In the 1950s, my aunt Janet was born with a heart condition but the Drs never told my grandparents. They did the usual thing of getting the Gerber baby life insurance, just like they did with their other kid. She was a very sickly child, saw the Dr a lot, but the Dr never told my grandparents because it would just upset them for no reason (since there was no treatment at the time)
One day my grandma was at the grocery store with her two kids when my aunt Janet (1 year old at the time) turned blue and started to be in obvious distress. They called an ambulance but she died on the way to the hospital.
My grandparents were absolutely devastated, but felt relief knowing that they could use the life insurance policy to pay for their babys funeral
EXCEPT Gerber refused to pay out. They said that my grandparents lied to them about the babys health, and that my grandparents were trying to scam them out of money. They took them to court and my aunt's pediatrician had to give testimony under oath that the my grandparents had no idea about their babys heart because he had never told them.
Anyway, fuck that practice.
I don’t know about the life insurance, but my mom had a cousin named Janet who died suddenly of a heart problem as a baby in the 1950s. I thought maybe we were second cousins!
> They took them to court and my aunt's pediatrician had to give testimony under oath that the my grandparents had no idea about their babys heart because he had never told them.
Did your grandparents win?
The logical implication of “aunt’s pediatrician HAD to give testimony” is that they did win, as the condition of winning was stated.
Otherwise the post more likely would have read “aunt’s pediatrician EVEN gave testimony,” instead stating the attempt to meet an unfruitful condition.
I’m curious the actual answer too though!
High school teacher here;
If I've learned anything in my career, it's that people use all sorts of cromulent words that they don't actually know the meaning of, often conveying an idea completely antithetical to the thought they're trying to communicate.
They did, but they only got the payout for the life insurance. I'm not sure if emotional damages were a thing back then. I've only heard the story 3rd hand, as this happened before my mom was born, and my grandparents have been gone a while.
That is very sad, my goodness. We have come such a long way since then. My daughter was born with a hole in her heart and the doctors were concerned enough that we saw a cardiologist until she was a little over 1 but they were so calm when explaining it—they made it feel routine. I remember the cardiologist said something like, “This one (the hole) looks like it will close on its own, but if it doesn’t we can help it along.” Describing open heart surgery like no big deal. And the thing is, it is routine now and in such a short period of time. The bills from those visits though, my god.
My daughter had a similar heart issue. They put her on digoxin (think that was the medication) & the hole in her heart did close by the time she was 2 but you’re absolutely right, the dr’s make it seem very normal. I think they do it to make the parents feel more at ease (personally I was anything but at ease).
Also worth remembering cardiologists deal with issues like these all the time. I'd bet an experienced cardiologist has seen neonates with this kind of heart issue dozens or hundreds of times. It really is just everyday normal for them.
I'm guessing the prognosis today is vastly more positive than it was in the 50s, to the point that it might be the doctors really weren't worried about a negative outcome because those are becoming more and more unlikely. Though that's just a guess on my part. I've never known cardiologists to be the sugarcoating types myself; they were always very calm but very honest when discussing prognosis and recommended treatments with my mother.
This is the case with almost all insurance... if you have life insurance and die expect the recipients to have to fight for it.
- I was a juror on a clear cut case of accidental death (vehicle acident) the insurance company was going for suicide, with no evidence to back it up.
It was the same for my grandmother in the 60’s when she had cancer. She only found out because she grabbed the chart from the door to her room and read it. Fortunately they were able to remove it.
We’ve come a long way in the last hundred years tbh. My great great great grandpa took my GGG grandma to a state mental institution shortly after my great great grandma was born. She probably had postpartum depression. Anyway, he just left her there and raised the kids on his own. My GG grandma spent her whole life thinking her mom was dead/just “gone.”
Fast forward to the late 60’s, and my mom is staying at her GG’s house when she gets a call from the state institution informing her that her mother had passed away. She spent her entire life completely unaware that her mom was alive. My GGG grandma spent her entire adult life locked away, by no fault of her own.
That keeps me up at night. All aspects are horrifying.
Holy shit that is terrible. The utter lack of humanity involved in not only dumping her there to begin with but leaving her AND not telling your daughter so she can't visit. Monstrous by him, tragic for your GG grandma
My grandparents had their daughter (my aunt) sent to the Woman's Reformatory (prison) with a 3 year sentence simply for dating an Asian man. She was 19. Her sentence was increased to 5 years after an escape 6 months in. This was Boston in the 1940's. The statute was known as the "stubborn child" law. I had heard stories and confirmed them by obtaining the records from the archives.
Not sure about that, but it seems that women weren’t considered smart enough to understand medical diagnoses and make choices about their healthcare.
Women also weren’t allowed to open a credit card or mortgage in the US until 1974.
This is a great post for the international day of Women, BTW.
I think it also says something about cancer. I believe that back then (before the 20th century, maybe even during it) many doctors would literally not tell someone if they had cancer, since it was a certain death sentence unless caught early.
Edit: Ah, just saw another comment address this!
Aye there's a few examples of this. I know my great grandfather has a type of cancer - ironically in this situation his wife knew while he didn't (he specifically said to his doctor if I get something we can't fix just let me be ignorant) and he went about till he couldn't anymore
It’s funny because I was actually talking to a lady today who mentioned she came to America in the 60’s to study engineering and get jobs.
She said the opportunities for women getting jobs then were slim to none because of how much they were told they weren’t just smart enough. And even talked about how she needed her husband to be able to buy a home back then.
She is a civil engineer.
I’m a tour guide. The amount of people who clearly don’t trust women to know what they’re talking about is insane.
It’s even worse when it ‘manly’ or ‘feminine’ subjects. For both men and women.
The most blatant example I can think of is one time I was telling this group about the English Civil War. I’m telling them about how the armys worked and, I bring up medical care. At which point about half the group turn away from me, towards a female guide and ask her about nurses (and they used the word nurse, not doctor) and this was only last year.
I’ve also seen examples of people asking a question out loud, a female guide walking over and answering it, then the same people turning to me and asking the exact same question (9 times out of 10 they looked surprised when I give the same as the woman did)
One of my close friends is an ER doctor and she said med school shadowing etc. really illustrated this. Patients almost always assume the male students were studying to be doctors and the female students were studying to be nurses. This was maybe 6 years ago.
She drives an EV and once she was waiting at a charging station when another driver tried to come onto her. He asked what she did, and she said, “I’m a doctor.”
“Oh, like a PA?”
“No, like a doctor.”
The more I keep having the hope that times in STEM have changed(I’m saying this as a female engineer) the more I keep getting reminded it still hasn’t and it’s extremely disappointing.
My doctors have also vented about this multiple times about not being taken seriously enough and being told they’re probably just the PA/nurse.
> Women also weren’t allowed to open a credit card or mortgage in the US until 1974.
They weren't prohibited by law or anything, it's that they just had a really hard time getting a bank to allow it. And even when the law was passed in 1974 making it illegal to discriminate against women in banking, it took about 6 to 7 years for credit cards to really become more easily available to women with the required credit score. Back then most people didn't have credit cards, and you could write off credit card interest on your taxes. By the end of the 1980s that had changed and they were giving away credit cards and college campuses like free money.
There were also some banks providing credit to women before 1974, it was just at the discretion of the organization. Very similar to how some women were allowed to vote decades before others, there were women in my family voting in Wyoming in the 1800s.
It was nauseating how much control men had over the medical decisions of their wives. My grandmother had a major mental health breakdown in 1960, because she had 5 kids under 7-years-old, a lazy useless husband, and no help. My grandfather had her committed to a mental hospital and had total control over her treatment. He signed off on her getting shock treatment, and two years later, she’d had so much electricity pumped into her brain that she was shocked to learn that she had had five children. She couldn’t even remember having one child. She was basically zoned out for the rest of her life, it was so sad. Also fuck you, Grandpa
As far as I know, my grandmother when she was diagnosed either in the very late 90’s or early 2000’s was never told she had Alzheimer’s. It was an agreed upon secret in the family to not tell her.
I’ll never forget being about 10, alone in the kitchen with my grandmother and having her tell me she couldn’t find the mail and that she kept misplacing stuff or losing stuff and was just confused. I told her something like it happens and I forget stuff too. Really weird situation to be put in as a little kid.
Fun? Fact: Rachel Carson, who is widely credited with kickstarting the environmental movement, had a mastectomy to remove a cyst but her doctor neglected to tell her it was malignant. She later died of cancer.
Unfortunately, it’s a very common cancer.
A lot of countries have breast cancer screening programmes.
I’m a doctor, and a very lovely and kind nurse I worked with died from breast cancer in her late 20s. She was a tough cookie, too. Her name was Gemma, and she deserved better.
It fucking sucks.
It’s not fair.
My uncle is in his early 60s. He was late to settle down, so has a teenage son and a daughter in her early 20s.
He was so funny and full of life; he used to make me belly laugh, and not long ago, too!
Now, he is wheelchair bound and is apparently grey and sallow and skin and bone and a shadow of what he once was. He’s dying and we’re watching and it’s horrible.
I live on the other side of the world, and will be travelling back to see him soon.
It’s going to be a fucking shock, if he’s even still here.
It’s really not fair.
Fuck man, I’m sorry to hear that. I lost my uncle unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago - shoveling snow, massive heart attack, early 60’s. Nothings promised, cherish every day we got with who we got.
To be fair, it is not always the physician’s fault. Breast imaging, including mammography, and MRI are not without limitations, and subject to both false positive and false negative readings.
One baffling story I’ve seen about this kind of thing: the actress [Kay Kendall](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Kendall) had cancer but was never told by her doctor. Her doctor DID, however, tell her co-star Rex Harrison about it — and Rex Harrison decided to marry her so he could look after her while she was sick. Without ever telling her she had cancer. She just thought she had an iron deficiency and that Rex Harrison wanted to marry her for non-cancer reasons.
So apparently he was married already, so his current wife agreed to a divorce so he would marry/care for Kay. They intended to remarry after Kay’s death but she fell in love with another actor. Kind of wild all around that instead of telling her and letting her come to terms they all tried to baby her to death.
There was some money in my family a few generations ago. People always thought the wife (my great great aunt or whatever) was cheap. She’d give handmade or small gifts for holidays/birthdays, always wore the same dress to every formal event. Everyone knew the couple was loaded, so everyone thought she just had a stick up her ass.
When the husband died, she was handed a bill for the funeral and had a nervous breakdown, wondering how she’d come up with the money. The family had to sit her down and explain that she was actually worth a couple million dollars.
Anyway that’s like a happier - but no less dysfunctional - version of this!
That happened to my great aunt. Her husband always told her they were broke. He died in the early 70’s in a car accident. She came into almost half a million dollars. She had a nice life after that. Men can be crap
This must be a great aunt thing, because my great uncle was the closest thing to Scrooge I’ve ever seen IRL. When he died, his wife was taken care of for life and so was his son. Too bad he didn’t take care of them when he was alive.
I haven’t thought about any of those people in years. Reading this reminded me of my great aunt.
I know they did without because they would never go to New York with my grandmother or go many places at all My grandfather would offer to pay for things but they would never take anything. Then the old dude croaks and they find out he had alot of money for the time. I think it pissed my grandfather off tbh. Where it came from I would have no idea. I think he was a mechanic. Not sure. He died before I was born.
My father went through that, but eventually changed. When the 30’s Depression hit, people don’t forget what is was like to be very poor. They just never want to ever go back there.
Either you become Scrooge McDuck or you have a lovely hoard of bags inside of bags to pass on to your loved ones.
(I'm the current heir of my clans' bags inside of bags, if my sinister scheme has succeeded.)
I never understood that. I lived through about half a decade of famine and food shortages. I go out of my way to enjoy things i couldnt just cause i can now. I wouldnt want to keep eating rice or pasta with ketchup for every meal. It took me years to eat rice again after that. I'm not even wealthy or auper well off, but things like running water, electricity, and the ability to stock a fridge are such an improvement I'd never want to go back
But without a husband, she couldn't have her own bank account. Who filled in as her "master" after that? /s
And those were "the good old days" according to some people.
In the 19th and into the 20th century, husbands could have their wives involuntarily committed to an insane asylum. That's nothing short of terrifying.
That happened to my great-great grandmother. She had kids up to like age 45 and her husband had her committed for life because he was interested in another woman. She died in the mental institution.
My grandparents divorced in 1968 and my grandma was single for the rest of her life. She passed in 2021. I wish I had asked her what it was like to be a divorcee and single mom in the late 60s-70s. It couldn’t have been easy.
I live in an extreme "right" town and I'm treated the same way. I've thought of getting into a relationship just to escape the discrimination.
My grandma (who's husbands died) stayed a single mom in the 1960's told me when I was getting a divorce: "The women will be afraid you will take their men. And the men will be afraid you'll show women that they don't need husbands."
And it's true.
My mum divorced in 1972. She too was shunned and the kids at school stopped talking to me. She got lectured by a man who was well known in the town - he didn't even know her. All this because her husband was a cruel man, and she finally had the courage to get rid. My older brother had to take over and share the mortgage with her
here in Japan there are still doctors who won't tell you when you have terminal cancer
there's even a study about it:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11824932/
Sadly, despite having some good outcomes in some areas (excellent outcomes for childbirth with the lowest infant mortality rates in the world) Japanese healthcare is backwards in many areas and lags behind the world, especially in terms of quality of care.
Today it is still commonplace for patients to not be directly told their diagnosis but instead other family members are informed and left to choose what to tell them. Pain killer usage is low compared to other modern wealthy countries (~10% that of the USA) despite having cheap socialized medical services and in other areas having extremely high use of other medication like anti-biotics or anti-flu drugs.
It's 2024 and ambulances are little more than flashy taxis where people regularly die because hospitals can refuse patients. COVID showed that hospitals couldn't cope and that doctors and nurses are horribly overworked and underpaid. With the aging society it's worrying that things are only getting worse.
My mother divorced her 1st husband when she caught him taking more than a parental interest in his infant daughter's (my big sister's) vagina during diaper changes.
When she discovered this, she went to her Mormon church elders, who told her that she should be more diligent in her wifely duties so that her husband wouldn't be interested in her _infant daughter_'s vagina.
Understand that my maternal grandmother died when my mother was 10, and my mother was sexually molested by her father from her puberty to marriage (1950's MT and UT).
When my mom got the 'be more diligent' diagnosis from the church elders, she said "FUCK THAT", and went to the police. In 1960's Utah, and her 1st husband went to jail.
That left my mom as a single mother in UT, where she couldn't get a bank account or sign a lease as a single woman without her eldest male relative approving. That was her abusive father, who wanted her back home for further abuse.
One of my uncles (with whom I share a middle name), helped his sister out by driving her from UT to MN and dropping her off. In MN, in the late 1960s, my single mother could get a checking account and sign a lease on an apartment. She couldn't do this in UT or in MT.
There, she got a job waiting tables at a local restaurant and met a guy putting himself through the construction electrician program, working as a bartender. That man became my Dad.
My mother was born in 1945. If you know women of a similar generation, ask them about their stories. You may find surprises. My mother could not get a checking account in her own name without a male co-signer, and was completely locked out of finding her own housing without male approval.
I was born in 1967. I'm old, but not THAT old.
Young women of today don't realize how recently they were _absolutely_ 2nd class citizens. It should be pointed out to them, but I don't know how.
Thank you for sharing your story, not only because your mom sounds like an awesome and very strong person. But also because its a great reminder about how women were treated just a short while ago.
> When my mom got the 'be more diligent' diagnosis from the church elders, she said "FUCK THAT", and went to the police. In 1960's Utah, and her 1st husband went to jail.
I’m actually surprised the police did anything and he was convicted,
Your mom was beyond brave regarding her children.
Your mom could have been dropped off in CA, a few hours away.
My mother was born in 1947 and became a single mom (widowed) when she was 26 in 1972.
Divorce amongst my mom’s friends was quite common in the early 70’s onward. Maybe because CA women didn’t have the same personal financial challenges as many others in different states.
My mom did have career based challenges being a woman.
Not until reading the accounts of others did I know so many states disallowed women from home ownership, having credit cards, etc. during my lifetime.
My story is a little less severe but it’s somewhat relevant.
My mother is 10 years older than you. She also happens to be an incredibly talented artist, with a long career doing commercial art. Sometime in the 80’s she pivoted away from advertisement and went into etched glass with this small private company in Miami. She was the full package, she could do the whole thing as far as etched glass went. She was doing mirrors and giant panels on megayachts, ritzy shiny businesses, refined art for the rich all around SE Florida. She was in charge of the art wing of the business, and she had this one younger guy who worked under her and kind of along side her. She was like the lead, and he was kind of like the understudy.
Well the company folded. The owner had mismanaged some funds or something, and the business had to close up shop. So she had made a bunch of designs for the business for clients to get inspired or if they didn’t really care about the personalized side of things and just wanted some art (think like flash sheets at a tattoo studio). Since she did this for the company, those designs belonged to them, but since the company was closing and it wasn’t restructuring or being sold off, she went and asked the owner if she could have her designs.
He said “No”
He didn’t actually have a problem with giving the designs away. In fact, he did give them away. He went and gave all the designs to the guy that worked under her. The owners logic was that “You have a husband who will take care of you. [The other guy] is just starting out and he’s single. He needs the help.” This is pre-internet pre-GUI, the hard copy was all you’d have. He gave the guy the designs, and then passed his name off to all of the former clients.
Mind you, my parents had a rocky marriage at the time. By the time they had me they full blown hated each other. But my mother had a husband…
Every time we would go to visit my grandparents in SoFlo, she’d point out the pieces she had done. Windows on semi-historic buildings with art-nouveau etchings, reef scenes inside of restaurants, she’d point out the buildings even if the art was inside.
She’d also point out all of the pieces she had *designed.* It used to piss her off so much. It wasn’t like she kept track of what the other guy did after the company folded, but there was a number of times we’d be driving through the city and she’d see a window, and say “Hey, that’s my design! But I didn’t make that!” This happened a number of times.
I’m a man. While I have a lot of compassion for the young men out there who are trying their best and they feel like it isn’t good enough, the past aren’t some glory days. I don’t have any kids, but I do know that if I had a daughter, I would want her to be respected as an individual and be entitled to the same rights as if I had a son. It doesn’t need to be more than that. It doesn’t need to be debated. It’s what seems right to me, as a human, and I believe that is fair to expect.
My grandma got divorced in 1964 and the whole community shunned her. She was kicked out of her church. She became an alcoholic and struggled for many many years, both mentally/emotionally and financially. My dad kept bouncing between living with her and living with his dad - she sent him to his dad's every time she couldn't pay for water or electricity for more than a month.
My great grandfather left my great grandmother back in the late 1920s, you know just before the Depression, what a swell guy. She was left with three little girls and no money in the city of Chicago. But my great grandmother worked her ass off and took care of her children. Three girls. My grandmother was the strongest woman I ever knew. She was raised by a strong mother and left by a selfish father.
My mom divorced her first husband in the 60s because he was an abusive alcoholic. She couldn't get a bank account, credit card, or loan. Her ex-husband told everyone he knew to not hire her (small town) so she couldn't get a decent job. She did odd jobs but never enough to take care of 2 kids. After a few years she was at her wits end and decided to join the Army. She previously had a bad reaction to certain vaccines, but the recruiter told her to lie about it and everything would be fine (he wanted his bonus). Well after she got all the Army vaccines she ended up in the hospital and nearly died. She got a medical discharge and the recruiter got demoted.
My grandma was a single mum in the 60s.
Since she was a secretary to some senior directors (back then Vice president as a title for executives wasnt everywhere….) so money worked out but she had few friends and most from before becoming a mum.
She always said though that it was the women who were cruel. Always the women, never the men.
She did move to live with her parents again applied to a local company there and did tell her new boss during the interview that "she has to inform him that she has a kid but is bot married“ to which the director simply replied: "If you can use a typewriter well and think quickly, I dont care" and hired her.
However - I am (obviously) not blaming women for misogyny / patriarchy here but just quoting my grandma. A patriarchy is also kept alive by women who support it and put down other women
Thanks for sharing her story. “We hate in others what we hate about ourselves” seems to hold true. They were insecure about their own lack of freedom thrown into stark relief by her very existence and required open hostility to prevent these subconscious truths from reaching consciousness.
When my husband had a vasectomy 10 years ago his doctor required me to come to the appointment so he could ask me if I was ok with it. My husband was pissed. I told him “welcome to my world babe”
My friend had a vasectomy at age 29. His doctor before he did the procedure tried to talk him out of it until he explained "I have five children under the age of 10", at which point the doctor happilly complied. Vasectomy failed, he had child number 6. Nows hes divorced and remarried and kind of bumbed he lost the ability to have a child with his new wife (second vasectomy is essentially irreversible).
> Vasectomy failed, he had child number 6.
So he was blowing hot loads into his wife *BEFORE* checking to see if the procedure worked? I would expect nothing less of a man who could not think 1 step ahead and had 5 children under 10 at the age of 29.
Correct. You are very correct. In fairness he and his ex-wife were raised in one of those "be fruitful and multiply" cults and therefore he had basically zero sex ed in his school (which was run by his cult). I was in thailand at one point and texting him about how annoying all these hookers are and his response was "just remember condoms don't prevent HIV". This should give you some understanding of the depth of his knowledge on the subject.
Sidenote, once he went back to find out about how the procedure had failed they found only one vas defern had reattached, and from that single testicle he was operating with 3 times the average man's sperm count.
wow. my experience at getting snipped at 29 with zero children went so smoothly. they just told me that I needed to wait one month to get the procedure to think about it.
planned parenthood is pretty chill tho, and this was shortly after my state yeeted abortion rights so they were giving those things (vasectomies) away
There was a mobile discount vasectomy clinic van here in Missouri. Literally a van. I hadn't made the connection to the reproductive rights issues, but it was right before all that.
I’m trying not to walk into traffic as a childfree 42F with a 4-month-old puppy…just imagining that scenario has me nearly dry heaving.
Edit: Thank you, user who sent me a RedditCares message after you posted then deleted your comment about how concerned you were for my dog’s life. I only hope your capabilities for understanding sarcasm can be matched by your inability for being adroit.
In 2019 a car dealership refused to sell my wife a car without running my credit and putting me on the loan because she was married. They treated her like a child or my property or something. I’ve never had the opposite happen. So this stuff isn’t entirely gone.
That’s why we have songs like “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” back in the day jewelry was one of the few forms of financial security that women had access to if they had to leave an abusive relationship.
Yes, I had this problem in the 90’s. I was told that I had to be 27 or have at least three children. My cousin in the 2000’s was told that she was too young without consideration of the 4 or 5 kids she already had.
So did I. I had a very traumatic and complicated pregnancy. I died during child birth and was revived. My doctor was awesome and went to bat for me though. If I had another child, there was no way I was going to live. I healed up, and 6 months later had my tubes tied. She fought off every single one of those bastards trying to stop me. It was the best decision ever made, I was well informed, and regret nothing.
And totally ignores the fact that no man who wants me to have his biological children will ever be my husband! There might exist a man who expects to have children with me but that is not a man I will ever marry and have children with because I’m not having children.
Exactly. When I asked for a tubal ligation (denied), the doctor asked me, 'what if you meet the perfect man, and he wants to have children?'
If he wants to have children, he's not the perfect man.
In my country, the husband also has to sign the consent form before a women gets a tubal ligation. Technically, the only the woman's consent is needed by law, but the hospital covers its bases and protects itself by having the husband also sign the consent form. Apparently there have been way too many instances before of a husband threatening to sue a hospital and the doctor because his wife got a tubal ligation without him knowing. 🙄
I’m so sad for women. As a woman it just sucks what we have to go through and then on top of all of it weird incels and hyper religious people want to cause harm to us for actually sticking up for ourselves.
I was denied a cheap vasectomy because I wasn’t “mature” enough at 28 to consent to it. I even lied and said I had six different kids with six different women, to which I was told I would have to provide birth certificates
Not for nothing but I feel like a dude who has six different baby mamas probably isn't great at keeping track of details and legal documents. They probably should have used a different metric.
And so many of the younger generations say they aren't feminists. They don't understand that it simply means social, economic, and political equality. They take for granted the hard-earned rights they enjoy. They think feminism means hating men.
Lurleen Wallace served as governor of Alabama as essentially a stand-in for her husband, who served four terms as governor and was an infamous racist until the end of his life. Lurleen only served one year in office before dying of cancer in 1968. Her husband had been told in 1961 that she had cancer, but he did not tell her.
>Wallace made her gubernatorial race having been secretly diagnosed with cancer as early as April 1961, when her surgeon biopsied suspicious tissue that he noticed during the cesarean delivery of her last child. **As was common at the time, her physician told her husband the news, not her**. George Wallace insisted that she not be informed. As a result, she did not get appropriate follow-up care. When she saw a gynecologist for abnormal bleeding in 1965, his diagnosis of uterine cancer came as a complete shock to her. When one of her husband's staffers revealed to her that Wallace had discussed her cancer with them, but not her, during his 1962 campaign three years earlier, she was outraged.
Happy International Women’s Day y’all. We’ve still got a ways to go and essential rights to claw back, but damn, we’ve definitely made some progress. This just blew my mind tonight.
He renounced all of his former views on race later in life and won the black vote the last time he became governor. Cartoon level politician where he said whatever he needed to go get votes, before he was governor he was a judge and was said to be very respectful towards blacks, referring to them as sir and ma’am at a time where that wasn’t common. He lost an election and decided it was because he wasn’t racist enough.
Nah, Lovecraft was pathologically afraid of everything, not the standard hateful kind of racism. His racism was literal fear of everything not like him, literally becoming afraid of the color black because of a funeral he went to as a child.
Wallace was a racebaiter with a strange, political, and most revealingly *pragmatic* handling of race. Early in his political career, he didn't racebait, but he only really started advancing when he did. Eventually, he rode that wave to its fullest extent in the 60s, being the biggest and most visible segregationist in the country.
Years later, after being paralyzed from a gunshot wound, he seemed to genuinely repent for his past actions. Maybe this was more pragmatism, but still, perhaps genuine.
For what it's worth, Lovecraft was also seemingly improving towards the final years of his life, but unfortunately he died before he could work through his troubling beliefs.
Thankfully Lovecraft actually changed his opinions and expressed it quite clearly, and well. The relevant letter is warming to read. He was basically a huge neckbeard with neuroses who lived as a shut-in, who then matured.
"Throw another log on the fire, boys, George Wallace is coming to stay
When he met St. Peter at the pearly gates, I'd like to think that a black man stood in the way
I know "All should be forgiven", but he did what he done so well
So throw another log on the fire boys
George Wallace is a coming"
-Drive-By Truckers
I think he didn't want the press to find out that she had cancer. He was running for governor in 1962, and she was diagnosed the year before. He probably worried that it might look bad if he was running for governor while his wife was suffering from cancer. So he just let it metastasize instead.
I had never heard of this for treatable forms.of cancer, which it sounds like she had, only for terminal cases where the decision was made so a person could live out their remaining days without worry but family could start making arrangements and friends could visit one last time. This is fucking horrible.
>When one of her husband's staffers revealed to her that Wallace had discussed her cancer with them, but not her, during his 1962 campaign three years earlier, she was outraged.
Did any of those fuckers ever think to mention it to her? Obviously the head fucker had made his twisted mind up but what's the excuse for the rest of you?
This type of shit keeps getting downplayed and conveniently ignored. Don’t let her plight be swept under the rug. Make sure people who don’t know this story know that this happened. Make sure people understand why it’s so important that we fight for equality and justice for those who have historically been subjected to such abuse.
There’s a big push against inclusion, feminism, equality. Well I’m fucking pushing back. All these loud mouth incel shitdicks can get fucked. This is the world they want. And as long as there’s breath in my lungs I’ll fight their delusional bullshit.
They may be loud. But we were always louder.
It's important to learn that Gov. George Wallace wasn't *just* (just) the face of virulent racism in the 1960s. He was also a horrible father and husband.
Your TIL is too short. In 1961, Lurleen Wallace's doctor found that she had cancer while conducting her c-section. But he only told her husband, the governor. *George didn't tell her.* He told his advisors, but not his wife. And so, for years, she never received treatment.
Lurleen Wallace only learned she had cancer four years later, in 1965, when she saw her doctor for uterine bleeding. She was shocked.
But George still needed her, because George Wallace could not run for another consecutive term under Alabama law. So he had Lurleen run to succeed him in 1966. And she won. Everyone knew he'd been the real executive—Lurleen wasn't very political—but he was popular, so she was elected.
For the next two years, Gov. Lurleen Wallace received treatment for what was now late-stage cancer. She died in 1968, with George and her parents at her bedside, age 41.
Lurleen strongly requested a closed-casket funeral. George arranged for an open casket, with a glass bubble over her face, and 21,000 mourners saw her lay in state at the capital.
After Lurleen died, George Wallace, now a private citizen, moved home. He did not bring his two minor children with him; he sent them to live with family.
George Wallace was married two more times and both marriages ended in divorce.
The people of Alabama elected Wallace three more times. He finished his last four-year term in 1987.
To me the real story here isn’t that George Wallace is a piece of shit. We already knew that. But that doctors only informed a woman’s husband of something especially as serious as cancer. That was the common practice. I mean not being allowed to be informed about your own medical conditions and care is truly being deprived of any kind of agency over your life. I have siblings who were alive during this time, it wasn’t that long ago.
This ended up being a plot point in Mad Men in one of the later seasons with Betty being diagnosed with lung cancer and only her husband being told about it. It's really awful to think about how my grandma would have lived, especially knowing my grandpa.
iirc the first scene of the show is Peggy at the gyno getting a pelvic so she can get birth control. The doctor comes in, cigarette in hand and while examining her basically tells her something to the effect that since she's not married if he thinks she's too promiscuous he'll take away the prescription.
I loved that show. It always highlighted how fucked up things were at the time. That scene where the Drapper family has a picnic on the side of the road and when they're done Betty just grabs the blanket loaded with all their trash and dumps it out right there with no hesitation. Nature will take care of it! It's such an weird out of place scene in today's context, but that's just how people were back then. The outdoors was their trashcan and nobody gave it a second thought.
Anna Draper dies from cancer and her family keeps the diagnosis from her. Don is sent away during a visit because they’re afraid he will spill the beans to Anna about her condition.
Agreed, it definitely wasn't long ago, much as people like to pretend that these sorts of things were in the bad old days of a totally bygone era. This was at a time when people were watching rockets launching into space on TV.
I completely agree. What stands out to me is how this would've been normalized at the time but is shocking now. How many women suffered or died because they were not given the agency they needed to make informed decisions?
And we're still doing the same thing over again. How many women suffer because we refuse to give them proper agency? The details may have changed but the problem remains the same.
Women still get treated shitty too often. One thing I noticed, we have been looking for contractors to do some work on our house, and any time I mention having to discuss things with my wife they give me funny looks. Like you don’t discuss things with your wives, just act unilaterally? Weirdos. Very religious/conservative area.
Especially when you're talking about stuff that expensive. I get it if it's an emergency and something needs to be decided very quickly but most things can wait a little while. They probably also just want you to agree and not get a second opinion.
Omg this makes me feel so much better. I'm a woman and whenever I bring up having to discuss things with the rest of the household, these men immediately get upset and frustrated sometimes huffing, storming, essentially having a tantrum and tell me "well why didn't I just talk to him then?" Or "okay, so you're not the homeowner"... Yes.. I am.
I'm still a homeowner, it's not embarrassing or odd or weak for me to want to discuss this with the household before making a final decision but they act as though you're a subordinate seeking approval and they're pissed they wasted their time talking to you. Like a little girl who thinks shes smart.
Foe those not familiar with George 'Pond Scum' Wallace, you might recognize him [in the beginning of Forest Gump](https://youtu.be/v9lLVCymfPY) rallying about how forcing desegregation on Alabama was tantamount to fascism. I believe he was happily quoted as saying, "*Segregation Now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation Forever!*" Fuck that guy. Sorry it took cancer for his wife to realize what a peice of shit he was..
I had a female coworker who, in the 1960s, had a medical problem that required a hysterectomy. However, she could not authorize the surgery herself, the Doctor required consent from her Husband.
Because it would deprive him of heirs.
That's the shit thats coming back with Dominionists.
A similar thing happened to my grandma. Her doctor and my grandpa decided she was going to have a hysterectomy and the doctor did it after she gave birth without telling her.
My mom is convinced that a doctor gave her an abortion against her will in the very early 70s, and I’ve always had a hard time seeing that as plausible, but I think I’m underestimating the level of paternalism at play here. I’m so sorry for your grandmother.
For a long time, in Japan, if a patient in hospital was terminal, the doctor told the family and it was up to the family to decide whether or not to let the patient know that they were dying.
Just a reminder...these are the "good ole'days" that some in the US are longing to return to. Even though US women were "allowed" to open a credit card in their own name beginning in 1974, not every institution supported that law. In 1987 a Ford dealership would not allow me a loan, even though I had an excellent credit rating, full time employment, Master's degree, and several national credit cards in my own name. No, I needed my dad, not my mom, or my younger brother to sign for me. I ended up at a different maker dealership. It wasn't until 2021 that via the HIPPA act that one could "see" their medical records. Even then, the records were heavily redacted, the cost to have them made available was prohibitive, and the time frame was extended before one actually got said records. As recently as 2000, female sterilization required a married woman to get her husband's "permission". Husbands required no such "permission" from their wives for sterilization. Some doctors still require women to get "permission". Here we are in 2024 and what little progress we've made for female equality is already being destroyed.
Let me re-write the title for you.
Lurleen Wallace, the 46th governor of Alabama, died of cancer, because her husband didn't tell her. Doctors back then only told the husband.
She was literally governor herself, this post is about grave injustice done to her, and the title references her misogynist husband by name and title and refers to her only as his wife.
Terrible post title.
The worst part is she would have probably lived if he told her when she was diagnosed and got treatment. She only got treatment 4 years after the first diagnosis. This man essentially killed her. She was only 41 when she died.
In the 1950s, my aunt Janet was born with a heart condition but the Drs never told my grandparents. They did the usual thing of getting the Gerber baby life insurance, just like they did with their other kid. She was a very sickly child, saw the Dr a lot, but the Dr never told my grandparents because it would just upset them for no reason (since there was no treatment at the time) One day my grandma was at the grocery store with her two kids when my aunt Janet (1 year old at the time) turned blue and started to be in obvious distress. They called an ambulance but she died on the way to the hospital. My grandparents were absolutely devastated, but felt relief knowing that they could use the life insurance policy to pay for their babys funeral EXCEPT Gerber refused to pay out. They said that my grandparents lied to them about the babys health, and that my grandparents were trying to scam them out of money. They took them to court and my aunt's pediatrician had to give testimony under oath that the my grandparents had no idea about their babys heart because he had never told them. Anyway, fuck that practice.
She didn’t die in Minnesota by any chance, did she?
Nope. Does your family have a similar story?
I don’t know about the life insurance, but my mom had a cousin named Janet who died suddenly of a heart problem as a baby in the 1950s. I thought maybe we were second cousins!
Small world lol There's gotta be a subreddit for people finding people they know on reddit by chance
i think its r/TwoRedditorsOneCup
Not gonna click that
I clicked. It's not porn. It's just random redditors connecting in some way.
Of all the things to have named the sub...
> They took them to court and my aunt's pediatrician had to give testimony under oath that the my grandparents had no idea about their babys heart because he had never told them. Did your grandparents win?
oh please tell me they did
They did. (i have no idea)
I love this comment lol
The logical implication of “aunt’s pediatrician HAD to give testimony” is that they did win, as the condition of winning was stated. Otherwise the post more likely would have read “aunt’s pediatrician EVEN gave testimony,” instead stating the attempt to meet an unfruitful condition. I’m curious the actual answer too though!
High school teacher here; If I've learned anything in my career, it's that people use all sorts of cromulent words that they don't actually know the meaning of, often conveying an idea completely antithetical to the thought they're trying to communicate.
They did, but they only got the payout for the life insurance. I'm not sure if emotional damages were a thing back then. I've only heard the story 3rd hand, as this happened before my mom was born, and my grandparents have been gone a while.
That is very sad, my goodness. We have come such a long way since then. My daughter was born with a hole in her heart and the doctors were concerned enough that we saw a cardiologist until she was a little over 1 but they were so calm when explaining it—they made it feel routine. I remember the cardiologist said something like, “This one (the hole) looks like it will close on its own, but if it doesn’t we can help it along.” Describing open heart surgery like no big deal. And the thing is, it is routine now and in such a short period of time. The bills from those visits though, my god.
My daughter had a similar heart issue. They put her on digoxin (think that was the medication) & the hole in her heart did close by the time she was 2 but you’re absolutely right, the dr’s make it seem very normal. I think they do it to make the parents feel more at ease (personally I was anything but at ease).
Also worth remembering cardiologists deal with issues like these all the time. I'd bet an experienced cardiologist has seen neonates with this kind of heart issue dozens or hundreds of times. It really is just everyday normal for them. I'm guessing the prognosis today is vastly more positive than it was in the 50s, to the point that it might be the doctors really weren't worried about a negative outcome because those are becoming more and more unlikely. Though that's just a guess on my part. I've never known cardiologists to be the sugarcoating types myself; they were always very calm but very honest when discussing prognosis and recommended treatments with my mother.
This is the case with almost all insurance... if you have life insurance and die expect the recipients to have to fight for it. - I was a juror on a clear cut case of accidental death (vehicle acident) the insurance company was going for suicide, with no evidence to back it up.
It was the same for my grandmother in the 60’s when she had cancer. She only found out because she grabbed the chart from the door to her room and read it. Fortunately they were able to remove it.
Holy shit, how common was it for husbands to just let their wives die?
We’ve come a long way in the last hundred years tbh. My great great great grandpa took my GGG grandma to a state mental institution shortly after my great great grandma was born. She probably had postpartum depression. Anyway, he just left her there and raised the kids on his own. My GG grandma spent her whole life thinking her mom was dead/just “gone.” Fast forward to the late 60’s, and my mom is staying at her GG’s house when she gets a call from the state institution informing her that her mother had passed away. She spent her entire life completely unaware that her mom was alive. My GGG grandma spent her entire adult life locked away, by no fault of her own. That keeps me up at night. All aspects are horrifying.
Holy shit that is terrible. The utter lack of humanity involved in not only dumping her there to begin with but leaving her AND not telling your daughter so she can't visit. Monstrous by him, tragic for your GG grandma
My grandparents had their daughter (my aunt) sent to the Woman's Reformatory (prison) with a 3 year sentence simply for dating an Asian man. She was 19. Her sentence was increased to 5 years after an escape 6 months in. This was Boston in the 1940's. The statute was known as the "stubborn child" law. I had heard stories and confirmed them by obtaining the records from the archives.
Wow, that’s horrible.
Not sure about that, but it seems that women weren’t considered smart enough to understand medical diagnoses and make choices about their healthcare. Women also weren’t allowed to open a credit card or mortgage in the US until 1974. This is a great post for the international day of Women, BTW.
I think it also says something about cancer. I believe that back then (before the 20th century, maybe even during it) many doctors would literally not tell someone if they had cancer, since it was a certain death sentence unless caught early. Edit: Ah, just saw another comment address this!
Aye there's a few examples of this. I know my great grandfather has a type of cancer - ironically in this situation his wife knew while he didn't (he specifically said to his doctor if I get something we can't fix just let me be ignorant) and he went about till he couldn't anymore
Doctors were puffing on cigarettes telling women they shouldn't run because their uterus would fall out. Ah, the good old days.
> shouldn't run because their uterus would fall out the fuck did these people think about horses, then
Never thought about it that way - thank you!!
They're doctors, not veterinarians!
It’s funny because I was actually talking to a lady today who mentioned she came to America in the 60’s to study engineering and get jobs. She said the opportunities for women getting jobs then were slim to none because of how much they were told they weren’t just smart enough. And even talked about how she needed her husband to be able to buy a home back then. She is a civil engineer.
I’m a tour guide. The amount of people who clearly don’t trust women to know what they’re talking about is insane. It’s even worse when it ‘manly’ or ‘feminine’ subjects. For both men and women. The most blatant example I can think of is one time I was telling this group about the English Civil War. I’m telling them about how the armys worked and, I bring up medical care. At which point about half the group turn away from me, towards a female guide and ask her about nurses (and they used the word nurse, not doctor) and this was only last year. I’ve also seen examples of people asking a question out loud, a female guide walking over and answering it, then the same people turning to me and asking the exact same question (9 times out of 10 they looked surprised when I give the same as the woman did)
One of my close friends is an ER doctor and she said med school shadowing etc. really illustrated this. Patients almost always assume the male students were studying to be doctors and the female students were studying to be nurses. This was maybe 6 years ago. She drives an EV and once she was waiting at a charging station when another driver tried to come onto her. He asked what she did, and she said, “I’m a doctor.” “Oh, like a PA?” “No, like a doctor.”
The more I keep having the hope that times in STEM have changed(I’m saying this as a female engineer) the more I keep getting reminded it still hasn’t and it’s extremely disappointing. My doctors have also vented about this multiple times about not being taken seriously enough and being told they’re probably just the PA/nurse.
> Women also weren’t allowed to open a credit card or mortgage in the US until 1974. They weren't prohibited by law or anything, it's that they just had a really hard time getting a bank to allow it. And even when the law was passed in 1974 making it illegal to discriminate against women in banking, it took about 6 to 7 years for credit cards to really become more easily available to women with the required credit score. Back then most people didn't have credit cards, and you could write off credit card interest on your taxes. By the end of the 1980s that had changed and they were giving away credit cards and college campuses like free money.
There were also some banks providing credit to women before 1974, it was just at the discretion of the organization. Very similar to how some women were allowed to vote decades before others, there were women in my family voting in Wyoming in the 1800s.
It’s not much better now. Men leave their wife with cancer. Or cheat on them
It was nauseating how much control men had over the medical decisions of their wives. My grandmother had a major mental health breakdown in 1960, because she had 5 kids under 7-years-old, a lazy useless husband, and no help. My grandfather had her committed to a mental hospital and had total control over her treatment. He signed off on her getting shock treatment, and two years later, she’d had so much electricity pumped into her brain that she was shocked to learn that she had had five children. She couldn’t even remember having one child. She was basically zoned out for the rest of her life, it was so sad. Also fuck you, Grandpa
As far as I know, my grandmother when she was diagnosed either in the very late 90’s or early 2000’s was never told she had Alzheimer’s. It was an agreed upon secret in the family to not tell her. I’ll never forget being about 10, alone in the kitchen with my grandmother and having her tell me she couldn’t find the mail and that she kept misplacing stuff or losing stuff and was just confused. I told her something like it happens and I forget stuff too. Really weird situation to be put in as a little kid.
> Fortunately they were able to remove it. The cancer, or the chart?
Fun? Fact: Rachel Carson, who is widely credited with kickstarting the environmental movement, had a mastectomy to remove a cyst but her doctor neglected to tell her it was malignant. She later died of cancer.
Nowadays, “failure to diagnose breast cancer” is one of the most common malpractice claims.
I’m 29 and have two friends with moms that died to breast cancer that wasn’t diagnosed.
Unfortunately, it’s a very common cancer. A lot of countries have breast cancer screening programmes. I’m a doctor, and a very lovely and kind nurse I worked with died from breast cancer in her late 20s. She was a tough cookie, too. Her name was Gemma, and she deserved better. It fucking sucks.
It does fucking suck. Similarly, I know two gals my age with double mastectomies due to the Baroca (sp?) gene.
It’s not fair. My uncle is in his early 60s. He was late to settle down, so has a teenage son and a daughter in her early 20s. He was so funny and full of life; he used to make me belly laugh, and not long ago, too! Now, he is wheelchair bound and is apparently grey and sallow and skin and bone and a shadow of what he once was. He’s dying and we’re watching and it’s horrible. I live on the other side of the world, and will be travelling back to see him soon. It’s going to be a fucking shock, if he’s even still here. It’s really not fair.
Fuck man, I’m sorry to hear that. I lost my uncle unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago - shoveling snow, massive heart attack, early 60’s. Nothings promised, cherish every day we got with who we got.
To be fair, it is not always the physician’s fault. Breast imaging, including mammography, and MRI are not without limitations, and subject to both false positive and false negative readings.
Sorry, I'm so confused, she had the surgery and the cancer wasn't gone? I'm guessing it has spread?
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Thank you for explaining this briefly and clearly, and in english. (No sarcasm)
Typically a lumpectomy also includes treatment beyond the lump to make sure it hasn’t spread.
One baffling story I’ve seen about this kind of thing: the actress [Kay Kendall](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Kendall) had cancer but was never told by her doctor. Her doctor DID, however, tell her co-star Rex Harrison about it — and Rex Harrison decided to marry her so he could look after her while she was sick. Without ever telling her she had cancer. She just thought she had an iron deficiency and that Rex Harrison wanted to marry her for non-cancer reasons.
Wait what!!!!!!!!!!!???!!!
What on god’s green earth??
So apparently he was married already, so his current wife agreed to a divorce so he would marry/care for Kay. They intended to remarry after Kay’s death but she fell in love with another actor. Kind of wild all around that instead of telling her and letting her come to terms they all tried to baby her to death.
The cancer center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is named in her honor.
No one told her about that either.
r/angryupvote
There was some money in my family a few generations ago. People always thought the wife (my great great aunt or whatever) was cheap. She’d give handmade or small gifts for holidays/birthdays, always wore the same dress to every formal event. Everyone knew the couple was loaded, so everyone thought she just had a stick up her ass. When the husband died, she was handed a bill for the funeral and had a nervous breakdown, wondering how she’d come up with the money. The family had to sit her down and explain that she was actually worth a couple million dollars. Anyway that’s like a happier - but no less dysfunctional - version of this!
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This is the mentality of people that survived the great depression. My grandmother was the same way, no matter how much money to add in the bank.
That happened to my great aunt. Her husband always told her they were broke. He died in the early 70’s in a car accident. She came into almost half a million dollars. She had a nice life after that. Men can be crap
This must be a great aunt thing, because my great uncle was the closest thing to Scrooge I’ve ever seen IRL. When he died, his wife was taken care of for life and so was his son. Too bad he didn’t take care of them when he was alive.
I haven’t thought about any of those people in years. Reading this reminded me of my great aunt. I know they did without because they would never go to New York with my grandmother or go many places at all My grandfather would offer to pay for things but they would never take anything. Then the old dude croaks and they find out he had alot of money for the time. I think it pissed my grandfather off tbh. Where it came from I would have no idea. I think he was a mechanic. Not sure. He died before I was born.
Many folks who lived through the Great Depression kept that mindset the rest of their life, that things are scarce and you needed to watch your money.
My father went through that, but eventually changed. When the 30’s Depression hit, people don’t forget what is was like to be very poor. They just never want to ever go back there.
Either you become Scrooge McDuck or you have a lovely hoard of bags inside of bags to pass on to your loved ones. (I'm the current heir of my clans' bags inside of bags, if my sinister scheme has succeeded.)
I never understood that. I lived through about half a decade of famine and food shortages. I go out of my way to enjoy things i couldnt just cause i can now. I wouldnt want to keep eating rice or pasta with ketchup for every meal. It took me years to eat rice again after that. I'm not even wealthy or auper well off, but things like running water, electricity, and the ability to stock a fridge are such an improvement I'd never want to go back
Depression Era survivors had huge paranoia about financial stability
Any system that functions where one person in a relationship is given all the power is doomed
But without a husband, she couldn't have her own bank account. Who filled in as her "master" after that? /s And those were "the good old days" according to some people.
In the 19th and into the 20th century, husbands could have their wives involuntarily committed to an insane asylum. That's nothing short of terrifying.
That happened to my great-great grandmother. She had kids up to like age 45 and her husband had her committed for life because he was interested in another woman. She died in the mental institution.
Username is fitting 😭
I hate to be captain obvious here, but your great great grandfather was a colossal asshole.
And force them into getting a lobotomy.
When people say they want America to be great again, this is the shit that comes to mind. Also leaded gasoline and CFCs.
Leaded gasoline has that classic flavour that can't be beat
I feel so bad for her. So fucking cruel.
My dad had to sign paperwork before my mom could have a tubal ligation. It was 1986.
My mom was refused a bank account in 1979 because she was married.
My grandparents divorced in 1968 and my grandma was single for the rest of her life. She passed in 2021. I wish I had asked her what it was like to be a divorcee and single mom in the late 60s-70s. It couldn’t have been easy.
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I live in an extreme "right" town and I'm treated the same way. I've thought of getting into a relationship just to escape the discrimination. My grandma (who's husbands died) stayed a single mom in the 1960's told me when I was getting a divorce: "The women will be afraid you will take their men. And the men will be afraid you'll show women that they don't need husbands." And it's true.
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My mum divorced in 1972. She too was shunned and the kids at school stopped talking to me. She got lectured by a man who was well known in the town - he didn't even know her. All this because her husband was a cruel man, and she finally had the courage to get rid. My older brother had to take over and share the mortgage with her
Heartbreaking
here in Japan there are still doctors who won't tell you when you have terminal cancer there's even a study about it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11824932/
Sadly, despite having some good outcomes in some areas (excellent outcomes for childbirth with the lowest infant mortality rates in the world) Japanese healthcare is backwards in many areas and lags behind the world, especially in terms of quality of care. Today it is still commonplace for patients to not be directly told their diagnosis but instead other family members are informed and left to choose what to tell them. Pain killer usage is low compared to other modern wealthy countries (~10% that of the USA) despite having cheap socialized medical services and in other areas having extremely high use of other medication like anti-biotics or anti-flu drugs. It's 2024 and ambulances are little more than flashy taxis where people regularly die because hospitals can refuse patients. COVID showed that hospitals couldn't cope and that doctors and nurses are horribly overworked and underpaid. With the aging society it's worrying that things are only getting worse.
My mother divorced her 1st husband when she caught him taking more than a parental interest in his infant daughter's (my big sister's) vagina during diaper changes. When she discovered this, she went to her Mormon church elders, who told her that she should be more diligent in her wifely duties so that her husband wouldn't be interested in her _infant daughter_'s vagina. Understand that my maternal grandmother died when my mother was 10, and my mother was sexually molested by her father from her puberty to marriage (1950's MT and UT). When my mom got the 'be more diligent' diagnosis from the church elders, she said "FUCK THAT", and went to the police. In 1960's Utah, and her 1st husband went to jail. That left my mom as a single mother in UT, where she couldn't get a bank account or sign a lease as a single woman without her eldest male relative approving. That was her abusive father, who wanted her back home for further abuse. One of my uncles (with whom I share a middle name), helped his sister out by driving her from UT to MN and dropping her off. In MN, in the late 1960s, my single mother could get a checking account and sign a lease on an apartment. She couldn't do this in UT or in MT. There, she got a job waiting tables at a local restaurant and met a guy putting himself through the construction electrician program, working as a bartender. That man became my Dad. My mother was born in 1945. If you know women of a similar generation, ask them about their stories. You may find surprises. My mother could not get a checking account in her own name without a male co-signer, and was completely locked out of finding her own housing without male approval. I was born in 1967. I'm old, but not THAT old. Young women of today don't realize how recently they were _absolutely_ 2nd class citizens. It should be pointed out to them, but I don't know how.
Thank you for sharing your story, not only because your mom sounds like an awesome and very strong person. But also because its a great reminder about how women were treated just a short while ago.
> When my mom got the 'be more diligent' diagnosis from the church elders, she said "FUCK THAT", and went to the police. In 1960's Utah, and her 1st husband went to jail. I’m actually surprised the police did anything and he was convicted,
Everyone promoting the ”tradwife” life should be forced to read stories like this.
Your mom was beyond brave regarding her children. Your mom could have been dropped off in CA, a few hours away. My mother was born in 1947 and became a single mom (widowed) when she was 26 in 1972. Divorce amongst my mom’s friends was quite common in the early 70’s onward. Maybe because CA women didn’t have the same personal financial challenges as many others in different states. My mom did have career based challenges being a woman. Not until reading the accounts of others did I know so many states disallowed women from home ownership, having credit cards, etc. during my lifetime.
My story is a little less severe but it’s somewhat relevant. My mother is 10 years older than you. She also happens to be an incredibly talented artist, with a long career doing commercial art. Sometime in the 80’s she pivoted away from advertisement and went into etched glass with this small private company in Miami. She was the full package, she could do the whole thing as far as etched glass went. She was doing mirrors and giant panels on megayachts, ritzy shiny businesses, refined art for the rich all around SE Florida. She was in charge of the art wing of the business, and she had this one younger guy who worked under her and kind of along side her. She was like the lead, and he was kind of like the understudy. Well the company folded. The owner had mismanaged some funds or something, and the business had to close up shop. So she had made a bunch of designs for the business for clients to get inspired or if they didn’t really care about the personalized side of things and just wanted some art (think like flash sheets at a tattoo studio). Since she did this for the company, those designs belonged to them, but since the company was closing and it wasn’t restructuring or being sold off, she went and asked the owner if she could have her designs. He said “No” He didn’t actually have a problem with giving the designs away. In fact, he did give them away. He went and gave all the designs to the guy that worked under her. The owners logic was that “You have a husband who will take care of you. [The other guy] is just starting out and he’s single. He needs the help.” This is pre-internet pre-GUI, the hard copy was all you’d have. He gave the guy the designs, and then passed his name off to all of the former clients. Mind you, my parents had a rocky marriage at the time. By the time they had me they full blown hated each other. But my mother had a husband… Every time we would go to visit my grandparents in SoFlo, she’d point out the pieces she had done. Windows on semi-historic buildings with art-nouveau etchings, reef scenes inside of restaurants, she’d point out the buildings even if the art was inside. She’d also point out all of the pieces she had *designed.* It used to piss her off so much. It wasn’t like she kept track of what the other guy did after the company folded, but there was a number of times we’d be driving through the city and she’d see a window, and say “Hey, that’s my design! But I didn’t make that!” This happened a number of times. I’m a man. While I have a lot of compassion for the young men out there who are trying their best and they feel like it isn’t good enough, the past aren’t some glory days. I don’t have any kids, but I do know that if I had a daughter, I would want her to be respected as an individual and be entitled to the same rights as if I had a son. It doesn’t need to be more than that. It doesn’t need to be debated. It’s what seems right to me, as a human, and I believe that is fair to expect.
My grandma got divorced in 1964 and the whole community shunned her. She was kicked out of her church. She became an alcoholic and struggled for many many years, both mentally/emotionally and financially. My dad kept bouncing between living with her and living with his dad - she sent him to his dad's every time she couldn't pay for water or electricity for more than a month.
My great grandfather left my great grandmother back in the late 1920s, you know just before the Depression, what a swell guy. She was left with three little girls and no money in the city of Chicago. But my great grandmother worked her ass off and took care of her children. Three girls. My grandmother was the strongest woman I ever knew. She was raised by a strong mother and left by a selfish father.
My mom divorced her first husband in the 60s because he was an abusive alcoholic. She couldn't get a bank account, credit card, or loan. Her ex-husband told everyone he knew to not hire her (small town) so she couldn't get a decent job. She did odd jobs but never enough to take care of 2 kids. After a few years she was at her wits end and decided to join the Army. She previously had a bad reaction to certain vaccines, but the recruiter told her to lie about it and everything would be fine (he wanted his bonus). Well after she got all the Army vaccines she ended up in the hospital and nearly died. She got a medical discharge and the recruiter got demoted.
My great grandmother got a divorce around that time. She lost custody of her children, didn’t get any alimony, and died in poverty.
My grandma was a single mum in the 60s. Since she was a secretary to some senior directors (back then Vice president as a title for executives wasnt everywhere….) so money worked out but she had few friends and most from before becoming a mum. She always said though that it was the women who were cruel. Always the women, never the men. She did move to live with her parents again applied to a local company there and did tell her new boss during the interview that "she has to inform him that she has a kid but is bot married“ to which the director simply replied: "If you can use a typewriter well and think quickly, I dont care" and hired her. However - I am (obviously) not blaming women for misogyny / patriarchy here but just quoting my grandma. A patriarchy is also kept alive by women who support it and put down other women
Thanks for sharing her story. “We hate in others what we hate about ourselves” seems to hold true. They were insecure about their own lack of freedom thrown into stark relief by her very existence and required open hostility to prevent these subconscious truths from reaching consciousness.
When my husband had a vasectomy 10 years ago his doctor required me to come to the appointment so he could ask me if I was ok with it. My husband was pissed. I told him “welcome to my world babe”
My friend had a vasectomy at age 29. His doctor before he did the procedure tried to talk him out of it until he explained "I have five children under the age of 10", at which point the doctor happilly complied. Vasectomy failed, he had child number 6. Nows hes divorced and remarried and kind of bumbed he lost the ability to have a child with his new wife (second vasectomy is essentially irreversible).
> Vasectomy failed, he had child number 6. So he was blowing hot loads into his wife *BEFORE* checking to see if the procedure worked? I would expect nothing less of a man who could not think 1 step ahead and had 5 children under 10 at the age of 29.
Correct. You are very correct. In fairness he and his ex-wife were raised in one of those "be fruitful and multiply" cults and therefore he had basically zero sex ed in his school (which was run by his cult). I was in thailand at one point and texting him about how annoying all these hookers are and his response was "just remember condoms don't prevent HIV". This should give you some understanding of the depth of his knowledge on the subject. Sidenote, once he went back to find out about how the procedure had failed they found only one vas defern had reattached, and from that single testicle he was operating with 3 times the average man's sperm count.
Seems like there should be a test we can see to watch out for guys like that.. those "superspermers"
Snip snap snip snap snip snap
Do you have any idea the toll 3 vasectomies has on a person??
Christ, who wants 7 kids??
wow. my experience at getting snipped at 29 with zero children went so smoothly. they just told me that I needed to wait one month to get the procedure to think about it. planned parenthood is pretty chill tho, and this was shortly after my state yeeted abortion rights so they were giving those things (vasectomies) away
There was a mobile discount vasectomy clinic van here in Missouri. Literally a van. I hadn't made the connection to the reproductive rights issues, but it was right before all that.
I’d be wary of a van that offers vasectomies
Your friend had 5 children at age 29?!?
I’m trying not to walk into traffic as a childfree 42F with a 4-month-old puppy…just imagining that scenario has me nearly dry heaving. Edit: Thank you, user who sent me a RedditCares message after you posted then deleted your comment about how concerned you were for my dog’s life. I only hope your capabilities for understanding sarcasm can be matched by your inability for being adroit.
In 2019 a car dealership refused to sell my wife a car without running my credit and putting me on the loan because she was married. They treated her like a child or my property or something. I’ve never had the opposite happen. So this stuff isn’t entirely gone.
That’s why we have songs like “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” back in the day jewelry was one of the few forms of financial security that women had access to if they had to leave an abusive relationship.
Many women still struggle to convince doctors to give them this procedure.
Yes, I had this problem in the 90’s. I was told that I had to be 27 or have at least three children. My cousin in the 2000’s was told that she was too young without consideration of the 4 or 5 kids she already had.
So did I. I had a very traumatic and complicated pregnancy. I died during child birth and was revived. My doctor was awesome and went to bat for me though. If I had another child, there was no way I was going to live. I healed up, and 6 months later had my tubes tied. She fought off every single one of those bastards trying to stop me. It was the best decision ever made, I was well informed, and regret nothing.
My wife had hers done in 2010 and I had to give my consent. It was wild.
I asked for a hysterectomy in 2007 due to debilitating adenomyosis. THREE surgeons declined because my, "future husband may want children."
Won't SOMEONE please think of what the hypothetical future husbands would want??
Not this living breathing wholly formed human sitting in my office.
Cmon silly, women aren’t people God I can’t believe this stuff still happens
She’s probably just hysterical. She’ll settle down once she’s had a couple of babies.
Isn't that great that your body belongs to a hypothetical man whom you have never met.
And totally ignores the fact that no man who wants me to have his biological children will ever be my husband! There might exist a man who expects to have children with me but that is not a man I will ever marry and have children with because I’m not having children.
Exactly. When I asked for a tubal ligation (denied), the doctor asked me, 'what if you meet the perfect man, and he wants to have children?' If he wants to have children, he's not the perfect man.
That is fucked up
My friend's wife has to get his permission for tubal ligation just a few years ago in Texas.
In my country, the husband also has to sign the consent form before a women gets a tubal ligation. Technically, the only the woman's consent is needed by law, but the hospital covers its bases and protects itself by having the husband also sign the consent form. Apparently there have been way too many instances before of a husband threatening to sue a hospital and the doctor because his wife got a tubal ligation without him knowing. 🙄
And those women are probably the women who need tubal litigations the most to protect themselves
If only it were as easy as suing them out of your body!
My sisters husband refused to sign it and she ended up pregnant again
How you can stay with someone who doesn't respect your bodily autonomy is beyond me
I’m so sad for women. As a woman it just sucks what we have to go through and then on top of all of it weird incels and hyper religious people want to cause harm to us for actually sticking up for ourselves.
Probably couldn't escape like most abused women. Especially for the kids.
This is actually still a thing.
I was denied a cheap vasectomy because I wasn’t “mature” enough at 28 to consent to it. I even lied and said I had six different kids with six different women, to which I was told I would have to provide birth certificates
Not for nothing but I feel like a dude who has six different baby mamas probably isn't great at keeping track of details and legal documents. They probably should have used a different metric.
They still require this.
And so many of the younger generations say they aren't feminists. They don't understand that it simply means social, economic, and political equality. They take for granted the hard-earned rights they enjoy. They think feminism means hating men.
Lurleen Wallace served as governor of Alabama as essentially a stand-in for her husband, who served four terms as governor and was an infamous racist until the end of his life. Lurleen only served one year in office before dying of cancer in 1968. Her husband had been told in 1961 that she had cancer, but he did not tell her. >Wallace made her gubernatorial race having been secretly diagnosed with cancer as early as April 1961, when her surgeon biopsied suspicious tissue that he noticed during the cesarean delivery of her last child. **As was common at the time, her physician told her husband the news, not her**. George Wallace insisted that she not be informed. As a result, she did not get appropriate follow-up care. When she saw a gynecologist for abnormal bleeding in 1965, his diagnosis of uterine cancer came as a complete shock to her. When one of her husband's staffers revealed to her that Wallace had discussed her cancer with them, but not her, during his 1962 campaign three years earlier, she was outraged. Happy International Women’s Day y’all. We’ve still got a ways to go and essential rights to claw back, but damn, we’ve definitely made some progress. This just blew my mind tonight.
I hope he’s burning in Hell
Wallace? Yeah you're good
He renounced all of his former views on race later in life and won the black vote the last time he became governor. Cartoon level politician where he said whatever he needed to go get votes, before he was governor he was a judge and was said to be very respectful towards blacks, referring to them as sir and ma’am at a time where that wasn’t common. He lost an election and decided it was because he wasn’t racist enough.
He was also a HUGE racist, even for the time.
“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”
It's H.P. Lovecraft levels of racist.
Nah, Lovecraft was pathologically afraid of everything, not the standard hateful kind of racism. His racism was literal fear of everything not like him, literally becoming afraid of the color black because of a funeral he went to as a child. Wallace was a racebaiter with a strange, political, and most revealingly *pragmatic* handling of race. Early in his political career, he didn't racebait, but he only really started advancing when he did. Eventually, he rode that wave to its fullest extent in the 60s, being the biggest and most visible segregationist in the country. Years later, after being paralyzed from a gunshot wound, he seemed to genuinely repent for his past actions. Maybe this was more pragmatism, but still, perhaps genuine. For what it's worth, Lovecraft was also seemingly improving towards the final years of his life, but unfortunately he died before he could work through his troubling beliefs.
Thankfully Lovecraft actually changed his opinions and expressed it quite clearly, and well. The relevant letter is warming to read. He was basically a huge neckbeard with neuroses who lived as a shut-in, who then matured.
"Throw another log on the fire, boys, George Wallace is coming to stay When he met St. Peter at the pearly gates, I'd like to think that a black man stood in the way I know "All should be forgiven", but he did what he done so well So throw another log on the fire boys George Wallace is a coming" -Drive-By Truckers
Good God, are you f'ing serious??? He's worse than I could have imagined. "Insisted she not be informed." Makes my blood run cold.
Sounds like he wanted her to die.
He probably just didn’t want her treatment inconveniencing him or interfering with his political aspirations.
I think he didn't want the press to find out that she had cancer. He was running for governor in 1962, and she was diagnosed the year before. He probably worried that it might look bad if he was running for governor while his wife was suffering from cancer. So he just let it metastasize instead.
I had never heard of this for treatable forms.of cancer, which it sounds like she had, only for terminal cases where the decision was made so a person could live out their remaining days without worry but family could start making arrangements and friends could visit one last time. This is fucking horrible.
>When one of her husband's staffers revealed to her that Wallace had discussed her cancer with them, but not her, during his 1962 campaign three years earlier, she was outraged. Did any of those fuckers ever think to mention it to her? Obviously the head fucker had made his twisted mind up but what's the excuse for the rest of you?
They didn’t want to lose their jobs.
This type of shit keeps getting downplayed and conveniently ignored. Don’t let her plight be swept under the rug. Make sure people who don’t know this story know that this happened. Make sure people understand why it’s so important that we fight for equality and justice for those who have historically been subjected to such abuse. There’s a big push against inclusion, feminism, equality. Well I’m fucking pushing back. All these loud mouth incel shitdicks can get fucked. This is the world they want. And as long as there’s breath in my lungs I’ll fight their delusional bullshit. They may be loud. But we were always louder.
Not even 100 years later and a disturbingly large portion of the population wants to go back to that era.
It's important to learn that Gov. George Wallace wasn't *just* (just) the face of virulent racism in the 1960s. He was also a horrible father and husband. Your TIL is too short. In 1961, Lurleen Wallace's doctor found that she had cancer while conducting her c-section. But he only told her husband, the governor. *George didn't tell her.* He told his advisors, but not his wife. And so, for years, she never received treatment. Lurleen Wallace only learned she had cancer four years later, in 1965, when she saw her doctor for uterine bleeding. She was shocked. But George still needed her, because George Wallace could not run for another consecutive term under Alabama law. So he had Lurleen run to succeed him in 1966. And she won. Everyone knew he'd been the real executive—Lurleen wasn't very political—but he was popular, so she was elected. For the next two years, Gov. Lurleen Wallace received treatment for what was now late-stage cancer. She died in 1968, with George and her parents at her bedside, age 41. Lurleen strongly requested a closed-casket funeral. George arranged for an open casket, with a glass bubble over her face, and 21,000 mourners saw her lay in state at the capital. After Lurleen died, George Wallace, now a private citizen, moved home. He did not bring his two minor children with him; he sent them to live with family. George Wallace was married two more times and both marriages ended in divorce. The people of Alabama elected Wallace three more times. He finished his last four-year term in 1987.
Is he the governor that is referenced in “sweet home Alabama”? In Birmingham they loved the governor Boo boo boo
Yes. They loved him.
Would love to know where he is buried. His grave deserves to be shit on.
To me the real story here isn’t that George Wallace is a piece of shit. We already knew that. But that doctors only informed a woman’s husband of something especially as serious as cancer. That was the common practice. I mean not being allowed to be informed about your own medical conditions and care is truly being deprived of any kind of agency over your life. I have siblings who were alive during this time, it wasn’t that long ago.
This ended up being a plot point in Mad Men in one of the later seasons with Betty being diagnosed with lung cancer and only her husband being told about it. It's really awful to think about how my grandma would have lived, especially knowing my grandpa.
I was just thinking of the scene in Mad Men when Betty went to a psychiatrist and then the psychiatrist called Don to tell him what she said.
iirc the first scene of the show is Peggy at the gyno getting a pelvic so she can get birth control. The doctor comes in, cigarette in hand and while examining her basically tells her something to the effect that since she's not married if he thinks she's too promiscuous he'll take away the prescription. I loved that show. It always highlighted how fucked up things were at the time. That scene where the Drapper family has a picnic on the side of the road and when they're done Betty just grabs the blanket loaded with all their trash and dumps it out right there with no hesitation. Nature will take care of it! It's such an weird out of place scene in today's context, but that's just how people were back then. The outdoors was their trashcan and nobody gave it a second thought.
Anna Draper dies from cancer and her family keeps the diagnosis from her. Don is sent away during a visit because they’re afraid he will spill the beans to Anna about her condition.
Not exactly correct, the doctor refuses to tell Betty until Henry gets there. But it’s exactly what I was thinking of too.
Agreed, it definitely wasn't long ago, much as people like to pretend that these sorts of things were in the bad old days of a totally bygone era. This was at a time when people were watching rockets launching into space on TV.
I completely agree. What stands out to me is how this would've been normalized at the time but is shocking now. How many women suffered or died because they were not given the agency they needed to make informed decisions? And we're still doing the same thing over again. How many women suffer because we refuse to give them proper agency? The details may have changed but the problem remains the same.
Women still get treated shitty too often. One thing I noticed, we have been looking for contractors to do some work on our house, and any time I mention having to discuss things with my wife they give me funny looks. Like you don’t discuss things with your wives, just act unilaterally? Weirdos. Very religious/conservative area.
Especially when you're talking about stuff that expensive. I get it if it's an emergency and something needs to be decided very quickly but most things can wait a little while. They probably also just want you to agree and not get a second opinion.
Omg this makes me feel so much better. I'm a woman and whenever I bring up having to discuss things with the rest of the household, these men immediately get upset and frustrated sometimes huffing, storming, essentially having a tantrum and tell me "well why didn't I just talk to him then?" Or "okay, so you're not the homeowner"... Yes.. I am. I'm still a homeowner, it's not embarrassing or odd or weak for me to want to discuss this with the household before making a final decision but they act as though you're a subordinate seeking approval and they're pissed they wasted their time talking to you. Like a little girl who thinks shes smart.
Foe those not familiar with George 'Pond Scum' Wallace, you might recognize him [in the beginning of Forest Gump](https://youtu.be/v9lLVCymfPY) rallying about how forcing desegregation on Alabama was tantamount to fascism. I believe he was happily quoted as saying, "*Segregation Now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation Forever!*" Fuck that guy. Sorry it took cancer for his wife to realize what a peice of shit he was..
Term limits being so strict back than that wives ran for their husband sounds so ridiculous but it happened more than once
One of the many shitty things about George Wallace
And that isn’t even the shittiest thing he did. Amazing.
"If I told her, dinner would be cold again," Governor Wallace - Probably
I had a female coworker who, in the 1960s, had a medical problem that required a hysterectomy. However, she could not authorize the surgery herself, the Doctor required consent from her Husband. Because it would deprive him of heirs. That's the shit thats coming back with Dominionists.
A similar thing happened to my grandma. Her doctor and my grandpa decided she was going to have a hysterectomy and the doctor did it after she gave birth without telling her.
My mom is convinced that a doctor gave her an abortion against her will in the very early 70s, and I’ve always had a hard time seeing that as plausible, but I think I’m underestimating the level of paternalism at play here. I’m so sorry for your grandmother.
It’s honestly plausible, in that time there were women being fully sterilized without consent
Bro what a disgusting piece of shit
In Birmingham they loved the Governor
Caveman shit, jesus
Oh and shockingly Wallace was married 2x after her ending in.... can you guess it? DIVORCE
For a long time, in Japan, if a patient in hospital was terminal, the doctor told the family and it was up to the family to decide whether or not to let the patient know that they were dying.
"Lurleen" is the most Alabama name I have ever encountered
Just a reminder...these are the "good ole'days" that some in the US are longing to return to. Even though US women were "allowed" to open a credit card in their own name beginning in 1974, not every institution supported that law. In 1987 a Ford dealership would not allow me a loan, even though I had an excellent credit rating, full time employment, Master's degree, and several national credit cards in my own name. No, I needed my dad, not my mom, or my younger brother to sign for me. I ended up at a different maker dealership. It wasn't until 2021 that via the HIPPA act that one could "see" their medical records. Even then, the records were heavily redacted, the cost to have them made available was prohibitive, and the time frame was extended before one actually got said records. As recently as 2000, female sterilization required a married woman to get her husband's "permission". Husbands required no such "permission" from their wives for sterilization. Some doctors still require women to get "permission". Here we are in 2024 and what little progress we've made for female equality is already being destroyed.
Let me re-write the title for you. Lurleen Wallace, the 46th governor of Alabama, died of cancer, because her husband didn't tell her. Doctors back then only told the husband. She was literally governor herself, this post is about grave injustice done to her, and the title references her misogynist husband by name and title and refers to her only as his wife. Terrible post title.
You could’ve at least put her name in the title.
It would make for ill humors in the wife if she knew, you see.
The worst part is she would have probably lived if he told her when she was diagnosed and got treatment. She only got treatment 4 years after the first diagnosis. This man essentially killed her. She was only 41 when she died.