Not Going Back

One of the many issues I'm not letting myself think about on the list of "We're Not Going Back" topics is the absolutely gonzo worldview of some on the Right who want to take away voting rights for women and with them, a total return to subjection of women.

At some point when that type of thinking is heard, someone will point out that it was as recently as the mid-1970s that women were finally able to get bank loans and credit cards without a male co-signer. That structurally enforced financial dependency promoted young marriage, and kept women in marriages they would have otherwise left. I was a kid when those things changed, and I wasn't aware that my mother and grandmothers couldn't do those things until then.

This was the topic of one of Lyz Lenz's excellent newsletters, Men Yell at Me, this week. The title of her essay is I didn't keep the house, I built a new one.

Here's an excerpt:

Fifty years ago it would have been impossible for me to buy my own home without a man co-signing the loan. Today, single women own more homes than single men do in America. Single women are one of the fastest-growing segments of home buyers in a country where homeownership is increasingly becoming unattainable. Single women often pay more for their homes because they earn less than men, meaning they often receive less favorable rates.

This joy of having my own home is a new freedom — one I can hold onto in a state and country where my freedoms are being taken away.

I think about what it means to have this house — historically, financially, personally. I think about my mean grandmothers and the bitter women that populate my ancestry and I wonder what they would have been like if they could have gotten free.

I remain mystified that people on the Right who proclaim their love of freedom and liberty can have such a narrow conception of what those mean. They must draw the circle of who they consider fully human, and therefore deserving, very tightly: I guess it's just big enough to fit themselves inside.

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I encourage everyone to subscribe to Men Yell at Me: Lenz is an excellent writer.