I found this amazing pic of “Husband Libber” Harry Britton posted to the Blue Pill subreddit; it was taken in 1972 by the father of Blue Piller smileybird.
According to Cape Girardeau History and Photos, which has another pic of him,
New York Magazine wrote that he was a fixture who had been supporting himself wearing placards, carrying signs and selling his leaflets for 25 cents each for several years. “Harry makes only $2,000 a year [roughly $12,000 today –DF]. He’s not in this for the money, though; he says his only goal is reconciliation with his wife, from whom he is, not surprisingly, separated.”
Another account said he was the “president (and probably sole member) of the National Association of Dissatisfied Husbands subsisting on sales of publications extolling ‘Husband Lib.(‘It’s not men’s lib,it’s Husband Lib. The Bachelors are not oppressed yet’).”
Here’s that pic, and a couple of others; thanks to SquashedBananas in the Blue Pill for tracking all this down. (And thanks to the reader who emailed me about all this.)
Desertion, you say? Well, hoodathunk.
But she was a Slutty McSlut-Slut hoo-er! And PTAs are misaaaaandry!!!
Nor, for that matter, can I. So glad she got it!
Oh my god, I love how one part of his sign just says “BIBLE”. xD
And what’s with the oddly placed quotes on his signs? Husband’s “Lib”, and Be Kind to Your Husband “Day”. O.o
The first thing I thought of when I saw this image was this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhad_Khoiee-Abbasi
Although the guy above is certainly more articulate.
In all fairness, his campaign to save the male species did work. Although they were nearly extinct in 1972, today they make up almost half the population!
For non Chicagans:
The guy above has been protesting in the Loop pretty much every day since 2006 at least. His signs are even more incomprehensible than above, but he claims to be protesting his divorce/lack of visitation. He blames the FBI and just about every other political figure.
Goddamn it! Now my keyboard has coffee on it!
Did anybody notice the guy standing next to Harry Britton in that third picture, with his arm around Harry and a big goofy grin on his face, to get his picture taken as though Harry is one of those wandering cartoon characters in a theme park?
@Sarah – I did! That guy is great. And he’s drinking Tab. I haven’t had that stuff since I was wee. Good times.
Just wait until the incels find out they’re not oppressed because they aren’t married. It will be a big surprise!
Although since this guy is no longer married in the pics posted, is he still oppressed? More research needed.
I wonder if our former troll Undies was related to him. He said he didn’t want a wife because women are shallow and want a furnished house.
Just for my own preferences, I’d rather have gotten my photo taken with Emperor Norton. There was a man who knew how to make impossible demands on the street-corner with style.
hahahaha…I love all of the random quotation marks in these. *sigh*
Thanks, Lea. For SlutWalk Toronto this year I decided to dress up in my Batgirl costume that I got in the kid’s section at Toys R Us. Costumes are not consent!
Because sitting and sleeping on anything other than bare floors is misandry, no doubt.
Okay
True story
I left my abusive husband 23 years ago.
He went to the police, and got a lawyer. He wanted me charged with abondment as he had to cook his own meals, do his own laundry and no one to set his clothes out the night before.
I’m not making this up.
Here in Canada in this “modern” age.
He said in the end he decided not to have me brought back in handcuffs as it would traumatize our young son.
My point is, as funny as this man is, his views truly are not behind us.
I’m laughing, horrified and mad all at the same time.
And here we are, 40 years later, and they still aren’t able to catch on that they aren’t going to turn time back. So much for superior intelligence and logic. I just think it sucks that the poor women only kicked him to the curb so late in her life.
Sad Cat,
That awful. I’m so glad you got free of that nightmare.
Interesting addendum: In the decision their is reference to spousal support: For him.
Oh, the misandry in the system!
carp! there, not their.
Unfortunately it’s very likely that is the best she was able to do. No-fault divorce didn’t come into favor until around the time this guy was marching around with his signs (and there are some efforts to do away with no-fault divorce; see the “covenant marriage” thing in Louisiana). Prior to no-fault divorce a complaining spouse had to prove misbehavior to obtain a divorce, and often times women couldn’t make their case even in the event of cruelty.
I am glad that she was able to get a few years of peace before passing beyond this mortal coil. (And all of that is also to say, I need feminism because I don’t want to get stuck depending on a shitbag like this guy Harry Britton for my next meal!)
Hmm. I’m not sure what happened to the link for the page I was trying to cite when I said that women couldn’t make their case for divorce even in the event of cruelty, but here it is:
https://la.utexas.edu/users/jmciver/357L/59NC322.html
I like to think the random scare quotes are a subconscious indicator that deep down he knows he’s wrong. That’s why they’re so common in the weirdest crackpot manifestos.
“Teach a man to fish, and clean the fish, and cook the fish, and maybe he won’t spend all day covered in signs complaining about no one making him dinner.
Yeah, but the poor slob stands out on the hard pavement all day, plastered in hot signs in the middle of a cold, cold world. Just think how many leaflets he has to sell at 25¢ apiece if he wants to raise $2000 a year. Neither snow nor rain nor sleet deters him. He works so hard.
He hasn’t got time to cook his own fish. Haven’t you got any heart?
Robin Thicke would probably want to be BFFs with this guy.
@ Falconer
Emperor Norton was America’s greatest political figure :’)
Emperor Norton would be an improvement on most politicians today.
Well, okay, Norton wanted to annex Mexico. I guess that’s better than going ew ick brown people.
Over here in New Zealand, the desire/dream to own a house (which funnily enough the person wishes to at least partly furnish) has been one avenue through which some* baby boomers and the preceding generation have been attacking generation Y. We used to have affordable housing to buy, now it’s unaffordable in most places apart from small towns – which don’t have jobs. In NZ, government superannuation is given out on basic residency grounds, and is a pay-as-you-go scheme so that the current year’s taxpayers fund the current year’s superannuatants. It is not means tested, either by income or by assets. So we have some people in two generations who believe they “earned” their superannuation attacking young people for being lazy, because anyone who can’t afford a house is lazy, and if they didn’t spend on their money on fripperies like new furniture then well, the could afford a house, so it’s laziness plus spend, spend, spend.
Clearly everyone should use beer crates for all their furniture even though in relative terms furniture is dirt cheap now compared to what it used to be (assuming it is bought rather than made). And sleep on blankets on the floors. And in the winter, they can huddle around a single kerosine heater just like they used to. /sigh
I’m now very sensitive to arguments about how people spend their money because it’s used as a very blunt instrument criticism.
* but very vocal ones, and they’re all over comments sections, these people are just like MRAs
Pallygirl,
It’s the same in the US. Baby boomers had affordable college, affordable housing and ever increasing wages when they entered adulthood. Then they decided “I want low taxes and loose regulations so screw the next generation because I’ve got mine!” Then they turn around and call younger people lazy for not bootstrapping properly. So many of them seriously don’t see that they got all these advantages.
Not that I’m bitter or anything.
Also, jobs were still a thing back then.
Sad cat,
That us truly hilarious and horrifying at the same time! Stalkers have the same entitled deluded attitude too. All the horrible things they do and ridiculous expectations they have, and then they’re the most surprised person in the world when their partner runs to the hills.
I had an ex stalk me. Once he jumped I to my car while I was at a stop sign! He wanted me to “admit to me what you’ve done!” Apparently I was guilty of sleeping w one of his asshole friends (which never happened). He yanked my keys out of the ignition and wouldn’t give them back. All if this happened on a residential street and a woman in the nearest house came out and demanded he give me back my keys. So that was awesome. He gave them back but then continued to follow me around in this car with a girl driving, shouting “admit to me what you’ve done!!!” Also for months after “slut!” Would be shouted at me randomly by people I didn’t know. It’s funny to look back on but shit.
Nitram, Sad Cat, I’m so sorry that happened to you. Hugs if you want them.
Pallygirl, WWTH, katz – yep. I work with colleges and universities (in Minneapolis! Hi, WWTH! I think?) and the degree to which people in this industry Don’t Get that tuition cost is a problem is ridiculous. I pay the same for my loans as I do for rent. It’s always “well you’d be worse off with without a college education, people need to understand that it’s worth it” – that’s the industry line.
A college degree just isn’t that optional any more. So, yeah I guess I’d be worse off in the sense I’d have even less access to jobs (plus I’m white, that helps with getting a job), but it’s not like all the money I’m NOT saving up to buy a house and instead using to pay loans is reasonable.
It’s like healthcare – can’t live without it, can’t afford it.
Makes me so mad I can’t even think of any jokes!
And when was the last time you met a young person who had a job that actually required a college education?
@Emmy Rae
What I don’t understand is how people think my generation hasn’t gotten the message. Like ‘GO TO COLLEGE TO GET A BETTER JOB!’ hasn’t been shoved down our throats since we were born (in the U.S., at least).
Emmy Rae,
I didn’t know there was another Minneapolis Mammotheer! Yay!
As a boomer but the father of four, I am very concerned about what young people of my two younger children’s age (28 & 26) face. If you don’t go to college, you are either competing with Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. workers or (for jobs that can’t be conveniently outsourced) with huge numbers of your peers. If you do go to college, you probably have massive debts because my generation of stinkers decided not to support public colleges the way our parents supported us — so then employers set job requirements so that nobody qualifies and they can whine that they need to bring somebody in from overseas — at, naturally, a much lower salary than a college-loan-burdened US young person has to ask for. (I heard of one company that required 5 years of experience with a piece of software that had only existed for 3 years.
Now you have Paul Ryan pushing the idea that Medicare should be turned into a voucher but not for people over 55, which means that you will be taxed to pay for our Medicare but will have to also pay for your own health care if you happen to survive to 65. My generation’s lack of responsibility puts your generation in a nasty spot. It stinks.
It’s exactly the same in Australia with jobs, housing and education.
Hear, hear.
My boomer mother suggested a while back that I take out a home equity line of credit. Not for any particular expense, just open one in case we had something happen and needed cheap money fast (she’d just gotten one, and the rates were very good at the time). She was flabbergasted when I reminded her that, despite paying extra toward the principal every month for eight years, Mr. FM and I have no equity in our home. We are in fact still very underwater on our mortgage. When she said how unfair that I was, I reminded her that I’m one of the lucky ones: I still have a house.
I’m one of the tail-end baby boomers, born just late enough to cop all the same crap Gen X did – recurring, frequent economic downturns, lifelong job instability (jobs for life disappeared even in the public service by the early 80s), spiralling housing and education costs, on top of Australia’s high cost of living. Living on my mother’s wage, which was bottom-rank public service, meant university was never going to be possible. Nor was buying a house. It’s always taken both our wages, or in the last twenty-plus years, my wage and her pension/super, to have a decent place to live. Neither of us could manage to rent and pay the bills even in a tiny flat, on our own, and we are far from being poor in any meaningful sense.
I don’t know how anyone on normal income can afford to live in Melbourne or Sydney. Canberra is also quite unaffordable unless you’re two people on at least mid career APS wages.
@kittehserf – Ooo, I straddle a generation divide, too (Depending on which arbitrary scale you use I’m either at the very end of Gen X or the tippy-top beginning of the Millennials). I’ve done all right out of my split; I got to finish college when it was still just expensive instead of absolutely absurd and I’ve usually been able to find a job of some sort. That sucks that you got the short end of both the boomer and Gen X sticks 🙁
Hey, we must be about the same age, Flying Mouse!
I haven’t done too badly employment wise: I was out of work for two solid years (from September 11 2001, would you believe) and for a few months a couple of years after that, and then now. I’ve worked all the rest of the time since ’84, but every damn job, half of which were in the public service, disappeared because we were being Jeffed – massive job cuts by the then Premier, Jeff Kennett, a total right wing bastard, but who looks good compared with the current crop. Schools, hospitals, country rail services – you name it, he closed it.
I was born in 1980, the year Reagan was elected. I don’t know if those two things are related. If so, my parents and I are really sorry.
Awfully big of him. [/sarcasm]
Glad you got away. What an absolutely ghastly man!
HUSBAND SUFFRAGE
I have no words, this is so incredibly awesome.
It’s like, you know what “suffrage” means, right ?
Who cares ? All that counts is that women’s libbers want it, so he wants it too !
Yeah. I went to Harvard when I was seventeen. Even so, I just… always planned that I would be poor. It just seemed the smartest, safest thing to do, because I always had this nagging suspicion that we’d be fucked someday.
Made it till twenty-four before homelessness. And now I’m disabled and get to feel like I’m just adding to the burden of the rest of my country. LOLZ.
Just… priceless.
I was born in 1977, which puts me right in the grey area between Gen X and millennials (indeed, a lot of the classic Gen X movies featured people about a decade older), and I had the extra burdens of having mental issues (including, it turns out, undiagnosed autism) and coming from a family that had always been kind of poor. I had a nervous breakdown at college and spent two years recovering, and I never did get to go back. I have a good job working for a family member, but said family member is up in years himself…
On top of that, my parents are both over 50, and my stepdad lost his longtime position a few years back and was out of work for three years. He’s since found seasonal work, but he really wants something full-time since my salary barely covers the bills. My mom has physical issues and even if she did find a job, the commute would be hard for her.
So I’m pushing 40, I mainly learned all I know from either reading about it or on-the-job-experience, I never finished college, and I have people depending on me. If one thing goes wrong, this whole house of cards may come down. And given my age and my apparent lack of qualifications compared to cannon fodder straight out of college, I’m not even sure I could work in my desired field should I have to change jobs or move.
I’ll be okay for now, but I have no idea where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing 10 years from now.