“When I went to the hearings for the Equal Rights Amendment and I heard what they were saying, and they had absolutely no benefit to offer women, but we could see a lot of disadvantages in it…What that amendment would do is to make all laws sex-neutral. Well, the typical, classic law that is not sex-neutral is the draft registration law. And we were still in the Vietnam War in 1972. I had sons and daughters about age 18. My daughters thought this was the craziest thing they ever heard. You’re going to have a new amendment for women? And the first thing is they’ll have to sign up for the draft like their brothers. Now, that was an unsaleable proposition.”[i]

Thus began one of the biggest anti-feminist fights in history. After the 1960s feminism had taken a radical turn. No longer were these new wave feminists concerned with family life for women as they had been in the past. Apparently to this new wave of feminism abortion, equal pay and women in combat were big enough issues that they were willing to harm millions of women to get what they wanted. I mean, according to them life was so miserable for women and all women were confined to the single option of becoming breeding machines. According to them, women were the inferior sex and her position in the family was an inferior one. As we’ve gone over before, this is about as far from the truth as it gets.

For many women before the modern feminist movement, family life took center stage in a woman’s life. Not because women had no other choice, but because they believed their families were more important than any amount of money they could bring in. Contrary to the tales feminist love to tell, women have always had the right to own property, pursue careers, and choose who they want to marry. In the memory of nobody living today have women not had the right to divorce an abusive husband or retain custody of children or pursue a career of their choosing. In the 19th century laws were more restrictive of married women, but all married women had options to bypass the restrictions of coverture. In regards to property, Married Women’s Property Acts were passed in states in the mid-1800s to allow a woman to maintain control over any property she came into the marriage with. Even before these acts, however, there were ways around the law:

“However, the common law also had for a long time been modified by arrangements in equity which provided loopholes. Wealthy fathers who did not have faith in their prospective sons-in law and wished to endow their daughters with an inheritance they could use free from their husbands’ control found a way to accomplish that. They established trusts which separated legal ownership from use. A trustee held title to the property and kept it out of the hands of the woman’s husband; the woman, however, had use of the property. Through such legal fictions, some women acquired the fruits of property ownership.”[ii]

The right to vote was a complicated thing and laws generally varied state to state. Many men did not have the right to vote unless they were property owners. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race or other previous condition of servitude (as the Amendment reads). Although many states did allow women to vote, the 19th Amendment would not go into the Constitution until the early 1900s. Again, the right to vote has nothing to do with the modern feminist movement. The Equal Rights Amendment was written by a suffragist, but the Amendment was ignored by most feminists of the time who did not believe in male-female fungibility the way feminists from the 1960s onward believe.

Women’s lib was about removing protective legislation for women that early feminists fought so hard to achieve for women. The most notable assault of women’s lib came from the so-called “Women’s Rights Project” of the American Civil Liberties Union, of which premier feminist lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the director (she was first a volunteer lawyer for the ACLU before The Project really took off). In a succession of Supreme Court cases, she sought plaintiffs (mostly male) from all around the country to remove any legal exemption or protection that women had. In the words of Phyllis Schlafly, “Ginsburg was vehement in her desire to abolish any legal preference or protection that women might have”[iii] The cases of Taylor vs. Louisiana, Ballard vs. United States, Kahn vs. Chevin, Califano vs Webster, Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld , Orr v. Orr, Rostker v. Goldberg, Michael M. v. Superior Court of Sonoma City and numerous others were all designed to take critical protections and exemptions away from women- all in the name of “women’s rights” and “gender equality.”

In the case of Orr v Orr, the majority opinion of the justices was,

“…There is no question that [he] bears a burden he would not bear were he female…the old notion that generally it is the man’s primary responsibility to provide a home and its essentials, can no longer justify a statute that discriminates on the basis of gender”[iv]

Well, dear feminists, the reason why the obligation of support is on the husband is because women are the ones who carry all of the physical burdens of the sex act and the main purpose of marriage is for men and women to reproduce in a stable family unit- thus sex is the constitution of marriage. Women, by nature of our biology, bear burdens we otherwise would not if we were born male. No amount of legislation can change that. That is how we are designed, and because of that our laws placed the obligation of support onto husbands and fathers. Even if a mother was unfit to retain custody of her children, the obligation of support was still that of the father and the obligation to support the wife was that of the husband before feminists burst onto the scene wanting the false notion of “gender equality.” Quoting Mrs. Phyllis Schlafly again:

“Since the women are the ones who bear the babies and there’s nothing we can do about that, our laws and customs then make it the financial obligation of the husband to provide the support. It is his obligation and his sole obligation. And this is exactly and precisely what we will lose if the Equal Rights Amendment is passed.”[v]

This particular case caused all remaining states to remove the exemptions that women once held. Now, dear feminists, forcing extra legal obligations onto women is not so much allowing her the choice to work as it is forcing her to work under the penalty of law. Explain to me again how that is an example of the “choices” you promote for women..?

“As a practical matter, the Court’s ruling had widespread repercussions in moving the law to a gender-neutral position. Ten other states that maintained divorce laws similar to Alabama’s were forced to change their laws as a result of the Court’s decision. Now courts can require both financially able husbands and wives to pay alimony to needy spouses at divorce. And laws concerning child custody, attorney’s fees, and child support arrangements were also considerably affected by the decision as they were reshaped to recognize the new economic and caretaking roles of both men and women in the America family.”[vi]

Feminists see cases such as this in a favorable light. They praise equal treatment. I mean, how dare us suggest that husbands should support their wives? Of course, women should be forced into the workforce to bear the burdens of men on top of all of the biological burdens women bear, burdens which men have never shared- Soviet Union egalitarian policies at their finest.

Thanks to feminism, we now have constant gender wars and most in the Western world don’t even see marriage as a necessary thing for having sex or starting a family. Marriage today is basically nothing more than cohabitation with insurance benefits. So, why not just cohabit in the first place? Thanks to the gender wars that feminists started, a woman’s place within the family is not secured, nor are her natural roles valued. Thanks to feminists, a woman is viewed as lazy and a worthless leech unless she joins the workforce and becomes an “equal partner” within the marriage (as if she wasn’t already a partner of just as much, if not even more, worth as her husband before).

Feminists hate housewives. Oh, they say they don’t really have a problem with a woman staying home for a little while to raise her kids. After all, many of them say they do it themselves. But, those same feminists will turn around and still believe a woman is lazy if she expects financial support from her husband for her lifetime.

Thanks to feminists traditional women now have another enemy: the MRM (Men’s Rights Movement). They too want gender-neutral laws to further avoid the responsibility of breadwinner for the family. They claim to be anti-feminist (which really doesn’t make much sense, as feminism has handed them all the things they claim to want right on a silver platter and feminists often take their side on the issues, in fact feminists have teamed up with them in the past to hurt women).

There appears to be two major groups of MRAs- ones that are traditional and those who just plain and simply hate women. The latter often use acronyms for themselves such as “MGTOW” or “Men Going Their Own Way.” To be fair, the feminist movement was all about women going their own way and breaking away from dependence upon men. So, once again, thanks feminists for the current mindset of our men today. You feminists don’t want to be supported and they don’t want to support you. I hope you enjoy it.

Another thing that puzzles me about a lot of them though is that some of them want women in the home yet complain about paying alimony and complain when the mother keeps the kids. Well boys, as the saying goes, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Unilateral (or “no-fault”) divorce is bad news for all of us all and women are feeling the sting of it too. But these boys conveniently forget (or maybe they never understood in the first place) that traditional family law gave numerous preferences and advantages to women (provided the woman was faithful and had committed no grave wrong against the husband):

“Traditional divorce law perpetuated the sex- based division of roles and responsibilities enshrined in traditional legal marriage: the wife’s domestic responsibilities and the husband’s obligation to provide support. Although traditional family law assumed that the husbands support would be provided in a lifelong marriage, if the marriage did not endure and if the wife was virtuous, she was nevertheless promised alimony- a means of continued support. Alimony thus perpetuated the husband’s responsibilities for economic support and the wife’s right to be supported in return for her domestic services. It therefore maintained at least part of the basic reciprocity in the legal marriage contract. Traditional divorce laws also reaffirmed the sex-based division of roles with respect to children: the husband remained responsible for their economic support, the wife for their care. All states, by statute or by case law, gave preference to the wife as the appropriate custodial parent after divorce, and all states gave the husband the primary responsibility for his children’s economic support. Traditional divorce law helped sanction the spouses’ conventional roles and responsibilities in marriage- by both punishment and reward. On the punishment side, if a wife was found guilty of adultery, cruelty, or desertion, she would have to pay for her wrongdoings by being denied alimony (and sometimes custody and property as well). And if the husband was at fault, he would be punished through awards of property, alimony, and child support to his ex-wife. On the reward side, traditional divorce law promised “justice” for those who fulfilled their marital obligations. It guaranteed support for the wife who devoted herself to her family, thus reinforcing the desirability and legitimacy of the wife’s role as homemaker and the husband’s role as supporter. And the law assured the husband that he would not have to support a wife who betrayed or failed him. Justice in this system was the assurance that the marriage contract would be honored. If not, the “bad” spouse would be punished, the “good” spouse rewarded, and the husband’s obligation to support his wife (if she was good) reinforced.”[vii]

The feminist movement and the subsequent changes in family life, along with the passing of “no-fault” divorce laws all across the nation dramatically altered the social, legal and economic climate of our civilization. As we have seen before in history, however, egalitarian societies do not work. And anyone or any group of people who is in favor of these ideals and in favor of male-female fungibility has no respect for the traditional woman, no matter if they try to convince the public that they are not looking to harm the homemaker of force unnecessary burdens onto women and families. We have seen egalitarian ideals and the breakdown of the nuclear family crash civilizations before in history. Rome is a historical example so breathtakingly similar to ours that we can learn from. There are also plenty of 20th century examples our civilization can learn from (such as Soviet Russia after the bolsheviks took power). George Gilder demonstrates quite poetically how gender relations can either make or break a society. If women will begin to listen, maybe there is a chance. But, as an unknown author so exclaimed: “Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do learn history are doomed to watch helplessly while everyone else repeats it.”

“The woman’s financial superiority thus leads to a society of sexually and economically predatory males. The sexual power of women, if combined with economic power, leaves many young men with no civilized way to achieve sexual identity. If they cannot be providers, they resort to the primal male assets, wielding muscle and phallus for masculine identity and attacking the fabric of society…What Mead concluded from all her other studies as well, the New Gunea experience affirms: Males always require a special arena of glorified achievement from which women are excluded. Their concern with sexual differentiation is obsessive. Men can be passive without grave psychological damage only if the women are passive also. Aggressive and competitive women, unconcerned with motherhood, produce more ruthless men- and a society so competitive that it disintegrates. Men, on the other hand, when passively preoccupied with child-rearing, become incapable of effective sexual behavior and paranoid about aggressive women. A society with a great emphasis on child-rearing will, however, be exceedingly generous and cooperative. In none of the tribes Mead studied is there the slightest evidence that roles, however created, through culture or biology, can be switched back and forth or that the aggressiveness and volatility of males can be ignore by any society”[viii]

Notes:

[i] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=134981902

[ii] Jacob, H. “Silent Revolution: The Transformation of Divorce Law in the United States,” p. 107. The University of Chicago Press. 1988.

[iii] Schlafly, P., “Feminist Fantasies,” p. 139. Spence, 2003

[iv] Cushman, C. “Supreme Court Decisions and Women’s Rights,” p. 79. CQ Press, 2001.

[v] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=134981902

[vi] Cushman, C., “Supreme Court Decisions and Women’s Rights,”p. 81. CQ Press, 2001.

[vii] Weitzman, L.J., “The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America,” p. 11;14. The Free Press, 1985

[viii] Gilder, G. “Men and Marriage.” Pelican, 1993.

© 2013 What’s Wrong With Equal Rights. Reproduction in whole or in part is strictly prohibited.