Thread by @sunnshiiny

Let’s go back a few hundred years, before women and children were considered persons in their own right.

In English Common Law, women and children were considered the property/assets of the head of the family.

https://twitter.com/gilllovesschool/status/1377619363231055876

Corporal punishment was restricted to a switch no larger than the size of your index finger. Women and children could be beat to within an inch of life, and it was entirely legal. Dogs and horses could be beaten as well.

Wealthy heads of households could abuse their servants.

Female Servants didn’t dare complain or they wouldn’t be paid their meagre below subsistence wages. Or maybe they’d be denied food for a few days. Forced to sleep with the animals. Beaten and raped instead of just raped.

Women were considered property.

We laugh at shotgun weddings as an antiquated joke. But they were no joke 200 years ago.

If a girl was seduced or sexually assaulted, her abuser was forced to marry her. In the same vein as a glass shop’s “you break it, you buy it” rationale.

Taking her virginity was considered a crime. The property owner’s goods had been damaged. The only solution was to marry the girl with a tarnished reputation to the person who took her virginity. No other reputable man would marry her.

To relieve the owner of a lifelong financial responsibility, the girl was married off to the man who messed with the head of the household’s property. By force if required.

If the man escaped, and the girl became pregnant, she was hidden away with relatives until the child was born & sent to an orphanage. Some girls remained on as their relative’s house servant. Others were allowed to rejoin their family.

If the mother or child died during childbirth, they would be refused a Christian burial. Eternally cursed to hell for sexual intercourse outside of marriage. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t her choice to be sexually active. God was punishing her for her wanton desires.

Abandoned babies were frequent. An abandoned baby couldn’t be easily labeled as created in sin. But they were frequently raised in an orphanage. Who was going to adopt a questionable orphan?

These laws were called Coverture. Women ceased to exist as a separate person after marriage. Before adulthood and before marriage, a girl was her father’s responsibility, covered by Coverture laws. Shotgun marriages transferred responsibility for the girl.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture

When we look at history, we can imagine what is expected of girls to internalize in the new Alberta curriculum.

The absence of agency.

You’ll find this is also the expectation of women in radicalized Evangelical Christian dogma.

Evangelicals promote the understanding that women are expected to be subservient to their husbands and primarily concern themselves with matters of the household and caretaking. Men have public agency, women no agency. The man makes ALL decisions as head of household.

Children are property. Assets. That’s why the Dominionist community is so adamant that parent’s rights be preserved. It isn’t parent’s rights, it’s the head of household’s rights. To decide how he wants his assets dealt with. It’s his prerogative.

Power can be delegated to wives, but it’s always the male in control and women following the direction of the head of household.

This is the agenda of the Dominionist political movement. To reestablish Coverture. Restrict property rights to men and some single adult women.

I’ve said UCP doesn’t envision 1950. They envision 1850, maybe even 1750 property rights. White, male, Evangelical Christian, land owners.

That’s what this curriculum represents and why girls in grade 5 learn it’s their responsibility to say no, emphatically. And not tempt men.

And some said my Women’s Studies minor in university wouldn’t come in handy in my lifetime.

I’ve found it exceptionally useful the last 5-6 years. Good thing I kept my textbooks and have an exceptional memory for obscure details.

And in case you’re wondering, indigenous women were not considered human. They didn’t have rights.

Proof: have a look at the Indian Act circa 1876.

Métis men could be property owners. Métis women had no status. Just human capital assets of their husbands, white or otherwise.

So was it a crime to sexually abuse indigenous women 200 years ago? Probably not.

Interesting story. My great/grandfather had 7 daughters, my grandmother being his 3rd. The community one room schoolhouse had a male teacher.

He tried some funny business with my grandmother and my aunties. My great-grandfather went to the schoolhouse one day after school had finished for the day.

I was told he took his shotgun. No one had to get married. (My grandmother was 8 years old, her sisters 6, 10 and 14). But apparently the teacher left my grandmother and aunties alone from that point forward. And he sported a black eye for a couple weeks.

My great-grandfather didn’t treat his girls like property. Métis are matrilineal and women are considered pretty equal, just different. He adored his children. All 11 of them. But he availed himself of the prevailing laws & norms of the day to threaten the life of a pedophile.

We are NOT going back to those days.

Tell me we aren’t going back to those days. Where men had to threaten other men to protect their daughters. Where indigenous girls were considered sexually available for white men to abuse at will.

I need to hear the public will not let that happen again.

I should say some evangelicals. It’s not every Christian. Just the extremists and radicalized fundamentalists.