milkfem

[milkfem]

RALEIGH, N.C. — At age 13, Judy Wiegand says community leaders gave her “suggested guidance” to marry the 16-year-old father of her unborn child.

It was the 1970s.

She remembers violence, difficulty raising her child, and her own childhood being taken from her, she testified to a North Carolina House judiciary committee on Tuesday.

Now 57, Wiegand hoped those memories would stay in her past.

“It was done. I dealt with it. I had moved on,” Wiegand said. “I had no intention of dealing with it again until I found out that this was still occurring.”

North Carolina is one of two states that still allow children as young as 14 to marry.

Opponents of North Carolina’s child marriage law say that because of this the state has become a destination spot for child trafficking.

The law is also used as a get-out-of-jail-free card for adults who had sex with children and impregnated them, some lawmakers say.

Wiegand is opposed to North Carolina, or any other state, allowing child marriage.

Now, with no connection to North Carolina, Wiegand traveled from Kentucky to Raleigh to urge the state’s representatives to rethink child marriage.

“If no one is complaining about it then everything just goes along as it is,” Wiegand said.

Wiegand grew up in rural Kentucky.

She keeps many of the details vague about the father of her child, but what she did say in testimony to a House committee Tuesday and in an interview with The News & Observer gives a window into how child marriage affects teens.

Many of the details she leaves out, she said, in an attempt to protect her child from being connected to her story.

She said she and the father met at a place in the community for teenagers. They weren’t in a relationship at the time she became pregnant. She describes him as her crush.

“He was somebody that was a little bit older and was giving me attention,” Wiegand said.

“When you go into a rural community, the population looks for guidance not from the police, not from elected officials,” Wiegand said. “They look for guidance from the local community leaders, and a large majority of the local community leaders are local community church leaders.”

She said the two families sought guidance from those leaders to determine how to handle her pregnancy.

“It’s sort of woven into everyday life in the community that to not be ostracized from the community, you have to follow these sort of unspoken rules of the community,” Wiegand said.

And in her case that meant marriage.

Wiegand said she doesn’t remember how she felt about marrying her crush.

She said on one hand she knew that it was a resolution her community would accept, but on the other hand “a problem born out of poor judgment” was met with a solution also born out of “poor judgment.”

To legally marry, the teens had to cross the border into Virginia.

Prior to 2016, Virginia lawmakers allowed children to get married as young as 12 if they were pregnant and had parental consent. That law changed five years ago banning all child marriages unless someone 16 or older had been emancipated from their parents.

At first the couple lived with the boy’s parents, but as he went through normal teenage rebellion they moved out on their own, she said.

“There were a lot of hardships,” Wiegand said. “I had a baby at 14, and I tried to go back to school after the baby was born.”

Wiegand said she was too young to get a driver’s license and didn’t have transportation to go to school.

She tried to get her GED so she could get a job and support her family, but said that the state wouldn’t allow her to take the test until what would have been her senior year of high school.

Her baby’s father had odd jobs on and off during their marriage but never substantial ones, she said.

She spent her teenage years cleaning houses and made an average $20 a day.

Wiegand said her parents would have supported her but access to them was controlled and they often didn’t know when their daughter ran out of food or money.

Wiegand testified before the House committee that her husband was violent.

She told the committee members that when he turned his violence from her to their child she knew she had to leave.

“I wanted more for my child,” Wiegand told The News & Observer.

Getting a divorce proved more challenging than getting married, she said.

She met with two or three attorneys who told her to wait until she turned 18.

And she didn’t have the money.

Two years later, at 18, she finally made it happen.

Wiegand said she missed many developmental opportunities in her teens.

When she was able to go to college she had to do two years of remedial work before beginning college classes.

Wiegand said she doesn’t want other children to experience what she had.

“It is the job of the government to protect all of the children,” she told lawmakers.

In both North Carolina’s House and Senate, lawmakers filed bills that would prevent anyone under 18 from getting married.

Many North Carolina residents have taken to Twitter asking questions like, “How is this still a thing?” and why lawmakers haven’t moved quicker to outlaw child marriages.

There have been hurdles. So much so that banning all child marriages in North Carolina isn’t even up for discussion anymore.

Sen. Vickie Sawyer, a Mooresville Republican, told her colleagues that after she filed the bill, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said they couldn’t support the bill because child marriage is woven somewhere into their family story.

She and Sen. Danny Britt, a Lumberton Republican, made a last-ditch effort in May to get the bill to pass through the Senate before it was too late.

They compromised and offered to ban marriage for 14- and 15-year-olds but continue allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to marry as long as the spouse wasn’t more than four years their senior.

“The amendment lines up with what our current statutory rape laws are,” Britt said. “So essentially, what we were allowing as a state was the offense of statutory rape to occur so long as you were married.”

Wiegand said the compromise version of the bill is “a good start” but not enough.

‘There would still need to be some safeguards in place,” Wiegand said. “Eighteen would be preferable because that’s the age when you can enter a contract, get a credit card and join the military. There’s a lot of other opportunities that open up for you at 18.”

Wiegand said to grant someone under 18 permission to marry she would hope there would be a person making sure they have a job and a home and have shown they’ve been able to maintain both.

Senators approved that version of Senate Bill 35. That’s what House members were considering when Wiegand joined them Tuesday afternoon.

Reps. Ashton Clemmons, a Greensboro Democrat, and Kristin Baker, a Concord Republican, introduced the bill to a House judiciary committee.

Clemmons said that studies have shown child marriage increases poverty by at least 30%, and increases mental health and psychological problems and school dropout rates.

Clemmons quoted a study from the International Center for Research on Women that looked at child marriages in North Carolina.

The organization states that between 2000 and 2019 there were 3,949 marriage applications for 4,000 minors and the majority of those applications involved an adult and a minor.

But the proposed bill wouldn’t have stopped most of those marriages. The organization is quick to point out that even if a law had been in place saying that minors couldn’t marry anyone more than four years their senior that 71% of the marriages would have still been approved.

“Delaying marriage is the right thing to do because it only improves the health, safety and welfare of the women and men in the situation,” Baker said. “It does not deny anyone the ultimate right to marry.”

[milkfem]

hello

this is @wingfem on twitter (previously milkfem but i got s worded). please interact if ur a radfem so i can follow you (:

#radical feminism #terf safe #pro terf #terfs please interact #radfem

[milkfem]

The way that they can't come up with a single example of actual violence by gender critical women tells you all you need to know. If there was even one case of even the slightest touch, they'd be all over it. There is nothing.

[milkfem]

did you know that trans women’s brain structure is similar to cis women’s and unlike cis men’s, (and conversely, trans men’s is similar to cis men’s) ? so yeah what you feel is real and is not a creation of your brain. trans women are women and trans men are men.

[milkfem]

Why do accusations of racism, classism, homophobia etc hold so much more power than accusations of misogyny? Why is a form of oppression more acceptable than the other? Why do black men, gay men, poor men matter more than women? Why are women always considered separately as if they're a different type of human being? Is it because women come second to everything? Women are always the last group people care about

[milkfem]

u occupy a special little folder in my head

[milkfem]

seeing a callout post for a mutual is like damn bro thats crazy. not gonna read it but damn thats insane dude

[milkfem]

[milkfem]

While I criticize hijab, I will never condone the forceful removal of someone’s hijab. That type of racist attacks will never be okay.

[milkfem]

as a minor i find it so gross when TRAs call themselves “trans girls” despite being literally 25+ bro you are a whole ass adult!! stop fetishising being a female child

#terfs please interact #radfem #terf safe #misogyny #gender critical #gc #tras

[milkfem]

for as much as studyblr may have its faults, it’s a pretty sizable online space that tells young girls that the absolute coolest thing you can do is be smart and work hard and believe in yourself and i think that’s pretty great

[milkfem]

can someone give me an explanation as to why two drag queens wrote a book called "guide to modern womanhood" that isn't going to be a pile of misogynistic drivel?

[milkfem]

“Oh noes. We told homosexuals to unlearn their rapey, disgusting, colonial genital fetishes, and now THEY’RE LEAVING US BY THE DROVES! What could have caused this??????”

[milkfem]

[milkfem]

between the death of Brronna Taylor and the shooting of Megan Thee Stallion one thing I've learnt is that you people cant take black womens pain seriously. One of these women is literally dead and y'all turned her death and the blm movements fight to bring her justice into a meme. Megan was shot in an attempt on her life, she was physically injured and traumatized and the first thing y'all do is crack out your joke books. Nonblack people and cishet black men just dont seem capable of taking the pain black women go through seriously and it's something that needs fucking addressing.

[milkfem]

I just read the most horrific "bdsm" story of a woman having her hair forcibly cut off with a fucking knife and then her abuserhusband beating her bloody with a branch for talking back to him when they were both frustrated and she mentioned feeling "safe" when he hugged her right after letting her sob on the ground for 15 minutes, all within earshot of their friend group and I cannot stop crying, everyone in the comments was telling her to leave him and that he was abusive and I honestly hope she left him but this lifestyle is what libfems are teaching young girls is empowering!? That bdsm is just a ~harmless kink~!? None of her friends did anything, no one said anything and I'm so angry, my heart breaks for her.

The comments that weren't telling her to get away from him were other women talking about their own horrific experiences! Bdsm disgusts me so much, ""doms"" claim to love their sub but who can hurt the one they love like that?

[milkfem]

What does modfem mean in this context? I only know the 3D model FEMAP file meaning, and I'm guessing that's not what you mean in your bio.

for me it means moderate feminist but more rad leaning! it also can mean a modern radical feminist ( :