Young girls and women weren't murdered during WWII era

[salex]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/orphants.html Orphan train, where thousands and thousands of children were moved from the city to the rural areas of the country after their parents died or abandoned them or were unable to care for them (or, theywere taken)

CHARLES LORING BRACE IV: [reading great-grandfather's diary] "May 19th, 1854. At dusk, I found a girl in the Sixth Street begging. Gave her a loaf of bread and followed her home. This little girl, nine years old, without a bonnet, barefooted and thinly clad, is sent out every day to beg for money.

"In the evening, at twelve o'clock, went down to the coffee cellars where the newsboys congregate. They were not more than ten or twelve years old, yet they had all the manners of old roués, drinking their coffee, smoking and talking of gambling.

"Visited the Eleventh Ward in the afternoon. Five thousand children throng the streets at all times. The younger girls sweep the crosswalks. The older girls prostitute themselves."

Or The gangs of New York, a non fiction book from the early 1900s that talks about recruiting prostitutes and running opium dens in the early to mid 1800s. http://www.amazon.com/Gangs-New-York-City-ebook/dp/B005REVZA8/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1379982513&sr=8-3&keywords=the+gangs+of+new+york#reader_B005REVZA8

OR,

Maybe The Wisconsin Death Trip with details of murders, suicide, sickness and madness in the late 1800s.

http://www.amazon.com/Wisconsin-Death-T ... death+trip

I didn't kill the links because they are PBS and Amazon.

[duplessis3]

Two of my great grandfathers didn't divorce, just ran away. My one grandfather ended up being raised by a single man who as bused him. My other grandfather's family was split apart between relatives. So of course that means no child support.

Also, Lori' s mother either had blinders on or she straight up lied to her.

[SPHASH]

I have to admit I do enjoy the music and movies during that time period, mainly because there were no swear words in them, but it wasn't all good times then. A friend of my grandad's immigrated to the states from Sweden in the late 30's and when he sent for her to live in the states with him in 1941 she arrived seven months preggers, they had not seen each other for two years. Figure that out.

[SPHASH]

Obviously Lori never read The Diary of Anne Frank.

[thoughtful]

I would have lots to say to Lori, but everyone else has said it so well.

I asked Rosie if she would like to address the idea that US women in the 1940s were home wearing modest feminine attire, but she is on her lunch break and doesn't want to waste it on someone like Lori:

BTW, did you know that Rockwell's Rosie painting is a a nod to Michaelangelo's Isaiah -- Isaiah is wearing a dress, though (well, OK, a robe):

As for language, my father taught me lots of alternate lyrics to songs, that he and his fellow soldiers sang in WWII. One of the best-known (to the tune of the Colonel Bogie March):

Hitler has only one big ball!

Goering has two, but they are small.

Himmler has something sim'lar,

And poor Goebbells has no balls at all!

The cry of "people were much cleaner back then!" always astonishes me. People never seem to think through that:

1. The Motion Picture Production Code, strongly effective in the US from 1934 to about the mid-1950s-60s (depending on what aspect of the code was chipped away), made for films in which there was virtually no cursing, crime never paid, aldulterers always suffered, etc.

But the movies didn't necessarily reflect real life. And, that doesn't mean they were all automatically better entertainment.

2. Perhaps they didn't hear a lot of cursing, or know about scandal, because they were children at the time they are glorifying. I certainly hope that, whether it's 1844, 1944, or 2044, people aren't yelling "your fucking Uncle Herbert ran out on Aunt Harriet with yet another goddamned bitch" in the presence of children.

[dairyfreelife]

lol, got a message from Lori. Basically she said she deleted my comments because she does want anyone to disagree with her and the destruction of the family is what's really the bad thing about society, so don't disagree with her on her blog. That is all.

I sent a different message that is currently up...for now...but doubt it will last because, you know, admitting it wasn't actually so great for everyone is not okay. Instead of Always Learning, she needs to call her blog, Always Right (because she refuses to learn about anything).

[thoughtful]

Instead of Always Learning, she needs to call her blog, Always Right (because she refuses to learn about anything).

Or "Lalalala, my fingers are in my ears, I can't hear you!"

Is that too long for a blog title?

[tenth muse]

She's living in fantasy land, that's for sure. All the stuff she complains about now (except the technology) existed back then. It was just more hidden and swept under the carpet, perhaps.

Due to family stories, I know of :

Women falling pregnant to American military

Hidden abortion clinics

Pre-marital sex

Adultery

Prostitution

Gambling

Alcoholism

etc,etc.

[lizziesmom]

I wish I could send Lori back in time to the 40's as a black woman in the south and see how GREAT things were.

How about the 1840's :)

[dairyfreelife]

Or "Lalalala, my fingers are in my ears, I can't hear you!"

Is that too long for a blog title?

I thought, "I Need to Always Be Right" sounded too obvious, so stuck with Always Right.

My comment to her: "Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?†For it is not wise to ask such questions." Ecclesiastes 7:10

Looking at the past, specifically the 1940s and 50s, I just cannot see them as more innocent times for the US for all people living here. What about the lives of blacks in the 1940s? What about Japanese Americans then? As a (white) woman engaged to a (black) man, I cannot look back at such times fondly. Our relationship was illegal then, which is sad as I would be missing out on the opportunity to have such an amazing person, my best friend, in my life. There are a lot of problems here and across the globe today, but I am still glad to live in the time I do instead of in past decades or centuries for many reasons, but the ability to not be a commodity and to not have my fiancee be a commodity are among the biggest reasons.

I sent her an email back as well saying that I did not want to cause an argument. I wanted to know how she felt about how blacks and Japanese Americans were treated during that time and what was there to disagree about with my comment anyway.

I really want to know what she thinks about that and I don't intend to be mean about, I genuinely am curious as it's not something people talk and forget about it often when they think back to the so-called "good old days. It's okay to be like, "oh, yeah, got so nostalgic I forgot that it really wasn't so great for everyone, was it?"It really is okay to dream and imagine and briefly wish life was like that...but my guess is she is seriously racist and thinks I'm contributing to the destruction of America by being with someone not of my race. She's not the first, so I can take it. I've gotten the side eye, the looks, the "must be trash", and though not said, but still there in stigma is that I, as a white woman, being with a black man, is that if we marry, I'd be "marrying down". I want her to be honest if that's what she thinks because she's far from the first. My own father had a hard time with it too to begin with...then he got to know him and slowly has gotten over it.

[lilwriter85]

I agree with others, "Always Learning" is the wrong title for Lori's blog. It should be, "I'm a White Christian and I'm Special." Her ignorance about the history of past eras in this country is a bit disturbing. It is like she doesn't want to accept that our society has never been perfect. I agree with others, if she went back in time as a black woman she would be in for a rude awakening. If she lived in the 1930s and 1940s as white woman in a lower socioeconomic class she would see that things weren't so great at times. Like I said before, I'm really curious about how her parents are.

[PennySycamore]

If Lori gets to use a Hallmark movie to prove that people were more chaste during WWII, then I get to use a fictional movie to prove that they weren't:

CABARET

*Ok, it was pre WWII, but still...

Or how about The Miracle of Morgan's Creek where Trudi Kockenlocker, played by Betty Hutton, goes out for a wild night with some GIs that are about to be sent overseas, apparently married one of the GIs when she's drunk, and then can't remember his name the next morning. She ends up pregnant from her marriage or was it a one-night stand? Her friend Norval Jones stands up for her and takes responsibility for the pregnancy. Trudi ends up having sextuplets at the end of the movie. Whether Trudi actually married the GI or not is never answered, but she sure did have sex! The movie was made by Preston Sturges in 1942, but not released until '44.

ETA: There is also the wonderful British film Hope and Glory which was not made during the War, but is based on director John Boorman's recollections of his life during the Blitz. One of his sisters falls for a Canadian soldier and ends up pregnant and not married. Her family do not turn her out, but embrace her situation. It's a great movie as is The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Ya know, since I'm spending so much time at synagogue this week, maybe I'll ask the older folks there about how wonderful the 1940s were.

Let's see - L's mom watched the Nazis murder her family and ran off into the forest with some cousins. At age 6. L's a big guy, but his mom is tiny, likely as a result of malnutrition since she was literally forced to live in the forest - no house, no grocery store, no parents - at such a young age.

G. was just a toddler when his parents were murdered.

A's grandfather had a wife and 2 children before the war. They were murdered.

My great-aunt was murdered by her Nazi uncle, for being both half-Jewish and mentally handicapped.

My FIL became a refugee, smuggled across a border under threat of death and going without food or water for a couple of days.

My dad, who is alive because he was born in Canada, has fond memories of summers on his grandpa's farm, but remembers the summer guests who never seemed to be happy. He saw the numbers on their arms and realized that they were Holocaust survivors.

Somehow, these people don't moan for the good ole days so much. I suppose Lori and the leghumpers should point out to these folks that they actually had it really good, since there was no internet porn or gayz kissing.

Oh, and I wonder if Lori's mom enjoyed her childhood where nobody had any problems because she lived in an area with restrictive covenants? Until 1948, you could go to court and have them legally prevent your neighbor from selling their property to a person of the wrong race or religion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_v._Kraemer

[Just_Jane]

World War II brought us the era of the pin-up girl. win the war for those legs, boys. Pin-up girls were very popular and many young women sent their beaus or husbands photographs of a similar nature. Plus erotic photography has been around since the invention of the camera and there is plenty of drawing type from before that.

This was also when the military created educational films about the horrors of VD.

Many women worked during WWII. My grandmother and great grandmother worked at the naval shipyard building ships. There were women who served as human computers during the war. They did ballistic research and figured out trajectories of the weapons.

[GeoBQn]

Ken puts all of us whippersnappers into place:

Ken

To today's detractors,

I have no clue what world a few commenters are living in, but to think that the world is not running headlong into the End Times is to be out of touch with reality. Evil is always present in the world, but there was a time in the U.S. where churches were filled, neighbors were knew each other and acted like a church, even the unbelievers. Doors were never locked, kids played out in the streets and hope abounded.

Fast forward to today and see that right is wrong and wrong is considered right in so many areas of our society. Abortion is acceptable to half the nation, and with it shacking up is almost the norm for even Christian kids. Being gay is not only considered an acceptable lifestyle, it is honored and glorified on tv, the media and legislated to be something wonderful. Alcohol is now replaced with a myriad of special drugs, and even our kids are loaded up with cocaine like drugs to keep their behavior in check and their grades at a high standard.

The list of degradation in our country from 50 years ago to today is almost endless with prisons filled, divorce rates through the roof and everyone doing what is good in their own eyes instead of listening to God’s Word at church on Sundays and at least trying to be a “good person.â€

What research do you need to prove this when it is so obvious, and many of us have lived the differences? And please, if you are going to say that the Bible warns against “precisely this kind of longing for "former days" put the Bible verse reference, as it simply is not true in context. God never says that we are not to reminisce about days when men and women walked with God in a more holy and acceptable way. Our longing is for an earth where holiness abounds, the New Millenium where the throne of God comes to live with men who will be obedient to His Word.

I see nothing wrong or inaccurate with what Lori has posted. We live in a fallen world that the scriptures say is running headlong towards complete godlessness. In the United States, much of this is happening on our watch, in our lifetime, and many of us can see it.

I have been working in France for some thirty years now and as you know the French are quite agnostic. About twenty years ago my French friends started saying to me that the U.S. was really falling down in its morality. For ten years they would say this to me and I did not see it, but the last ten years it has becomes so obvious to me. The flood gates of sin are open and abounding in our country and Hollywood and the Internet are leading the way. If some cannot see this, you must have rose colored blinders on. Maybe that is a good thing as it protects your heart and spirit, but the reality is that each decade the heart of mankind is growing colder to the things of God, and with this, evil is abounding and springing up in the most unimaginable places.

Give me your Miley Cyrus, and tell me about the new world of porn compared to 50 years ago. How about men kissing men and women kissing women openly in public. Find me equivalents that a whole nation watches on tv, and what our kids get to see at school, and maybe I will change my mind. The list is endless… not hopeless, because God always calls out a remnant that He keeps as holy unto Himself.

[Arete]

^THAT was the best Ken could do? Pathetic.

[ThisOlGirl]

Mods, please lock this thread--The Great And Powerful Ken has spoken. There's nothing left to say.

[Arete]

Oh, and I wonder if Lori's mom enjoyed her childhood where nobody had any problems because she lived in an area with restrictive covenants? Until 1948, you could go to court and have them legally prevent your neighbor from selling their property to a person of the wrong race or religion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_v._Kraemer

Even if her mom grew up in a lily white Protestant suburb with picket fences, I have a hard time believing those fences were able to keep out bad marriages, unwanted pregnancies, wife beaters, alcoholics, rapists, and the precursors of Harlequin novels.

[AnnieC 305]

OK, I didn't read every reply.

Has anyone else said anything about pinups and nosecone art yet?

No porn in WW II indeed.

[ADoyle90815]

Even if her mom grew up in a lily white Protestant suburb with picket fences, I have a hard time believing those fences were able to keep out bad marriages, unwanted pregnancies, wife beaters, alcoholics, rapists, and the precursors of Harlequin novels.

I think those fences hid the bad marriages, wife beaters, rapists, premarital sex, etc while people appeared to be like the Cleaver family in public.

[chaotic life]

In the 1940s, one great-grandfather left his wife and seven children when my grandmother was a teen. He left her for a woman a mere two years old than his oldest child. Of course, since it was the good old days where divorce did not happen, child support was unheard of. My great-grandmother had to finish raising her seven children by taking in laundry and being a seamstress.

My grandmother and her sister used to follow their father and his new little thing around town and throw rotten vegetables at them.

In the same 1940s, another great-grandfather was filthy rich, owned a dozen motels and his favorite Friday evening pastime? He would get rip-roaring drunk, beat up my great-grandmother and then play Russian Roulette with her, taunting all of the children that if anyone intervened to save her, he would disown them. Except for the years he was serving in the South Pacific, my grandfather was the only child who consistent intervened and stopped his father from killing his mother. The other eight children were FAR too preoccupied with the fortune Daddy-dearest dangled in front of their faces.

In those same 1940s, my other set of grandparents got married when she graduated high school, he was two years older. They were childhood sweethearts. They started dating when she was 12 and started having sex when she was 14. I have NO idea how they avoided pregnancy until she was 18 at the end of the 1940s. She swears she never had an abortion. I'm not certain I believe her. Though, her own mother DID have an abortion in the late 1930s when she was a child. One child was all the family could dream of affording during the Depression, so the second pregnancy ended with an abortion. It wasn't uncommon, my great-grandmother assisted two of her sisters in securing abortions in the 30s and 40s as well.

[2xx1xy1JD]

I think those fences hid the bad marriages, wife beaters, rapists, premarital sex, etc while people appeared to be like the Cleaver family in public.

Exactly. There was a lot of shit that both my mother and my MIL experienced in their families that was hidden behind a wall of silence. That wall was only broken decades later, during an era of greater tolerance, mandatory reporting and more openness.

Oh, here's another example of the wonderful values and knowing the difference between good and evil 50-60 years ago: treatment of anyone with special needs.

My former step-grandmother literally hid the existence of her daughter, who was developmentally delayed. She put her daughter in a home, had some secret visits with her, and did not tell others that she existed. She only introduced us to her daughter when I was in my early 20s, despite the fact that I had known this woman since I was 6 (I already knew of the daughter's existence from my grandmother, who was trying to badmouth step-grandma, but never told my grandpa that). My sister once worked at one of the last big institutions for people with mental handicaps. Many of the aging residents had been dumped there as children, which is what doctors at the time would have advised. My sister was appalled by what she saw - staff had no expectations at all of the residents and made no attempts to socialize them or integrate them into society. They were basically fine with residents using masturbation as their main daily activity. One resident there wasn't even developmentally delayed - he was just deaf, but had somehow been institutionalized. After living in that environment for decades, he had no real social skills or ability to cope with the outside world.

Restrictive covenants, however, would have kept out some groups who may not have appreciated the whole "God in the schools" thing. Look, I can appreciate the idea of an education that includes religion, but I don't want the government to force me or my children to participate in a religion that is not our own. For some people, it would have been merely annoying and insensitive. My parents went to Protestant schools where they had to sing hymns to Jesus and learn the New Testament, but those schools were 99% Jewish so nobody took the lessons to heart. The children forced to attend residential schools for Native Canadians were not so lucky. Under a guise of bringing heathen children to Jesus and western culture, their own cultures and spirituality and family connections suffered massive damage. Abuse was rampant. The degree of devastation, which has had a lasting legacy, was overwhelming. When you engage in cultural genocide and destroy family life across the board in communities, you get sky-high rates of alcoholism, suicide, domestic violence, infant mortality, etc.

[docmom]

I have been working in France for some thirty years now and as you know the French are quite agnostic. About twenty years ago my French friends started saying to me that the U.S. was really falling down in its morality.

Ken and I must have different French friends. None of my French friends have ever said the US was falling down in its morality (except during the Iraq war).

Give me your Miley Cyrus, and tell me about the new world of porn compared to 50 years ago. How about men kissing men and women kissing women openly in public.

So, what Ken is basically saying is that it's better to have lived in a time of segregation, hidden abuse and lack of basic human rights for a large segement of the population that to watch two men or two women share a symbol of affection? Yeah- abuse good, love bad. Got it Ken.

ETA: quote

[lilwriter85]

Ken is a fucking douche and an idiot to say that there is nothing inaccurate with Lori's post.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Ken and I must have different French friends. None of my French friends have ever said the US was falling down in its morality (except during the Iraq war).

So, what Ken is basically saying is that it's better to have lived in a time of segregation, hidden abuse and lack of basic human rights for a large segement of the population that to watch two men or two women share a symbol of affection? Yeah- abuse good, love bad. Got it Ken.

ETA: quote

Maybe Ken should read this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shm ... 84992.html

I don't agree with everything that Boteach says, but he's right on when he says that gays are not the ones posing a threat to straight marriage, and that focusing on the issue actually hurt efforts to deal with the real issues affecting families.