The post isn’t wrong, but there’s some nuance to it. With the credit thing, it’s true that women couldn’t reliably get their own credit until 1974. That’s when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed, which finally made it illegal for banks to require a husband or male co-signer. Before that, a lot of women could be and were turned away outright, even if they had the income to qualify. So the way it’s phrased is a bit simplified, but the gist is accurate.
The marital rape part is more complicated. Nebraska was actually the first state to outlaw it in 1976, and then other states slowly followed. By 1993, every state had removed the explicit marital exemption from their rape laws. That said, a lot of states still had narrower definitions, weaker penalties, or loopholes, so saying it became “illegal nationwide in 1994” smooths over a messy process. What really happened is that by the early ’90s, no state could outright say “marital rape doesn’t exist” anymore, but enforcement and protections still varied a lot.
So, while the tweet compresses the details, the broader point stands: these changes are incredibly recent. We’re only a generation or two removed from a time when women couldn’t open a line of credit on their own and had virtually no legal protection if their husbands assaulted them.
The post isn’t wrong, but there’s some nuance to it. With the credit thing, it’s true that women couldn’t reliably get their own credit until 1974. That’s when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed, which finally made it illegal for banks to require a husband or male co-signer. Before that, a lot of women could be and were turned away outright, even if they had the income to qualify. So the way it’s phrased is a bit simplified, but the gist is accurate.
The marital rape part is more complicated. Nebraska was actually the first state to outlaw it in 1976, and then other states slowly followed. By 1993, every state had removed the explicit marital exemption from their rape laws. That said, a lot of states still had narrower definitions, weaker penalties, or loopholes, so saying it became “illegal nationwide in 1994” smooths over a messy process. What really happened is that by the early ’90s, no state could outright say “marital rape doesn’t exist” anymore, but enforcement and protections still varied a lot.
So, while the tweet compresses the details, the broader point stands: these changes are incredibly recent. We’re only a generation or two removed from a time when women couldn’t open a line of credit on their own and had virtually no legal protection if their husbands assaulted them.