h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I enjoyed this - thanks.

It's no bad thing to be reminded, now and again - and to wonder how our current customs will be viewed Forty Years On.

Thanks for sharing.

It is amazing at times just how long it took for the weirdest laws to be altered into something which actually gave equal rights to men AND women. Until well into the 1960s, it was the marital DUTY of women to have sex with their husbands, and not only to let it happen, but she was not allowed to show disgust or indifference.
As late as 2000, a court judged that the alimony should be less because one partner had refused to have sex. The article doesn't say whether it was the woman or not, but I guess so.

It is scandalous!

In the 1950s when I was born, in Quebec, women were still legally chattel. A woman belonged to her father until she married, at which time her husband became the person legally in charge of her. When my mother went in to labour with me, my father had to sign her in at the hospital, she could not legally do so, herself. When it became apparent that she required a C-Section, my father was at home sleeping in his studio. The phone was in the house and he couldn't hear it. It took them hours to track someone down to go and get him to go to the hospital. Why? Because unless he signed the permission to allow the procedure, they couldn't do it.

My mother and I would simply have died because no matter what, my mother could not give her permission as she had no say in her own care. If my father had refused to sign, that would be that. We would have died.

It was into the 1960s before women in Quebec were able to legally speak for themselves in their own medical care.

Even today, when a woman goes to a hospital before they will treat you, they ask your father's name. My mother, at the age of 70+ and a widow for over 20 years was required to provide her father's and husband's name at the hospital. While women ARE fully equal to men in their ability to legally sign for themselves, this nonsensical holdover which serves no actual purpose.

When I went in to emergency in Quebec a number of years ago, they asked my father's name. I asked "My birth father or my adoptive father?"

They wanted my birth father's name despite the fact that he had not been my "father" for over 40 years and had been dead for 5 years, as had my step-father. I asked what would happen if I refused and they said I would not be treated! The information would not be for identification purposes because the health insurance body does not maintain this information and legally speaking my step-father was my "father".

I wrote to the Quebec ministers of Health and of Justice and complained. I received no reply.

Even 3 years ago when I ended up in the BuckighamQuebec hospital, I was asked this same nonsensical question.

That's incredible! Isn't there anything you can do about that? if I read what anhaga writes, you're all close acquaintances of your MPs.

That really is disturbing.