Rachel Hewitt; How men have used discrimination legislation against women

[ArabellaScott]

https://rachelhewitt.substack.com/p/to-keep-women-safe-legislators-must

A great post/essay on legal history, and how legislation has been used against women.

Thanks, very interesting

Thanks. That’s quite an eye opening read.

Thanks will read in the morning

That was a good (and depressing) read.

I’ve read her book In Her Nature about women and endurance sport and access to it - it’s very good. Lots of forgotten 19thC climbers who were frozen out by men and forgotten from the records.

One of the final paragraphs

However, Sir George Jessel, barrister, politician, judge and soon-to-be Solicitor General, responded by pointing out that all crime is ‘exceptional’, and that the majority - ie. law-abiding citizens - agree to have their freedoms somewhat curtailed so that the minority, criminals, can be prosecuted. ‘It [is] always necessary to legislate against the minority’ of exceptional, even vanishingly rare, predators, in order to promote ‘the protection of the majority’ of potential victims, he emphasised. The philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill put it more succinctly: ‘laws and institutions require to be adapted, not to good men, but to bad.’

Why do the same lessons have to be taught over and over again? It has to be deliberate.

Now that's a paragraph worth saving!

It does seem that wisdoms gained have to be constantly re-discovered and re-asserted.

I think it's probably more a frustrating fact of life and the human condition, than deliberate.

I've come to realise that human beings have such short memories! (So clearly demonstrated by so many elements the whole gender mess).
Perhaps this is it's own kind of wisdom gained.

I do think though, that there are many factors in today's world, that have made this tendency worse.