Rachel Wilson

And there was something called breadwinner laws that the courts, it was like a systemic law.

It wasn't like one specific law.

It was like a whole legal framework that said, look, women have to raise kids and be pregnant and have babies.

So we have to hold men responsible for financially taking care of women and children.

So women couldn't be thrown into a debtor's prison.

They couldn't be held legally liable for repaying a loan or anything like that.

They could own property.

People don't believe that either.

People believe women couldn't own anything.

And the reason they say that is because once you were married, you were considered one legal entity.

But even then, a married man in the state of New York in 1800 couldn't sell a property that was owned after he was married without his wife's written consent.

And the court had to be assured that she was not being like coerced into it.

So there were already like the anti-suffragists themselves argued, we kind of have everything we want.

You know, we have like most of the benefits of this, you know, they didn't call it a patriarchy, but what we would call a patriarchy.

They said, we're the primary beneficiaries of this system.

We have a lot of protections.

And if you make us equal, we're going to lose those.

Like, what if we get drafted?

What if we have to go do jury duty and hear like the gruesome details of like murders and rapes and things like that?

It's going to pit the family against each other.