Letters to the Editor

• Punishment?

  [Read the article: Katie Roiphe's morning after]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  But you had just told us how you think the victim mentality is a good thing, based on the hard lives your mother and grandmother went through. And as evidence of that, your father could legally rape your mother!!! Aieee!

  Victim mentality? Who said anything about victim mentality? I think legal recourse against rape is an absolute necessity. The law that protects wives from rape wasn't solidly in place until the 1970s. What that means is that my mother had only as much control over her sexuality as my father gave her. The fact that my father gave her the control she wanted doesn't mean that the laws were right and appropriate. The fact that those laws as they were then are unacceptable to me doesn't mean I adhere to a victim mentality, only that I'm a firm believer in sexual autonomy and consider a society in which a class of people is deprived of that for any reason to have a serious problem.

  That was America in the late 60s, when my mother married. When you consider that she was also unable to get a job in her field, own a home, own a car or develop a credit history without male help, the situation looks even more hideous.

  Why are you advocating blaming current generation men for the sins of their grandfathers? Why do you want to punish and setback current men and demand compensation for offenses your grandmother and mother endured and not you?

  I don't want to blame a current generation of men for anything other than what they do, nor do I want to set them back. What I do want is the opportunity to live adult life as an adult, not as a slave or a child. This means creating a social and legal environment in which women can function in the world at large on parity with men.

  When my grandfather married, he was pretty sure of certain things. He had the right to a wife if he wanted one. He would have unfettered sexual access to his wife. His wife would have to be faithful and tolerate any infidelity on his part. He would have unfettered access to any money she earned or inherited. He would be able to demand labor from her, physical or mental, and would have total control over the fruits. He would have the right to use her children as he saw fit, even to abuse them within certain limits. He would have the right to beat her or deprive her if she failed to comply with his exercise of the above rights.

  This was all to be his until one of them died.

  Does the current generation of men get these things? Can you give me one reason why they should?

  The laws that gave my grandfather these rights were a letter of marque and he was a privateer, a robber and batterer given legal license to do as he liked within certain limits. This is now outlawed, and that isn't a punishment of modern men for the sins of their grandfathers. It's an understanding that what their grandfathers had was stolen. It wasn't a right. It was theft.

  Do current men really have it that easy?

  Nobody has it easy.

  Can current men really drop out of the rat race and parent their children?

  Yes, and more are doing it every year. Check the census records if you don't believe me.

  Personally, I have more respect and a more willing ear for men who take on traditionally female roles than those who stay in their comfort zone and complain that they're getting the short end of the stick.

  Pick up the other end for a few years, and then get back to me.

  I am very sorry for what your mother and grandmother had to endure. No one should have to endure that. I don't see why that entitles feminists to bash men or to demand offsets from current men.

  We're not demanding offsets. We're demanding a legal situation in which these events are less likely to happen and more likely to have negative consequences if they do. Historically speaking, this is unprecedented and I'm not surprised that some men are upset. Something they believed they could count on is now gone.

  Congrats to your mom for earning her software engineering degree. It may be small consolation to your mom now, but now it would be very easy for her to get a job in software (well as easy as for any man.)

  It is small consolation, as my father devoured almost 20 years of her life. My father is retired. My mother will have to work into her 70s at least to make up for the nearly 20 years that she was my father's property.

  Mom is still paying, in cold hard cash, for pre-feminist laws and customs.

  Permalink Monday, July 9, 2007 03:53 PM