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Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Society’s Acceptance of Domestic Violence?


Every day we in the United States are told that before the rise of the domestic violence industry in the 1980s domestic violence against women was largely ignored by police and the courts and was regarded as acceptable behavior by society. Here are some clippings from newspapers which can assist us in verifying the truthfulness of such claims.


B. G. Jefferis, Light on Dark Corners: A Complete Sexual Science (Toronto: J. L. Nichols, 1895), p. 181





Sarah Comstock, “Shall We Have a Whipping Post?” San Francisco Call (Ca.), Aug. 11, 1901, Magazine Section, p. 2
 



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“Some Strange Penalties.” The Minneapolis Journal (Mn.), Feb. 23, 1905, p. 14


EXCERPT: ~ Oppose Whipping Post. ~ The convention voted down by a large majority President Roosevelt’s recommendation of the whipping-post for wife-beaters.

[“Women Tell Of Work Done. - Progress of Fight for Suffrage. - Reports Made at Portland by Representatives of Various States. - Resolution Protests Against Statement In England That Roosevelt Opposes Suffrage Extension.” The Salt Lake Tribune (Ut.), Jul. 2, 1905, p. 4]

This evidence from a 1905 newspaper contradicts the following, recently published, claim included in what is widely considered to be a definitive study of domestic violence. “In the United States, flogging bills were proposed in twelve states and in the District of Columbia. Most supporters were eminently respectable – mainly Republican male lawyers, district attorneys, and grand juries. … They were supported by suffragist leaders.” (Donald G. Dutton, Rethinking Domestic Violence, (University of Columbia Press, Canada, 2006, p. 10)
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Christopher Webster, “Queer Punishments Obtaining in This Country – Borrowed from Mother England Where They Were Retained for Many Years – Signs of Some Return to Olden Forms.” Stevens Point Daily Journal (Wi.), Apr. 20, 1905, p. 3


Postcard bearing the photo upon which the April 20, 1905 illustration is based. The Delaware pillory was abolished by an act dated Mar. 20, 1905.
















In parts of Kent [England] a quaint old tradition still survives. When a man is known to be a confirmed wife-beater, his neighbours collect noiselessly under his window at night and proceed to take and sew the victim in bag of chaff. The following morning  the culprit is asked, to make a grim pleasantry, “if he has done his thrashing yet.”

[Arthur Watts (illustrator), “Where A Man Turns Feminist; An Old Kentish Method Of Punishing A Wife-Beater, The Graphic (London, England), Aug. 9, 1913, p. 275]
 















“Wife Beater Must Fight – Judge Orders Him to Training Camp to Prepare to Try His Talents on Him.” The Maurice Times (Io.), Nov. 28, 1918, p. 3


“Family Rows – The Police Magistrates’ Greatest Problems.” The Burlington Hawk-Eye (Io.), Nov. 23, 1919, sec. 2, p. 1
 





“Husband Beater Gets No Mercy,” The Brainerd Daily Dispatch (Mn.), Jan. 18, 1940, p. 4

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Throughout the period covered in this selection of clippings, courts in the United States also prosecuted husband beaters – but in much smaller numbers. While wife beaters were sentenced to flogging as late as 1953, no mention has so far been found of a woman being sentenced to flogging or any other form of corporal punishment for the offense of husband beating.

On HUSBAND BATTERING: Suzanne Steinmetz concluded that "the most unreported crime is not wife beating -- it's husband beating"  

In 1977, Steinmetz released results from several studies showing that the percentage of wives who have used physical violence is higher than the percentage of husbands, and that the wives' average violence score tended to be higher, although men were somewhat more likely to cause greater injury. She also found that women were as likely as men to initiate physical violence, and that they had similar motives for their violent acts (Steinmetz, Suzanne K. "The Battered Husband Syndrome" Victimology 2, 1977-1978, p. 499)  See online article “Husband Battering”


“Wife Beater Lashed by County Sheriff – 30 [sic] Strokes Administered to Nude Prisoner for Attacking Spouse,” The Morning Herald (Hagerstown, Md,), Oct. 20, 1945, p. 1; & “Gets 10 Lashes For Beating Wife,” Altoona Mirror (Oh.), Oct. 22, 1945, p. 13


The 1945 Busching case was deemed a fit subject for teaching children about the evil of domestic violence as is evidenced by a comic book issued not long after the Maryland wife-beater's flogging.





“Northeast Kansas Court Houses – Atchison County, Atchison,” Atchison Sunday Globe (Ks.), Nov. 3, 1957, p. 8

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To get an idea of just how extreme the distortion of history is, as it is presented in an ideologically sanitized form by cultural Marxists, take a look at this brief summary of the period which this post covers in a highly regarded professional law journal. The judicial beatings of male abusers, the floggings, the pillorying, the hard labor prison sentences are all sent down the memory hole by the author, leaving only a discussion of “oppressive” linguistics to guide the reader’s understanding of what was going on between 1890 and 1960 in the United States with respect to legal attitudes towards domestic violence.

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Here's an academic article which cleverly uses cherry-picked legal language to give the false impression that domestic violence was not treated as a serious crime in the past:

Patricia Sully, “Taking It Seriously: Repairing Domestic Violence Sentencing in Washington State,” Seattle University Law Review [Vol. 34:963]

Section A. - History of Domestic Violence Law in the United States

“By the 1890s, American courts completely abandoned the idea that a husband may legally chastise his wife within reasonable limits.

While laws prohibiting chastisement were enacted, they were rarely enforced. Instead, courts began to ignore domestic violence based on “domestic harmony” concerns; domestic violence was perceived to be an internal family matter, best left free from state interference. As one court stated, “We will not inflict upon society the greater evil of raising the curtain upon domestic privacy, to punish the lesser evil of trifling violence.” Instead of using the “hierarchal-based” chastisement language, jurists began to employ “affective privacy” language. Such language invoked “the feelings and spaces of domesticity.” More importantly, it translated an antiquated idea the rule of chastisement into a modern context that felt profoundly reasonable domestic privacy. By invoking marital- or domestic-privacy justifications, the courts preserved the system of oppression by changing only the language. These justifications held firm until the 1960s, when domestic violence once again became a national issue.” ( p. 970)

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The notion that because some judges in the past wrote about domestic violence as “a private matter,” we can ignore the well-documented reality of widespread societal condemnation and prosecution for domestic violence cases throughout the 19th and 20th centuries can be ignored, appeared in this 2003 article:

“Despite the tremendous toll on both the victims and society, domestic violence was not
recognized as a public health issue in the US until relatively recently. With the women’s movement of the 1970s, domestic violence was increasingly recognized as a public, not a private, issue.” [Amy Farmer and Jill Tiefenthaler, “Explaining The Recent Decline In Domestic Violence,”  Contemporary Economic Policy, No. 21 (2003), pp. 158-172]

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Here’s a quote from another hoax article, this time from a mainstream media source, from 1986:

“The policy of benign neglect toward domestic violence was tolerated until feminists began focusing attention on the issue of spouse abuse a decade ago and insisted that wife beaters be treated like other violent criminals. The nation's police have finally begun to take domestic violence seriously.”  (“Attitudes change toward domestic violence,” Newsweek, March 3,  1986; Vol. 107 Issue 9, p. 58)

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Another example:

Findlaw claims: “Police responses to domestic violence have historically been clouded by notions, for example, the idea that a wife is the "property" of a husband and he has the right to carry out whatever behavior is necessary to "keep her in line." This idea and others like it reflect attitudes held by the greater society. Further aggravating the situation was the perception that domestic violence is not "real police work," and such disputes are private matters that should be kept within the household. Prior to 1980, when domestic situations were brought to the attention of police, calls were often diverted by dispatchers, given a lower priority, or officers responded to the scene and departed again as quickly as possible without achieving any type of meaningful intervention. Laws such as the "rule of thumb" (whereby it was legal for a husband to beat his wife with a stick not wider than his thumb) were still on the books until very recent times.” [“Domestic Violence: History of Police Responses,” FindLaw.com, Mar. 28, 2013]

Response: Much of this has been proven to be false. The rest is cleverly deceptive: how long “prior to 1980?” Perhaps when police became militarized in the 1970s the policy was to reduce priorities for domestic violence. But this was definitely not the case in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The “attitudes held by the greater society” have, in throughout the history of the US, been firmly hostile to male domestic violence offenders. There never has been a single “rule of thumb” statute on the books.

Findlaw is owned by Westlaw, the largest law publisher in the world.

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Yet another example:


“[O]nly since the 1970s has the criminal justice system begun to treat domestic violence as a serious crime, not as a private family matter.”

From the entry: “Domestic Violence” on encyclopedia.com

This claim has been proven to be false.

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Other References:

Elizabeth Pleck, “The Whipping Post for Wife-Beaters 1876-1906,” in David Levine & Leslie Page Moch, eds., Essays on the Family and Historical Change, pp. 127 ff. (Texas A&M Press, 1983)

On the “Rule of Thumb” hoax: Christina Hoff Sommers, “The Rule of Thumb”  from Who Stole Feminism? - (Simon & Schuster, New York 1994) (Excerpted from Ch 9 "Noble Lies" pp. 203-208)

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SEE ADDENDUM POSTS:

19th Century Intolerance Towards Domestic Violence
Treatment of Domestic Violence Against Women Before 1960

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Some of the material in this post is referenced in “How feminism conned society, and other not-so-tall tales...” by Girl Writes What, Youtube

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[12,185-8/28/18; 14,410-3/9/21]
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6 comments:

  1. This is brilliant research, and most horribly buried by establishment media and historians. Thank you for doing this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So domestic violence was already against the law in America back then the whole time!

    atleast spousal abuse sure was, especially if it was spousal abuse against wives.

    Wow, something America should be proud of!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What is not to be proud of is censorship and fraud perpetuated by scholars, educators, non profit operatives and social constructionist ideologues.

      Violence by women against children was illegal. Violence by women against women was illegal. Violence by women against men was illegal. And the myth -- still taught by "gender" hoaxers in the university and far beyond -- that violence by against husbands against wives was tolerated by society is something to be ashamed of.

      There needs to be a fact audit of taxpayer supported institutions and a culling of fraudsters and hoaxers pushing the "gender ideology" disinformation, graft and scams.

      [Reply to: Alina Boyles October 22, 2014 at 4:47 PM “So domestic violence was already against the law in America back then the whole time! at least spousal abuse sure was, especially if it was spousal abuse against wives. Wow, something America should be proud of!”

      Delete
    2. Yeah making myths about gender studies is something universities should be very ashamed of doing. This is why I like this site, because it tells the truth about gender studies and doesn't tell myths.

      White women used to be taken care of by their husbands and also used to be treated with honor and high respect, but this young generation likes to forget that.

      Yes there may have been some husbands who abused their wives back in the 1800's, but it was not the norm, it was not socially tolerated and it was defiantly not legal or allowable.

      Delete
  3. This site rocks!

    It's a shame they never mention this in western movies, why does modern society these days like to pretend that our forefathers were wife beaters just like the Muslims and East Indians were?

    it's very strange, and it really pisses me off! western society was good to women, unlike most other societies.

    Our society never needed feminism to respect women or outlaw domestic violence.

    ReplyDelete