There's enough documented cases where we KNOW this is the case to think this is likely true for a very large proportion of them. Dick Francis is a major case in point; his wife wrote most of "his" books.

Some pay/benefits via your spouse/partner is probably better than none.

EDIT: I absent mindedly commented in a womens only community. My bad.

I’ve heard so many of these stories. It’s so scandalous, yet not enough has changed today.

Edit: I lazily did not check what sub I was in when commenting. Apologies, I wouldn’t intentionally intrude on a women-only space.

I can think of two things even better:

1. Getting pay and benefits for your own work instead of through your spouse's taking credit.
2. People paying attention to the rules of the group they're posting in.

Well back then they had to, right? Were women even allowed to publish art/writing? In like...medieval days.

I’m of two minds about this: obviously it sucks historically, when there were no other options for women, but today I absolutely want to help my husband with his work (and want him to help him with mine- we’re married and we depend on each other’s success).

I guess it’s actually not complicated at all: the difference is choice. Just like I support women who want to be stay-at-homes today, it’s fucked up that women have historically been forced into that, and that some women still are (whether through actual force or through social pressure).

I’m always surprised at other users correctly identifying men commenting here. How do you know? Do you tag people or just assume that if they’re an older user and haven’t commented here before, they’re probably not women? Is it the takes?

To be clear, I’m not complaining, it’s good work! I don’t do it, because I worry about misidentifying users, but I’ve never seen a misidentification here (though I have seen people completely unbelievably pretend to be women in response to getting called out).

But this isn't a "stay-at-home wife" scenario. I fully support any woman who chooses that (not is forced into that) if they can swing it.

The issue here is men claiming credit for their wives' work.

Like the mystery writer, whose nickname was "Dick"¹ in a case of deep comic irony, whose wife², it turns out, might well have done the bulk of the writing for "his" novels. Because at first he didn't even mention his wife's input, but as that came out it turned out that they were a "team" and she did "the research". Like when a "Dick Francis" novel about an air taxi service came out, it was after Mary got a pilot's license and ran ... an air taxi service. When a "Dick Francis" novel about a computer-based crime was in the works, Dick was going around doing his writer's glad-handing and interview thing while Mary was ... writing computer programs.

There's just enough plausible deniability here that you could almost believe the story that it was collaboration and that "Dick Francis" was just the code for "Richard and Mary Francis" but for the fact he never mentioned her until it came out that they worked together, the fact he dropped out of school to become a jockey at age 15 and she had degrees in English and French literature, and, here's the killer bit for me, the style of "Dick Francis" novels changed dramatically after her death and his son became his collaborator.

This is the kind of thing the meme is talking about: men taking credit for women's work. And you see it in literature. You see it in science. You see it everywhere.

¹ Dick Francis
² Mary Francis

If the husband died first, his widow could end up “finding” “his” mislaid manuscripts for a decade or more..

Nope.

There was no blanket proscription on women writing and/or being published. There were restrictions on women's activities, including writing activities, yes, but no proscription. Here are some restriction examples:

• The church, drawing upon the Pauline prohibition of women preaching, said that women must not write about matters of faith.
• In 1579 the Fifth Council stated that nuns should be given neither ink nor writing materials in their cells so that all writing could be overseen by a scriptorium supervisor.
• Women were excluded from education, thus excluded from the academic channels of publication.

And naturally, like the pharaoh I outlined in my Kick-Ass Women from History series, there was an awful lot of outright erasure of women's contributions using tactics like destruction (common, since the printing press wasn't available to make mass publication a thing) and reattribution to a man.

This didn't stop women from writing works that got published however. Marguerite Porete published the mystical treatise The Mirror of Simple Souls. (It was found to be heretical and she was burned at the stake and her works destroyed.) Perpetua of Carthage's prison diary from the 3rd century was published and is one of the oldest extent works written by Christian women. Hrotsvit of Gandersheim wrote plays, poems and historical works in the 10th century. Hildegard of Bingen wrote extensive works of theology, music, and even medicine in the 11th and 12th centuries. In fact here's a list in rough chronological order of women who wrote famous works that were circulated during medieval times onward:

• Dhuoda (9th century)
• Héloïse (11th-12th)
• Marie de France (12th)
• Clemence of Barking (12th)
• Trota of Salerno (12th)
• Mechthild of Magdeburg (13th)
• Hadewijch (13th)
• St. Bridget of Sweden (14th)
• St. Catherine of Siena (14th)
• Julian of Norwich (14th-15th)
• Margery Kempe (14th-15th)
• Christine de Pizan (14th-15th)

But that's never happened before, right? RIGHT!? 🤣

I misidentified pretty embarrassingly once; I'm much more careful now than before as a result. But there's a few things.

1. A big tell is when people who have never been seen in here before suddenly Have Opinions™. That sparks immediate suspicion. It's not conclusive, but it's a flag.
2. An even bigger tell is that the Opinions They Have™ seem to take the man's side, or use some argument about "human nature" to put the men in the right and so on.
3. A lesser tell is there is some wording issues that raise a smaller flag for me.

But once the tells are there and I start looking, the first place I look is their posting history. A lot of them just flat-out state that they're dudes in some post or another. Others will mention their wife in one post, then in another post say they're cis-het. If you're cis-het and you've got a wife, you're pretty much automatically a dude because of, you know, what 'cis' and 'het' mean. Also a history of commenting on men's issues is a big tell.

And then, if I'm VERY suspicious but still not really certain, I hit the mod log for the user. And there it often comes glaring out. Even if they don't identify as male in the mod log entries, the nature of their behaviour and what they get modded for often screams "OBVIOUS GUY ... AND A COMPLETE DOUCHEBAG TO BOOT!" Things like being banned and having posts deleted for misogyny.

Or they just plagiarised freely, like Shakespeare did (I learnt this from a recent J Draper video).

I had no idea about Dick Francis - I loved "his" books when I was a teenager.

My mum is a huge Dick Francis fan, and I tried buying one of his son‘s book for her. That was a mistake.

I know, right? Never meet your heroes.

Yeah, I gather his son was nowhere near as good a writer as his mother.

Yeah, I’m not trying to suggest that this instance is iffy (I haven’t read anything from Francis), nor that it’s generally morally unclear. My first reaction was unsureness, but consent is a pretty clear way to distinguish it.

Like, I don’t want credit for proofreading work I do for my husband, even when it edges from proofreading into co-writing.

This is honestly impressive detective work!

Imagine losing your partner and being too sad continue writing though

Oh, not all those steps belonged to the guy here, to be clear. I don't think he's a misogynist. I just IDed him as a guy pretty quickly. He was so polite about removing himself I don't want people to think I think he's misogynistic!

I'm sure that happens. But there's enough examples of this clearly not happening (without a sudden and "mysterious" change in writing styles to boot!) that I doubt all such cases are true.

Maybe not, it's just what it made me think of

Sorry for the women whose writing couldn't be recognized in their time

Another example: Artist Margaret Keane whose husband (Walter Keane) took credit for her paintings.

She did get to enjoy credit for her work while alive.

You have to wonder at the mentality of men who do this. What kind of narcissistic asshole do you have to be to pretend that a creation is yours?

Oh. Wait. The popularity of generated "Art" tells me exactly what kind of asshole you have to be: a run of the mill asshole.

For reference, women in the US weren't allowed to have their own bank accounts until the 1970s. At least they were able to make money from their work.

Ayup. It's absolutely scary to me that women were that badly off in the USA in my lifetime.

With Dick Francis' books it seems to have been a public secret for a long time. It was a joint decision by the couple to market the books this way, where she was the one who insisted on not being credited, while he wanted to credit her.

"Most persuasive is an account of a conversation he had with Mary Francis following an interview with her husband in 1980, when he asked her directly if she had written the books.

That's an impossible question to answer," she said. "Yes, Dick would like me to have all the credit for them but believe me, Graham, it's much better for everyone, including the readers, to think that he writes them because they're taut, masculine books that might otherwise lose their credibility."

She begged Mr Lord not to mention this in his article, and he didn't, because he had no wish to damage their careers. But he did keep the notes from the conversation and now he thinks it is about time the truth was told, and she enjoyed some credit for her literary efforts.

"I don't think she wrote them entirely," said Mr Lord yesterday. "What I'm getting at is that Mary certainly has contributed a great deal more than anyone's ever previously suspected, and that Dick himself would like her to get very much more credit for the books."
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/dick-francis-thrillers-were-ghost-written-by-wife-743503.html

It was a joint decision by the couple to market the books this way, where she was the one who insisted on not being credited, while he wanted to credit her.

I have seen too many married couples, ESPECIALLY in the '70s and '80s era, where the wife will say whatever story her husband has concocted.

If they really wanted a joint brand, well, there's been a long tradition of using fake authorial names (the earliest example I can think of is the Bobbsey Twins) where various writers write under that brand. But they didn't do that. They used HIS name. This tells me something.

Is it possible that this was something she willingly partook of? Sure.

But it's not very likely to my mind. The story "no, really, I want my wife to get credit but we HAVE to do it under my name for reasons" is very, very thin.

My mother remembers being able to get her own account. My grandmother was the first to go to college, a 'teaching college' the only kind that really accepted women at the time.

Maybe, or maybe she was the one to convince her husband to continue the charade because she didn't want to be in the limelight. Or maybe it was their publisher that forced it when they started out. Or maybe ... But that's all speculation. We don't know how their arrangement came to be, only that it was, and that it was not against her will. As such, I don't see any objective reason to villify her husband.

He was very polite. And I just meant in general it's good detective work.

A lot of my older male patients basically fall apart when their wives pass, and not from sadness, but usually it's a complete inability to take care of themselves. A lot of men from previous generations simply refuse to or do not know how to do basic things like wash their clothes or cook their own food. I imagine it's harder to be productive when you are filthy and eating nothing but cans of cold beans everyday.

Damn, Mary was fucking impressive

I am not a man and I handle all the domestic stuff but if my wife died I'd probably drown myself in a bottle.

I'm sure it doesn't help when you can't take care of yourself but if losing a spouse after decades together doesn't shatter you I'm a but sus about the relationship tbh. I've got friends and family but absolutely nothing compares to the love I have for her.