Regarding Justice Alito's invocation of Sir Matthew Hale
Jack Elias
Author, Finding True Magic: Transpersonal Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy NLP at Institute for Therapeutic Learning
Excerpts from article by Willow Grace, PhD – area of expertise: women and gender in the early modern era (1500-1700).
Regarding Justice Alito's invocation of Sir Matthew Hale in his leaked majority opinion.
1)???Matthew Hale, just like a lot of Christian extremists today, believed that women were made from Adam's rib. God did not make her as an autonomous being with rights. She was a physical extension of his body, made to be his "helpmeet," namely to exist to help him to whatever he wants. Women were not legally independent human beings.
2)???Hale therefore wrote in his posthumously published book Historia Placitorum Coron? (1713) that marital rape was totally legal. In fact, because a man owned a woman's body as it was an extension of his own to do with whatever he willed, he was incapable of marital rape. Women who denied men sex needed to be punished.
3)???It should be no surprise that Hale was responsible for the trial and execution of women for witchcraft and that his legal opinion would be used as a base for the execution of women and children by the state both in England and the Americas.
4)???Women were viewed as extremely susceptible to immorality and becoming a Satanic force in the community. Hale believed it was in society's best interest for men of the state to step in and control these women. A woman's primary purpose in adulthood was to be married, be obedient to a man, & to have children.
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5)??Alito invoking Hale in his opinion made it clear that he also thinks this too. It's his duty as a man to put the bodily fate of women in the hands of states run by white men.???
6)???Keep in mind that Hale was only talking about white Christian women. Nonwhite, non-Christian women were viewed as less than human with even less rights.
7)???Alito's invocation of Hale is so deeply, deeply insane that there isn't a way to possibly overreact to his legal standing here. Rage, horror, disgust, etc. are not deep enough reactions to his legal opinion.
8)???Hale is all over our legal system. The easiest application to find was the Salem Witch Trials, but his influence on our laws is much more insidious than that. Marital rape was not completely outlawed in the United States until 1993.
9)???Justice Alito and men like him do not see women as independent human beings with their own human rights. They see us as incapable of making our own decisions. They consider men to be divinely appointed to rule over women. This is not an exaggeration.
10) Imagine what they think about women of color, women of non-Christian groups, or trans women and men. The utter disdain towards them is deep, disturbing, incomprehensible, and violent.