One day there was a lovely family. A wife, a husband and four beautiful children. They attended church every Sunday and were such a lovely family that the city gave them an award reserved for the loveliest of families.
Unexpectedly, the high school sweetheart of the wife came back to their hometown, and he was a millionaire. The wife, upon their first meeting since high school, told him that she'd always loved him and that she always would. The millionaire then proceeded to court her, taking her to various expensive places and buying her expensive things.
The wife left her husband to join her high school sweetheart and the world of new money. Then, the millionaire dumped her ass. She went sniveling back to her children and her husband, who could have taken her back, but the husband instead decided to sue. He sued the millionaire.
On what grounds, you might ask, could you sue a man for having an affair with your wife? After all, she willingly had the affair and left her husband. If the husband were to sue anyone, why not the wife? She's the one that left. These things happen all the time. Sure, people acted stupidly'perhaps even immorally'but no one actually did anything legally wrong. Correct? Well, lucky for the husband, old rules die hard and he revived a custom most Americans think to be long dead. He drew on property law.
According to state law, women are the property of the man to whom they are married. So, the millionaire pilfered the husband's property'sort of like stealing a guy's favorite golf club. Based on this, they went to court.
This happened in 1842, right? Wrong. It happened a couple of weeks ago. In fact, my mother, who is a legal secretary for the lawyer representing the husband, called me to get advice. Above all, she said, it's important to prove that the woman isn't a \slut."" We need some way to show that she couldn't help herself. In other words, that she was a victim in a property battle between men.
Despite all my background in gender and sexuality, I found myself unable'call it unwilling'to think of a way to help her characterize a woman in this way. Then, she said, what do you think the jury will say? I told her I thought they'd think the whole thing was ridiculous. I told her that people today recognize that women aren't property and would be offended by the use of the law. I told her that people also realize that people make their own choices and that the woman clearly wasn't ""stolen"" away passively. I told her the whole thing was preposterous and the jury would come back with an acquittal or with a cash award of a dollar, if the guy was lucky. What do you think the jury did?
The jury awarded the husband a million dollars. A million dollars, people! I suppose we think that in today's modern times Americans no longer think of women as objects, as something that men can earn, or steal, with money, as something that a man owns regardless of the woman's feelings or desires. And yet, the jury obviously thought that the husband did own her and that her motivations didn't matter. In the end, the millionaire got a nice piece of ass for a while and had to suffer the consequences. The husband made off with a million dollars, but he lost his lovely family. No matter that the wife desperately wants to reunite with her husband, and he says no.
What did the wife get? Nothing. She lost her lovely family and watched her husband run off with a million dollars because of a decision she made. Where is her kickback? Oh, I forget, property can't own property.
