|
|
|
||||||||
|
THE FIGHT FOR EQUALITY: THE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE MOVEMENT TAKES ROOT
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
The roots of the modern domestic violence opposition movement can be traced back to the efforts of America's first female "politicians:" Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
In 1852 Susan B. Anthony attended a state temperance meeting was was literaly drowned out by boos when she spoke out against the exclusion of women from politics, especially about the lack of womens suffrage. Anthony was so alarmed at the strong opposition to female voting, even from women themselves, that she and a few more radical temperance movement workers formed an organization to coordinate the efforts of a new temperance society aimed at giving women a voice in politics.
Later in the summer of that same year, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was elected the first president of the New York State Woman's Temperance Society. Stanton held strong beliefs about domestic violence. She opened her own home as a refuge for battered women neighbors in what was arguably the first true shelter in the United States.
Stanton's crowning achievement in the arena of domestic violence policy and reform lay in her efforts to gather support for a new divorce bill that would have prohibit drunkard men to "have no claims on either wife or child." (4)
The New York convention also marked the first time that women publicly denounced marital rape. Feminist Amelia Bloomer addresses the outrage of marital rape by intoning that "no wife should have to be the recipient of a drunken husband's blows and curses, and submit to his brutish passions and lusts." (4)
1852 also saw the first legislation to prevent the abuse of women in London. Magistrate Thomas Phinn published stastics on the number of assaults by men against women and children in London, revealing that one in six assaults occurred within the family. As a result of his findings, Phinn advocated the punishment of public flogging for abusers. Although Phinn's suggestions were not followed, his research did spawn the Act for the Better Prevention of Aggravated Assaults Upon Women and Children, more popularly known as the "Good Wives Rod." The act punished aggravated assault on women and children under the age of 14 by a six month prison sentence, a fine, and an order to keep the peace for 6 months.
The term "wife beating" was used for the first time in England in 1856 during a campaign for divorce reform. Public shaming was an important part of English community life and used as a way of emphasizing community standards.
The first formal organization to provide legal advice to victims of battering was established in England in 1857. The Society for the Protection of Women and Children came into being as a result of the Matrimonial Causes Act of the same year. The Society establish the first recognized shelter for battered women, set up a divorce court, and monitored court cases involving women and child victims.
The period between 1855 and 1860 saw Stanton and Anthony continue to fight for equal treatment of women in the United States. They focused their efforts primarily on a married woman's right to own and control proprty because divorce was too controversial at the time. In 1855 and 1856 some New York state legislators introduced bills asking that divorce be granted for desertion, cruelty, and drunkeness. New York Tribune editor Horace Greely published biting editorials condemning divorce on the grounds that a two-parent home is the best place to raise children. Depsite Greely's bitter opposition, the bill loses by only 4 votes.
1860 saw Susan Anthony secretly lodging the sister of a U.S. senator who had kidnapped her daughter and fled from her husband, a powerful Massachusetts legislator. The desperate plight of the woman moved Elizabeth Cady Stanton to introduce 10 new resolutions at the 1860 convention in support of a new divorce bill. The onset of the Civil War in 1861 effectively killed interest in the bill.
The women's equality movement was dealt a strong blow in 1864 when a North Carolina court set what would be America's legal precedent in the area of domestic violence when it declared that even though a husband had choked his wife, "the law permits him to use such a degree of force as necessary to control an unruly temper and make her behave herself; and unless some permanent inury be inflicted, or there be an excess of violence, or such a degree of cruelty as shows that it is inflicted to gratify his own bad passions, the law will not invade the domestic forum, or go behind the curtain. It prefers to leave the parties to themselves, as the best mode of inducing them to make the matter up and live together as man and wife should." (1)
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
| page created with Easy Designer |