About the GQP wanting to end no-fault

[moniss]

divorce I would use every cuss word I could for them because of where they want to go back to.
They want to take us back to a time where wives were being physically abused, leaving the house with the kids and "going back to mother" which was usually followed by the cops and maybe even the parents telling the woman she was "being too emotional", "over-reacting", "being a bad wife", "shouldn't upset your husband", "shouldn't be mouthy" etc.

Many people today don't realize what it was like back then. Little in the way of social services available to help a woman care for children, parents taking the side of the abusive husband, cops and courts pooh-poohing the bruises and broken bones etc. Where was a woman supposed to go? What was she supposed to do? If she left the children with the husband in order to save herself as a human being then she was torn apart by society for being a "bad mother" and if she took the kids with her then she was torn apart as "deserting her husband", "stealing the children" etc.

If you did manage to get a divorce then you were looked at by society as a "wanton woman" who was going to be "needing it bad" and so all of the bullshit sexual harassment/groping and advances would pile in. Nobody was going to step in to stop it because you were "one of those" women and were "probably asking for it".

Marriage became a prison for far too many women before no-fault. For far too many the home was also a torture chamber. I worked in a grocery store while in school in my small town and I saw some of those women. Coming into the store to shop when it was late and just before closing so there would be as few people to see them. See them in the dark of night wearing sunglasses to hide the black eyes, a scarf on their head to hide a missing chunk of hair and long sleeves to hide the bruised arms. But you knew they were there because you could see the bandage under the scarf and the bruises and scrapes on the hands. The hands that trembled and shook as they quickly picked a few things and left. You would see them sometimes with their husbands during the day in the store after the bruises healed during one of the times the husband is "being nicer". The hands still shaking, voice very meek and a very noticeable flinch if he made a sudden gesture in her direction or raised his voice slightly while saying "no" about something she wanted to buy.

Yes I've seen it too many times. We all know what "it" is. Grandmothers, Aunts, Mothers, Daughters and Sisters trapped in that prison and trying to endure the torture chamber and stay alive. That prison closed down when no-fault passed and it must never be allowed to open again.

[MLAA]

1. Excellent post. Right on!

[Diamond_Dog]

2. K n R

[calimary]

3. Good Grief! Those bastards REALLY want to turn time back.

W. T. F. ???

[niyad]

4. This is such a painfully true OP. Having done DV work for many years,

those images and stories are all too heartbreakingly familiar. NEVER AGAIN!

Would you consider posting this in Women's Rights And Issues? Thanks in advance.

[Skittles]

5. you know if repukes are for it

it ain't a good thing

[Haggard Celine]

6. It takes a certain kind of man

to yearn for those times. I don't understand why most men aren't speaking out about this, including abortion rights. Why would a man want to force a woman to carry a baby, especially since so many of these men try so hard to get out of paying child support?

[Demobrat]

7. Women who are forced to give birth

are not competition as a rule. They don’t compete for spots at good schools. They don’t compete for good jobs. They don’t end up managing mediocre men. Every woman who is forced to give birth way too young is a woman they won’t be seeing across the conference room table. They don’t like competing with women and forcing women into motherhood is a great way to keep them out of the workforce. Or at least keep them doing the scut work that doesn’t require much education.

[NanaCat]

8. It was even worse than you delineated it here

parents taking the side of the abusive husband, cops and courts pooh-poohing the bruises and broken bones

It wasn't parents alone doing it. It was 'friends' and neighbours as well. If it were discussed. I remember the days before Mommie Dearest, when people didn't talk about domestic violence in public or around children.

I was 13 and got the dubious honour of learning about marital domestic violence when my friend's stepdad punched his wife in the face, right in front of both of us. I was so shocked, I ran home to Mum for what to do, only to get 'the talk.' All of you women who are old enough remember The Talk: The one where we learned that we were defenseless against a violent husband, nobody would help, really, because men could beat a wife, if he felt like it, and the law allowed it.

All my mum could offer to protect myself was telling me how important it was to be very sure of a man before marrying him. Finding one who wouldn't beat the crap out of us was the only hope we had. I figured out the other alternative on my own: Don't get married, and that was pretty much the option I planned to go with as an adult, until no-fault divorce became accepted.

Here's another part of the story long forgotten: Only people of a certain age remember how many women during the 50s-70s were swallowing handfuls of downers to cope with the tedium and misery of their lives. Before that, millions of women were hooked on laudanum (AKA opium).

If you did manage to get a divorce then you were looked at by society as a "wanton woman" who was going to be "needing it bad" and so all of the bullshit sexual harassment/groping and advances would pile in. Nobody was going to step in to stop it because you were "one of those" women and were "probably asking for it".

Just as bad, her children would be ostracised and bullied because other parents considered them trash for having a divorced mother. I got to experience that one, first hand. I can't even count the number of times I'd be playing with a kid at the park and his or her mum would jerk the kid away from me and shout, 'You can't play with her!' If the kid protested or hesitated, some of them had zero compunction about adding, 'She's trash--her mother is a whore!' Right in front of me. One parent even guaranteed that if her child played with me, she'd grow up to be a criminal like I would someday.

That's the world these sick, twisted sexists want to drag us back to.

[moniss]

10. Yes indeed

and the pill addiction during that time is perhaps most well known for being pushed into the face of society to have to recognize when the Rolling Stones released "Mother's Little Helper". The barbiturates were only a portion of the problem however because the prescribing of them was so many times followed by an additional prescription for amphetamines to bring you up from the down and then sleeping pills to cut the amphetamine effect. Lather, rinse, repeat. Now combine that with alcohol and away we go. I've got a whole thing I'm working on about those times and the way life was with then with pills, booze, cigarettes, pressure to "conform", pressure to "get ahead", "easy payment plans" for buying all kinds of things to show you were "moving up" and then the destructive results from that unsustainable pressure cooker created by all of that in combination.

[lostnfound]

9. No privacy either for men or women in divorce. Genealogy records include details..

It’s a little shocking to see several pages of testimony of in historical records, recording how one’s great-grandmother or whatever filed for divorce because one’s great-grandfather or whatever was a drunken lout who spent all his money on loose women and gambling and alcohol, leaving her at home alone and destitute… etc. Or people having to publicly declare the nature of the infidelity or the alienation of affection or whatever.

Maybe people even made stuff up to get the divorce. None of that crap should have to be recorded in legal records to prove to strangers that you both deserve a divorce.

Some of us are smart enough to know that kids are damaged when parents disparage each other publicly.

The other reasons mentioned above are more important. But i also think the simple matter of privacy is important too.

[moniss]

11. Yes and for society

they put people into a judgemental Catch-22 if you were a woman. So disclosure of what went on in the marriage was handled at the time with many people more or less being accepting of the man drinking and "keeping his wife in line". Society was heavy into drinking and cigarettes to the point that it seems to us to today to have been madness. And it was. The woman was supposed to have the house spotless and shiny at all times, the kids all cleaned up, the wonderful meals on the table and look nice and have her hair done at all times. Because that's the way it was on "Leave it to Beaver", "Father Knows Best" and "Ozzie and Harriet". If you weren't that way then you weren't "doing it right" and it was "your fault".

[TSExile]

12. The Grand Old Patriarchy in a nutshell.

I've stayed unmarried well into my 40s, and see no incentive at all to change that. No man is worth it.

[Johnny2X2X]

13. Thank you for this post

It’s about control, but also about money. GOP men want divorce to be about finding the best lawyer who can strike first and blame the woman so the man can keep all of the martial assets for himself.