Feminism, Freedom, and Mental Health

Next time anyone tells you that feminism is BAD, please remember how they used to treat women before we had any basic human rights.

White women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920, Black women didn’t get the right to vote until 1965, and Hispanic women didn’t get the right to vote until 1967.

Birth Control was invented in 1950, allowing women to have some control over their own bodies for the first time.

In 1973, Roe v Wade protected the right to abortion in all 50 states, making abortion services safer and more accessible throughout the country – another huge step for women’s rights.

But we still couldn’t get a credit card without the permission and help of a man until 1974.

It’s crazy how oppressed women have been by men. And we still don’t make the same amount of money as men for doing the same exact jobs with the same exact skill level.

Now we’re going backwards on abortion, birth control, and other things too. We are regressing.

When people romanticize the “good old days”, I remind them that not only did women not have any rights, freedom, or respect in the “good old days”, but they could be forcibly institutionalized for no reason at all, or any fabricated reason that a man cared to dream up.

Sending a woman to the asylum was a convenient way for husbands and fathers to keep opinionated, unruly or inconvenient women and girls in line. When women were admitted to the asylum, it was common for the nurses to ask the male relative admitting them what dress they would like her to be buried in. This was because, once admitted, it was rare for a woman to be discharged. In most cases, she would die in the asylum due to a number of factors, including torture, abuse, and murder. The torturous “treatments” these women were subjected to actually made them insane if they weren’t already, and definitely hastened their demise.

Here are just a few of the reasons that a woman could be involuntarily admitted to an insane asylum for the rest of her life:

• Ill treatment by husband.
• Imaginary female trouble (As decided by men.)
• Hysteria.
• Greed.
• Laziness.
• Domestic trouble.
• Religious enthusiasm.
• Excessive sexual abuse (done to her)
• Immoral Life
• Laziness
• Menstrual Deranged
• Novel Reading
• Fits
• Bad Company
• Egotism
• Female Disease
• Time of Life
• Grief
• Tobacco Use
• Masturbation
• Nymphomania
• Jealousy
• Desertion of Husband

In 2024, many of our sisters around the world still live without basic human rights or autonomy. Many of our sisters around the world are still fighting for their lives. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.