This comes up quite a lot whenever people discuss things that were commonplace in the past.
People say husbands beating their wives was normal, children were routinely smacked or caned, racism was widespread, homophobia was accepted, and so on. Often the defence is that people were simply products of their time and didn't know any better.
But were they really?
Not that long ago, police often treated violence against wives as a private domestic matter and were reluctant to get involved. Marital rape wasn't even recognised in law. Racist attitudes were commonplace and children could be hit in ways that would be completely unacceptable today.
Yet even then there were people saying these things were wrong. Women campaigned against domestic violence, people fought against racism and discrimination, and some parents chose not to hit their children despite it being socially accepted.
I sometimes wonder whether too much emphasis is placed on "that's just how things were". Were people really incapable of thinking for themselves? Did they lack an internal moral compass? If your neighbour was regularly beating his wife, or a child was being routinely thrashed, did it genuinely not occur to people that this was cruel and wrong simply because society tolerated it?
I understand that social norms are powerful and that people are influenced by the world around them. But surely "everyone else was doing it" can explain behaviour without excusing it.