When I was growing up in the sixties, being a girl and good at sports was considered a misfortune. Girls were not allowed in Little League. Girls' teams didn't exist in high school (at least the ones in my state), except at all-girls' high schools. Boys played sports, and girls were the cheerleaders.
People used to ask me as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be a brain surgeon or the first woman justice on the Supreme Court. Everyone laughed indulgently and told me it was impossible--those just weren't realistic goals for a girl...the latter, especially, because you couldn't trust women to judge fairly and rationally, after all.
In the 1960s and 1970s, all women were identified by their marital status, even in arrest reports and obituaries. In elementary school, my science teacher referred to Pierre Curie as DOCTOR Curie and Marie Curie as MRS. Curie...because, as he put it, "she was just his wife."
Companies could and did require women to wear dresses and skirts. Failure to do could and did get women fired. And it was legal. It was also legal to fire women for getting married or getting pregnant. The rationale was that a woman who was married or who had a child had no business working; that was what her husband was for. Aetna Insurance, the biggest insurance company in America, fired women for all of the above.
A man could rape his wife. Legally. I can remember being twelve years old and reading about legal experts actually debating whether or not a man could coerce his wife into having sex. This was a serious debate in 1974.
The debate about marital rape came up in my law school, too, in 1984. Could a woman be raped by her husband? The guys all said no--a woman got married, so she was consenting to sex at all times. So I turned it around. I asked them if, since a man had gotten married, that meant that his wife could shove a dildo or a stick or something up his ass any time she wanted to for HER sexual pleasure.
(Hey, I thought it was reasonable. If one gender is legally entitled to force sex on the other, then obviously the reverse should also be true.)
The male law students didn't like the idea. Interestingly, they commented that being treated like that would make them feel like a woman.
My reaction was, "Thank you for proving my point..."
The concept of date rape, when first proposed, was considered laughable. If a woman went out on a date, the argument of legal experts ran, sexual consent was implied. Even more sickening was the fact that in some states--even in the early 1980s--a man could rape his daughter...and it was no worse than a misdemeanor.
Women taking self-defense classes in the 1970s and 1980s were frequently described in books and on TV as "cute." The implication was that a woman attempting to defend herself was absurd, but wasn't it just adorable for her to try?
I was expressly forbidden to take computer classes in junior and senior years of high school--1978-79 and 1979-80--because, as the principal told me, "Only boys have to know that kind of thing. You girls are going to get married, and you won't use it."
When I was in college--from 1980 to 1984--there were no womens' studies. The idea hadn't occurred in many places because the presumption was that there was nothing TO study. My history professor--a man who had a doctorate in history--informed me quite seriously that women had never produced a noted painter, sculptor, composer, architect or scientist because...wait for it...womens' brains were too small.
(He was very surprised when I came up with a list of fifty women gifted in the arts and science, most of whom he had never heard of before.)
We have a long way to go toward true equality. But so many of those assumptions just aren't built into society anymore.
So I think people change. We just don't realize how much things have changed, because we've changed along with them.
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ninetydegrees
Part 2
on 2011-03-22 02:32 am (UTC)When I was growing up in the sixties, being a girl and good at sports was considered a misfortune. Girls were not allowed in Little League. Girls' teams didn't exist in high school (at least the ones in my state), except at all-girls' high schools. Boys played sports, and girls were the cheerleaders.
People used to ask me as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be a brain surgeon or the first woman justice on the Supreme Court. Everyone laughed indulgently and told me it was impossible--those just weren't realistic goals for a girl...the latter, especially, because you couldn't trust women to judge fairly and rationally, after all.
In the 1960s and 1970s, all women were identified by their marital status, even in arrest reports and obituaries. In elementary school, my science teacher referred to Pierre Curie as DOCTOR Curie and Marie Curie as MRS. Curie...because, as he put it, "she was just his wife."
Companies could and did require women to wear dresses and skirts. Failure to do could and did get women fired. And it was legal. It was also legal to fire women for getting married or getting pregnant. The rationale was that a woman who was married or who had a child had no business working; that was what her husband was for. Aetna Insurance, the biggest insurance company in America, fired women for all of the above.
A man could rape his wife. Legally. I can remember being twelve years old and reading about legal experts actually debating whether or not a man could coerce his wife into having sex. This was a serious debate in 1974.
The debate about marital rape came up in my law school, too, in 1984. Could a woman be raped by her husband? The guys all said no--a woman got married, so she was consenting to sex at all times. So I turned it around. I asked them if, since a man had gotten married, that meant that his wife could shove a dildo or a stick or something up his ass any time she wanted to for HER sexual pleasure.
(Hey, I thought it was reasonable. If one gender is legally entitled to force sex on the other, then obviously the reverse should also be true.)
The male law students didn't like the idea. Interestingly, they commented that being treated like that would make them feel like a woman.
My reaction was, "Thank you for proving my point..."
The concept of date rape, when first proposed, was considered laughable. If a woman went out on a date, the argument of legal experts ran, sexual consent was implied. Even more sickening was the fact that in some states--even in the early 1980s--a man could rape his daughter...and it was no worse than a misdemeanor.
Women taking self-defense classes in the 1970s and 1980s were frequently described in books and on TV as "cute." The implication was that a woman attempting to defend herself was absurd, but wasn't it just adorable for her to try?
I was expressly forbidden to take computer classes in junior and senior years of high school--1978-79 and 1979-80--because, as the principal told me, "Only boys have to know that kind of thing. You girls are going to get married, and you won't use it."
When I was in college--from 1980 to 1984--there were no womens' studies. The idea hadn't occurred in many places because the presumption was that there was nothing TO study. My history professor--a man who had a doctorate in history--informed me quite seriously that women had never produced a noted painter, sculptor, composer, architect or scientist because...wait for it...womens' brains were too small.
(He was very surprised when I came up with a list of fifty women gifted in the arts and science, most of whom he had never heard of before.)
We have a long way to go toward true equality. But so many of those assumptions just aren't built into society anymore.
So I think people change. We just don't realize how much things have changed, because we've changed along with them.