MOmentum for Change Season 5, Episode 10: Sarah Weinman on Without Consent

Yeah, and I think now in our modern-day thinking, we can't really imagine what the opposition was to making marital rape a crime because, I mean, we obviously can tell that no matter what the context, you know, sexual assault, if it happens within a marriage or not, is sexual assault, right? But in Missouri, actually, we had a lot of opposition on this issue for many years.

We did not get a law making marital rape a crime until 1991.

And that faced a lot of opposition even in the early 90s and took a lot of grassroots organizing on behalf of the anti-violence movement here.

In order to make that change happen, there's a wonderful story where, because advocates are phone people, we answer hotlines, we make phone calls.

There's a wonderful story where the coalition in 91 had a phone tree.

And because they were getting so much resistance in the state legislature on a Friday morning, the coalition had their advocates work down the phone tree and call the homes of legislatures.

Because at that time, legislators were mostly male lawmakers.

and mostly married, and their spouses were at home.

So on a Friday morning, we had advocates call the homes of lawmakers and say, hey, by the way, did you know that there's a bill coming up to make spousal rape a crime? Can you believe that's not, you know, already illegal here in Missouri? What can you do to convince your partner, your husband? Oh, wow.

So it's this great story of social change happening.

And in fact, that year, we got a marital rape law passed here in Missouri.

Sadly, three years later in 94, it was snuck back in to a crime bill.

And so we had to work again to get it overturned in 94.

And this is really due to British common law.

There was this idea in law that a wife had the legal identity of a husband, so they could not commit a crime against themselves, I guess.

Right, exactly.

I mean, the legal term for it is coverture, that essentially a wife became the perpetual property of her husband.

And so as a result, he would essentially have perpetual consent to do whatever he wanted, and she had no legal recourse to do anything about it.

And it is kind of incredible in hindsight to think how long this common law idea persisted, not just in British law, because marital rape didn't become a crime there until the early 90s, or Canada, which did not legalize marital rape until I think 1983.

But why in the United States, which became a country in 1776, you would think that if it was separating itself from British law, wouldn't they separate themselves from common law too? But, you know, I guess these Puritans and American founders didn't really care either because they had other things to worry about.

It baffles me.

It's an

interesting question, Sarah.

Maybe the patriarchy could explain that.

Well, I mean, the research that I did, it seemed like in the first wave of feminism in the 1840s and 50s and the like, they wanted to... maybe figure out how to make marital rape a crime, but the consensus was we need to concentrate on suffrage and we can't do both.