America Has Always Been Obsessed with Controlling Women

Before the United States was a country, it was already obsessed with controlling women. American ideals were based on the belief that women are not individuals worthy of rights and respect but rather, legal extensions of the men who own them.

Long before Roe v. Wade was overturned, before Texas paid bounties for citizens to report abortions, and before high school girls were pulled out of class for showing a sliver of shoulder, the American psyche was shaped by a fixation: regulating women’s bodies and behavior.

In the days of English colonization, women’s lives were regulated by rigid legal codes. In Puritan New England, women who gave birth outside marriage were prosecuted under bastardy laws. Midwives were required to interrogate women during childbirth, extracting confessions of fornication and naming fathers to enforce community morals. Punishments were extreme, public whipping, fines, and social ostracism were common for women labeled “immoral.” By the 1680s in Massachusetts, women faced fines of forty shillings or ten lashings for being suspected of raising a child out of wedlock. Courts nearly always focused on punishing women rather than men.  

Between the 15th and 18th centuries, thousands of women, typically unmarried, widowed, childless, or vocal, were murdered on witchcraft charges. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 are an early example of what happens when patriarchal fear is codified as law. Women who violated boundaries of domesticity or would not submit to men's authority were deemed dangerous and put to death. 

In early American law, rape of a woman was considered a property crime against the victim’s father, as it was viewed as damaging a mans property. The crime was measured by the loss of purity, not by the trauma and violation experienced. This view of women as property was reinforced by the laws that denied women the right to vote, own land, or retain their wages after marriage. Marital rape remained legal in much of the country until the 1990s. The U.S. has treated women’s bodies as someone else’s to claim, use, or silence for far too long.

In the 19th century, the medical field expanded its reach into this control. Modern gynecology was built on the abuse of enslaved Black women like Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, experimented on by J. Marion Sims, still referred to as the “father of gynecology.” Their suffering helped establish a field that continues to fail Black women today.

During the 20th century, eugenics policies allowed the state to sterilize “undesirable” women, which included those who were poor, disabled, institutionalized, or “nonwhite”. In places like Puerto Rico and California, sterilization was not just legal. It was policy. That practice persisted into the 2000s. recently as 2013.

Control of female behavior has never been limited to policy or medicine. It also shows up in classrooms. American school dress codes consistently target girls, especially girls of color, for vague infractions like being “distracting.” Students are sent home or removed from class not to protect education, but to remind them that their bodies are being watched.

Culture reinforces this. Purity discussions, "virginity tests," and surveillance of girls' bodies and choices are modern expressions of this restriction. Although the World Health Organization (WHO) condemns virginity testing as a human rights violation, virginity testing still gains approval from many conservative circles in the U.S. The media, however, is preoccupied with policing women's appearance, sexuality, and self-expression. The message is for girls to be pretty, but not too tempting that men can't control themselves. Be seen, but only on society's terms, not your own. Consistently, women are shamed for the same sexual behavior that earns men respect. Men earn praise for experience, while women are deemed reckless and promiscuous. This double standard enables victim-blaming, where a woman's clothing or past is used as an excuse for abuse and assault.

​​Women who defend themselves against abuse are habitually criminalized instead of protected. In many cases survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, even in cases of self-defense, have been imprisoned for fighting back against their abusers. Cyntoia Brown, a 16 year old girl who fell victim to sex trafficking and rape, was sentenced to life for killing her abuser. Her case is not rare. The justice system repeatedly criminalizes women as aggressors, especially when they are poor, Black, or marginalized.

In 2022,  the Supreme Court decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion. Following the overturning, over a dozen states have introduced near-total abortion bans. Some have no exceptions for rape or incest. Some criminalize doctors. All share the same ideology, women's autonomy is a threat.

Birth control is under attack, too. Conservatives are trying to end contraception access and comprehensive sex education by pushing for abstinence-only programs. This is not about protecting life. It is about controlling it.

The pattern is not subtle. From public burnings to public hearings, from forced sterilizations to forced births, America has always responded to women’s freedom with fear.

But history does not repeat itself unless we let it. Girls are speaking out about how dress codes punish them. Organizers are fighting for abortion sanctuary states. Survivors are refusing silence. And younger generations are documenting it all. We must continue to fight for the freedom of all women, that means fighting for access to safe abortions, advocating for real sex education, fighting for equal pay, paid family leave, and affordable childcare. We need to stay engaged. That means voting, organizing, speaking up, and refusing to let this level of control continue without resistance.

The obsession with controlling women is not an accident or a flaw. It is the system itself. And it will take all of us to break it.