Whinging about women’s rights. Mary Sue Terry, the first woman elected as Attorney General in Virginia, is still stumping for women’s rights — and she sounds as if little has changed in a hundred years. “A 100 years ago a man could beat his wife with impunity, women weren’t allowed to own property, they couldn’t vote, it was ingrained in them at a sub-conscious level to feel like they were not powerful,” Terry told a Martinsville-area gathering Sunday, reports the Martinsville Bulletin.
Balderdash. Women have been able to own property in the U.S. since the 18th century, and in an unrestricted way since 1900. In my history of the Massey family, I recounted how Wilmoth Massey, who owned a farm adjacent (or very nearby) the Terry family farm in Patrick County inherited the property after her husband’s death around the turn of the 20th century. As for the right to vote, women’s suffrage was enacted in 1920– 101 years ago. Do I really need to recite all the ways — mental illness, suicides, over-medication, dropout rates, college attendance, life expectancy, the denigration of dads as dolts, legal rights for children — in which men get the short end of the stick? Can you imagine all the blubbering we would hear if the disparities were reversed?