The story about the asshole who refused to actually take care of his family and instead pressured his wife to close her company and fire employees is so infuriating and depressing.

but also.

I’ve been waiting for these stories.

Bc this is what happened in the Great Depression

I’m hoping they will be less prevalent...but I worry they won’t be.

And I wish I was smart enough to have solutions.

But I’m not.

All I’ve got right now is the admonition that history is about people and culture, not dates and Great Men.

When I took AP US history, my teacher took a day to go over the “social” movements of the 1800s.

A whole. Day.

And he clearly knew what he was doing, because I got a 5.

But despite knowing exactly what a The College expected me to know for both the AP test and the SAT subject test* in US history...

I didn’t learn that during the Great Depression there were a large number of US men who refused to do “women’s work” even when their wives were employed and they were not

Until I took “women’s” history in college.

(It turns out that a lot of women’s history is actually about women dealing with men being shits)

And there are a thousand things wrong with our governments response to the current global pandemic

But the fact that even 99% of the sensible politicians have no idea that history is repeating in stories like this

Is just depressing as hell.

And while the husband is a shit

I do think there needs to be space for talking about our own choices as women with power and responsibility

and what it says to make that choice, and not a different one.

To choose to fire staff in the middle of a pandemic instead of divorce a shitty non-partner.

It’s one thing to make that kind of choice when the only person suffering the consequences is you.

It’s another to make that choice when you have other responsibilities as well.

And ladies, one advantage we have over our great grandmothers (and grandmothers and great great grandmothers)

Is that DIVORCE is much easier to get and no longer results in being shunned