Posted by
Greg England on Thursday, May 15, 2008 5:37:46 PM
The UKs Daily Telegraph wrote an article entitled:
"Mark your wives: The 1930s marriage test"
The article states that "American psychologists have unearthed a 'marital rating scale' used by marriage counsellors in 1939 to assess the performance of wives - and the categories make interesting reading for modern couples brought up to believe in the equality of the sexes"
It then contains an embedded image, which is a set of questions that a husband is supposed to use to mark his wife. The questions are typical of the time e.g. "a good hostess - even to unexpected guests" or "has meals on time"
However, the article is a misrepresentation of the truth ... a half-truth.
You see, buried deep within the article is the phrase "The test was designed to be answered either by husbands or their wives themselves ..." One of the commenters on the blog, posted links to the questions that the husbands are supposed to answer:
These include questions like:
"Helps wife with dishes, caring for children, scrubbing"
"Leaves car for wife on days she may need it"
This is disgraceful.
The Daily Telegraph wrote this article in an attempt to portray the 1930s as a dark age, full of male chauvinist pigs. But when you read the questions that the men have to answer, you come away with the impression that 1930s marriage counsellors viewed marriage as a partnership between men and women.
In other words, the article is 180 degrees out of phase with the truth. But it gets worse. Much worse.
One of the commenters on the site, complained about the Telegraph only publishing the "the wife's chart and not the husbands" stating that "not much progress has been made in attitudes to women!"
So let's get this straight.
A respected UK conservative broadsheet newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, writes a misleading article designed to manipulate the reader into an anti-male viewpoint, and one of the women who read the article thought that the Daily Telegraph was being sexist against women.
What hope do we have when liberals get it so utterly, utterly wrong?