ALWAYS leave your cheating spouse! Every time a woman forgives a cheating man, she is spitting on the grave of all the women who suffered under patriarchy before us. Staying with a cheater is degrading to yourself and to all women.

Recently during quarantine I've been watching a lot of period dramas. I gotta say, one of the recurring themes in literally most period dramas is that it's okay for men to commit adultery but not women. The Duchess. A Royal Affair. The Rise of Catherine the Great. The Crown. The White Queen. Anything to do with Henry VIII. The list goes on.

It breaks my heart to see the pain that it causes these women. The tears, the heartbreak, the frustration at the sheer injustice of the world they live in. Literal Queens of history, all suffering under patriarchy.

Then I remember that things haven't really changed much since then, and I get angry.

We still live in a world where if a man cheats, there is at least some expectation that his wife/girlfriend should "have the strength to forgive him" (implying that it is weakness to not forgive him). Sometimes there is even an implication that it was somehow her fault that he cheated in the first place, and that she should have done more to "satisfy his needs" to prevent eye from wandering.

Meanwhile, if a woman cheats, our culture perceives this as an extreme betrayal on her part, and there is no question that the husband/boyfriend is 100% within his rights to leave her. This patriarchal double standard is so extreme that even when a woman is raped, her spouse may still leave her because they see it as her fault for getting raped, or they consider her "damaged goods"

For thousands of years, male adultery was completely normalized, particularly for wealthy men. It was not unusual for married men to have mistresses or go to brothels, and the wife was expected to not complain about it.

Meanwhile, if a wife was suspected of (real or perceived) adultery, she faced dire consequences. Depending on where she lived, her social status, or the time period, she might have had her head shaved and publicly stoned to death, burned alive or beheaded, or best case scenario divorced and left penniless and humiliated.

One of the main reasons why women could not leave their cheating husbands in the past, was because women could not own property or earn their own income, so they were completely financially reliant on their husbands no matter how awfully he treated her.

Nowadays, there is NO EXCUSE for staying with a cheating spouse. Women have more legal rights and opportunities than ever before. Divorce is painful and messy, I understand, but it is nowhere near as painful and humiliating as staying with a husband who disrespects you, who violates your trust, who causes you emotional pain, who gives you STDs, and whose paycheck goes to his other baby mamas.

"But I LOOOOVE him!" you might say.

Have some goddamn self respect. Was HE showing love towards YOU when he stuck his dick in another woman? It wasn't an "accident" it was a conscious decision on his part to disrespect you like that.

When you stay with a cheating spouse, you are degrading yourself. And when you [degrade yourself, you degrade all women.]( The treatment that women tolerate for themselves is reflected onto all women. When a woman stays with a cheater, she is telling him that it is okay to cheat, and that there will be never be consequences for his behavior.

It honestly pisses me off when women stay with a cheater, especially when she is a leader or any kind of public figure with an influence. It's one of the reasons why I had slightly less admiration for Hillary Clinton than her achievements would have otherwise warranted. It would have been a total boss move for her to divorce Bill Clinton. But nope, despite all her intelligence and ambition, she chose to stay with a man who humiliated her by cheating. That is the example she is setting for all women.

This double standard surrounding adultery is historically rooted in female oppression. When you forgive a cheating man, especially when you know he would never do the same for you, this is perpetuating a double standard that is oppressive to women.

Every time a woman forgives her cheating spouse, she is spitting on the grave of all our female ancestors who suffered under patriarchy before us. I consider it a grave insult to all the women who came before us, who had NO choice but to suffer their husbands disrespect.

Nowadays, women have freedom of choice and you STILL choose to forgive his lying, cheating ass? Nah, sis. You deserve better. We deserve better.