In April, when the FBI confronted BM with the fact that it was illegal to submit a ballot for his missing wife, BM said,
"I didn't know you couldn't do that for your spouse."
I've been ruminating on that comment ever since. Reluctantly, I came to believe the comment reflects a value system that may be culturally supported in America, even in the time of #MeToo. MOO, it makes it easier to believe BM felt he was entitled to take SM's life because she was planning to leave him.
Across cultures, "uxorixide" (wife- or girlfriend-murder)
long has been culturally supported and remains so in culturally conservative countries.
Vestiges of cultural support for the treatment of women as the property of their husbands can be found in the history of the English common law of
"coverture", under which a married woman was considered to have merged with her husband and was subject to his protection and control - to the extent she had no legal right to act independently. It hasn't been that long since the practice was largely abolished in English-speaking countries. California finally abolished it by common law in 1954 (
Follansbee v Benzenburg).
In fact, there are common law cases holding that a husband's marital rights included the right to beat his wife, including an American case that post-dates the Civil War.
"Wife beating is acknowledged in Blackstone's 'Commentaries,' and many court rulings sanctioned the practice.
(Perhaps) the earliest... (legal) reference to wife beating is the 17th century, when one Dr. Marmaduke Coghill, an Irish judge, held that a man who had beaten his wife "with such a switch as the one he held in his hand" was within his matrimonial privilege.
In the 18th century a judge named Francis Buller, dubbed "Judge Thumb" by the famous caricaturist James Gillray, was said to have allowed that a man could beat his wife, as long as the punitive stick was no thicker than his thumb. (A witty countess was said to have asked the judge to measure her husband's thumb exactly, so that she might know the precise extent of his privilege.)
..."Three 19th-century cases in America... mention the "rule of thumb," including an 1868 ruling in North Carolina that 'the defendant had a right to whip his wife with a switch no larger than his thumb.'"
Misunderstood "Rule of Thumb"...
Back to the present day, we have seen the growth online of a terrorist
"male supremacist ecosystem" that includes "incels" - a radicalized
subculture of advocates for harassment of - and violence against - women. These men commonly feel entitled to sex and believe women have too much power.
In this context, I have been speculating (MOO) that BM had a sense of sexual entitlement, and a kind of "married male privilege" to act on his wife's behalf, that is supported by some influential elements of our current culture.
