The most illuminating thing I've seen about feminism is Rogan's recent interview of Rachel Wilson. I subscribe to Hannah Spier's blog "Psychobabble," and Dr Spier had already heard of her.
I remember going shopping with my mother ins the late 50s and 60s. That was when there were few all-purpose cards and, instead, stores issued their own. Consequently, her wallet bulged with credit cards from Sears, clothing stores, oil companies, super markets, etc. She had a dozen at least and probably more.
Yes! I remember the store department store cards well, and that's because my Mom had those cards - I remember Sears and The Bay for sure, and there may have been more. And, here's the important point: This was while my Mom was still a stay at home mom. Sounds really oppressed to me...
This fact is so often forgotten, and it was not only "poor" women. Most women worked throughout American history. It is insane that we hear all of this nonsense about women sitting at home bored. That was a tiny number of women for a brief period. For normal people, everybody worked.
In addition, i do think we have assumptions about divorce that were not true back then. People did not expect to get divorced. Many decisions were made on that assumption, which made divorce considerably more painful, although today divorce still does lead to terrifyingly high rates of suicide and substance abuse. Marriage rates will never increase until we can get a handle on divorce. It causes so much harm, and often not to the person responsible (drunken loser husbands, delusional women,...).
I never said that. Obviously, your Mom did a *ton* of work managing 6 kids and a job. My post was only regarding the false impression the author discusses, that of helpless women being unable to bank or have credit cards. Times were different then and roles of the sexes were more segregated than now, but women were not unpersons or slaves.
When you posted "... all in Dad's name", it read (to me) that what you meant was "yeah, women could have credit cards but not their own, we were being held down, it was a raw deal". That might not be what you meant (the internet is a *horrible* means for communication) , but in the context of comments here that's how it appeared to me.
"Obviously, your Mom did a *ton* of work managing 6 kids and a job."
You don't "manage" six children. You get them to manage each other. Helicoptering is a small-family phenomenon.
Hollywood did recent remakes of "Yours, Mine, and Ours" and "Cheaper By the Dozen", based on true stories from the 1950s and 1920s, with eighteen and eleven children respectively. Both families were *extremely* organized-- they had to be, and this was a central theme of both-- and the original movies in the 1960s reflected that.
However at least one of the 21st-century remakes turned its family into a zoo. It's like nobody in Hollywood could remember large families, or knew anyone from one.
The very first book I got from Amazon years ago was "Seventeen Little Miracals", about a similar but more recent family. The local Barnes and Noble brick-and-mortar couldn't get it for me-- not only was it already out-of-print, the publisher had gone out of business. No one wanted to read about big families anymore! Amazon just happened to have a copy, though.
However, the transaction was complicated, because I didn't have a credit card at the time.
No need to assume that your mother, who was working full time with 6 children mooching off of your dad. You provided the evidence yourself by saying that all of those cards, were in your dads name.
I don't know exactly what your point is but it sounds like you are still saying my mother was mooching off my father because couldn't get credit or have a checking account in her own name.
They were in her name. And I'm amazed that merchants extended credit to anyone using cards not in that person's name. How did they know the cards weren't stolen?
It sounds like the problems that women faced in getting credit cards, when they even existed, resulted from being a person without a reliable income and track record of her own on which to establish a credit history. A man with a similar lack of employment or credit history would be equally deemed a poor credit risk and likely denied credit or given a very limited account requiring a co-signer. The feminist complaint reveals 2 things about feminist women and neither are flattering.
1. Feminist women seem to think that the assets, income and privileges their husbands have EARNED by conduct should automatically be extended to them...unearned...even if they are no longer married to the person to whom those privileges belong.
2. Women should never be expected to conform to the same rules regarding personal responsibility as men...EVER.
Banks could refuse women a credit card until the https://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/index.html was signed into law. Prior to that, a bank could refuse to issue a credit card to an unmarried woman, and if a woman was married, her husband was required to cosign.»
Do you not notice that it says "COULD refuse women ... COULD refuse to issue ...". A man COULD also be refused if his credit-worthiness was not considered sufficient. We are talking about an era in which some women didn't work for pay at all, and were happy not to do so. A married woman who didn't have an income would naturally be expected to have her husband--the one on the hook for her debt--sign to indicate that he was aware of the credit limit and would pay. This is not sex discrimination. It is common sense. Would you expect a bank today to give credit to a man who didn't have an independent income?
And the point is that COULD is not the same as DID (refuse). There was no law or policy barring credit-worthy women from having access to credit. If there were, someone would have produced the proof, which no one has.
Cosigning a credit card as a member of a married couple makes complete sense as they are financially a single entity. This is no different than both husband and wife having to sign a tax return that is being jointly filed. A bank can refuse to give credit card to any one they wish, particularly if they do not have a reliable source of income to insure payment of the debt incurred. How many unmarried women in the 60's were declined because they failed to meet those criteria? The problem is not their being women...but their being unfit in terms of the credit profile.
Let me give you a real life example from the 70's. My mother made a foolish choice in marrying her first husband and soon had 2 kids in an abusive marriage. Despite the fact that she was the person with the steady job, the 2 had a joint bank account and joint credit cards. When she decided to take us kids and leave, she had run up huge amounts of money on the credit card and took most of the money from the bank. My father could do nothing as they were both legally on the accounts and it "ruined" his credit for a long time. In his case I am unsympathetic given his conduct and the fact that he held onto the real property and the "stolen" assets were actually her money, but the idea that the banks were being discriminatory in such an arrangement is just plain bunk. Choosing to get married has consequences that women should be mindful of.
Why do you refuse to acknowledge the truth but instead try to steer the conversation into women somehow being unjust victims. Why not just admit that women as a group exhibit a character flaw that men generally do not and encourage them to take responsibility to correct it?
And, this is why I happily subscribe. (By the way, if you need me to sign some statement that I will continue to financially support your work so that you can get your own credit card, just let me know.)
People still believe the feminist myth that the "rule of thumb" had to do with how thick a stick could be for a husband to legally beat his wife, rather than the reality that it had to do with artists using their thumbs for size and perspective.
When I read the original tale about women being denied credit until 1974, I laughed out loud. That was the year I graduated from high school and my parents suggested I take out a small loan at our bank to establish credit. I needed a cosigner, since I made $1.35/hr at my Dairy Queen job, but my mom said it was important for women to be financially independent (at the time, she was worried that I was going to marry my high school boyfriend). I paid off my $200 loan, which I used to buy a neighbor's old car, and got my own credit card by the time I was a sophomore in college. But none of this seemed like a big deal at the time! Mom had a degree in Economics and her own credit cards, and I remember hearing her discuss interest rates with her sister, a single working woman. They both lived long, happy lives, unencumbered by The Patriarchy. And I did eventually marry my high school boyfriend, when I was 31. I kept my own credit cards :)
Thank you! I'm just a bit younger than you are, but I remember that in 1982, when I was graduating from high school, I was inundated with requests from credit card companies and department stores to sign up. My mother, too, thought I should establish credit, so I did. No big deal at all.
The fun thing is that the advent of debit cards made that less likely. I know of two women, sisters, where the older graduated from college, got her credit card, and started to build up credit, and the younger graduated a bit later, went to grad school, and then used a debit card while she worked, until she realized she needed some credit history, and had to finagle something with the bank because she was in her thirties without any.
What's sickening is that this "tale" that women could not get loans, credit cards or even bank accounts without a male cosignor (or at all) is taught in schools! The radfemme liars are in charge!
One more comment to share - my great-Aunt (name of Idonea Nourse) lived in Montreal and had been a teacher all her life and had travelled to India before WW1 to do missionary teaching work. She never married and taught all her life in Montreal after returning from India, and retired in Montreal, living in a house she bought in NDG and cohabitated with a female friend (she may have been a latent lesbian, don't know). I think she also operated her house as a bit of rooming house. She took my mother on a tour of Europe by ocean liner in the mid 1950s. She was a totally independent single woman and obviously had no problem thriving in that world of the early and mid 20th century.
The stuff you presented is a pack of lies, thanks for exposing it.
I am immune to the lies and find myself surprised by how many are taken in. Our sense of history is so foreshortened, it seems, and nobody seems to remember their grandmothers' lives, etc.
I wrote my PhD dissertation on Canadian women who worked as journalists, essayists, columnists, and platform speakers of various sorts from 1880-1920. One of them, Sara Jeannette Duncan, traveled around the world when she was about 26 with another young, unmarried woman, and wrote a book about the experience (they had a great time in Japan). She also wrote regularly for The Globe (which became The Globe and Mail) and The Washington Post. She was from a little town in Ontario: Brantford. She had no special background or training, was just a super-smart young woman whose parents encouraged her to attend the Brantford Collegiate and to believe in herself. Nobody ever tried to tell her that as a woman, she couldn't do whatever. She was financially independent all her life. She eventually married a British civil servant in the Raj (India) and lived most of her life in Calcutta and Simla, writing novels about Anglo-Indian culture.
She said that the 1880s was "a golden age for girls, full of new interests and opportunities." She would have been appalled by today's weeping and screaming (and lying) harridans.
My grandmother and her mother was just like that. My grandmother went to the University of Nebraska in the late 1930s (at time when women were supposedly not allowed to attend university). She never reported any problem and had many females friends there. She also met my grandfather there.
When she was a child her mother travelled the world as a divorced woman and often took my grandmother as well. They have incredible family photos from the 1920s.
Back then it was not legal restrictions that were holding back independent women. It was just that very few women wanted to play that role. And given how many jobs during that time involved hard physical labor, that is not surprising.
Electric home appliances were the real factor that gave women options, not legal reforms or feminist activism.
I got sick of hearing my mom and sister bemoaning the fact that women were discouraged from going to college when my mom was college age. I went to find the college yearbook for the University of Missouri in 1950, when my dad would have been a sophomore or junior there, and guess what? There were tons of women there! Lots of sororities, women's sports, women on the faculty--you name it. Probably not quite as many as men, but well represented.
I was in high school in the 80s and girls were expected to go on to university, because by that point most people's mothers had been to university (in my middle class environ). Yet young women today think they are the breakthrough generation.
My friend Barb Kay went to university in Toronto in the early 60s and won the scholarship for highest overall grade; she wrote about the experience, which was very positive, in her book *Acknowledgements.* Reading it made me aware of how much absolute twaddle is written about that pre-feminist period.
Sorry, I know it's an old thread, but I wonder what Jane Fonda would have to say about this?
She attended Vassar University 1955-1957, but did not graduate.
I'm not a particular fan of her, to me she seems to be an activist for the sake of being one, hopping from cause to cause at whim. For me that casts some doubts on her authenticity. that is just my impression of her though, others may see it differently.
I wonder what she would have to say about women not being able to get a good education back then?
The old argument about how women were held as secondary choice for these things in families is somewhat true, with gender roles being a little different to those of today. University education was expensive (still is) and there was little outside help financially, which meant the family had to foot the bill into their budgets. A very different scenario to today.
My wife's Uncle was Dr. Arthur Peacocke, a lifelong Academic bio chemist, later becoming a Theology Dean at Cambridge. He was funded by scholarship, along with his brother John, and their mother made my mother in law go to university to study Accounting because girls had the right to be educated too. This was just after WWII. The scholarship was instrumental here, as the family wasn't wealthy enough to provide the children's funding and they were a fairly well off middle class family.
Arthur's wife was Dr Rosemary Peacocke, another Academic in the early education system in England, becoming Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. After the collapse of the Soviet system, she went to Russia to help set up a modernised early education system over there. So she was no slouch in the achievement scene either.
Family finances usually dictated what level of education the children would receive, not necessarily discrimination. Higher education up to then was really the realm of upper class families that had resources. Same in the US with Ivy League colleges.
Absolutely. Moderns have no idea how easy their lives are in 2025, and because of this they can be quick to get resentful and lack gratitude - and suffer from Presentism. Our material circumstances are a world apart form the people living in 1900 or prior.
Or frankly (in the UK) 1970. I had a job on washing day holding on to our electric "tub" washer as it tended to wander about the kitchen while operating. We got a Fridge in 1969 and were by no means the last in my area. It really wasn't until the late 60s that the "American" domestic machinery started to become widespread.
When I was a kid in the late '50s and early '60s, my mom had a wringer washing machine, a clothes line, and a washboard for tough stains. She would make me scrub the grass stains off the knees of my jeans on the corrugated metal of the board, and it was tough work. You could end up with knuckles rubbed raw.
I remember watching my mom and grandma working on one of those wringers in the late 1960s. I think they thought it did a better job than the newer machines.
Thanks. Idonea Nourse had a sister named Grace who was a Nursing Sister and was preparing to go to Europe during the Great War to serve, and got a required inoculation and a bad reaction and succumbed in about 1917. The Nourse family (and so many others) were filled with independent women.
How rude of you. I always look into what she writes and its always correct, what is incorrect is the establishment narrative. As someone who has lived through the last sixty years, and simply looks at what has actually happened and events to which I have been an actual observer, its clear that most of the claims of 'feminism' are patently untrue or are exaggerated.
Thanks Janice for unearthing the truth. It seems to have been buried deep and you took the pains to dig it out. Many thanks. And yes, I remember my mother in the 1950's and 60's with multiple credit cards from various department stores. I also remember seeing her name on them, since when I was a teen she would send me to the store with her card to buy clothes. Oh and btw, my mother was born more than 100 years ago and guess what? When she got out of high school she was recruited by a law firm who offered her free schooling and a position when she graduated...but she didn't want to do that, she wanted to be a teacher and that is what she did.
Amazing piece of work, Janice! Really important. I knew that sometimes credit cards weee denied to women without a male co-signatory. But how big a problem this was was always unclear. In addition there was signing credit agreements to buy white goods. But again not sure how wide spread. And as you point out credit cards only came into existence in the 1950s and targeted the well off (so a bourgeois problem). Feminism exaggerated this into women were not allowed credit cards or bank accounts and therefore had to marry men. And this disinformation, anti-male propaganda is just repeated ad infinitum till it's "common knowledge". Off course women who were off age before 1974 never said a word to discourage this narrative. Which is disappointing to say the least. I recall a Karen Straughn video saying that before people had bank accounts married women took mens names so that retailers etc knew which line of credit to charge goods to. Town cryers would announce new marriages so everyone would know. Men were responsible for all women's debt so women were spared debtors prison. I recall the Uks National Westminster banks website claiming they had the first recorded bank account for a woman, dating in the late 17th century. Theres so much lying that just breeds hatred for men. And boys have to face this bs ins schools. And then they wonder why these boys seek out the likes of Andrew Tate. No ine questions the radicalization of teachers.
I'm with you. I find myself having to work very hard to hang on to any degree of optimism about the state of things. I make the effort, because I will not allow myself to descend into nihilism, but day to day life in an "upside-down" world is disheartening.
I focus on building and creating, which puts me into a higher state. But ignoring the sense of foreboding I have based on reality isn't honest either. Just slipping into our bubbles is how they got away with this crap. Very hard to balance but I'm going to keep building and creating.
You've put your finger on the crucial issue. One must continue to have a life outside of the psychological (and other) warfare, but not so much of one that political ground is ceded to the forces that would destroy us. It's tough to find the right balance; extra difficult for parents. It's good to know that we are not alone, however.
Thanks, Janice. I've been following you for years, long before Substack. Your intellectual yet fierce approach to the fight is an example for us all.
I am getting pretty disillusioned about Substack though. It seems next to impossible to build an audience here without being sensationalist. Big names have massive investment backing them and they just crowd everyone else out. I write and write - with little reward.
I'm getting tired. I'm going broke. The fight is wearing me down...Fyi, Substack is by no means what I'm counting on to make a living but the plateau I've been on for a while is super discouraging. I have about 800 subs, only 8 paid. I get 300 or so reads of every article, small engagement but it seems I'm too small to ever get in a 'feed'. Only my subs see me it seems.
All the social platforms seem to reward only the top 1%. Makes me really question why I do any of this.
Kudos on this thoroughly researched piece, Dr. Fiamengo. We need more responsible analysis from scholars such as yourself to combat this longstanding feminist agenda of boldly lying to weaponize victimhood in the favor of women. This reminds me of other tactics feminists have used to assert their “alternative truths,” such as the thoroughly dishonest claims of a wage gap, and the even more blatantly outrageous claim that the “rule of thumb” referred to laws allowing men to beat their wives with implements that did not exceed the width of their thumb. The actual rule of thumb referred to conventions between buyers and sellers in a time before many measurements were strictly codified and standardized, but feminists saw this as an opportunity to assert sexism over truth. Why should we be surprised? That’s their specialty.
In order for men and boys to be disenfranchised and mistreated decade after decade, females must be maintained in a constant state of aggrieved rage against men and the (nonexistent) patriarchy.
Likewise, men must be maintained in a constant state of embarrassment and guilt. This is how the gynarchic Sistem is kept in stasis.
Thus, the routine lying of feminists and their organizations to ensure those emotional conditions remain constant.
Thank you Janice, for debunking yet another Feminist "old wive's tale" (can't help myself with that figure of speech!). I started school in the mid 1960's and typical for the time (not unlike now) there were many female teachers, married and unmarried. Amongst my near neighbours, there was a combination of stay at home mothers and working mothers. Single parent families were very rare in our acquaintance. Reflecting back to that time, I do not recall ever having the sense that these women were being oppressed by the male half of the population.
It is wearying to contemplate the length and breath feminists will go to vilify "the patriarchy", and the readiness with which media take up their cause. On the latter, it's distressing to be reminded yet again of the extent of the feminist control of the dissemination of "information". Combine that with a public who are increasingly unlikely to question the received wisdom (ideas get more entrenched the more time passes, and people are distracted to an increasing degree), and here we are.
My best friend's mother was director of personnel (Human Resources) during the 60's and hired me to work at the bank as a messenger in 1972. She certainly had credit cards in her name, a house,, car and other items in her name by then.
You mean the feminists were LYING? Why on earth would they do that? 🫣😂
I was going to say something about Santa Claus but that might be too much for one day.
Okay now don't tell me you don't believe in Jolly Old St Nick!☺️
I must admit I still find his existence more convincing than feminist ideology.
Me too. At least the idea of Santa Clause makes children happy, and being children, their gullibility can be excused.
I am shocked--shocked!
The most illuminating thing I've seen about feminism is Rogan's recent interview of Rachel Wilson. I subscribe to Hannah Spier's blog "Psychobabble," and Dr Spier had already heard of her.
My sentiments exactly, "Dude"! 😂
They weren’t. Dude ^^^ is the one lying.
I remember going shopping with my mother ins the late 50s and 60s. That was when there were few all-purpose cards and, instead, stores issued their own. Consequently, her wallet bulged with credit cards from Sears, clothing stores, oil companies, super markets, etc. She had a dozen at least and probably more.
Yes! I remember the store department store cards well, and that's because my Mom had those cards - I remember Sears and The Bay for sure, and there may have been more. And, here's the important point: This was while my Mom was still a stay at home mom. Sounds really oppressed to me...
Whose name was on them?
Did she sign those cards with her name or her husband's name? My Mom had cards too. All in my Dad's name.
So Mom could buy things and Dad had to pay. Oooh, the Patriarchy!
I think it's telling that you assume my Mom who worked full time with 6 children was mooching of my Dad. Poor women have always had to work.
This fact is so often forgotten, and it was not only "poor" women. Most women worked throughout American history. It is insane that we hear all of this nonsense about women sitting at home bored. That was a tiny number of women for a brief period. For normal people, everybody worked.
In addition, i do think we have assumptions about divorce that were not true back then. People did not expect to get divorced. Many decisions were made on that assumption, which made divorce considerably more painful, although today divorce still does lead to terrifyingly high rates of suicide and substance abuse. Marriage rates will never increase until we can get a handle on divorce. It causes so much harm, and often not to the person responsible (drunken loser husbands, delusional women,...).
I never said that. Obviously, your Mom did a *ton* of work managing 6 kids and a job. My post was only regarding the false impression the author discusses, that of helpless women being unable to bank or have credit cards. Times were different then and roles of the sexes were more segregated than now, but women were not unpersons or slaves.
When you posted "... all in Dad's name", it read (to me) that what you meant was "yeah, women could have credit cards but not their own, we were being held down, it was a raw deal". That might not be what you meant (the internet is a *horrible* means for communication) , but in the context of comments here that's how it appeared to me.
"Obviously, your Mom did a *ton* of work managing 6 kids and a job."
You don't "manage" six children. You get them to manage each other. Helicoptering is a small-family phenomenon.
Hollywood did recent remakes of "Yours, Mine, and Ours" and "Cheaper By the Dozen", based on true stories from the 1950s and 1920s, with eighteen and eleven children respectively. Both families were *extremely* organized-- they had to be, and this was a central theme of both-- and the original movies in the 1960s reflected that.
However at least one of the 21st-century remakes turned its family into a zoo. It's like nobody in Hollywood could remember large families, or knew anyone from one.
The very first book I got from Amazon years ago was "Seventeen Little Miracals", about a similar but more recent family. The local Barnes and Noble brick-and-mortar couldn't get it for me-- not only was it already out-of-print, the publisher had gone out of business. No one wanted to read about big families anymore! Amazon just happened to have a copy, though.
However, the transaction was complicated, because I didn't have a credit card at the time.
No need to assume that your mother, who was working full time with 6 children mooching off of your dad. You provided the evidence yourself by saying that all of those cards, were in your dads name.
I don't know exactly what your point is but it sounds like you are still saying my mother was mooching off my father because couldn't get credit or have a checking account in her own name.
That's exactly what the law of coverture required although I'm sure it had finally been repealed by the time her mother was raising kids.
They were in her name. And I'm amazed that merchants extended credit to anyone using cards not in that person's name. How did they know the cards weren't stolen?
Exactly. A man had to approve!,
It sounds like the problems that women faced in getting credit cards, when they even existed, resulted from being a person without a reliable income and track record of her own on which to establish a credit history. A man with a similar lack of employment or credit history would be equally deemed a poor credit risk and likely denied credit or given a very limited account requiring a co-signer. The feminist complaint reveals 2 things about feminist women and neither are flattering.
1. Feminist women seem to think that the assets, income and privileges their husbands have EARNED by conduct should automatically be extended to them...unearned...even if they are no longer married to the person to whom those privileges belong.
2. Women should never be expected to conform to the same rules regarding personal responsibility as men...EVER.
«Get a credit card in their own name
Banks could refuse women a credit card until the https://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/index.html was signed into law. Prior to that, a bank could refuse to issue a credit card to an unmarried woman, and if a woman was married, her husband was required to cosign.»
Do you not notice that it says "COULD refuse women ... COULD refuse to issue ...". A man COULD also be refused if his credit-worthiness was not considered sufficient. We are talking about an era in which some women didn't work for pay at all, and were happy not to do so. A married woman who didn't have an income would naturally be expected to have her husband--the one on the hook for her debt--sign to indicate that he was aware of the credit limit and would pay. This is not sex discrimination. It is common sense. Would you expect a bank today to give credit to a man who didn't have an independent income?
And the point is that COULD is not the same as DID (refuse). There was no law or policy barring credit-worthy women from having access to credit. If there were, someone would have produced the proof, which no one has.
I needed my step father to co-sign applications for a student loan at age forty in 1999.
Student loans are their own universe, a special case.
Cosigning a credit card as a member of a married couple makes complete sense as they are financially a single entity. This is no different than both husband and wife having to sign a tax return that is being jointly filed. A bank can refuse to give credit card to any one they wish, particularly if they do not have a reliable source of income to insure payment of the debt incurred. How many unmarried women in the 60's were declined because they failed to meet those criteria? The problem is not their being women...but their being unfit in terms of the credit profile.
Let me give you a real life example from the 70's. My mother made a foolish choice in marrying her first husband and soon had 2 kids in an abusive marriage. Despite the fact that she was the person with the steady job, the 2 had a joint bank account and joint credit cards. When she decided to take us kids and leave, she had run up huge amounts of money on the credit card and took most of the money from the bank. My father could do nothing as they were both legally on the accounts and it "ruined" his credit for a long time. In his case I am unsympathetic given his conduct and the fact that he held onto the real property and the "stolen" assets were actually her money, but the idea that the banks were being discriminatory in such an arrangement is just plain bunk. Choosing to get married has consequences that women should be mindful of.
Credit Card companies STILL can refuse to issue a card. Duh!
“2. Women should never be expected to conform to the same rules regarding personal responsibility as men...EVER.”
Why do you hate women so much?
Why do you refuse to acknowledge the truth but instead try to steer the conversation into women somehow being unjust victims. Why not just admit that women as a group exhibit a character flaw that men generally do not and encourage them to take responsibility to correct it?
Why do you seem hell bent on finding offence and discrimination where it doesn't exist?
And, this is why I happily subscribe. (By the way, if you need me to sign some statement that I will continue to financially support your work so that you can get your own credit card, just let me know.)
People still believe the feminist myth that the "rule of thumb" had to do with how thick a stick could be for a husband to legally beat his wife, rather than the reality that it had to do with artists using their thumbs for size and perspective.
Thank you!
When I read the original tale about women being denied credit until 1974, I laughed out loud. That was the year I graduated from high school and my parents suggested I take out a small loan at our bank to establish credit. I needed a cosigner, since I made $1.35/hr at my Dairy Queen job, but my mom said it was important for women to be financially independent (at the time, she was worried that I was going to marry my high school boyfriend). I paid off my $200 loan, which I used to buy a neighbor's old car, and got my own credit card by the time I was a sophomore in college. But none of this seemed like a big deal at the time! Mom had a degree in Economics and her own credit cards, and I remember hearing her discuss interest rates with her sister, a single working woman. They both lived long, happy lives, unencumbered by The Patriarchy. And I did eventually marry my high school boyfriend, when I was 31. I kept my own credit cards :)
Thank you! I'm just a bit younger than you are, but I remember that in 1982, when I was graduating from high school, I was inundated with requests from credit card companies and department stores to sign up. My mother, too, thought I should establish credit, so I did. No big deal at all.
The fun thing is that the advent of debit cards made that less likely. I know of two women, sisters, where the older graduated from college, got her credit card, and started to build up credit, and the younger graduated a bit later, went to grad school, and then used a debit card while she worked, until she realized she needed some credit history, and had to finagle something with the bank because she was in her thirties without any.
My Mom also made sure I got a credit card early to establish a credit rating, but that was the 90’s. I’ve never missed a payment.
What's sickening is that this "tale" that women could not get loans, credit cards or even bank accounts without a male cosignor (or at all) is taught in schools! The radfemme liars are in charge!
One more comment to share - my great-Aunt (name of Idonea Nourse) lived in Montreal and had been a teacher all her life and had travelled to India before WW1 to do missionary teaching work. She never married and taught all her life in Montreal after returning from India, and retired in Montreal, living in a house she bought in NDG and cohabitated with a female friend (she may have been a latent lesbian, don't know). I think she also operated her house as a bit of rooming house. She took my mother on a tour of Europe by ocean liner in the mid 1950s. She was a totally independent single woman and obviously had no problem thriving in that world of the early and mid 20th century.
The stuff you presented is a pack of lies, thanks for exposing it.
Thank you. It's incredible.
I am immune to the lies and find myself surprised by how many are taken in. Our sense of history is so foreshortened, it seems, and nobody seems to remember their grandmothers' lives, etc.
I wrote my PhD dissertation on Canadian women who worked as journalists, essayists, columnists, and platform speakers of various sorts from 1880-1920. One of them, Sara Jeannette Duncan, traveled around the world when she was about 26 with another young, unmarried woman, and wrote a book about the experience (they had a great time in Japan). She also wrote regularly for The Globe (which became The Globe and Mail) and The Washington Post. She was from a little town in Ontario: Brantford. She had no special background or training, was just a super-smart young woman whose parents encouraged her to attend the Brantford Collegiate and to believe in herself. Nobody ever tried to tell her that as a woman, she couldn't do whatever. She was financially independent all her life. She eventually married a British civil servant in the Raj (India) and lived most of her life in Calcutta and Simla, writing novels about Anglo-Indian culture.
She said that the 1880s was "a golden age for girls, full of new interests and opportunities." She would have been appalled by today's weeping and screaming (and lying) harridans.
My grandmother and her mother was just like that. My grandmother went to the University of Nebraska in the late 1930s (at time when women were supposedly not allowed to attend university). She never reported any problem and had many females friends there. She also met my grandfather there.
When she was a child her mother travelled the world as a divorced woman and often took my grandmother as well. They have incredible family photos from the 1920s.
Back then it was not legal restrictions that were holding back independent women. It was just that very few women wanted to play that role. And given how many jobs during that time involved hard physical labor, that is not surprising.
Electric home appliances were the real factor that gave women options, not legal reforms or feminist activism.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-technological-innovations-liberated
I got sick of hearing my mom and sister bemoaning the fact that women were discouraged from going to college when my mom was college age. I went to find the college yearbook for the University of Missouri in 1950, when my dad would have been a sophomore or junior there, and guess what? There were tons of women there! Lots of sororities, women's sports, women on the faculty--you name it. Probably not quite as many as men, but well represented.
https://digital.library.missouri.edu/node/117155
I was in high school in the 80s and girls were expected to go on to university, because by that point most people's mothers had been to university (in my middle class environ). Yet young women today think they are the breakthrough generation.
My friend Barb Kay went to university in Toronto in the early 60s and won the scholarship for highest overall grade; she wrote about the experience, which was very positive, in her book *Acknowledgements.* Reading it made me aware of how much absolute twaddle is written about that pre-feminist period.
Sorry, I know it's an old thread, but I wonder what Jane Fonda would have to say about this?
She attended Vassar University 1955-1957, but did not graduate.
I'm not a particular fan of her, to me she seems to be an activist for the sake of being one, hopping from cause to cause at whim. For me that casts some doubts on her authenticity. that is just my impression of her though, others may see it differently.
I wonder what she would have to say about women not being able to get a good education back then?
The old argument about how women were held as secondary choice for these things in families is somewhat true, with gender roles being a little different to those of today. University education was expensive (still is) and there was little outside help financially, which meant the family had to foot the bill into their budgets. A very different scenario to today.
My wife's Uncle was Dr. Arthur Peacocke, a lifelong Academic bio chemist, later becoming a Theology Dean at Cambridge. He was funded by scholarship, along with his brother John, and their mother made my mother in law go to university to study Accounting because girls had the right to be educated too. This was just after WWII. The scholarship was instrumental here, as the family wasn't wealthy enough to provide the children's funding and they were a fairly well off middle class family.
Arthur's wife was Dr Rosemary Peacocke, another Academic in the early education system in England, becoming Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. After the collapse of the Soviet system, she went to Russia to help set up a modernised early education system over there. So she was no slouch in the achievement scene either.
Family finances usually dictated what level of education the children would receive, not necessarily discrimination. Higher education up to then was really the realm of upper class families that had resources. Same in the US with Ivy League colleges.
I just looked up the numbers.
In 1930, women made up 40% of bachelor’s degrees in USA. It was pretty steady up until the 1970s.
Did you show them?
Yes excellent point about home appliances, I try to explain this to my daughters.
Just have her do laundry using the 1900 method, and she will get it right away!
They literally called it laundry day, because it took the women all day!
Absolutely. Moderns have no idea how easy their lives are in 2025, and because of this they can be quick to get resentful and lack gratitude - and suffer from Presentism. Our material circumstances are a world apart form the people living in 1900 or prior.
Or frankly (in the UK) 1970. I had a job on washing day holding on to our electric "tub" washer as it tended to wander about the kitchen while operating. We got a Fridge in 1969 and were by no means the last in my area. It really wasn't until the late 60s that the "American" domestic machinery started to become widespread.
When I was a kid in the late '50s and early '60s, my mom had a wringer washing machine, a clothes line, and a washboard for tough stains. She would make me scrub the grass stains off the knees of my jeans on the corrugated metal of the board, and it was tough work. You could end up with knuckles rubbed raw.
I remember watching my mom and grandma working on one of those wringers in the late 1960s. I think they thought it did a better job than the newer machines.
I remember my own grandmother back in the 60s, a widow by then (born 1884), did not believe in vacuum cleaners or washing machines.
She dragged the rugs out to the clothes lines and beat them clean. Laundry was done with the old copper and washboard.
She had all the modern conveniences available at the time, but chose to be traditional.
Thanks. Idonea Nourse had a sister named Grace who was a Nursing Sister and was preparing to go to Europe during the Great War to serve, and got a required inoculation and a bad reaction and succumbed in about 1917. The Nourse family (and so many others) were filled with independent women.
Canada has always been more progressive than the US.
You are doing really important work. Keep going.
She’s lying.
YOU are lying.
No, she is, and now you are.
Have you done any research and made any attempt to verify her bullshit? No?
Then fuck off.
Author: Provides literal links to the actual government documents. https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/93rd%20Congress/Reports/Economic%20Problems%20of%20Women%20Part%203%20(623).pdf
Random commentator: "Nu uh! She's totally lying and made it all up." And no links.
Round 1 goes to the author. Especially since I can literally read on the page there what she says. Ergo, you are the one that lying.
How rude of you. I always look into what she writes and its always correct, what is incorrect is the establishment narrative. As someone who has lived through the last sixty years, and simply looks at what has actually happened and events to which I have been an actual observer, its clear that most of the claims of 'feminism' are patently untrue or are exaggerated.
You sound a bit triggered. Could it be that a dose of reality jeopardises the distorted world view that you have been indoctrinated with?
Thanks Janice for unearthing the truth. It seems to have been buried deep and you took the pains to dig it out. Many thanks. And yes, I remember my mother in the 1950's and 60's with multiple credit cards from various department stores. I also remember seeing her name on them, since when I was a teen she would send me to the store with her card to buy clothes. Oh and btw, my mother was born more than 100 years ago and guess what? When she got out of high school she was recruited by a law firm who offered her free schooling and a position when she graduated...but she didn't want to do that, she wanted to be a teacher and that is what she did.
Thanks, Tom. What a fascinating story about your mom being recruited by a law firm!
Amazing piece of work, Janice! Really important. I knew that sometimes credit cards weee denied to women without a male co-signatory. But how big a problem this was was always unclear. In addition there was signing credit agreements to buy white goods. But again not sure how wide spread. And as you point out credit cards only came into existence in the 1950s and targeted the well off (so a bourgeois problem). Feminism exaggerated this into women were not allowed credit cards or bank accounts and therefore had to marry men. And this disinformation, anti-male propaganda is just repeated ad infinitum till it's "common knowledge". Off course women who were off age before 1974 never said a word to discourage this narrative. Which is disappointing to say the least. I recall a Karen Straughn video saying that before people had bank accounts married women took mens names so that retailers etc knew which line of credit to charge goods to. Town cryers would announce new marriages so everyone would know. Men were responsible for all women's debt so women were spared debtors prison. I recall the Uks National Westminster banks website claiming they had the first recorded bank account for a woman, dating in the late 17th century. Theres so much lying that just breeds hatred for men. And boys have to face this bs ins schools. And then they wonder why these boys seek out the likes of Andrew Tate. No ine questions the radicalization of teachers.
The entire epistemology of Leftist thought is based on an endless series of lies.
I cannot take it anymore, it's so overwhelmingly depressing to fight the flood of hateful propaganda and mythology they propagate.
I'm with you. I find myself having to work very hard to hang on to any degree of optimism about the state of things. I make the effort, because I will not allow myself to descend into nihilism, but day to day life in an "upside-down" world is disheartening.
I focus on building and creating, which puts me into a higher state. But ignoring the sense of foreboding I have based on reality isn't honest either. Just slipping into our bubbles is how they got away with this crap. Very hard to balance but I'm going to keep building and creating.
You've put your finger on the crucial issue. One must continue to have a life outside of the psychological (and other) warfare, but not so much of one that political ground is ceded to the forces that would destroy us. It's tough to find the right balance; extra difficult for parents. It's good to know that we are not alone, however.
Thanks, Janice. I've been following you for years, long before Substack. Your intellectual yet fierce approach to the fight is an example for us all.
I am getting pretty disillusioned about Substack though. It seems next to impossible to build an audience here without being sensationalist. Big names have massive investment backing them and they just crowd everyone else out. I write and write - with little reward.
I'm getting tired. I'm going broke. The fight is wearing me down...Fyi, Substack is by no means what I'm counting on to make a living but the plateau I've been on for a while is super discouraging. I have about 800 subs, only 8 paid. I get 300 or so reads of every article, small engagement but it seems I'm too small to ever get in a 'feed'. Only my subs see me it seems.
All the social platforms seem to reward only the top 1%. Makes me really question why I do any of this.
Very true. I find humour helps.
Agree with you on that!
Did you see the new book by feminist Wharton Professor Corinna Low? She claims the data shows it’s better not to date or marry men. Insane.
Actually...men could make the argument that it is better not to date or marry WOMEN!
And far more convincingly.
You would have to be high to believe Low.
Of course it is insane but thank goodness she is warning everyone because then Men might have some peace from the Nonsense....
"so stupid as to ask them to" Quite so. Made me smile.
Great essay, Janice. Thank you for conducting this important historical research.
The framing of the issue is deceptive.
Nobody has a "right" to a credit card.
Indeed!
Kudos on this thoroughly researched piece, Dr. Fiamengo. We need more responsible analysis from scholars such as yourself to combat this longstanding feminist agenda of boldly lying to weaponize victimhood in the favor of women. This reminds me of other tactics feminists have used to assert their “alternative truths,” such as the thoroughly dishonest claims of a wage gap, and the even more blatantly outrageous claim that the “rule of thumb” referred to laws allowing men to beat their wives with implements that did not exceed the width of their thumb. The actual rule of thumb referred to conventions between buyers and sellers in a time before many measurements were strictly codified and standardized, but feminists saw this as an opportunity to assert sexism over truth. Why should we be surprised? That’s their specialty.
In order for men and boys to be disenfranchised and mistreated decade after decade, females must be maintained in a constant state of aggrieved rage against men and the (nonexistent) patriarchy.
Likewise, men must be maintained in a constant state of embarrassment and guilt. This is how the gynarchic Sistem is kept in stasis.
Thus, the routine lying of feminists and their organizations to ensure those emotional conditions remain constant.
Thank you Janice, for debunking yet another Feminist "old wive's tale" (can't help myself with that figure of speech!). I started school in the mid 1960's and typical for the time (not unlike now) there were many female teachers, married and unmarried. Amongst my near neighbours, there was a combination of stay at home mothers and working mothers. Single parent families were very rare in our acquaintance. Reflecting back to that time, I do not recall ever having the sense that these women were being oppressed by the male half of the population.
It is wearying to contemplate the length and breath feminists will go to vilify "the patriarchy", and the readiness with which media take up their cause. On the latter, it's distressing to be reminded yet again of the extent of the feminist control of the dissemination of "information". Combine that with a public who are increasingly unlikely to question the received wisdom (ideas get more entrenched the more time passes, and people are distracted to an increasing degree), and here we are.
My best friend's mother was director of personnel (Human Resources) during the 60's and hired me to work at the bank as a messenger in 1972. She certainly had credit cards in her name, a house,, car and other items in her name by then.