…it’s important to note that abuse of women, although epidemic, isn’t new. Western civilization documents the medieval comments of Geoffrey de la Tour de Landry concerning how to punish the “wickness of a nagging wife.” In 1371 he wrote, “Here is an example to every good woman that she suffer and endure patiently, nor strive with her husband nor answer him before strangers, as did once a woman who did answer her husband before strangers with short words: and he smote her in her visage and broke her nose, and all her life after she had her nose crooked, which she shent [spoiled] and disfigured her visage after, that she might not for shame show her face, it was so foul blemished. And this she had for her language that she was wont to say to her husband, and therefore the wife ought to suffer, and let the husband have the words, and to be master for that is her duty.” Less than fifty years later, Bernard of Sienna, Italy suggested that men treat their spouses with the same affection that they show their livestock…