The world John McCain was born into

When I was a little girl, one of my grandparents made an unintentionally racist remark. For the life of me, I can’t remember exactly what they said, but only my mother’s explanation for it “You have to remember that people carry certain prejudices from the world they were born into.” My paternal grandparents are only a few years older than John McCain. The fact of the matter is that unless you’re an extremely open-minded person, you do carry certain ideas and prejudices with you from the world you were born into. People think it’s an issue of humor how old John McCain is, but it’s true that his attitudes, especially towards women, seem to be heavily influenced by a different time. 

John McCain was born in 1936. That was really quite a long time ago. The last public hanging in the United States occurred in that year. Public hangings aren’t something most people associate with the modern world. Let’s see what life for women was like in 1936. 

Under the ruling Buck vs. Bell, women could be sterilized against their will, and in some cases, without their knowledge. Minority women, especially, would often go into the hospital for minor surgery and discover years later they’d been sterilized during the procedure without being informed or asked permission. A husband could legally rape his wife in 1936, and for years afterwards. 

In popular culture, the major event of 1936 was in December of that year when King Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson. Wallis Simpson was named “Man of the Year” by time magazine, the first women to receive that honor. Though her life story was very unique, Wallis Simpson, having been born white and upper-middle class, was very “lucky” for a woman of her generation. 

Wallis’s first husband had been horribly abusive, and was in the habit of beating her and then locking her in the closet for days on end so he could go drinking. When she told her family she wanted to leave him, they informed her “something was better than nothing”, meaning that it was better to be with an abusive husband that to not be married at all. When she finally did leave him, she was cut out of her uncle’s will and became a black sheep until she remarried.

She married her second husband, not out of love, but because she had no money and couldn’t get a job (being a woman probably had something to do with that). She was still married to her second husband when she met the future King. They got involved in a relationship and once he was on the throne she tried to divorce her second husband. Under the laws in both Britain and America, it was easier for a husband to divorce his wife than for a wife to divorce her husband. It was like that up until the 1960’s.

In 1936, Wallis Simpson became one of the most hated people in the world. The royal family refused to meet her, and called her an “adventuress” (Victorian euphemism for slut) and the “lowest of the low”. She was accused of the worst things a woman could be accused of at that time, being promiscuous and being outspoken. Stories spread that she’d had an abortion (which I’m sure John McCain would agree was a serious crime), and that she was a Nazi spy. When King Edward abdicated, everyone blamed Wallis, even though she’d told him not to make any rash decisions and was out of the country at the time. 

In 1936, everything was the woman’s fault. If she got pregnant, even as a result of rape, she could be sent to a mental institution for the rest of her life, if she wasn’t forced to marry the father. If a woman was divorced, she carried a heavy stigma much worse than the stigma for a divorced man. There were very few job choices for women, and all of them meant less pay and opportunities than men’s jobs. We live in a sexist society today, but in 1936 every major inequality was there and 100 times worse. 

Now, it’s unfair to say John McCain agrees with every injustice of 1936, but, like my mother said “people carry certain prejudices from the world they were born into”. Now, there are many, many open minded older people do not have those prejudices and never had them to begin with, but John McCain has shown us time and time again with his opinions on women’s rights that he is not among them. He is against reproductive rights and against equal pay. He has been heard to joke about rape. John McCain clearly carries many prejudices from the world he was born into, where divorced women were “adventuresses”, forced sterilization was legal, women couldn’t work with men, and rape was either not a crime or partially the victim’s fault. Do we really want to let those ideas loose in the White House? I’m not saying John McCain supports forced sterilization and he’s made it quite clear he has no issues with divorce, but I still think that people carry certain prejudices from the world they were born into.