No, women did not have more freedom in the 1880s.

I wrote some years back about how Bryan Caplain, libertarian sexist, believes women had more freedom in the 1880s than today. Sure, marital rape was legal, wife-beating was trivial and hubby controlled the money but if a woman ran a business there were no regulations! Freedom! As noted at the link, he’s wrong — and I didn’t even consider African-American women who had considerably less freedom (and lost more as white supremacy pushed back against reconstruction).

Turns out Caplain tried to defend his position (not a direct link) and it’s another turkey. For example he takes his position as a given: if you don’t believe him, prove that men abused their power (plenty of people in the comments do). He also handwaves things like a married woman had to have her husband sign contracts for her: she’d just talk, negotiate or bargain with him, same way couples work things out today. And her husband certainly wouldn’t sign any contracts without her approval so it cuts both ways. Equality!

No, no it doesn’t. Maybe some husbands did discuss business decisions with their wives, but my impression of the era is (and I’ve read a fair amount) that they did not ask for approval. More importantly, they didn’t have to: the husband could veto his wife’s business contracts but not vice versa. Assuming it doesn’t matter if husbands have the power because they’d never ever abuse it is balderdash (just ask Abigail Adams).

Even if husbands didn’t abuse their power, it would still be an unjust and unacceptable situation (and eventually we stopped accepting it). Equal rights matter; as Jamelle Bouie says, denying them says flat-out that the denied are not equal citizens. That’s apparently fine with Caplan if he could get the laissez-faire government with no business regulation that we had in the 1880s.

As noted at the link, Caplan’s response doesn’t simply defend his initial position, he defends the right of people to pressure, slut-shame and otherwise advocate for women to have less freedom. No question, people do have the legal right to be sexist, to slut-shame women for getting raped or using birth control. But it does make a difference to women’s rights and freedom; taken to an extreme it’s how you get cults like the Duggar family where men effectively have all the power. Again, that doesn’t seem to bother him as long as government stays out of regulating business. Of course, saying women couldn’t sign contracts without their husband’s approval is applying government regulation — but as it’s only affecting women, I suspect he doesn’t care.

I’m not surprised he pushes back against Robin “redistribute sex” Hanson’s critics, claiming it’s unfair to shit on incels for not getting laid. We don’t. We shit on incels (as opposed to “virgins” or “lonely people”) because they’re vicious misogynists.

I dissect the thoughts of other sexists and misogynists in Undead Sexist Cliches, available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward. #SFWApro.