Yet Another Example of French Women Being #Goals
Or, that time when husbands had two choices: get it up or get the hell out.
I think my Smartnews app is finally catching on to my interests. Ever since I released Yes, Misstrix into the world, the algorithm has started throwing some seriously intriguing content my way. Imagine, if you will, sipping some coffee in the early morning when you stumble across an article that is too enticing not to tap. In this example, the headline is: “Trial by Impotence: When men had to copulate publicly or be served divorce papers.” Um, alright Smartnews. I’ll bite.
So glad I did. This Salon article by Matthew Rozsa is downright fascinating. I can’t help but think that if our educational system was spilling the tea on these sorts of historical details, we might remember more than a few random facts after we reach adulthood. I digress.
While I recommend you read the full article for both an insane story about French celebrity Marquis de Langey getting absolutely trolled by his wife (and a whole lot of spectators) and information about how and why public copulation trials became a thing, for the purposes of this newsletter, I will share the quick-and-dirty details. Here are the points that are most relevant to what I’ll be discussing today:
1. Renaissance-era French women had little recourse when it came to dissolving a marriage. Divorce was completely prohibited in the country from the 12th century until the mid-15th century, after which point ecclesiastical authorities uncovered what we will call the “impotent-husband loophole” (because it’s a fun name).
2. The logic (if you can really call it that) of the impotent-husband loophole was that men only had one goddamn job: produce children. If a husband couldn’t perform that basic task, he prevented his wife from performing hers: bearing children. This was grounds to annul the marriage.
3. Proving that a husband could perform his “most basic masculine responsibility” was kind of tricky at the time. You’re probably not surprised to learn that male infertility testing was fairly nonexistent between the years of 1426-1712. In the absence of a medical option, the French went nuclear: the épreuve du congrès (aka trial by congress) to uncover possible instances of impotence was born.
4. Here’s the best part (in my opinion): The trials gave some French women some serious power at a time when they weren’t exactly swimming in freedom and options. Although the article states that the trials varied, weren’t required to follow a standard procedure and didn’t always require a couple to have sex in front of a group of rowdy spectators, if a marriage started to get ugly, the pair would be required to get down and dirty in front of a judge and jury. The act might be performed in an adjacent room or behind a thin cloth. Delightful!
5. After a few hours, a semen test was conducted on the man, the woman and the bedsheets to see whether the act had been completed. Men who were unable to get it up blamed everything from poisoned eel pie to witchcraft to (most obviously) performance anxiety as a result of having to publicly fuck someone they didn’t even like anymore. Apparently, not everyone has an exhibitionist kink… Monsieur de Langey did not. A detail that is all but confirmed by the fact that he had seven (!!) children in the years following the trial when he began fucking someone (I assume) he didn’t actively despise in the comfort of a private residence.
Reading this article was a morning-maker for me. It also got me thinking. Honestly, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I first read it, and I’d like to share a few takeaways. The first is that French women have once again earned my undying respect.
While mostly wealthy French women were afforded the means to hire lawyers necessary to represent them throughout the impotence-trial process, they nevertheless found a way to work the system in their favor. I love a good #lifehack, don’t you? These trials put the ball in the husband’s court to perform in a high-pressure situation, and then forced them to physically respond to the question, “Do you have the balls to make it happen?"
The second takeaway focuses on the pervasiveness of humanity’s misunderstanding of male arousal. It’s still amazingly common for women (and people in general) to believe that men are inherent horndogs. They can get it up for anything at any time, right? If they can’t, it’s probably because their partner is unattractive or bad in bed, right? I know a lot of women—myself most certainly included—who have bought into this myth for a long time. Apparently, people have been putting a lot of stock in it since the 15th century, so understandably, it’s been a tough misconception to overcome.
My third and final takeaway is that we still have a long way to go with respect to changing our outdated ideas about gender roles. While men today generally get a pass on producing children if they so choose, society still seems to view “bearing children” as the be-all-end-all goal for most women.
You see this in the HEATED response conservative commentators and others had to Chelsea Handler’s facetious day-in-the-life video of a purposely childfree woman. Other women who have posted similarly encounter much of the same. Regardless of whether you’re a Chelsea fan (I’m not personally), this “scandal” gives some insight into the way society often buckets women into the categories of Madonna or whore based on whether they’ve “done their duty” by having kids. There’s still an extremely high value placed on becoming a mother.
Ask any married woman. She can likely produce an alphabetized list of all the “well-meaning” people who have asked her when she’s going to start having babies. Husbands can often go their entire lives without having to answer this question. That is the norm. As a society, we’re still working to embrace the exception. That should happen soon, though, right? I mean, based on the amount of time that’s passed between the demise of the épreuve du congrès and now, we only have another 113,580 days to go.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix
P.S. Hey there! Did you know that I was recently featured on the ZFG Living Podcast? In case you missed it, you can listen to the full episode here. And if you’re not entirely sick of my voice, you might also enjoy this interview I had with boudoir photography queen Katy Rayne (remember her?). We had some technical difficulties, so even though the interview is on YouTube, think of it as a podcast-style audio experience.