Historical Facts That Counter Fundie's Romantic Views

[Hane]

I can sum up why the fundies fetishize the past in one simple sentence: They think there was no fucking then.

They believe that married-sex-for-making-babies was the ONLY condoned--or practiced--sexual behavior. No doubt they get this impression from the most popular novels of the Victorian era. I mean, in the most widely read novels of Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott, there was no one doin' the nasty ever depicted.

Controlled Fucking is the cornerstone of fundie ideology. If teenagers aren't even allowed to touch--let alone be alone together--all the easier to hasten them into marriage. If women aren't allowed to use contraception, they can't plan when and if to have children, and are essentially tied to a life as SAHMs, entirely dependent on the financial support of the spouse who can't get pregnant.

Oh, and there's no gayness. Because that would be just icky.

[Visionoyahweh]

[Arete]

My mother was a little girl in the 1940s. She had typhoid fever and survived. Twenty other children in her small village in Greece died. Both my grandmothers have described what it was like being pregnant in the 1930 and 1940s. You always received Communion about two weeks before you were due in case you died in childbirth. If you lived in the countryside, you were milking goats, making bread, tilling your garden and washing your clothes in the water you hauled from the well until you dropped that kid. There was no getting the vapors. Your husband could be gone for years at a time working as a soujourner in the Anglosphere or in the merchant marine so you and the kids you conceived when he was home had a shot at regular food and getting an education. This also necessitated a woman needing to pull on the big girl panties and make all the decisions at home because the headship was simply not there. If you lived in the city you took care of the house and also ran the family business with your husband. In between that you got to be terrified with every polio, measles, flu, and typhoid epidemic that hit, and they hit frequently. They did pray a lot, I'll give the fundies that.

[Artemis]

For a shocking insight into life in London in the early 20th century I would highly recommend a book called 'Round About a Pound a Week' by Maud Pember Reeves. I first read this as teen and it is what got me interested in women's issues and social history. A group called the Fabian Society (still going) made an in-depth study of women's lives in working-class London around 1910. The level of detail is absolutely fascinating - they focus on about 30 families, their living conditions, what they ate, what they earned, how they spent their days, how they managed on very little money, how they cared for their children. Every time I read a fundie blog idealising large families in days gone by I think of this book. A quote to illustrate my point:

"Though fond of the children, this life of stress and strain makes the women dread nothing so much as the conviction that there is to be still another baby with its inevitable consequences - more crowding, more illness, more worry, more work, and less food, less strength, less time to manage with."

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keyw ... pjsto0g4_b

I really like this book - it's great as social commentary, and it's one of the books I think about when I listen to fundies doing 'the good old days'. It really puts things into perspective.

[Hane]

What? There were actual gay islands in the olden days? :doh: Surely someone must be making that up!

[Arete]

Well, it wasn't a gay island, but let's just say that gay sex was hardly closeted in ancient Greece. ;)

[Vex]

That site about NC is really interesting, thanks for linking to it.

I have no idea why they want to live kind of like the Amish, but then they criticise the Amish and use cars and juicers and other mod cons. Why can't they just admit to liking a fictionalised version of a particular time period (like I love Ancient Greece as shown in Xena - doesn't mean I wish I lived in Ancient Greece as it actually was) and be grateful for the generally superior conditions we have today?

[Wolfie]

Of course, even if you were one of those rich Southern plantation ladies, under that hoop skirt you would be wearing a belt with ribbons attached--and at the bottom of the ribbons would be small pots of honey to catch lice. What fun!

This is not true. Life wasn't easy, and there were lots of bugs, but they didn't wear belts with pots of honey under their skirts. At least not in the times of hoop skirts, and not in America. (hoop skirts were not in vogue as we know them until about the later 1850's anyway. Then the big round ones had a very short life, and they changed shape often, and got narrower until they faded away in the late 1800's)

Why would they wear honey under their clothing when they barely were able to wash it anyway?

If you want to dispute this, can you cite where the fact came from?

[Artemis]

Tudor history is an interest of mine, too. I had the same impression of Anne. I think they kind of look at her (and possibly Henry) as important parts of the Reformation.

For non-nerds, I apologise in advance for my long post in reply to this. I did look for the YUKU link, but could not find it.

This is what the Botkins think of Anne Boleyn:

http://visionarydaughters.com/2009/07/r ... eat-queens

A quote from what they write gives a flavour of their argument. It is supported by quite a lot of historical revisionists with Evangelical backgrounds – the reason being that Anne can easily be contrasted with Katherine, the Catholic, and therefore evil, queen.

“Anne Boleyn was not only the catalyst for England’s break with Rome but one of the most active and influential reformers in England during her three years as queen. As a child, Anne was diligent to cultivate her mind and abilities, so that she became exceptionally well prepared for the role God had in store for her:

“Certain this was, that for the rare and singular gifts of her mind, so well instructed, and given toward God, with such a fervent desire unto the truth and setting forth of sincere religion, joined with like gentleness, modesty, and pity toward all men, there have not many such queens before her borne the crown of England. Principally this one commendation she left behind her, that during her life, the religion of Christ most happily flourished, and had a right prosperous course.†– John Foxe, author of Foxe’s Book of Martyrsâ€

(John Foxe only being the most bigoted of the anti-Catholic polemicists, and not exactly an unbiased witness.)

This, however is the historical, unbiased background to Anne Boleyn.

Anne was the younger daughter of a country gentleman called Thomas Boleyn – a socially ambitious man who pimped out his daughters to Henry VIII for his own social advancement. In the normal course of political and social manoeuvring, Anne and her older sister Mary went to the French court. The young girls spent their teenage years in France as ladies-in-waiting to Henry's sister, the French Queen. Later Anne was transferred to the court of the new French Queen, Claude, while Mary returned home.

Anne arrived back in England when she was about twenty and was placed (through Henry’s influence) in the household of Henry's wife, Katherine of Aragon, as maid of honour. Anne immediately found favour with the men at court – she was cool, sexy, elegant and witty. She had learned about Protestantism in France, but for her it was part of the intellectual life of the French court and her own ‘modern’ circle. Religion was a major part of her life, true, but then it was a major part of the lives of most of her contemporaries, and the ‘New Learning’ and reformed religion were the hot topics of the time. It’s not surprising that an intelligent girl, brought up in intellectual circles with educated people would know a lot about it. Anne's experience in France made her devout in the new, humanistic Renaissance way. She was influenced by an evangelical variety of French humanism which led her to champion the vernacular Bible. She did appear to believe the reformist position that the papacy was a corrupting influence on the church, but her Catholic and conservative tendencies could be seen in her devotion to the Virgin Mary, something that is never mentioned by Protestant commentators.

Anne was initially quite circumspect about her relationship with the king. Only one of her love letters to the king has survived. It is undated, but its contents place it in late summer/early autumn of 1526. Interestingly, this letter reveals that Anne owed her position at court entirely to the king's favor.

(This is believed to be the first love letter Anne wrote to Henry, and is rarely included in any biography of the queen. However, its authenticity is not in serious doubt. One should remember that Henry's brief relationship with Anne's sister, Mary Boleyn, had only ended a year before (in July 1525.) On 4 March 1526, Mary gave birth to a son called Henry, widely assumed to be the king's son. Anne's feelings about this awkward situation were never made clear, but she was not close to her sister. )

Sire,

It belongs only to the august mind of a great king, to whom Nature has given a heart full of generosity towards the sex, to repay by favors so extraordinary an artless and short conversation with a girl. Inexhaustible as is the treasury of your majesty's bounties, I pray you to consider that it cannot be sufficient to your generosity; for, if you recompense so slight a conversation by gifts so great, what will you be able to do for those who are ready to consecrate their entire obedience to your desires? How great soever may be the bounties I have received, the joy that I feel in being loved by a king whom I adore, and to whom I would with pleasure make a sacrifice of my heart, if fortune had rendered it worthy of being offered to him, will ever be infinitely greater.

The warrant of maid of honor to the queen induces me to think that your majesty has some regard for me, since it gives me means of seeing you oftener, and of assuring you by my own lips (which I shall do on the first opportunity) that I am,

Your majesty's very obliged and very obedient servant, without any reserve,

Anne Bulen.

As she grew in favour, Anne made enemies at court. By contemporary accounts she could be bitter-tongued and critical. Katherine was kind, gentle, and popular, and her inability to bear a living child was compassionated by many. (It appears she and Henry may have been Kell antigen incompatible, an issue similar to Rhesus incompatibility, which would also have explained why Anne, after producing Elizabeth, had a stillborn boy, just as Katherine, after producing Mary, had many male stillbirths.) Anne’s subtle but determined pursuit of the king raised many eyebrows, and caused the Abbot of Whitby to say of her in 1530

'The King's Grace is ruled by one common stewed whore, Anne Boleyn, who makes all the spirituality to be beggared, and the temporality also.'

It’s interesting that Anne managed to hold Henry off for so long without surrendering her virginity, but it’s clear that she had good reason to do so, having seen her sister pregnant, pensioned off, and married to a compliant gentlemen in waiting. She was holding out for a bigger prize – marriage and queenship. Henry was besotted with her . . .

No more to you at this present mine own darling for lack of time but that I would you were in my arms or I in yours for I think it long since I kissed you. Written after the killing of an hart at a xj. of the clock minding with God's grace tomorrow mightily timely to kill another: by the hand of him which I trust shortly shall be yours.

Henry R.

Mine own sweetheart, these shall be to advertise you of the great loneliness that I find here since your departing, for I ensure you methinketh the time longer since your departing now last than I was wont to do a whole fortnight: I think your kindness and my fervents of love causeth it, for otherwise I would not have thought it possible that for so little a while it should have grieved me, but now that I am coming toward you methinketh my pains been half released.... Wishing myself (specially an evening) in my sweetheart's arms, whose pretty dukkys (breasts!) I trust shortly to kiss. Written with the hand of him that was, is, and shall be yours by his will.

H.R.

. . . and it’s clear they didn’t have a no touching rule, and that she was playing around with him although he was still married – not very chaste, one has to say.

By the early 1530s Henry was desperate for a divorce from Katherine, who miscarried every baby she conceived. He was desperate for a living, male heir, but the Pope would not give him the divorce he wanted because he was being held prisoner by Katherine’s nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Then Thomas Cranmer, a university academic, suggested to the king, that if Rome wouldn’t give him a divorce, he should dispense with Catholicism, get his own divorce, and marry Anne.

And that, in a nutshell, is why the Henrician ‘reformation’ came about

- because Henry wanted sex with Anne, and couldn’t get it without a divorce. It had nothing to do with Anne being the brave reformer, persuading the king to throw off the evil trammels of Rome, and everything to do with a succession crisis and unslaked lust.

Anne actually did give in to the king. She had sex with him before he was divorced, and, it appears, before they were married. Henry and Anne married on 25 January 1533, when Anne was 32 or 33. On 23 May 1533 Thomas Cranmer declared Henry and Catherine's marriage null and void; five days later, he declared Henry and Anne's marriage to be good and valid. Shortly afterwards, the Pope decreed sentences of excommunication against Henry and Cranmer. As a result of this marriage and these excommunications, the first break between England and Rome took place and the Church of England was brought under the King's control. Anne was crowned Queen of England on 1 June 1533. On 7 September she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth.

Anne’s reign as queen was brief, as everyone knows. The king became disenchanted with her after she miscarried a male foetus of about 4 months gestation. His fancy had lighted on someone very different to vivacious Anne – the quiet, meek Jane Seymour. Anne was accused of treason, incest and adultery and beheaded in 1536.

Anne was not a Protestant martyr – she went to her death protesting her innocence of treason, witchcraft, incest and adultery, not of religious heresy. Had she been a strong reformer, she might have courted the danger experienced by Katharine Parr, Henry’s last wife, who displeased him by too close adherence to Protestantism, and by her support of the martyr Anne Askew, and who was actually in the King’s presence when Wriothesley came to arrest her for heretical Protestantism. (Henry saved her when she submitted to him and admitted she had been wrong to support the Protestants). There was, however, no suggestion in Henry’s repudiation of Anne that he was dissatisfied with her religious views: it is therefore totally incorrect to argue that she was a martyr for the cause.

The perception of Anne as martyr rests largely on the ‘testimony’ of John Foxe, of Book of Martyrs fame. Following the coronation of her daughter, Elizabeth, as queen, Anne was venerated as a martyr and heroine of the English Reformation, particularly through his works. He argued that Anne had saved England from the evils of Roman Catholicism by her influence on the appointment of Protestant-leaning bishops, and that God had provided proof of her innocence and virtue by making sure her daughter Elizabeth I became Queen.

The Botkins, and others like them, make a stalking horse of history for their own political ends. I find it shameful in the extreme that they can be so lacking in integrity. History should be a clean plate of objective fact, not a festering stew of faux-romanticism, political bias, willed ignorance and social indoctrination.

[JesusFightClub]

I'm 30.

My dad came from a miner's family and was diagnosed with TB practically from birth. He was allowed very brief hospital visits and released when he was 3 or 4 (he can't remember).

My mum never had TB, but she was born into a poor family in London. They had one outside toilet for the whole street. She moved up to Scotland, where I was born, and daringly saved up to buy a telly to watch Charles and Di's weddlng. Half of the street piled in, half objected on political grounds.

Yes, the bliss that was the 20th C....

[Miss M]

This is not true. Life wasn't easy, and there were lots of bugs, but they didn't wear belts with pots of honey under their skirts. At least not in the times of hoop skirts, and not in America. (hoop skirts were not in vogue as we know them until about the later 1850's anyway. Then the big round ones had a very short life, and they changed shape often, and got narrower until they faded away in the late 1800's)

Why would they wear honey under their clothing when they barely were able to wash it anyway?

If you want to dispute this, can you cite where the fact came from?

THANK YOU WOLFIE!! I want to see the documentation on this, because I have studied the clothing of the Rev War and Civil War period and have NEVER come across anything like this!

Also, why the hell would lice be drawn to tiny pots of honey, lice feed on blood as do fleas, ticks and crabs!!

M.

[Visionoyahweh]

What? There were actual gay islands in the olden days? :doh: Surely someone must be making that up!

LOL. The root of 'Lesbian'.

Also, it's a pretty good lesbian bar.

ETA: Fundies also like to leave out how widely used drugs like cocaine, etc. were by perfect, upper class Christians w/o repercussions.

Dougie's historical dress-up parties would be more accurate if everyone did a few lines of coke.

[freejoytoo]

My nana grew up on a council estate in Liverpool during the thirties. People starved and there were two sisters who only had one coat between them so they had to take turns to go out.

[Hane]

LOL. The root of 'Lesbian'.

Jeez Louise, guys, I know perfectly well about Lesbos, and Sappho, and the gang.

As many of us have pointed out, Dougie's obsession with the separation of sexual roles, and his "mentoring" of the young interns, smacks far, far more of the social practices of the ancient Greek aristocracy than of anything anywhere in the Bible.

[Visionoyahweh]

Jeez Louise, guys, I know perfectly well about Lesbos, and Sappho, and the gang.

As many of us have pointed out, Dougie's obsession with the separation of sexual roles, and his "mentoring" of the young interns, smacks far, far more of the social practices of the ancient Greek aristocracy than of anything anywhere in the Bible.

I knew you were playing dumb. :clap:

[Pudicitia]

I can sum up why the fundies fetishize the past in one simple sentence: They think there was no fucking then.

They believe that married-sex-for-making-babies was the ONLY condoned--or practiced--sexual behavior. No doubt they get this impression from the most popular novels of the Victorian era. I mean, in the most widely read novels of Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott, there was no one doin' the nasty ever depicted.

Controlled Fucking is the cornerstone of fundie ideology. If teenagers aren't even allowed to touch--let alone being alone together--all the easier to hasten them into marriage. If women aren't allowed to use contraception, they can't plan when and if to have children, and are essentially tied to a life as SAHMs, entirely dependent on the financial support of the spouse who can't get pregnant.

Oh, and there's no gayness. Because that would be just icky.

I wonder what they'd make of some of the ancient Roman stuff... There's a great quote from an ancient writer being really confused because the Emperor Claudius only wants to shag women and has no interest in shagging men which, apparently makes him a total weirdo. Though I suppose that's all easily passed over by saying that they were sinners and therefore not relevant...

[Muriel]

I wonder what they'd make of some of the ancient Roman stuff... There's a great quote from an ancient writer being really confused because the Emperor Claudius only wants to shag women and has no interest in shagging men which, apparently makes him a total weirdo. Though I suppose that's all easily passed over by saying that they were sinners and therefore not relevant...

I remember learning that in University too, sex with women was for reproduction purpose and love was between men :roll:

[Sumeri]

I just got back yesterday from a trip to one of the towns I used to live in. I stopped to show my daughter my favorite iron cross cemetery, which, while beautiful looking back 100 years, will tear your heart out if you imagine what life was like for these poor women. Imagine leaving your homeland to live under a freaking buggy or in a soddy during a North Dakota winter, and losing most of your children in the process. One oft told story from those days was of a woman who lost eight of her ten children and her husband to diptheria on the same day. Apparently as he was dying her husband told her - "Don't worry, Anna, I will take the babies with me." Jesus!

I don't care where you lived, 100 years ago 99.999% of women weren't having fancy teas and watching their husbands check their gold pocketwatches -- they were out trying to find water and tending to sick babies or losing their kids to accidents and disease.

I should start a tour of North Dakota for fundies, complete with an authentic sod house with nothing but a wood stove for heat. And make them all come in the middle of January in their party dresses.

[Arete]

I remember learning that in University too, sex with women was for reproduction purpose and love was between men :roll:

This applied to upperclass ancient Greeks. I believe the ancient Romans were light years ahead of this attitude as they actually believed heterosexual couples could have "companionship" marriages, meaning a man did not need another man for love/friendship. They did have the option of getting that from their wives. :o

[JesusFightClub]

I learnt that as between samurai....

[Arete]

I don't care where you lived, 100 years ago 99.999% of women weren't having fancy teas and watching their husbands check their gold pocketwatches -- they were out trying to find water and tending to sick babies or losing their kids to accidents and disease.

Now, now. Mustn't confuse the fundies with the facts. :naughty: Some of their women might swoon.

[Arete]

JFC, that makes a lot of sense about the samurai. The ancient Spartans were essentially one huge warrior caste and erotic friendships/companionships between men flourished due to their lifestyle and training.

[Pudicitia]

This applied to upperclass ancient Greeks. I believe the ancient Romans were light years ahead of this attitude as they actually believed heterosexual couples could have "companionship" marriages, meaning a man did not need another man for love/friendship. They did have the option of getting that from their wives. :o

It's a little bit more complicated than that, but yes, basically. The ancient Greek social elites in many places had institutionalized structures of homoerotic companionship, but this was frequently not between men of the same age and status. The Romans didn't have the same formal structures, though again, provided that it wasn't with someone of the same age and status, sexual relationships between men were considered fairly ok. The Romans, unlike the Greeks, tended to see it as a good thing for elite women to have some degree of education, and socializing happened in mixed groups, instead of all male groups entertained by sex workers, as was more common in ancient Greece. Of course, this is all a huge generalization, and we don't really know much beyond the elites (though if you look at proverbs and sayings, which are the closest we can get to what more ordinary people might have held to, they do seem to be less in favour of homoerotic stuff and a huge age gap between husband and wife - common with the elites - was seen as more problematic).

But don't forget that until the early Roman empire, adult women still needed to have a legal guardian like a child and could be divorced at the drop of a hat, exchanged by men, sidelined and even if they could discuss Plato at a dinner party, their main social role was still the production of legitimate children for their husband. (Martial and Juvenal, satirists, talk about 'gay marriages' happening in ancient Rome, but mock them because they cannot be productive - shows what the main purpose of marriage was considered to be). Ironically, this is one reason why initially Christianity was so attractive to women, and particularly some wealthy women - reforms in inheritance law + declaring yourself a virgin dedicated to God meant that you could essentially end up as an independent woman controlling your own money and using it to support the institutions and scholars you thought were worthwhile. All went downhill in the 2nd century, of course...

[Clementine]

I don't care where you lived, 100 years ago 99.999% of women weren't having fancy teas and watching their husbands check their gold pocketwatches -- they were out trying to find water and tending to sick babies or losing their kids to accidents and disease.

I should start a tour of North Dakota for fundies, complete with an authentic sod house with nothing but a wood stove for heat. And make them all come in the middle of January in their party dresses.

^^ This!

None of the fundies that I have read about seem to come from wealthy backgrounds. If they lived 100 years ago, they were more likely to work 16 hours a day doing backbreaking chores just to keep the family alive. None of them would have "puttered around" in white lace dresses (that took a full day to iron for a laundress) and do nothing but arrange tea parties for their friends.

But I guess that they are so used to never question "history" (since they believe in creationism) that they are confortable living in a historic lie. They should do some genealogical research. It's very humbling to realize how most of our great grandparents lived.

My great grandmother: 12 kids, earth floor, husband went blind and couldn't pay rent, they were evicted and ended up in a poor house with people that were old, sick or insane.

Maybe I should arrange a reenactment and relive those wonderful days. Complete with a rye porridge and milk that has gone sour meal and a shared outhouse. One room, five "toilet" holes. That's how great the Victorian era was for a lot of people.

[Arete]

Pudicitia, I absolutely agree, the Romans hardly had anything like egalitarian marriages in law. However upperclass Athenian society takes the cake in terms of keeping women as segregated breeding stock.