re: #53 majii

“I don’t remember what derp he was peddling back then but it wasn’t much better than this organic fertilizer.”

I have no idea why some right-leaning writers seem to think there were no single-parent households, no abortion, and no divorces before the mid-20th Century. I recall knowing about these things when I was growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s. I specifically remember the time when my mom asked me to help an elderly neighbor pack up her things because she was moving into an elderly care facility. She was a well-educated, well-known and well-regarded member of our community. While I was packing some of her possessions, I ran across material on performing abortions. Now, I don’t know if she’d had one, or if she had performed them at some time in the past, but I remember reading the materials she had on the subject. I was about 11 or 12 at the time. I also recall that some women in our general neighborhood at the time were also single parents, and I remember some couples getting divorces. In addition to these, I remember having contact with LGBTQ persons who lived in my city. Some of them were very active in local churches and were pianists and vocalists who were welcomed in every church. Some people live very sheltered lives, it seems.

That which isn’t discussed doesn’t exist. There was no homosexuality, just a lot of ‘confirmed bachelors’ and ‘maiden aunts’, and women like the ones who used to live next door to us when we were just married. They were about 50 when we were 30, so they’d have been born in the 1930s. They had both retired from careers in the Army. They lived in a 2 bedroom flat, the mirror image of ours. In the bigger bedroom, there was a large bed, and it was all nicely decorated. In the smaller one, there was a day bed that appeared never to have been used. Each one identified that room as the other’s. We weren’t fooled, but then, we also didn’t care.

I think that mostly the people who want to return to the 1950s want to return to a time when they didn’t have to think about things like that, or interact with anyone different from themselves. And of course, it was the Zenith of White Men In America.