Note from the Editor:
This article was kindly written for the SDC by member Josephine G.

Reading the variety of comments on my ‘Things Only Grandmothers Know’ pieces made me aware, yet again, of the importance of distinctions. We often miss the need to explain the things that are most familiar to us, and this is especially important when we talk about history, whether it is ancient or the more recent past.

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[Ebby]

l remember my mother saying in her day that women were kept in hospital for ten days after giving birth and wore a binding round their stomach to help it get back into shape.
When l lived in Sydney l happened to see one poor woman who had probably had a prolapse as her stomach was nearly down to her knees through not taking care of herself

 

[marni]

History is full of religious piety. Still to this day women in the Church are not seen as equal, even though the icon of Mary is everywhere females are left out of most of the bible. Just think of the holy trinity. Males definitely took it on themselves to make the rules for the opposite sex even though they did not even “understand women’s experiences” to keep authority and power

 

[Rob44]

l remember my mother saying in her day that women were kept in hospital for ten days after giving birth and wore a binding round their stomach to help it get back into shape.
When l lived in Sydney l happened to see one poor woman who had probably had a prolapse as her stomach was nearly down to her knees through not taking care of herself

I recall that my father only had to wait a week on a British NHS waiting list to get a double hernia operation, and that after that he was allowed a week in the local public hospital to recover. That was in the early 1960s in the UK, before Thatcherism raised its ugly head. My double hernia; I was told that the public waiting list in Hobart was so long it would take between 4 to 8 years to get a bed for for the operation. So I went private; the surgeon, wearing a blood-stained apron, did a clumsy job and I was kicked out of the private hospital on the same day. So I had to go back after 7 days, crawling up the steps to the hospital on all fours to get charged $150 before the receptionist would even consider that I needed the damned surgeon to fix up his bodge. That's history; it's not a women's issue; it addresses what our society has become and what we have voted for when it comes to public hospitals and people with what are normal problems, such as men's hernias and women giving birth.

 

[Reet]

I don't know what part of England Josephine came from but it was normal practice for all the family to attend funerals where I lived. I attended my grandfathers funeral in London at the age of seven and all my aunts and cousins were there as well. I am 88 years old so you can see how long ago that was.

 

[Rob44]

History is full of religious piety. Still to this day women in the Church are not seen as equal, even though the icon of Mary is everywhere females are left out of most of the bible. Just think of the holy trinity. Males definitely took it on themselves to make the rules for the opposite sex even though they did not even “understand women’s experiences” to keep authority and power

That happens in regard to women in most semitic types of religion (those invented in the Middle East). Quite probably partly because men did the fighting to protect the tribe and women need protecting to present the tribe with babies. Effective birth control, controlled by women, did not come about generally until the 1960s.

 

[Vinylted]

I am as old as dirt lol I recall that on another forum discussion I posed the question to female members, "Has anyone actually used sex as a bargaining tool with their menfolk" Wow! was I ever howled down and castigated... to the extent of an enforced apology and a withdrawal. Far distant past... not really circa 2005 or so.

 

[Rob44]

Has anyone actually used sex as a bargaining tool with their menfolk"> No, never, not tonight, dear.