Frenzied Feminists Find The Soviet Marriage Situation Much To Their Liking
As a member of the So-Called Men’s Rights Movement I must say am a bit ashamed of how little work I put into the article I humbly present to you here. I might have taken the time to paraphrase my sources rather than quoting them. I might have given a short history of the political system referred to herein in order to put the facts in their specific context. I might have taken these reports pertaining to a foreign country, in a long past time, under a different political system than our own, and took the trouble to explain why I think they deserve your notice. But I chose not, I confess, to do any of these things.
My reason for this? Simply put, if there are any historical text I have ever uncovered in my extensive research on the relations between the sexes (which is the barbaric way I refer to what our legal superiors call “gender relations”) which need no explanation, analysis, or introduction, it is the two brief newspaper articles which I reproduce in toto below. This pair of journalistic ditties made their appearance in American newspapers in 1927, spaced apart by a period of about six weeks. This was right smack-a-dab in the middle of the years when the world’s first formally organized men’s rights groups – in Vienna, Chicago and New York – came together.
Newspaper report #1: Feb. 13, 1927 – “New Soviet Marriage Laws Find Favor Among Women”
MOSCOW – Frenzied feminists find the soviet marriage situation much to their liking. It is the male of the species that all new marriage laws attack. Once upon a time it was the woman who cried when she was deserted. Now the case is reversed. A dictatorship of the eternal woman has been declared and it is the man who weeps.
He weeps because a new law just passed in the Ukraine permits him to be married without knowing about it. He can simply be notified through the post that a certain lady says she has married him. That is enough, no other ceremony is necessary. The lady “announces” the marriage, and he is a benedict, whether he wishes it or not.
The law provides that either party may deal thus summarily with the other. But it is usually the man who finds himself married without knowing it. Then upon refusing to continue with the marriage, he can be made to pay alimony in case there is offspring.
ANOTHER CAUSE
Another cause for weeping is the fact that all over Russia a law now exists that will hold the man responsible for all matrimonial ventures, whether registered or simply do facto. He must pay alimony to any and all fair ladies who can prove that at one time, they lived in a state of de facto matrimony with him.
Cases that come to court show that this is easily proved. There is always some woman ready to swear that the defenseless man was the recognized “de facto husband” of her “girl friend.” A third person as a witness that the couple has a joint household, even if only for a few days, is all that is needed.
Should there be children, the question is settled without further ado. The woman collects. Should there be two women and two sets of children, they also collect and so on ad infinitum. So the new legislation insures a second thought on the part of the man before he goes in for a new and casual attachment.
The scions said the recognition of the de facto marriage as equally binding as the registered one would automatically quash any polygamous tendencies on the part of the man.
MUST DIVIDE WITH ALL
If he must divide his property with all the ladles of his heart, then he will take care that there is just one with a real claim upon him, reasoned the lawmakers. Perhaps there is logic in that.
The situation which the latest legislation strives to remedy is certainly bad enough. For the last few years there had been a new profession arising in the land of the Soviets. It is that of the “alimony widow.”
The “alimony widow” it is who lives in several short de facto marriages, and raises a brood of de facto children. For the support of her offspring she is legally entitled to collect a certain percentage of the wages of the men she names as the fathers of her brood. In this way she rakes in a much larger income than she could ever make working in a soviet factory or institution—and lives comfortably and happily ever after.
[Source: “New Soviet Marriage Laws Find Favor Among Women,” Syndicated (Universal), The Salt Lake Tribune (Ut.), Feb. 13, 1927, p. 7]
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Newspaper report #2: March. 27, 1927 “‘Alimony Widow’ Is Soviet Problem – Women Who Wed Several and Insist on Collecting From All Rapped by Russian Commisar of Health.”
Moscow. – Commissar Health Semashko condemned the superficial attitude toward matrimonial relations which exists among modem Russian boys and girls, in a lecture which drew a full house and enthusiastic applause.
As one method of control the Health Commissar suggested that Freud’s theory of converting sexual energy into more sublimated channels should be taught youths. Yet, he said, despite the lax living which is prevalent, university students of today are three times healthier than those of pre-revolutionary times.
These prematurely mated youngsters live “more intensely than common cense should permit,” he said. Semashko has just published a new book on the morals of the young in Soviet Russia entitled, “Rely on Alimony but learn to provide for yourself.”
This title is a parody on an old Russian proverb where the word ‘Alimony” has been substituted for “the Lord.”
Alimony has proved a stumbling block in the new order of matrimony. Young women who married for a week at various times were tar too clever in collecting a permanent income from the fathers of their assemblage of children.
“With alimony from one man,” they argued. “I can just manage to exist. But if I can collect from three or four at a time then I’ve a settled income tor life.”
Chiefly against these “alimony widows” Semashko directed the complaints in his book.
[Source: “‘Alimony Widow’ Is Soviet Problem – Women Who Wed Several and Insist on Collecting From All Rapped by Russian Commisar of Health.” Syndicated, The Charleston Gazette (W. Va.), Mar. 27, 1927, p. 9]
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There you have it. The naked documents as I came across them.
I personally cherish these two journalistic gems. These creepy reports – from totalitarian Russia dated only three years before the creation of the NKVD on April 25, 1930, and therefore precede the mass arrests and incarceration in gulags of all those comrades whom the state considered to perhaps have secret thoughts which might run counter to the philosophy of “social justice” – are in my estimation quite valuable to every single So-Called Men’s Rights Activist, and likewise to all others who detest tyranny and its sycophantic ethics-washed and spineless “public servants,” whose taxpayer-funded ranks expand in our former republic on an incremental but nauseatingly steady basis.
Now you too, dear reader of AVfM, can share in the delight I experienced in discovering these charming little bomblets of utopian top-down planners. Share ‘em with your buddies. Quote ‘em in the comments you wildly sew across unfettered cyperspace like so many So-Called Johnny Appleseeds disseminating intensely unwelcome and inconvenient seminal truths. Milk ‘em for all they’ve got to offer. And may your orchards blossom with the passionate spirit of victorious post-totalitarian liberty.
P.S. For any Marxist with a PhD who might some day come across this piece: Here’s an asterisk (*). You, Herr Doktor, can kiss my asterisk.
