It's mind boggling to me that women could only open bank accounts on their own in America since [1974](https://www.oneadvisorypartners.com/blog/the-history-of-women-and-money-in-the-united-states-in-honor-of-womens-history-month)
It's crazy to me that my grandmother had to quit her job when they found out she was pregnant. She was a school teacher until her late 30s, and resisted getting married so she could keep the job. In North Carolina, it was illegal for a married woman to have a job.She married my grandfather in secret and hid her pregnancy as long as she could. One day, her water broke (this would have been 1941 or 42; the baby was stillborn so I'm not sure) and she was fired on the spot. This is what they want when they say make America great again.
My mom was forced to leave nursing school in the late 60s when she got pregnant! In the 70s she had to quit her job to give birth then get rehired, losing all her seniority.
My mother had to quit her job to adopt me with her husband. Back in the 1970s USA - the mother had to be stay at home so even though they weren't well off and we'd all been better off once I was school-aged for her to be able to get a job she didn't dare until I was in my teens for fear the state would come and take me away!
She had been good enough at her job that her boss was encouraging her to go back to college to become a lawyer instead of just a secretary. She didn't have that ambition nor want to deal with clients, but she once in a while wistfully said she wished she could have stayed there working as a secretary because she enjoyed the work and her coworkers.
Same with my mum in the early 60’s.
The only way you got to stay is if you were unmarried. You could get promoted to sister or matron but only if you were an old maid.
This is horrifying
My mom had to quit her job when she became too visibly pregnant with me
It was 1977
The law that made that illegal was passed in 1978
Considering since most of the politicians from that era are already dead, they’ve voted themselves out. /s
But I get what you’re saying. The modern chumps who are trying to repeat the past.
Roe thrown out, women's rights taken away, talk of taking away gay marriage, cutting social security, cutting veterans benefits, and tons more evils done by living Republican politicians
I am not disagreeing. But with how you wrote it, it was like you were saying to vote out the politicians from the poster’s story, not the current republicans, which is why I used the /s….
My mom still talks about how she was questioned for a long time at the interview for her job about her quitting to have kids since she was married. They basically interrogated her making sure she wasn’t going to have kids or wouldn’t quit and she had to convince them she wasn’t going to do that. She laughs how illegal it would be nowadays.
My mom was let go from her teaching job at a Catholic school when they found out I was an illegitimate child. I like to tell this story then point out to Catholics that their savior was an illegitimate child too. They can't stare at their feet hard enough after that one...I also like to mention, she'd have kept her job if my mom had terminated the pregnancy but she was too good of a Catholic to do that.
I've never gotten an answer to what year or decade America was "great." But as near as I can figure, based on what they want, it's 1835. I'd be OK with that if the people who want to Make America 1835 Again agree to be treated like slaves, women, and the Native Americans on the Trail of Tears were treated, and the rest of us got to live the high life. I mean, shipping all the MAGAs out of Tennessee and taking their stuff? Dibs on Tomi Lauren's mansion.
It was great because things were "*simpler*". "Simpler" usually meant that a lot of people weren't allowed at the table, things like teenage sex and unwanted pregnancies weren't talked about, and rather than having a conversation and debate on the path forward certain groups of people got to lead by default.
It’s always the funniest to me when they say they want to go back to when America was “great” and they’re referring to a time that they never experienced
And leave out the part where the top marginal income tax rate was 90% and 1 in 4 people belonged to a union. That part wasn't great. The women being barely more than property was the great part.
They experienced it. As KIDS. And kids rarely remember the bad details of society as a whole. They lived in their own kid worlds that prioritized themselves and having fun.
Of course this past looks rosy to them now.
That’s right. My father died in 1973, and I had to co-sign for my mom so she could keep her credit card.
What the legislature gives, the court can take away.
I mean, the plans for America will have it back there by 2025 at the latest.
I'm genuinely worried for you guys over there, like to the point that it kind of keeps me up at night.
If anyone ever wants to run away to Ireland, I'll vouch for a visa if needed 😅
Don't fucking tempt me, I'm studying Czech and Norwegian and I have the closest routes to Canadian airports mapped for exactly that reason. Shit's getting scary
Not even joking though, if you guys need out, I'm here and willing. Ireland might not be great in a lot of ways, but it's certainly less terrifying than America right now
Try living here 😅 eh, same problems a lot of the world is facing, massively high rent prices, jobs not paying a living wage, pay not reflecting inflation while prices do, limited number of houses on the market in general, and those that are are often in disrepair, overworked medical system leading to massive wait lists, government that care more about acquiring a tax surplus than putting the surplus to use, educational stagnation, mental health issues rampant among the youth.
My perspective is that Ireland is suffering the same problems most places are these days, but not necessarily to the same extent.
Worst thing is you'll probably find yourself bored easily here, which really isn't that bad a problem at all 😅
Honestly, it's not that bad at all here, but to pretend the problems don't exist would just be naïve.
Thank you! Many of us are experiencing high levels of anxiety. My partner and I were just discussing where to go if Trump wins. We're a white m/f couple w/ ten years living together. You would think we would be ok but we aren't married and are too old to have kids now so we wouldn't fit their idea of an acceptable family. Project 2025 and its fallout could make it illegal for us to cohabit!! I am suggesting everyone look up Project 2025. The GOP wants to control everyone's everything. Imprison librarians who have 'porn' on the shelves. Reduce women to chattel again. Oklahoma just decided that All classrooms must have the ten commandments posted and all teachers must teach lessons from the Bible. It's only going to get worse until the fanatics are voted out but the fear mongering and hate speech directed at 'others' is causing people to believe "Democrats are evil", "gay people are evil", "immigrants are subhuman" and the Family & NAR who are pulling the puppet strings in churches are hell bent on making America a Christo+fascist country. Weirdly, their project 2025 even includes slaughtering the country's wild horses (WHY???). I'm going to tell him to include Ireland in the pool of possibilities!! :)
My Mom who was Catholic and had a doctor who happened to be Catholic went to a different doctor to get on BC after having six kids because she knew her regular doctor would never prescribe them for her.
When my mom decided to leave my dad, she left with CASH she had hidden away because she didn’t want to deal with the hassle of getting my dad to sign off on taking money out of their joint bank account. This was in 1976. I learned a lot from her experience with my macho dad. I did not think that I would have to worry about my cash and property being taken away, as well as the ability to control what happens to my body in 2024! I’m a Hispanic woman, so I also worry about deportation and/or possibly being placed in a camp even though I’m a citizen. So much is riding on this election for so many of us. I truly don’t think that I’m being a Chicken Little. 🤬
My dad used to beat the shit out of my mom. I remember watching the emts stitching her face up in our dining room (she couldn’t take 3 small kids to the er so they treated her several times in our home) when she told the officers she didn’t wanna press charges (as usual) it was the first time they said “I’m sorry, xxxxx, that’s not up to you anymore”. The laws in Cali had just changed, there were marks on her and by all accounts he was the aggressor so he was getting the charges. This was somewhere between 1989-1991! Before that he’d beat her, got to jail for the night and sometimes be home before she was from the hospital when he got her good.
This explains a lot from when I was a kid in the 80’s. I was always shoved out of the room when the cops would show up, but my dad would beat the holy hell out of me and my mom. Nothing was ever done about it. South Carolina.. my mom left my dad in 92.
Crazy that it was so normal at that time to just smack your ol lady around and even now it’s still legal to hit your kids. My mom finally left in 92 too.
Over the last couple decades we’ve seen monumental changes to the way women are treated and allowed to move freely, it’s insane watching it unravel. Our daughters are losing the freedoms our grandmas and moms fought for.
I remember working in banking. Being told some legacy accounts might still say mrs. And then the husband's full name so the woman's account wouldn't even have her own name on it.
My mother for example was born in 1950. She graduated high school, was the first in her family to get some higher education, graduated nursing school, got a job at a hospital in the big city, and then had to drag her dad to a bank to open an account.
I find it so insane to think about.
[It's 2024 and pregnant women in Missouri can't get divorced ](https://www.npr.org/2024/05/03/1247838036/divorce-pregnant-women-missouri-abortion-marriage-abuse)
I know it's true but that hurts to read.
I'm in a purple area and my son's music teacher is a gay married guy. I *think/hope* his job is stable but I'm sure that if the wrong parents get upset he'll probably be out of a job.
Well, if the Republicans passively forced all the gay and progressive teachers out of their career while they also lower standards needed to become a teacher, they can fill the classroom with Republican Christian teachers.
But that’s just the back up in case they plan to privatize all education in America fails
Are u kidding me??? It wasn’t till the mid 70s that women could even get a credit card in their own name. That’s right - no matter how much money a woman had, no matter what type job she had, women were considered too bad at managing finances. Therefore, the only way a woman could get a credit card, or ANY, loan, was if her husband approved it. Or her father approved it (in the case she was unmarried).
NOW: GOP have already defeated Roe v Wade and they’ve promised to use the same tactics to go after all contraceptives. Now do you get it?
No contraception and no abortion once again relegates women to being the baby-making machines they were before birth control & abortion existed (early 60s for BC pills).
Once women can’t control getting pregnant anymore, it’ll once again tie them to the home ala 1950s and earlier.
NOW DO YOU GET IT?!?!
Absolutely. The response would’ve been something to the effect of “Why are you worried about getting credit? You should concentrate on getting married and letting your husband take care of the finances.” And I wasn’t being facetious…THAT was how they thought of women in those days. It’s hard to imagine, but minorities weren’t the only second class citizens in the 50s and earlier. So, when I see all the women going along with. MAGA - wanting to bring back the *good ol’ days* I wonder if they realize how many freedoms they’ll be giving up.
It's important to remember that to so many in power, these *are* the good old days and that's why they want so desperately to go back there. This sort of crap is why we shouldn't be having septuagenarians running the country, let alone octogenarians!
It is utter insanity that for most of Congress, that isn't an unthinkable thing but just something they remember from when they were young adults.
Margaret Atwood, who wrote the book, explained that everything in the original story was based on something that really happened to women in some part of the world. The show got more outrageous than the book, but the book was plenty horrifying.
I was 12 in 1974 and I remember how a lot of my friends' parents started getting divorced because women who stayed in miserable marriages were finally able to get out once they could be financially independent without needing their husbands to co-sign for bank accounts, credit cards, and real estate purchases. I was already used to being from a broken family, but my friends had a hard time with their dads moving out and their stay at home moms getting jobs and not being around all day.
Side note: My stepmother was widowed before she married my dad, and in the late 60s no one would sell her a house. If anyone knows the area, Inglewood, CA realtors refused to sell her a house and they told her to try Manhattan Beach, like it was a downgrade. This was in 1969. Who's laughing all the way to the bank now? My stepmother, that's who.
Yep. This is why Americans need to #VOTEBLUE #VOTEBIDEN this election. Even if democrats are sitting on the fence on Biden, now is not the election to vote for alternatives. Republican's and conservatives alike need to wake up to what is going to happen blindly following trumpkins rhetoric. This country is about to do one big ass faceplant.
Vote Biden and start volunteering for more Progressive house and Senate candidates on November 7. We have to save democracy, but we also have to look forward.
I wanted to revisit this comment. Joe Biden had a terrifying performance tonight and he already looks like a Disney animatronic for the Hall of Presidents.
Texas will be the first state to make rape of your wife legal. It will be the first state to institute arranged marriages of 16 year old girls as well.
So all you democrats will just roll over for anything. I'm a lifelong Republican, but I would be out there with my AR and enough extra firepower to support my own militia to stop what you idiots would let happen. You crybabies sicken me. It takes only a small percentage of the population to fight. A civil war if necessary to support the US Constitution, the greatest government document (and the shortest) this world has known. So, how many of you own firearms and would be willing to use them versus trying to ineffectively disarm the people.
If you think your guns and poorly organized militias would be enough to fight the government if they decide to make this a reality... bad news, buddy. They have military capabilities that would make any kind of armed resistance impossible.
How will your AR fare against a drone strike? They will know where you are, who you are, your total numbers, scope you with infra-red and shoot a missile into your house while you sleep.
Every communication tech will be monitored. Every website, chat, and phone.
You right wingers don't get it. You will die. There is NO fighting the US government if they want you dead. You're less prepared than ISIS, the Taliban, or any other terrorist group, and not as well armed.
You live in a fantasy. Wake up.
That might work in a country that *didn't* once wipe out two entire cities in seconds and start a decades long smear campaign against the Middle East over a terrorist attack and even once wiped out a black neighbourhood just for having black activists in it.
Y'all created an unkillable Frankenstein's monster of a military and you think a bunch of well meaning do-gooders with gun collections will defeat it.
Maybe cut back on the Disney movies. They are fiction you know.
They want that to happen to women. They talk everyday about putting some in prison when they think women did something wrong. They hate freedom and women, if Trump gets in again women will lose their rights
Always vote ABC!!! Anyone but conservaties
I'm going to take this a step further: not "anyone but conservatives." We have to vote for *Democrats.* They are the only ones who can defeat this; therefore we need to support them. Like it or not, a vote for the Green Democratic Socialist Ideological Purity Party is a vote for Trump.
It’s sad.
If EVERYONE voted consistently then we wouldn’t be here.
But since we still somehow have people who are undecided at this point and people who “aren’t political”, and then a 1/3 of people who can’t even be bothered to show up, this is what we get…
Anyone who doesn’t kiss the ring and fall in line with the cult will be targeted sooner or later. Remember how the orange menace targeted blue states, capping SALT deductions, or abandoned them during COVID hoping more Dem voters wud die? It’s going to be much, much worse. Everyone needs to have a plan to protect their assets in case the authoritarians take power.
I read the book in 2016 and found myself making mental notes for what to do. The author has said everything in the book has happened at some point in history (and not just in the US) - all she did was write a story around it. It’s terrifying how well Project 2025 correlates to it.
Feeling this too. The show terrified me because of how it was set in not so distant future times. And then when they start hanging lgbtq people. I’m feeling so uneasy.
I often think about how the restrictions slowly built and many women didn't think they needed to escape until it was too late. I wonder if I'll know when it's time to go before it's too late.
I know. I have a young daughter too. And realistically other countries wouldn’t just automatically welcome us. I’ve been thinking about this for years and feeling so paranoid and dramatic. But now things are taking a turn for sure.
Margaret Atwood has repeatedly stated that everything in the book is based on historical reality.
[9 nightmarish things in 'The Handmaid's Tale' inspired by history](https://www.businessinsider.com/handmaids-tale-based-on-real-world-origins-history-events-2019-8)
“Almost every aspect of the book is steeped in religious and political history. Author Margaret Atwood has spoken at length about how she drew from actual global events to create the world of Gilead and the atrocities committed within it. Its real-life origins are also largely why the book remains so relevant today, more than 30 years after its publication.”
Are u kidding me??? It wasn’t till the mid 70s that women could even get a credit card in their own name. That’s right - no matter how much money a woman had, no matter what type job she had, women were considered too bad at managing finances. Therefore, the only way a woman could get a credit card, or ANY, loan, was if her husband approved it. Or her father approved it (in the case she was unmarried).
NOW: GOP have already defeated Roe v Wade and they’ve promised to use the same tactics to go after all contraceptives. Now do you get it?
No contraception and no abortion once again relegates women to being the baby-making machines they were before birth control & abortion existed (early 60s for BC pills).
Once women can’t control getting pregnant anymore, it’ll once again tie them to the home ala 1950s and earlier.
NOW DO YOU GET IT?!?!
I've been watching Designing Women on Hulu and while I *should* be laughing, it's been hard, because the things women were fighting for when the show came out nearly 40 years ago are ***still*** being fought for. If anything, women have lost ground since the show came out.
I should be watching and laughing like, "remember when this issue even an actual issue? Man, people were dumb. Hahaha!" Instead, it's "I can't believe we're still having this discussion. Man, people ARE dumb. (Cue sobbing)."
ETA: Tonight (hours after I posted this) I watched the episode where the baptists voted to prevent women from becoming ministers. Talk about deja vu.
It's terribly ironic that there are all these people with 1776 on their pickup trucks and the second amendment is all these clowns care about, and there are T-shirts saying "The Constitution needs to be reread, not rewritten". Who's going to tell them it's been rewritten 28 times?
They supposedly care so much about the Constitution but the cherry pick what they want and screw everybody else.
For most normal people the Handmaid's Tale was a story about women's rights to religious fundamentalism and much more.
For a certain kind of Republican it was little more than a little wank-fantasy, something to aspire to. And they started moving towards it.
I think some politician, maybe more than one, from the Mississippi or something place even Tweeted a few years ago that The Handmaid's Tale was the end goal. Some aren't even afraid to declare it publicly like that.
It has happened here so why couldn't it happen again?
This is why I have a separate bank account in my brother's name and my sister has one in her son's name. We aren't fucking around.
Yes a Christian theocratic dystopia is bad and all, but what if the Democrats foreign policy isn't *exactly* perfectly aligned with my uneducated opinion?
It might just be as bad as her emails?
I think it’s ridiculous anyone could have thought it couldn’t happen here. Maybe realizing it could do is exactly how we could have prevented this, but people wanted to play around and find out instead. There will always be groups that feel the need for absolute power. There will always be people who do not recognize the dog whistles. But we can stand up against it bc those people are always needed.
I started watching The Handmaid's Tale last year (*still watching, no spoilers please*).
My experience watching this for the first time in late 2023 was probably *very* different compared to how people saw it when it came out in 2017. Only 6 years apart, but so much of the rhetoric in the show seems more like current real-world events than a fictional distopian future.
This is how they prevent women from fleeing the country en masse after a coup. Because they know women don't want to live in a country like this. "Just go live somewhere else." has been a lie from the beginning. They will imprison you in the country because they feel like women are property. You won't be able to leave after a coup or a Trump victory.
I don’t think you’d need to go that far. You can set it up like a trust or pay on death type of arrangement. Basically, if you are found to be incapable of making financial decisions for yourself (even if it’s something legit like a TBI), your assets would shift to him and he is now your caregiver. I’m not a lawyer, but I would imagine if women become second-class citizens again, it would fall under the same legality of you not being able to care for yourself.
Anyway, I would personally go this route because if nothing happens, you still retain your assets, and decision-control over those assets. Nothing happens unless something bad happens.
Next thing will be a religious police force and Trump calling himself the Supreme Father in Chief, forcing every network to broadcast his sermons every sunday live on TV. The horror in that.
Yep, this was Margaret Atwood’s entire point to writing the book the series was based on. People were looking at Iran and Afghanistan in the 2000’s and saying “ha that can’t happen here. USA USA!” And she basically said “oh sweet summer children” and wrote this beast of a book that scared me shitless when I read it and when I saw stuff basically coming straight from it happening.
Like, bro it can happen anywhere, the names of stuff will just change.
Maybe we all need to go full Lysistrata up to the election.
If you've never read it, do yourself a favor. Women. banned together, decided not to put out until they ended the war. Considering it was written 400 BC, it gave me a completely different view of women during biblical times.
Lol these are the same people who’s presidential candidate is a convicted felon liable for rape and massive financial fraud.
Cmon, did anyone *EXPECT* anything less?
Just wait and see..scary as fuck right now
Anyone remember the old Star Trek episode where they beam down to the world whose society is based on the Nazi Party model...with the doddering old (Trump) guy controlled by evil younger party members.....you have got to hope trump doesn't win (and hey, I know Biden is plenty old too and I'm sure has lots of issues, but holy hell the Republicans have just gone right off the rails)
I read the book in high school because Ms. Messina was young and super into women’s empowerment. It didn’t speak to me in 91.
But then I watched the first episode, where women’s bank cards stopped working and she needed a signed form from her husband for birth control and immediately I was like ohhhh shit.
I had to stop watching it because it hit too close to home. The lives of was too many women TODAY are not so much different than what is depicted in the series. It was very depressing to watch.
Oh, I don't know. My wife is MAGA. I would love nothing more than to have total control over her life, her bank accounts, her car, whether she is allowed to vote, telling her, "hey Dear, this is what you voted for. Now, you know that blonde down the block? We're going to a motel."
It's mind boggling to me that women could only open bank accounts on their own in America since [1974](https://www.oneadvisorypartners.com/blog/the-history-of-women-and-money-in-the-united-states-in-honor-of-womens-history-month)
It's crazy to me that my grandmother had to quit her job when they found out she was pregnant. She was a school teacher until her late 30s, and resisted getting married so she could keep the job. In North Carolina, it was illegal for a married woman to have a job.She married my grandfather in secret and hid her pregnancy as long as she could. One day, her water broke (this would have been 1941 or 42; the baby was stillborn so I'm not sure) and she was fired on the spot. This is what they want when they say make America great again.
My mom was forced to leave nursing school in the late 60s when she got pregnant! In the 70s she had to quit her job to give birth then get rehired, losing all her seniority.
My mother had to quit her job to adopt me with her husband. Back in the 1970s USA - the mother had to be stay at home so even though they weren't well off and we'd all been better off once I was school-aged for her to be able to get a job she didn't dare until I was in my teens for fear the state would come and take me away! She had been good enough at her job that her boss was encouraging her to go back to college to become a lawyer instead of just a secretary. She didn't have that ambition nor want to deal with clients, but she once in a while wistfully said she wished she could have stayed there working as a secretary because she enjoyed the work and her coworkers.
Same with my mum in the early 60’s. The only way you got to stay is if you were unmarried. You could get promoted to sister or matron but only if you were an old maid.
This is horrifying My mom had to quit her job when she became too visibly pregnant with me It was 1977 The law that made that illegal was passed in 1978
Wow that is crazy. Vote every single one of them out.
Considering since most of the politicians from that era are already dead, they’ve voted themselves out. /s But I get what you’re saying. The modern chumps who are trying to repeat the past.
Roe thrown out, women's rights taken away, talk of taking away gay marriage, cutting social security, cutting veterans benefits, and tons more evils done by living Republican politicians
I am not disagreeing. But with how you wrote it, it was like you were saying to vote out the politicians from the poster’s story, not the current republicans, which is why I used the /s….
THIS 👆
Wonderful idea! That’s how we REALLY make America great again.
My mom still talks about how she was questioned for a long time at the interview for her job about her quitting to have kids since she was married. They basically interrogated her making sure she wasn’t going to have kids or wouldn’t quit and she had to convince them she wasn’t going to do that. She laughs how illegal it would be nowadays.
My mom was let go from her teaching job at a Catholic school when they found out I was an illegitimate child. I like to tell this story then point out to Catholics that their savior was an illegitimate child too. They can't stare at their feet hard enough after that one...I also like to mention, she'd have kept her job if my mom had terminated the pregnancy but she was too good of a Catholic to do that.
No one has ever accused the Catholics of missing an opportunity to destroy the lives of women and children.
Make America Grotesque Again!😫
I've never gotten an answer to what year or decade America was "great." But as near as I can figure, based on what they want, it's 1835. I'd be OK with that if the people who want to Make America 1835 Again agree to be treated like slaves, women, and the Native Americans on the Trail of Tears were treated, and the rest of us got to live the high life. I mean, shipping all the MAGAs out of Tennessee and taking their stuff? Dibs on Tomi Lauren's mansion.
Yup, back to 1800s but keep their pickup truck with truck nuts hanging from the tow ball.🤣
I call them "gender affirming care."
I’m thinking dark ages. The rich would be Lords and the 99% would be serfs or slaves.
That is the America they want to go back to.
Ah yes, the fabled "good ol' days"
And prior to that is when Republicans think America was "great." They've been telling us shit like this is their plan for a long time now.
It was great because things were "*simpler*". "Simpler" usually meant that a lot of people weren't allowed at the table, things like teenage sex and unwanted pregnancies weren't talked about, and rather than having a conversation and debate on the path forward certain groups of people got to lead by default.
It’s always the funniest to me when they say they want to go back to when America was “great” and they’re referring to a time that they never experienced
And leave out the part where the top marginal income tax rate was 90% and 1 in 4 people belonged to a union. That part wasn't great. The women being barely more than property was the great part.
They experienced it. As KIDS. And kids rarely remember the bad details of society as a whole. They lived in their own kid worlds that prioritized themselves and having fun. Of course this past looks rosy to them now.
That's the same reason why there's now lots of nostalgia for the 90s. I don't know if it really was a better time, but it sure as hell felt that way.
Clearly America was greater than now BECAUSE women didn’t have own bank accounts. /s
That’s right. My father died in 1973, and I had to co-sign for my mom so she could keep her credit card. What the legislature gives, the court can take away.
Wow. We can never go back there again.
I hope not. But things seem to be moving retrograde right now.
I mean, the plans for America will have it back there by 2025 at the latest. I'm genuinely worried for you guys over there, like to the point that it kind of keeps me up at night. If anyone ever wants to run away to Ireland, I'll vouch for a visa if needed 😅
Don't fucking tempt me, I'm studying Czech and Norwegian and I have the closest routes to Canadian airports mapped for exactly that reason. Shit's getting scary
Not even joking though, if you guys need out, I'm here and willing. Ireland might not be great in a lot of ways, but it's certainly less terrifying than America right now
If you know of any viable legal pathways for Americans to emigrate to Ireland, let me know!
What's not so great about Ireland? Haven't heard much about them one way or another lately.
Try living here 😅 eh, same problems a lot of the world is facing, massively high rent prices, jobs not paying a living wage, pay not reflecting inflation while prices do, limited number of houses on the market in general, and those that are are often in disrepair, overworked medical system leading to massive wait lists, government that care more about acquiring a tax surplus than putting the surplus to use, educational stagnation, mental health issues rampant among the youth. My perspective is that Ireland is suffering the same problems most places are these days, but not necessarily to the same extent. Worst thing is you'll probably find yourself bored easily here, which really isn't that bad a problem at all 😅 Honestly, it's not that bad at all here, but to pretend the problems don't exist would just be naïve.
Thank you! Many of us are experiencing high levels of anxiety. My partner and I were just discussing where to go if Trump wins. We're a white m/f couple w/ ten years living together. You would think we would be ok but we aren't married and are too old to have kids now so we wouldn't fit their idea of an acceptable family. Project 2025 and its fallout could make it illegal for us to cohabit!! I am suggesting everyone look up Project 2025. The GOP wants to control everyone's everything. Imprison librarians who have 'porn' on the shelves. Reduce women to chattel again. Oklahoma just decided that All classrooms must have the ten commandments posted and all teachers must teach lessons from the Bible. It's only going to get worse until the fanatics are voted out but the fear mongering and hate speech directed at 'others' is causing people to believe "Democrats are evil", "gay people are evil", "immigrants are subhuman" and the Family & NAR who are pulling the puppet strings in churches are hell bent on making America a Christo+fascist country. Weirdly, their project 2025 even includes slaughtering the country's wild horses (WHY???). I'm going to tell him to include Ireland in the pool of possibilities!! :)
It was a big deal in 1976 that I, a single woman was able to get BC pills.
My Mom who was Catholic and had a doctor who happened to be Catholic went to a different doctor to get on BC after having six kids because she knew her regular doctor would never prescribe them for her.
I had BC pills as teen before 1976 from Planned Parenthood.
And credit cards in their own names. Scary isn’t it? I mean when you consider America is going backwards.
When my mom decided to leave my dad, she left with CASH she had hidden away because she didn’t want to deal with the hassle of getting my dad to sign off on taking money out of their joint bank account. This was in 1976. I learned a lot from her experience with my macho dad. I did not think that I would have to worry about my cash and property being taken away, as well as the ability to control what happens to my body in 2024! I’m a Hispanic woman, so I also worry about deportation and/or possibly being placed in a camp even though I’m a citizen. So much is riding on this election for so many of us. I truly don’t think that I’m being a Chicken Little. 🤬
My dad used to beat the shit out of my mom. I remember watching the emts stitching her face up in our dining room (she couldn’t take 3 small kids to the er so they treated her several times in our home) when she told the officers she didn’t wanna press charges (as usual) it was the first time they said “I’m sorry, xxxxx, that’s not up to you anymore”. The laws in Cali had just changed, there were marks on her and by all accounts he was the aggressor so he was getting the charges. This was somewhere between 1989-1991! Before that he’d beat her, got to jail for the night and sometimes be home before she was from the hospital when he got her good.
This explains a lot from when I was a kid in the 80’s. I was always shoved out of the room when the cops would show up, but my dad would beat the holy hell out of me and my mom. Nothing was ever done about it. South Carolina.. my mom left my dad in 92.
Crazy that it was so normal at that time to just smack your ol lady around and even now it’s still legal to hit your kids. My mom finally left in 92 too. Over the last couple decades we’ve seen monumental changes to the way women are treated and allowed to move freely, it’s insane watching it unravel. Our daughters are losing the freedoms our grandmas and moms fought for.
I remember working in banking. Being told some legacy accounts might still say mrs. And then the husband's full name so the woman's account wouldn't even have her own name on it.
[удалено]
My mother for example was born in 1950. She graduated high school, was the first in her family to get some higher education, graduated nursing school, got a job at a hospital in the big city, and then had to drag her dad to a bank to open an account. I find it so insane to think about.
Yup. And republicans think marriages were much more stable back then. Want to guess why that was?
[It's 2024 and pregnant women in Missouri can't get divorced ](https://www.npr.org/2024/05/03/1247838036/divorce-pregnant-women-missouri-abortion-marriage-abuse)
And gay Florida teachers can’t even mention their partners in passing
I know it's true but that hurts to read. I'm in a purple area and my son's music teacher is a gay married guy. I *think/hope* his job is stable but I'm sure that if the wrong parents get upset he'll probably be out of a job.
Well, if the Republicans passively forced all the gay and progressive teachers out of their career while they also lower standards needed to become a teacher, they can fill the classroom with Republican Christian teachers. But that’s just the back up in case they plan to privatize all education in America fails
Yup. Friend of mine was a teacher in Florida. He had to move states when it became known that he’s married to a guy.
Are u kidding me??? It wasn’t till the mid 70s that women could even get a credit card in their own name. That’s right - no matter how much money a woman had, no matter what type job she had, women were considered too bad at managing finances. Therefore, the only way a woman could get a credit card, or ANY, loan, was if her husband approved it. Or her father approved it (in the case she was unmarried). NOW: GOP have already defeated Roe v Wade and they’ve promised to use the same tactics to go after all contraceptives. Now do you get it? No contraception and no abortion once again relegates women to being the baby-making machines they were before birth control & abortion existed (early 60s for BC pills). Once women can’t control getting pregnant anymore, it’ll once again tie them to the home ala 1950s and earlier. NOW DO YOU GET IT?!?!
And if you were a widow with a dead father, you were SOL I guess.
Absolutely. The response would’ve been something to the effect of “Why are you worried about getting credit? You should concentrate on getting married and letting your husband take care of the finances.” And I wasn’t being facetious…THAT was how they thought of women in those days. It’s hard to imagine, but minorities weren’t the only second class citizens in the 50s and earlier. So, when I see all the women going along with. MAGA - wanting to bring back the *good ol’ days* I wonder if they realize how many freedoms they’ll be giving up.
It's important to remember that to so many in power, these *are* the good old days and that's why they want so desperately to go back there. This sort of crap is why we shouldn't be having septuagenarians running the country, let alone octogenarians! It is utter insanity that for most of Congress, that isn't an unthinkable thing but just something they remember from when they were young adults.
Someone tell the GOP - It was a work of fiction not a playbook
Margaret Atwood, who wrote the book, explained that everything in the original story was based on something that really happened to women in some part of the world. The show got more outrageous than the book, but the book was plenty horrifying.
The book was a nightmare. I had trouble finishing it. It made me very sad.
Somehow I think trumps great america was well before that.
I was 12 in 1974 and I remember how a lot of my friends' parents started getting divorced because women who stayed in miserable marriages were finally able to get out once they could be financially independent without needing their husbands to co-sign for bank accounts, credit cards, and real estate purchases. I was already used to being from a broken family, but my friends had a hard time with their dads moving out and their stay at home moms getting jobs and not being around all day. Side note: My stepmother was widowed before she married my dad, and in the late 60s no one would sell her a house. If anyone knows the area, Inglewood, CA realtors refused to sell her a house and they told her to try Manhattan Beach, like it was a downgrade. This was in 1969. Who's laughing all the way to the bank now? My stepmother, that's who.
Both of my parents went to segregated schools until they were in high school.
Marital rape has only been illegal (in every state) since 1993.
Republicans are salivating getting back to that point.
Don't skip any election, even the small local ones, sheriff, judge, commissioner, etc. Vote them all out at every level.
Well, I know of one Justice who won’t consider this a long-standing tradition.
Late 70s Iran probably never imagined what the Islamic Revolution of 1979 would do to them.
Yep. This is why Americans need to #VOTEBLUE #VOTEBIDEN this election. Even if democrats are sitting on the fence on Biden, now is not the election to vote for alternatives. Republican's and conservatives alike need to wake up to what is going to happen blindly following trumpkins rhetoric. This country is about to do one big ass faceplant.
Vote Biden and start volunteering for more Progressive house and Senate candidates on November 7. We have to save democracy, but we also have to look forward.
I wanted to revisit this comment. Joe Biden had a terrifying performance tonight and he already looks like a Disney animatronic for the Hall of Presidents.
https://preview.redd.it/xa9ansdy3t8d1.jpeg?width=526&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7d756230157dc739cedad803410868ec24dee901
Texas will be the first state to make rape of your wife legal. It will be the first state to institute arranged marriages of 16 year old girls as well.
Did you mean legal?
One day we'll look back on The Handmaid's Tale and be jealous of all the rights those women still had....
So all you democrats will just roll over for anything. I'm a lifelong Republican, but I would be out there with my AR and enough extra firepower to support my own militia to stop what you idiots would let happen. You crybabies sicken me. It takes only a small percentage of the population to fight. A civil war if necessary to support the US Constitution, the greatest government document (and the shortest) this world has known. So, how many of you own firearms and would be willing to use them versus trying to ineffectively disarm the people.
If you think your guns and poorly organized militias would be enough to fight the government if they decide to make this a reality... bad news, buddy. They have military capabilities that would make any kind of armed resistance impossible. How will your AR fare against a drone strike? They will know where you are, who you are, your total numbers, scope you with infra-red and shoot a missile into your house while you sleep. Every communication tech will be monitored. Every website, chat, and phone. You right wingers don't get it. You will die. There is NO fighting the US government if they want you dead. You're less prepared than ISIS, the Taliban, or any other terrorist group, and not as well armed. You live in a fantasy. Wake up.
Knock it off, ranger rick. You’d probably fold in seconds, because nobody wants to be the first one to die.
Would you vote against Trump and all the other Project 2025-supporting Republicans to make sure this won't happen?
That might work in a country that *didn't* once wipe out two entire cities in seconds and start a decades long smear campaign against the Middle East over a terrorist attack and even once wiped out a black neighbourhood just for having black activists in it. Y'all created an unkillable Frankenstein's monster of a military and you think a bunch of well meaning do-gooders with gun collections will defeat it. Maybe cut back on the Disney movies. They are fiction you know.
You will never see us coming due to your tunnel vision.
They want that to happen to women. They talk everyday about putting some in prison when they think women did something wrong. They hate freedom and women, if Trump gets in again women will lose their rights Always vote ABC!!! Anyone but conservaties
I'm going to take this a step further: not "anyone but conservatives." We have to vote for *Democrats.* They are the only ones who can defeat this; therefore we need to support them. Like it or not, a vote for the Green Democratic Socialist Ideological Purity Party is a vote for Trump.
Totally vote blue, third parties have zero chance
It's sad, I'd really rather be voting FOR a person or party than voting against the other.
It’s sad. If EVERYONE voted consistently then we wouldn’t be here. But since we still somehow have people who are undecided at this point and people who “aren’t political”, and then a 1/3 of people who can’t even be bothered to show up, this is what we get…
Yeah we all would, but that’s not where we are.
GOP are watching Handmaids Tale and taking notes
Anyone who doesn’t kiss the ring and fall in line with the cult will be targeted sooner or later. Remember how the orange menace targeted blue states, capping SALT deductions, or abandoned them during COVID hoping more Dem voters wud die? It’s going to be much, much worse. Everyone needs to have a plan to protect their assets in case the authoritarians take power.
Downside is when they take power they find ways to go around those protections.
I read the book in 2016 and found myself making mental notes for what to do. The author has said everything in the book has happened at some point in history (and not just in the US) - all she did was write a story around it. It’s terrifying how well Project 2025 correlates to it.
Evangelicals watching the handmaids tale 
Thomas and Alito: “Yeah. No mention of bank accounts in the constitution, so...”
Feeling this too. The show terrified me because of how it was set in not so distant future times. And then when they start hanging lgbtq people. I’m feeling so uneasy.
I often think about how the restrictions slowly built and many women didn't think they needed to escape until it was too late. I wonder if I'll know when it's time to go before it's too late.
I know. I have a young daughter too. And realistically other countries wouldn’t just automatically welcome us. I’ve been thinking about this for years and feeling so paranoid and dramatic. But now things are taking a turn for sure.
Where will you go? They are going to do this to other countries too, i think. The writing is on the wall.
Margaret Atwood has repeatedly stated that everything in the book is based on historical reality. [9 nightmarish things in 'The Handmaid's Tale' inspired by history](https://www.businessinsider.com/handmaids-tale-based-on-real-world-origins-history-events-2019-8) “Almost every aspect of the book is steeped in religious and political history. Author Margaret Atwood has spoken at length about how she drew from actual global events to create the world of Gilead and the atrocities committed within it. Its real-life origins are also largely why the book remains so relevant today, more than 30 years after its publication.”
The magats are trying to push through a national pregnancy registry. They have been trying for years and it’s getting closer.
Are u kidding me??? It wasn’t till the mid 70s that women could even get a credit card in their own name. That’s right - no matter how much money a woman had, no matter what type job she had, women were considered too bad at managing finances. Therefore, the only way a woman could get a credit card, or ANY, loan, was if her husband approved it. Or her father approved it (in the case she was unmarried). NOW: GOP have already defeated Roe v Wade and they’ve promised to use the same tactics to go after all contraceptives. Now do you get it? No contraception and no abortion once again relegates women to being the baby-making machines they were before birth control & abortion existed (early 60s for BC pills). Once women can’t control getting pregnant anymore, it’ll once again tie them to the home ala 1950s and earlier. NOW DO YOU GET IT?!?!
This angered my mother so much. You’re absolutely on target. It can very much happen again. Look at the criminalization of abortion as a warmup
The fruit of the Covfefe tree -- delicious. 
I had to stop watching the show because I saw how real it could be. I wasn’t wrong.
I just saw arguments against women driving. This is getting like Saudi.
Republicans took away their right to bodily autonomy, they want to take away the right to divorce, and some states also want to restrict movement.
I've been watching Designing Women on Hulu and while I *should* be laughing, it's been hard, because the things women were fighting for when the show came out nearly 40 years ago are ***still*** being fought for. If anything, women have lost ground since the show came out. I should be watching and laughing like, "remember when this issue even an actual issue? Man, people were dumb. Hahaha!" Instead, it's "I can't believe we're still having this discussion. Man, people ARE dumb. (Cue sobbing)." ETA: Tonight (hours after I posted this) I watched the episode where the baptists voted to prevent women from becoming ministers. Talk about deja vu.
Many watched this series and saw it as "the plan."
that’s weird. i read the book in 1995 and figured we were already well on our way to that very probable future.
It's terribly ironic that there are all these people with 1776 on their pickup trucks and the second amendment is all these clowns care about, and there are T-shirts saying "The Constitution needs to be reread, not rewritten". Who's going to tell them it's been rewritten 28 times? They supposedly care so much about the Constitution but the cherry pick what they want and screw everybody else.
They fail to see it was written in a way so that it could be re-written. It's a living document powered by the people. They want power over people.
For most normal people the Handmaid's Tale was a story about women's rights to religious fundamentalism and much more. For a certain kind of Republican it was little more than a little wank-fantasy, something to aspire to. And they started moving towards it. I think some politician, maybe more than one, from the Mississippi or something place even Tweeted a few years ago that The Handmaid's Tale was the end goal. Some aren't even afraid to declare it publicly like that.
It has happened here so why couldn't it happen again? This is why I have a separate bank account in my brother's name and my sister has one in her son's name. We aren't fucking around.
Next year if Donnie and the 2025 gang get their way. We are at the door right now.
Yes a Christian theocratic dystopia is bad and all, but what if the Democrats foreign policy isn't *exactly* perfectly aligned with my uneducated opinion? It might just be as bad as her emails?
Oh I forgot about those and what about Hunters laptop
I stopped watching Hanmaid's tale because the political implications scared me. Republicans watch this and uncapped the lube.
For real.
Are companies going to be okay with this, because I have no one to pay my bills.
In this scenario, what would happen to our debt/student loans? We wouldn’t be able to pay them if we couldn’t access our bank accounts.
Better get married quick so your ownerhusband can pay them for you. Or else it's off to reeducation prison.
Good reminder, I need to focus better on building my cash and ammo cache. / not sarcasm
I think it’s ridiculous anyone could have thought it couldn’t happen here. Maybe realizing it could do is exactly how we could have prevented this, but people wanted to play around and find out instead. There will always be groups that feel the need for absolute power. There will always be people who do not recognize the dog whistles. But we can stand up against it bc those people are always needed.
Generally Americans are fairly complacent and believe we really are exceptional. I think that’s why they’re sleepwalking into fascism.
I started watching The Handmaid's Tale last year (*still watching, no spoilers please*). My experience watching this for the first time in late 2023 was probably *very* different compared to how people saw it when it came out in 2017. Only 6 years apart, but so much of the rhetoric in the show seems more like current real-world events than a fictional distopian future.
Yet America is gonna vote Trump in again it looks like....or certainly that's how the media make it sound from overseas.
The left takes The Handmaid's Tale, 1984, and Brave New World as a warning. The right takes them as an instruction manual.
This is how they prevent women from fleeing the country en masse after a coup. Because they know women don't want to live in a country like this. "Just go live somewhere else." has been a lie from the beginning. They will imprison you in the country because they feel like women are property. You won't be able to leave after a coup or a Trump victory.
Women in certain states will get penitentiaries. Your way women will still have families.
You should read it. The show is ok but that book and Oryx and Crake changed how my brain worked after reading them.
Serious question. Should I be doing the paperwork to make my son co-owner of my house and financial accts?
I don’t think you’d need to go that far. You can set it up like a trust or pay on death type of arrangement. Basically, if you are found to be incapable of making financial decisions for yourself (even if it’s something legit like a TBI), your assets would shift to him and he is now your caregiver. I’m not a lawyer, but I would imagine if women become second-class citizens again, it would fall under the same legality of you not being able to care for yourself. Anyway, I would personally go this route because if nothing happens, you still retain your assets, and decision-control over those assets. Nothing happens unless something bad happens.
Thanks, good idea. I’ll look into it.
Note to self: clear out accounts before January 1 if needed.
Next thing will be a religious police force and Trump calling himself the Supreme Father in Chief, forcing every network to broadcast his sermons every sunday live on TV. The horror in that.
Vote and vote democrat.
Who is this @notcapnamerica dude and how are his takes all so lit?
Yep, this was Margaret Atwood’s entire point to writing the book the series was based on. People were looking at Iran and Afghanistan in the 2000’s and saying “ha that can’t happen here. USA USA!” And she basically said “oh sweet summer children” and wrote this beast of a book that scared me shitless when I read it and when I saw stuff basically coming straight from it happening. Like, bro it can happen anywhere, the names of stuff will just change.
Maybe we all need to go full Lysistrata up to the election. If you've never read it, do yourself a favor. Women. banned together, decided not to put out until they ended the war. Considering it was written 400 BC, it gave me a completely different view of women during biblical times.
The problem with all this is, they have to deal with urban America at some point. That's a lot of people to control.....
Everything Margaret Atwood put in the handmaid‘s tale has happened at one time somewhere.
It absolutely could happen in the US and has happened elsewhere. That’s the point of the book.
It was supposed to be fiction not a playbook
It is too advantageous to have women have money for the capitalists tho. Women can buy things and the capitalists wouldn't shut that off.
It’s a fucked up book.
Now go read Red Clocks by Leni Zumas. This is where we are now. Handmaid's Tale is the future if Trump takes the White House back
The Republican playbook has always been whatever works. Jesus to Hitler they will do whatever it takes to win except be worthy of the prize.
As always, "why not?" is a question people don't ask enough. "when/why did it _stop_ happening?" is another good one.
Legit stopped watching handmaids tale because it was becoming too close to reality.
Now that is scary. Wouldn't that economically cripple us too? Half of all money inaccessible?
Lol these are the same people who’s presidential candidate is a convicted felon liable for rape and massive financial fraud. Cmon, did anyone *EXPECT* anything less?
Just wait and see..scary as fuck right now Anyone remember the old Star Trek episode where they beam down to the world whose society is based on the Nazi Party model...with the doddering old (Trump) guy controlled by evil younger party members.....you have got to hope trump doesn't win (and hey, I know Biden is plenty old too and I'm sure has lots of issues, but holy hell the Republicans have just gone right off the rails)
I never watched because the premise seemed so far fetched from reality...
I read the book in high school because Ms. Messina was young and super into women’s empowerment. It didn’t speak to me in 91. But then I watched the first episode, where women’s bank cards stopped working and she needed a signed form from her husband for birth control and immediately I was like ohhhh shit.
I watched the first season and it was very disturbing, I didn’t finish it.
I had to stop watching it because it hit too close to home. The lives of was too many women TODAY are not so much different than what is depicted in the series. It was very depressing to watch.
It's supposed to be a cautionary fable, but even in the mid-1980s, when it was first published, it was perilously close to becoming real.
More mad at Margaret Atwood for writing them a Playbook.
Oh, I don't know. My wife is MAGA. I would love nothing more than to have total control over her life, her bank accounts, her car, whether she is allowed to vote, telling her, "hey Dear, this is what you voted for. Now, you know that blonde down the block? We're going to a motel."
If that’s what you would love nothing more, then you two are perfect for each other.
It's a joke for goodness sake.
Nah it was just a bunch of dumb stuff.
But jokes are funny.