New Leaf November 2019 Discussion • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Victoria

[...] Agreed on the shrubbery - it hardly seems worth it! But to the young anything is possible

And not just possible, but a challenge to be taken up with enthusiasm.

I was going to say that we were all young once ... but given the context that might be sending the wrong message.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

Continuing with the off-topic discussion (and why not? ), I recently read a book titled Yale Needs Women, about the coeducation of Yale in 1969. It doesn't seem that long ago, but the underlying and prevailing assumption of white male privilege (which continued after a tiny percentage of women were admitted) in the context of laws wherein not only was abortion illegal, so was birth control in the state of Connecticut, is both breathtaking and yet, in the current context, not all that surprising either.

Just came across this: 40 Basic Rights Women Did Not Have Until The 1970s

[Bookpossum]

Thanks for this Catlady. Some of the items startled me: for example, the one about not being allowed to have a bank account. I certainly had one from when I started working. Maybe things were different here from in the US.

The other thing which struck me was the use of terms every so often such as "girls" and "ladies". The use of those terms, which were used by men to put women in what was considered to be their place, jarred with me.

[gmw]

Bookpossum, Looking at that link I'm thinking it might be the same as in Australia where a married woman couldn't open a bank account without her husband's permission. (This is given in the detail but not the heading in that article.) If you were not married I don't think the same rules applies - although I imagine a father's consent would have been required up to a certain age. Also, I think in practice there tended to be considerable variation in how these rules were enforced. The difficulty being that if you got stuck with a ***** of a bank manager you had no come back.

[issybird]

While the gist of the article was accurate, I found a lot of the specifics to be counterfactual. Whole lot of padding and poor research.

[Victoria]

A good article, but a mixed blessing - sorta infuriating to be reminded of some of those things

My high school triumph was to march out of class with my friends and winning the right to wear pants. The day before, the wind had scattered all my notebooks across a field. I had to trudge through 2 feet of snow capped with thin ice to recover them, cutting my legs to ribbons. They were ruined and I was furious. An hour into the protest, the younger female teachers came out to join us, and by noon, the administration caved. As we used to say, the personal is political.

[Catlady]

The bias of the article was clear; it used the most extreme examples to make its point. It conflated actual legal barriers with general practices, and even the legal barriers weren't necessarily nationwide. It's still sobering. In the U.S. we still haven't passed the Equal Rights Amendment, which is rather appalling. Not to mention that women still earn only about 80 percent of what men earn in the U.S.

If you watch TV from the 1950s/1960s, the casual discrimination against women is startling. There's a Father Knows Best episode, for example, where daughter Betty wants to be an engineer; her mom assumes it's a joke and tries to distract her with a new dress. In another episode, when interviewing for a job, Betty has to explain that even though she's a pretty young thing, she doesn't plan to get married anytime soon, so the company won't be wasting the training they provide.

That's the 1950s; a decade later, in a Gidget episode, Gidget is mocked and demeaned when she signs up for a shop class to learn about car repair. She learns that it's easier to pretend helplessness and let some boy fix the car instead. In a Joey Bishop episode from that same time frame, Joey wants to get rid of his pretty new secretary to assuage his wife's jealousy, so he sets up a fake seduction to make her quit. That's supposed to be hilariously funny.

Does anyone remember classified ads in newspapers? When I was in high school looking for my first after-school job, the job ads were segregated as Help Wanted--Male and Help Wanted--Female.

(Yes, I watch too much old TV, and yes, gender discrimination is a hot-button issue for me.)

[CRussel]

Indeed, we're still in an era where it's news that women in the workplace are, just now, getting the right not to be forced to wear high heels, of all the torture instruments! Or at least, they're finally getting it here in Canada -- I'm not sure about elsewhere anymore. And where even school uniform codes are routinely far more restrictive and sexist for girls. To "protect" the boys from being unduly aroused!

And yes, Catlady, I all too well remember those ads. I find myself pretty much unable to watch most of older TV because I find it way too offensive -- very little of it has aged well. OTOH, I do manage to read quite a bit of older fiction, which is still full of this subtle, or not so subtle, sexism and discrimination.

[Victoria]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Does anyone remember classified ads in newspapers? When I was in high school looking for my first after-school job, the job ads were segregated as Help Wanted--Male and Help Wanted--Female.

(Yes, I watch too much old TV, and yes, gender discrimination is a hot-button issue for me.)

As it should be Catlady! Our first protest in school was followed by many other battles. I certainly remember the ads, and being paid less for the same job. One explanation I remember being given as a cashier was ”yes, but he’ll have a family someday”.

Originally Posted by CRussel

Indeed, we're still in an era where it's news that women in the workplace are, just now, getting the right not to be forced to wear high heels, of all the torture instruments!

I find myself pretty much unable to watch most of older TV because I find it way too offensive -- very little of it has aged well. OTOH, I do manage to read quite a bit of older fiction, which is still full of this subtle, or not so subtle, sexism and discrimination.

Great point about OHS and wearing heels. I find a lot of the older tv too provoking to watch as well and yet, like you, I can read late 19th / early 20th c fiction. Perhaps the tv is too recent, and we directly experienced it first time round? We’re cringing at our own history, not someone else’s.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Victoria

Great point about OHS and wearing heels. I find a lot of the older tv too provoking to watch as well and yet, like you, I can read late 19th / early 20th c fiction. Perhaps the tv is too recent, and we directly experienced it first time round? We’re cringing at our own history, not someone else’s.

Perhaps it's that cringe, though I suspect it has more to do with the immediacy of TV/Movies. Somehow, it's easier to distance myself from a book than from TV, though you're right that even on TV, when you go far enough back (as with period BBC dramas, for example), it's at enough distance to not be as provoking. Though I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed the HBO drama Gentleman Jack as both my DW and I rooted for Anne Lister to get her own back. A powerful and compelling woman who was castigated for both her gender and her sexual preferences. But mostly for beating men at their own game.

[issybird]

People might enjoy this relevant comic strip.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by issybird

People might enjoy this relevant comic strip.

I just KNEW before I even moused over the link that it was going to be Kate Beaton

[Bookpossum]

Hah! I hadn’t come across Kate Beaton, but I can see I need to bookmark her site. Thanks, issybird.

[Victoria]

Fun issybird - thanks.