 1966, and even then the plaintiff had to establish that a sufficient

00:24:11.580 number of beatings had taken place. You'd think that one would be all it would take, but apparently

00:24:16.560 not. And in 1964, a study on wife beating essentially claimed that it was therapeutic

00:24:21.940 for men. No, really. Here's a quote. The periods of violent behavior by the husband, the doctors

00:24:28.280 observed, served to release him momentarily from his anxiety about his ineffectiveness as a man

00:24:33.620 while giving his wife apparent masochistic gratification and helping probably to deal

00:24:38.960 with the guilt arising from the intense hostility

00:24:41.380 expressed in her controlling, castrating behavior. 0.93

00:24:45.100 So in other words, if you nag your husband too much 0.88

00:24:47.440 and make him feel emasculated, 0.93

00:24:49.120 then you had that slap coming, honey. 1.00

00:24:52.240 Even if they could get a divorce, what happened then? 1.00

00:24:55.080 There were no shelters for domestic abuse until the late 1960s.

00:24:58.480 The education gap between men and women

00:25:00.260 had widened significantly in the 1950s,

00:25:02.820 with only 27% of bachelor's degrees going to women in 1950.

00:25:07.280 And even if they had a degree, 0.98

00:25:08.580 what jobs were available? Would they be able to ever see their children again, or would their

00:25:12.880 husband get custody? The ability to get a credit card or a mortgage was severely curtailed by

00:25:17.640 discrimination by credit card companies and banks. So, of course, no-fault divorce isn't the only

00:25:22.840 thing standing between women in the 21st century and the loss of legal autonomy. There's a whole 0.99

00:25:27.500 host of laws which help to legalize our right to autonomy as women in America, but it's not

00:25:32.460 promising that one of the major successes of women's autonomy, Roe versus Wade, was overturned

00:25:37.620 just last year. And almost immediately on the wings of that, we had more than a few American

00:25:42.280 conservatives making comments about overturning landmark Supreme Court cases that made it illegal

00:25:47.260 to ban birth control. And now we have conservative talking heads like Steven Crowder saying things

00:25:52.240 like this. And no, this was not my choice. My then wife decided that she didn't want to be

00:26:00.600 married anymore. And in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted. Ohio Republican Senate

00:26:06.900 candidate jd vance said that divorce is a great trick pulled by the sexual revolution and that

00:26:12.380 even when a marriage is violent divorce isn't the best thing for kids michael knowles best known for

00:26:17.840 his brief stint in a gay student film in college and his fervent wish to exterminate transgenderism

00:26:23.020 from society yeah i think you might be projecting a little bit there buddy says that things have 0.62

00:26:28.140 only gotten worse in america since we got no fault divorce the state of california decided to make it

00:26:35.740 easier to get divorced in only in 1969 but for the vast majority of our country's history for

00:26:40.700 the vast majority of our civilization's history divorce was very difficult to obtain when it was

00:26:45.460 not outright illegal but we see the weakening of marriage through no-fault divorce this is a very

00:26:51.280 bad turn of events do you think society has gotten much better since the social and sexual

00:26:57.460 revolutions of the 1960s or has it gotten a little bit worse to answer his question i feel like the

00:27:03.800 world has definitely become a better place since the sexual revolution, but I'm saying that as a 0.92

00:27:08.760 woman and a queer woman at that, and I do understand how it might feel less good for a mediocre white 0.98

00:27:16.120 man. It's a lot harder to get by as a mediocre white man today than it was in the 1950s. I feel 0.97

00:27:22.400 for you, Michael. I really do. The problem is that it's not just a bunch of mediocre white men with

00:27:28.080 podcasts that are angry about this and wishing that they could control women more. If I could 0.99

00:27:33.220 dismiss them as easily as that one character in Knives Out, you know, the one. He's an

00:27:38.240 old-right troll dipshit. But unfortunately, that's just not the case. In 2022, the Texas 1.00

00:27:44.000 Republican Party made ending no-fault divorce a literal part of its platform, the same state

00:27:49.340 where the judge who recently halted the FDA approval of Mifepristone once wrote in the

00:27:54.160 National Catholic Register that Reagan's signing of the Family Law Act of 1969 caused the first

00:28:00.240 pillar to fall when it came to marriage law. So how did we get here? To this moment where the all

00:28:06.280 too recent victories for women's autonomy are under threat almost constantly. Well, conservative 1.00

00:28:11.640 backlash against women, or any minority really, fighting for or obtaining their rights and autonomy

00:28:16.680 is nothing new. They've been playing this game with our legal rights for a long time and overturning 0.98

00:28:21.620 no-fault divorce would just be one more way to turn the clock back to what they think was the

00:28:25.660 golden age of America. Though at this point, I'm not sure if they think that was 1950 or 1850.

00:28:31.940 Either way, I think I speak for all sane people when I say, I'm not here for it. You can pry my

00:28:37.840 no-fault divorce from my cold, dead hands. Thank you for tuning in to hear me bitch about history. 0.98

00:28:43.660 I know this was a long episode. What can I say? I get fired up about women's history and feminism.

00:28:48.460 I guess the title of the podcast should have been a clue about that for you.

00:28:51.660 just a reminder if you want updates on all new episodes you can bookmark podpage.com 0.98

00:28:57.100 slash bitchy dash history for continuously updated list of episodes of the show or just

00:29:02.640 subscribe on youtube spotify apple podcasts amazon podcasts or whatever rss feed based podcast app you

00:29:09.600 prefer on monday we'll be back with a new history 101 episode this one focused on the history of

00:29:14.960 the puritans who they were and why they came to the new world if you're enjoying this podcast

00:29:19.640 please share it with your family and friends and join the podcast discord where you can ask

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00:29:34.080 bitchy history. 0.99

Bitchy History - June 02, 2023

Episode 6： How Did America Get Here - The History of Women’s Autonomy and No-Fault Divorce

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