Month: August 2015

coverture, domestic violence & criminalization of men

In a poem that a judge living in Georgia wrote in 1837, a judge heard a criminal domestic violence case. Henry Day, “a mild-looking man with a youthful face,” was accused of having beaten his large strong wife, Julia Sweet. Day pleaded to the court:

I don’t deny I beat my wife;
And for that part where you aver
That Satan did my spirit stir —
‘Tis true; for I was moved by her.
The dying sinnner’s wildest groans
Are music to her gentlest tones;
And for her blows! alas, my bones!
Well, let it pass; perhaps ‘t was wrong;
But I had borne her curses long,
And I am weak, and she is strong;
Let that, too, pass. I’ve done my best;
My counsel there must say the rest. [1]

Day’s counsel might have invoked for him a claim to self-defense or a claim to be a battered spouse. Such legal strategies in actual domestic violence cases work almost exclusively for women defendants. With sound legal judgment of likely outcomes, Day’s counsel turned instead to a ludicrous defense based on the common-law concept of coverture.

Coverture was the idea that husband and wife are one under law. More specifically, coverture assigned to the husband responsibility and punishment under law for his wife’s criminal acts. Coverture also protected women from mass imprisonment for debt in early modern England. In this case, Day’s counsel claimed that, according to coverture, a husband had an equal right to beat his wife as he did to beat himself. The prosecutor countered that if a husband killed his wife, he would be charged with murder, not suicide. The presiding judge summarized the law of coverture to the sitting jury:

If any ill the wife hath done,
The man is fined; for they are one:
If any crime the man doth do,
Still he is fined; for they are two.
The rule is hard, it is confessed:
It can’t be helped, lex ita est. [2]

Coverture was among a range of institutions and ideas that generated highly disproportionate imprisonment of men. Legal history conventionally interprets coverture as a legal concept oppressing women.[3] Coverture oppressed women in the same way that men-only Selective Service registration oppresses women today.

Coverture has been badly misunderstood in legal history. Coverture assigned to husbands responsibility for their wives’ criminal acts and their wives’ debts. Coverture increased the criminalization of men. Coverture didn’t give husbands the legal right to beat their wives. Men have long been punished for committing domestic violence, as well as punished for having domestic violence committed against them. Legal historians have stressed wife-beating and largely ignored husbands getting attacked by their wives.[4] Law and policy similarly treats domestic violence with anti-men bias today. Anti-men bias in invoking coverture is a general rhetorical pattern built upon deep structures of gynocentrism.

princess imagination

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Notes:

[1] Robert M. Charlton, “The State vs. Henry Day,” in Charlton & Charlton (1839) pp. 92-104. The quotes above are from id. pp. 96, 97. In 1834, Charlton became Judge of the Supreme Court of the Eastern District of Georgia. From 1853-53, he served as a U.S. Senator for Georgia. See Robert Milledge Charlton biography. The poem is dated 1837. Charlton & Charlton (1839) p. 99. A long, final footnote added:

Note to the Note.

As the prose note to this poetical report has gone the rounds of the papers, headed “The way they do things in Georgia,” perhaps it would be as well for the author to acknowledge that it is a highly exaggerated statement of the existing state of affairs in Georgia, and ought not to be received as evidence against the firmness and wisdom of the bench and bar of this State. The author was a member of the judiciary of Georgia at the time “the State vs. Henry Day” was composed, and therefore very little inclined to attack that branch of the government.

Id. pp. 103-4. “The State vs. Henry Day” appeared with the author’s initials “R.M.C.” in The American Jurist, vol. 20 (Oct. 1838) pp. 237-43. The poem there is dated May, 1837. Id. p. 237.

[2] Lex ita est is Latin for “thus is the law.” After citing the verses in which the judge declared men’s double criminal responsibility, Hartog (2000) p. 104 observed:

The poem was a plausible fiction, coherent with the contemporary law.

As if unequal justice under law for men doesn’t matter, Hartog moved from the poetic declaration of men’s double criminal responsibility to the conventional one-sided, false understanding of the incidence of domestic violence. Coverture was a legal fiction rarely determinative of legal results. Id. p. 106. The legal fiction of coverture, however, supported general gynocentric bias toward disproportionate punishment of men.

[3] Wikipedia, which has struggled with the problem of feminist bias, features considerable anti-men bias in its entry on coverture.

[4] E.g. Hartog (2000) pp. 104-110, which includes poorly informed discussion of the “rule of thumb.” The myth that a husband could legally beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb (the mythic “rule of thumb”) is prevalent in scholarly family history. For a thorough review of formal law, Kelly (1994). Commenting on a court’s declaration that it wouldn’t interfere in minor incidents of violence at home or in the schoolyard, Kelly mythologizes law in action and endorses conventional gender stereotyping of domestic violence:

the court would have made the same judgment {not all minor violence belongs in criminal court} if the wife had done the beating. One cannot conclude, therefore, that husbands were allowed a special latitude in chastising their wives, except, of course, in the sense that husbands were much more prone to such misconduct than wives and would more readily benefit from the court’s conclusion.

Id. p. 346, n. 25. Especially if domestic violence is defined to encompass minor violence, e.g. slapping, women almost surely would be found to be more prone to domestic violence than are men. Almost all minor violence isn’t in fact taken into criminal court and could not feasibly be policed in a non-totalitarian state. Charlton & Charlton (1839), p. 104, writing from judicial experience, frankly points to the legal difficulty of fairly judging domestic violence. Judges today would hardly dare to make that common-sense observation. More generally, Kelly (1994) falls to recognize the gynocentric structures supporting the “rule of thumb” myth and their implications for the criminalization of men.

[image] Princess.  Thanks to Clipartcottage for making the image available under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

References:

Charlton, Robert M., and Thomas Jackson Charlton. 1839. Poems. Boston: C.C. Little and J. Brown. (2nd ed., 1842)

Hartog, Hendrik. 2000. Man and wife in America: a history. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Kelly, Henry Ansgar. 1994. “‘Rule of Thumb’ and the Folklaw of the Husband’s Stick.” Journal of Legal Education. 44 (3): 341-65.

Marina: patron saint for men falsely accused of rape

While false accusations of rape have been trivialized in recent years, throughout most of recorded history both rape and false accusations of rape have been matters of serious concern. Accusations against men have tended to conflate impregnating a woman, seducing a woman, and raping a woman. In its various versions from the sixth century to the fifteenth century, the Life of Saint Marina the Monk presents false sexual accusation, along with cuckoldry, as essential problems of men’s sexuality. God ultimately vindicated Saint Marina beyond humans’ bodily sense. Saint Marina thus stands as a poignant, patron saint for men falsely accused of rape.

The Life of Marina was probably first written in Syriac sometime from the fifth to the seventh centuries. It subsequently became known in a wide range of languages spanning western Eurasia and northern Africa.[1] The Life of Marina was included in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (Legenda aurea), compiled in Latin about 1260. By the late-thirteenth century, a version of Marina’s life existed in French verse. By the early-fourteenth century, at least two versions existed in English verse.[2] While all the versions of the Life of Marina represent the victimization of innocent men, men’s virtues and men’s victimization are particularly well-represented in the early-fourteenth-century English verse version in the Harley manuscript.

Saint Marina and father entering monastery

The Harley Life of Marina highlights a father’s love for his children. Marina’s father was a man “who lived in purity, piety, and in the fear of God.” Marina’s mother, who was married to her father, was “honorable and devout.”[3] When Marina’s mother died, her father, rather than remarrying, sought to live a life of holiness by joining a monastery.  In the early Syriac and Greek texts, Marina begged her father to be allowed to join him in entering a monastery. Marina proposed to cut off her hair, put on men’s clothes, and enter the monastery with her father. In the Harley version, Marina comes into the story only after her father spiritually married himself to the Virgin Mary and became a monk. The father living as a monk longed to see his absent, flesh-and-blood daughter. Expressing his longing to his abbot, he falsely stated that his child was a boy. The virtuous father lied in love for his daughter.

Lies about men’s sexual behavior, in contrast, are vicious and evil. Marina joined her father’s monastery disguised as a boy named Marin. With her father’s loving guidance, Marina / Marin became an exemplary monk. One day, Marin was sent on a household business trip outside the monastery. Marin stopped at a house where the householder’s daughter had secretly become pregnant as a result of an illicit sexual affair with a soldier. The daughter falsely accused Marin of causing her pregnancy. That false accusation devastated Marin’s life.

The specific circumstances in which an alleged man allegedly caused a pregnancy matters little in practice. Formal legal trial of the crime of rape must examine in detail the facts of how sexual intercourse occurred. In the case of Marin, whether the daughter accused him of getting her pregnant or raping her depends on the specific version of the Life of Marin and difficult questions of philology.[4] Literary scholars have generally ignored those literary subtleties and declared that the woman accused Marin of rape.[5] Across the versions of the Life of Marina, the punishment of Marin seems to have followed only from the fact of the woman’s pregnancy and her blaming Marin. Marin was expelled from the monastery and lived for years outside its gates as a hungry, homeless person.

Like men today facing state-institutionalized cuckoldry, Marina / Marin was obliged to support a child who was not her own. The women who falsely accused Marin of rape (or of just getting her pregnant) gave birth to a son. She abandoned her son with Marin. Marin, as a starving, homeless person, did his best to support the child who was not biologically his. Marina in the person of Marin thus took on an additional injustice that men distinctively suffer in gynocentric society.

Saint Marina with child she was falsely accused of begetting

Exoneration from the false accusation came only with the realization that Marin was not biologically a man. After enduring years of harsh treatment resulting from the false accusation, Marin died. When the monks prepared to wash Marin’s body, they discovered that he didn’t have male genitals. Marin’s culpability had essentially rested only on the accusation and belief that he had a penis. With the recognition that Marin lacked a penis, the monks realized that they had gravely wronged Marin / Marina.[6] They resolved to “honor her in every way.” Marina was honored as a saint who could mediate God’s blessings. God posthumously gave her miraculous power. Her tomb became the site of a miraculous healing of the woman who had falsely accused Marin.

Saint Marina took upon herself suffering wrongfully imposed upon men. In the Greek version, after the abbot informed Marina / Marin of the woman’s accusation against her, Marina confessed, “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned as a man.”[7] Christians confess to having sinned. Being a man is no sin. To confess to having “sinned as a man” seems to refer ironically to Marina not being capable of sinning through action biologically distinctive to men.

Saint Marina is venerated for her patience and humility in the face of outrageous injustice. Under gynocentrism that permeates even monasteries, men are criminally suspect because of their penises.[8] Saint Marina’s life points beyond that criminal essentialism. Through the Life of Saint Marina, men falsely accused of rape can understand that the suffering wrongfully imposed on them can ultimately end in honor and power.

How could you endure
The pain that was imposed on you
Wrongly and without good cause?
Yours will be the final reward, and the failure, mine. [9]

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Notes:

[1] The Life of Saint Marina the Monk has survived in Syriac, Coptic, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, French, High German, and English texts from the fifteenth century or earlier.  Hourani (2013) p. 19. Marina’s life may have originated, along with roughly ten other lives of women transvestite saints, among monks of the Scetis desert near Alexandria in the middle of the fifth to the start of the sixth centuries. Anson (1974) p. 12. Authorities variously date Marina’s life from the fifth to the seventh century. Among surviving early manuscripts are a Syriac manuscript dated to 778 GC and three Greek manuscripts from the Mount Athelon monastery. Hourani (2013) p. 21. The earliest of the Greek manuscripts dates to the tenth century. For an English translation of the Syriac life, Lewis (1900) pp. 36-45 (pdf pages 468-77). For an English translation of the Greek life, Constas (1996).

Marina is a Latin name that corresponds to the Greek name Pelagia. Saint Pelagia, however, has a different life from Saint Marina. In western Europe, Saint Marina’s life has in some texts become confused with Saint Margaret’s life.

[2] The Latin Life of Marina is available in Patrologia Latina 73: 692-6. The version from the Golden Legend is available in English translation in Ryan & Duffy (2012) Ch. 84. Large excepts of the late-thirteenth century French version are available in English translation in Cazelles (1991) pp. 238-57. English versions are in the Harley 2253 Manuscript, Article 32, in Fein (2014); and the Northern Homily Cycle, Homily 15, ll. 137-356, in Thompson (2008).

[3] From Greek version, trans. Constas (1996) p. 7. The Harley version describes Marina’s father as a man:

Who greatly loved God’s command,
And exerted himself by all his strength
To serve God both day and night.
He was a man of good works,
And deeply he loved his soul’s comfort.

Trans. Fein (2014).

[4] In the Greek version of the Life of Marina, an innkeeper’s daughter falsely accused Marin of “causing a pregnancy”:

The young monk from the monastery, the attractive one called Marinos, he made me pregnant.

Trans. Constas (1996) p. 9. The Syriac version is similar in making causing the pregnancy the wrong:

The monk whom ye praise for being holy did this {pregnancy} to me, and by him I am with child.

Trans. Lewis (1900) p. 40. In the French version, Marin is accused of deceptive seduction:

It is he who made me pregnant
No other man has ever touched me.
He has deceived me
And is the cause of my distress.
I thought he was a religious man
And was eager to converse with him.
But he is so malicious
That he induced me to sin,
Causing me to fall into shame.
I mistook his intentions.

French Life of Saint Marina, ll. 424-433, trans. Cazelles (1991) p. 247. In the Harley version, a dairyman’s daughter falsely accused Marin of acting “unlawfully”:

In the barn, there we were
And he took me forth, unlawfully —
All in truth, so it was!

Trans. Fein (2014) ll. 98-100. Accusation of unlawful sex in medieval Europe encompassed consensual sex outside of marriage (a consensual roll in the hay, perhaps in a barn), as well as rape. The English for “unlawfully” in the Harley version is more literally translated as “against the peace.” That more directly suggests an accusation of violence. The Northern Homily Cycle makes the false accusation of rape explicit:

And she told them that the monk Marin
Had forced her, and they were angry

Homily 15, ll. 204-5, my English modernization. The Latin Life of Marina uses the accusation ipse me oppressit, which could mean he pressed down on me (in the physical act of sex), he surprised me (deceptive seduction), or he raped me. See Patrologia Latina 73: 692.

[5] With respect to the Greek version, Constas (1996) intro., p. 3 (“rape”). With respect to the Harley version, Fein (2014) intro. (“rape”). Misleading use of the word rape is now exploited in major newspapers to criminalize a large share of men worldwide.

[6] Directing attention to the vagina, an eminent medievalist imagined the monks relishing the sight of a dead woman’s vagina:

These ignorant holy men are also, however, at the climax of the text they could not read, richly rewarded with an ample viewing. Male desire is deflected, refocused, and then abundantly fulfilled. One can hardly avoid {sic!} the supposition that the compiler chose this tale precisely for titillation of that continuing interest in what women have “under gore,” this time the curiosity being the spur of the story rather than the conventional ending of the love poem. And even though Marina escaped the male gaze in life, the suddenly crowded viewing of her in death — by the monks and the “other men mo” (where did they come from?) — seems rather to compensate the men for their lost opportunity. Miraculous moment is indelibly marked with prurient response.

Fein (2000) p. 364. That interpretation goes beyond constructing men as dogs to assuming them to be necrophiliacs. The implications for women, as always, are dire even after their deaths:

Women may not be free of men. Instead they must choose from an array of ways in which they will meet their defining fate: to be constructed accord to male desire and actualized in acceding to it.

Id. 361. Such scholarship subtly gestures toward the emancipatory potential of masturbation.

[7] From Greek trans. Constas (1996) p. 9.

[8] Study of the Life of Marina has highlighted scholarly fantasies. For example, a scholar fantasized that women are the cause of lust, but women don’t experience lust. Anson (1974) p. 17. Moreover, this scholar perceived the Life of Marina to represent the “wish-fulfillment dream of the domestication of the demonic seductress.” Id. False accusations of rape and wrongfully imposing paternity on men are serious public issues. Those issues are more directly relevant to thinking seriously about the Life of Marina than are abstract psychological speculations.

[9] Words of the abbot in the French version of the Life of Marina, ll. 1058-61, trans. Cazelles (1991) p. 256. Cazelles’s explication of the Life of Marina points to Christine de Pizan and current academic boilerplate:

Christine de Pizan sought to destabilize the hagiographic canon by unmasking its ideological implications.

Id. p. 84. Scholarship can be more interesting than that. The Life of Marina unmasks trivializing false accusations of rape and devaluing men’s paternity interests.

The Life of Marina may have been written by a woman and probably had many women readers / listeners. Scholars have tended to dismiss the possibility of women as readers and writers of early transvestite saints’ lives:

they are with the exception of Thecla products of a monastic culture written by monks for monks

Anson (1974) p. 5. Scholars now generally believe that a woman or community of women wrote the Acts of Paul and Thecla. A woman probably also authored Joseph and Aseneth. Women probably comprised a significant share of readers / listeners to these saints’ lives as well as lives of other saints. Marina’s life addresses issues that men are generally afraid to discuss. Most medieval women loved men and would have cared about issues of vital concern to men. A woman may have wrote the Life of Marina for women who cared deeply about men.

Other lives of transvestite women saints also present false accusations of rape and false attributions of paternity. In the Life of Eugenia, Eugenia dressed as Brother Eugene is falsely accused of raping Melancia. The lives of Saint Margaret (Pelagius) and Saint Theodora present transvestite women saints falsely attributed paternity. These lives can be found in the Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend. The Life of Eugenia also survives in an early Syriac text. Lewis (1900) pp. 1-35.

The significance of these saints’ lives have been obscured in ideological posing. Consider how Cazelles interprets these stories of women being falsely accused of rape or paternity while they were dressed as men:

the profound significance of their stories is that, whether dressed, undressed, or cross-dressed, they {the women} are similarly and inexorably defenseless in the face of masculine desire.

Cazelles (1991) pp. 66-7. Men do not desire to be falsely accused of rape. Men do not desire to be victims of paternity fraud. Such claims reflect the social process of criminalizing men in gynocentric society.

[images] (1) Marina and her father entering monastery. Illumination in f. 139v, Jacques de Voragine.  Légende dorée. Manuscript dated 1348, written in French. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Français 241. (2) Saint Marina in Benedictine dress. She, with her face dirty in poverty, lovingly holds the child she was falsely accused of begetting. Illumination in f. 74r, Guillelmus a Mederio, Calendarium sive Commemorationes sanctorum monachorum, Missa et officium sanctarum reliquiarum, Officia sancti Georgii et sanctae Marinae. Manuscript dated 1400-1425, written in Latin. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Latin 5264. Images thanks to Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

References:

Anson, John. 1974. “The female transvestite in early monasticism: the origin and development of a motif.” Viator. Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. 5: 1-32.

Cazelles, Brigitte. 1991. The Lady as saint: a collection of French hagiographic romances of the thirteenth century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Constas, Nicholas, trans. 1996. “Life of St. Mary / Marinos.” Ch. 1 (pp. 1-12) in Talbot, Alice-Mary. 1996. Holy women of Byzantium: ten saints’ lives in English translation. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Fein, Susanna. 2000. “A saint ‘Geynest under Gore’: Marina and the love lyrics of the seventh quire.” Pp. 351-76 in Fein, Susanna, ed. 2000. Studies in the Harley manuscript: the scribes, contents, and social contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253. Kalamazoo, Mich: TEAMS (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages) in association with the University of Rochester. Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University.

Fein, Susanna, ed. with David B. Raybin, and Jan M. Ziolkowski, trans. 2014. The complete Harley 2253 Manuscript (vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3). Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Hourani, Guita. 2013. “The Vita of Saint Marina in the Maronite Tradition.” Notre Dame University, Lebanon. 17-39.

Lewis, Agnes Smith. 1900. Select Narratives of Holy Women from the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest as written above the old Syriac gospels by John the Stylite, of Beth-Mari-Qanun in a.d. 778. Syriac text and English translation. Studia Sinaitica No. IX. London: C.J. Clay and Sons.

Ryan, William Granger and Eamon Duffy trans. and ed. 2012. Jacobus de Voragine. The golden legend: readings on the saints. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Thompson, Anne B. 2008. The Northern homily cycle. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications.

domestic violence & child custody bias: Crabtree case

Justice blind to anti-men bias in child custody

In 1922, the Supreme Court of Arkansas heard the appeal of Marvin Crabtree. He was married to Josephine Crabtree. She committed horrendous domestic violence against him. Fearing his life, Marvin left her and sought divorce from her. He also sought custody of their two children, ages six and nine. With some reluctance, the Supreme Court granted Marvin a divorce, overturning the lower court’s grant of merely a separation. The Supreme Court, however, let stand the award of custody of their children to Josephine. This case, Crabtree v. Crabtree, is an astonishing testament to anti-men bias in the administration of child custody and domestic violence laws.

Marvin and Josephine Crabtree and their two children had lived in Josephine’s mother’s house. Marvin wanted his immediate family to move to their own house. He explained that Josephine’s mother “meddled with their marital affairs and made their home life with her unpleasant.” Josephine, however, refused to move from her mother’s house.

One day, Josephine nearly murdered Marvin. The trouble started when Josephine’s mother allegedly falsely accused Marvin of bad behavior. Marvin, his wife, and children walked outside to leave the house, but returned. Marvin then went to leave on his own:

He walked in front of the car {outside the house} and set the crank to start the motor. At this time his wife stepped up behind him and laid her left hand on his left shoulder. She asked him if he would come back, and he replied that he was not making any promises. At this instant his wife cut his throat with a razor. Then, seeing a light in the rear of McCann’s residence, about 100 feet away, he hastened there for help, and his wife followed him. He saw her coming, and she showed that she had not accomplished her purpose. He had to act quickly. He grabbed a swinging door and tried to keep her from getting to him by holding the swinging door with his hand. His fingers stuck out on the side of the door next to his wife, and when she could not push the door open she slashed his hands, cutting four fingers on one and one finger on his other hand, practically severing the leaders in all of them. The cut in his throat was five inches long. He then turned loose the door and ran through the house into the kitchen, where McCann was sitting, and called his attention to what had just happened to him. His wife entered the room, and McCann caught her from behind and held her by the arms. His wife made two desperate attempts to assault him again, but was prevented by McCann. He {Marvin Crabtree} grew very weak from loss of blood. Finally he sat down on the porch in a swing. His wife begged McCann to let her get to him. She got a little closer to him and struck at him again, hitting him across the face, but by some means the razor turned and only peeled the skin. He then started to run. His.wife jerked loose from McCann and slashed him in the back, cutting three holes in his coat. She caught him, and all three of them fell on the floor. Mr. Shaffer came up at this time, and the plaintiff was released. Finally he started off of the porch and his wife ran at him, striking at him with the razor. Shaffer caught her. The plaintiff then got into his car and requested a man to drive him to the hospital. He was in the hospital ten days.

Witnesses corroborated this account. Josephine Crabtree vaguely admitted to her domestic violence:

She admitted cutting him on the occasion in question. … When she got to the car she put her hands in her pocket to get the key, and felt the razor. She had been using it that day in ripping some of her children’s clothes. She does not recall anything from the time she felt the razor in her pocket until some time after the assault on her husband was made. She supposed she attempted to cut her husband’s throat with the razor, but had no recollection of it.

Facing a criminal charge of assault with intent to kill her husband, Josephine Crabtree apparently pleaded temporary insanity. Witnesses supported the claim of her being temporarily insane:

J. A. McCann was one of the witnesses. He told about the wife following her husband to his house with a razor in her hand. He held her about twenty minutes while she struggled to get away. She appeared very nervous and struggled to get free from him. She had a wild look in her eyes and stared into vacancy. In his opinion she was temporarily insane.

Several witnesses who saw her later in the evening and on the next day testified that she did not appear normal and was very nervous and had a peculiar look. They said that she had always been a peaceable woman before that time, and they regarded her as temporarily insane when she attacked her husband with the razor and cut his throat.

Josephine Crabtree apparently avoided conviction for assault with intent to murder her husband. In addition, she implored her husband  to return to living with her. He refused. He declared that “he would not risk his life by living with her again.” Marvin’s fear for his life, after Josephine had attempted to kill him, set up the divorce and custody battle of Crabtree v. Crabtree.

The Arkansas Supreme Court rationalized depriving Marvin of custody of his children with lack of reason for doing otherwise and the best interests of the child. The Supreme Court explained:

While the plaintiff {Marvin Crabtree} asked for the custody of the children, he does not assign any reason why he should have them, and the court can perceive none. It does not follow that, because the wife tried to kill him in a fit of anger, she did not have any parental affection for the children. On the contrary, the record discloses that she loved them and was properly caring for them. The court looks mainly to the comfort and happiness of the children and gives them to the keeping of that parent who can best look after them.

The Court provide no evidence indicating that Marvin didn’t love his children and couldn’t properly care for them. Discriminating against men in child custody proceedings is standard practice, even when the wife has committed horrendous domestic violence against the husband.

The arc of the moral universe is long, and across centuries one cannot see it bending toward justice for men in child custody decisions. Today, “experts” in domestic violence draw upon deeply entrenched anti-men gender stereotyping of domestic violence to further anti-men bias in custody decisions. Parents’ relationships with their children and good public reason are central to humane civilization. Facing the ugly reality of domestic violence and child custody disputes is necessary for hope and change.

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Notes:

The quotes above are from Crabtree v. Crabtree, 154 Ark. 401, 242 S.W. 804, 24 A.L.R. 912 (1922). The text of the Arkansas Supreme Court opinion in Crabtree v. Crabtree is available online from the Arkansas Judiciary and in the Southwestern Reporter.

The Court’s opinion refers to “absolute divorce” and “limited divorce.” These legal terms refer to English common law concepts:

  1. absolute divorce: divorce a vinculo matrimonii (from the bond of marriage), meaning divorce through a legal act that severs the legal bonds of matrimony.
  2. limited divorce: divorce a mensa et thoro (from board and bed), meaning divorce granting each spouse legal right to live apart from each other while still being legally married to each other. Limited divorce is now called legal separation of spouses.

On legal types of divorce and the legal history of divorce law in relation to child custody, James (2014) Ch. 10.

The Supreme Court’s opinion noted:

By agreement of counsel, certain evidence which had been used in the trial in the circuit court on the charge against his wife for assault with the intent to kill her husband was made a part of the record in this case.

The record of the criminal case against Josephine Crabtree apparently isn’t available online. The awarding of child custody to Josephine Crabtree makes reasonably clear that she wasn’t convicted of assault with intent to kill her husband. Not convicting women for killing their husbands has probably been much more prevalent than not convicting men for killing their wives. Consistent with that gender bias, legal scholars now publish books advocating extreme anti-men gender bias in adjudicating cases of wives killing their husbands.

Justice Thomas H. Humphreys dissented from his colleagues ruling in Crabtree v. Crabtree. Justice Humphreys declared:

After a careful reading of the facts in this case, my conclusion is that the attack made upon appellant {Marvin Crabtree} by appellee {Josephine Crabtree} was due to temporary insanity. They had lived together for a number of years in peace and harmony. No serious friction existed between them at the time the attack was made. The infliction of the injuries was an isolated act of cruelty, out of keeping with the current of their lives, and without excuse upon any other theory than momentary insanity. The undisputed evidence tended to show that appellee was beside herself, when she so unexpectedly and viciously attacked her husband. She herself testified that she knew nothing of the occurrence until it was all over. The evidence is wanting to show intentional cruelty, so a decree of divorce should have been refused.

In short, Marvin Crabtree should have “manned up” and taken like a man his wife slashing his throat with a razor and sending him to the hospital for ten days. Law and policy more generally to this day has shown relatively little concern for violence against men.

[image] Lady Justice (Justitia) blind. Thanks to Hans and pixabay for this excellent contribution to the public domain.

Reference:

James, Tom. 2014. The History of Custody Law. 2nd ed. ISBN-13: 978-1499182033, available from Amazon.

prison of marriage: lovers’ foolishness, jailors’ diligence

caged dog: prison of marriage

When men marry, they often think little of possible unhappy consequences. Divorce has dire financial consequences for men under U.S. family law today. But most men refuse to consider such consequences. They believe that they are different from men reamed in divorce proceedings. Every man is different from men transformed from fathers into wallets. Every man is different from men working under the threat of imprisonment to provide money to their ex-wives and their ex-wives’ boyfriends. Every man who enters the prison of marriage is a fool, except for you. That’s what every one of you and me believes.[1]

Men’s irrationality in entering the prison of marriage has long been recognized in literature of men’s sexed protest. In 1509, Wynkyn de Worde printed an English verse adaptation of the French prose work Les Quinze Joyes de mariage (The Fifteen Joys of Marriage).[2] This French source was written early in the fifteenth century. It’s a comic work of men’s sexed protest. The English translation, entitled The Fyftene Joyes of Maryage, is more solemn. Its introduction describes a man foolishly entering the prison of marriage:

As thus when men in youth courageous
With free will endowed and lustiness
Of their desire and mind outrageous
Without need, but of their foolishness,
Convey themselves from all their liberty
Nothing content with their felicity.

For whereas they may freely ride or go
And at their choice disport themselves over all,
I you ensure these young men will not so
When they least expect, then suddenly they fall
And unconstrained make their bodies thrall,
Like to a person that into prison deep
Without cause all hastily does creep.

So do they often for lack of kindly wit
And when they be within this prison strait
The jailor comes and fast the door shuts
Which is of iron strong, and in waiting
he lies often for dread that through defeat
By night or day some should escape out,
Right busily he pries all about.

He bars the door and makes sure all the locks,
The strong bolts, the fetters, and the chain,
He searches well the holes and the stocks
That woe be they that lie there in pain,
And out from there they shall not go again
But ever endure in weeping care and sorrow,
For good no prayer shall they ever borrow.

And especially men may call him besotted,
Far from reason, of wisdom desolate,
That thus his time misused has and doubted,
When he had heard such prisoners but late
Weeping, wailing, and with themselves debate,
Lying in prison as he has passed by,
And put himself therein so foolishly. [3]

The verses “suddenly they fall / and unconstrained make their bodies thrall / Like to a person that into prison deep” connects through simile imprisonment in lust to actual imprisonment and figuratively to the prison of marriage. Paul of Tarsus counseled Christians that it is better to marry than to burn with lust. The Fyftene Joyes of Maryage emphatically rejects Paul’s counsel. It figures imprisonment in marriage to be worse than imprisonment in lust.[4]

The Fyftene Joyes of Maryage contrasts the lover’s foolishness with the jailor’s diligence. Within their personal lives, many men enter into marriage without careful examination of the circumstances. Men are not, however, essentially fools. Men in their jobs thoroughly consider risks, seek to mitigate them, and diligently work to advance their employers’ objectives. Men make good jailors. Men predominate today among guards working in prisons that highly disproportionately imprison men. Men should guard more diligently their own personal lives.

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Notes:

[1] For women and persons entering homosexual marriages, the acute anti-men bias of family law doesn’t directly cause harm. But unjust justice is generally dangerous. Family law applied to person who have entered homosexual marriages isn’t likely to be fair and rational. Women dedicated to demanding careers and high earnings, and who allow their husbands the economic freedom that similarly motivated men have often allowed their wives, face to a lesser degree the risks and injustices that such men face.

Men and women have significantly different positions with respect to legal regulation of reproduction. Women have reproductive rights. Men have no reproductive rights whatsoever. Married men thus face paternity risk that married women don’t.

[2] Scholars have attributed the anonymous Les Quinze Joyes de mariage to Antoine de La Sale, born perhaps in 1388. The anonymous English translation The Fyftene Joyes of Maryage has been attributed to Robert Copland, who flourished from 1508 to 1547.

[3] The fyftene joyes of maryage, “prohemye of the auctour,” ll. 101-35, available from the Early English Books, Text Creation Partnership. The “Prologue” and “Prohemye” of The fyftene joyes of maryage are also printed in Coldiron (2009), Appendix 2.

Wynkyn de Worde printed the first edition of The fyftene joyes of maryage in 1509. He also printed The Payne and Sorrowe of Euyll maryage (ca. 1530), an English translation of De Coniuge non ducenda (Don’t Be Drawn into Marriage). That English translation is commonly attributed to John Lydgate, but without good reason. Boffey (1999) p. 237. Wynkyn de Worde seems to have appreciated literature of men’s sexed protest. He also printed Complaynte of them that been to late maryed and Complaynt of them that be to soone maryed. Id. p. 244. For discussion of these marriage complaints from a gynocentric perspective, Coldiron (2009) Ch. 5. Id., Appendix 3, provides the texts. For related medieval English poems, see Against Hasty Marriage (I) and Against Hasty Marriage (II) in Salisbury (2002).

[4] For Paul’s counsel on marriage, 1 Corinthians 7:8-9. The allusion to the Pauline counsel on marriage was added to the English translation of Les Quinze Joyes de mariage. Coldiron (2009), p. 129, suggests that these verses support the Pauline counsel. That seems to me to be a misreading. Today, a further challenge to the Pauline counsel is sexless marriages.

[image] Caged dog. Public Domain image by amayaeguizabal on pixabay.

References:

Boffey, Julia. 1999. “Wynkyn de Worde and Misogyny in Print.” Pp. 236-51 in Blake, N. F., and Geoffrey Lester. 1999. Chaucer in perspective Middle English essays in honour of Norman Blake. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Coldiron, Anne E. B. 2009. English printing, verse translation, and the battle of the sexes, 1476-1557. Farnham, England: Ashgate.

Salisbury, Eve. 2002. The trials and joys of marriage. Kalamazoo, Mich: Published for TEAMS in association with the University of Rochester by Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University.