So obviously I’m sitting her thinking about the way things were before the 1994 Violence Against Women Act written by and and passed into law by Joe Biden and I shake my head at the changes that affect every aspect of our society from that bill.

When I was growing up if

You went out with the guy or knew the guy or he was your neighbor or your friends boyfriend or you classmate, it wasn’t “real rape.” If was always your fault. It was your clothes, it was because you went to hang out with your friend or your neighbor or your schoolmate.

There were no rape hotlines to call. There were no federally funded safe houses for women fleeing domestic violence. Men just beat the shit out of their wives and the police would not even come to the house. Can you imagine? Home with the kids, no job and beaten regularly?

With no escape. No formal outside help. Sure you could call them cops but they would side with the abuser. TV reflected this reality. Jackie Gleason’s tag line was “Alice, one of these days right in the kisser”
And everyone acted like that was funny.

“After all the yelling he truly loves her” Nah.

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/joe-biden-sex-assault-witness-224311. Here is Joe Biden calling out frat brothers who see sexual assault happening “accomplices”

The violence against women act hearings by Senator Joe Biden in the early 1990’s showed the country- brave women testifying for the first time- on how horrible it was to live under a Jackie Gleason threat and the brutal and devastating reality of domestic violence.

"Joe Biden first introduced the law in 1990, when domestic violence was considered a family matter and few in Congress wanted to work on the issue."

A "family matter"

Those two words sting my generation because that's what the cops would say.

"It's a family matter"

Women were property.

Husbands "ruled the roost" and if a woman did "act out" and call the cops she faced a more ruthless beating because the cops shamed the man for not "controlling his woman"

For women trapped in these situations there was no way out. Large families, 5, 6, 7 and 8 kids to feed and take care of, laundry to do, no job or training for outside the home. Women just "took it"

If you go back and look at any of the TV "comedies' of the 1950's and 1960's almost all the jokes revolve around wives "misbehaving" and the "punishment" doled out by the husband.

Marital rape was legal.
Not a crime at all.
"Wives submit to your husband"
And birth control and abortion was illegal.

Decent paying Jobs "outside the home" were hard to come by. If a woman thought about leaving, she was writing off her kids because she wasn't going to get custody. And she was looking at a life of poverty. And shame. The shame of it.