I am "Wom", Hear Me Roar

Thank you for celebrating Women's History Month with me. Tomorrow begins National Poetry Month, and daily poetry postings.

“It is taken for granted that a work reveals the artist's soul as well as his mind" writes Jacques Barzun in From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present (67). Barzun is referring to an unspecified Renaissance artist, to Renaissance artists in a general, abstract sense, yet he uses the masculine third person singular pronoun "his". Were all Renaissance artists men? Are only male Renaissance artists worthy of Barzun's (and the reader's) attention? Are women merely hypersensitive to the use of the male pronouns "he" and "his" to refer to individuals of unspecified gender as suggested by Calvert Watkins, Chair of the Linguistics Department at Harvard Divinity School who coined the phrase "pronoun envy"? (Harvard Crimson, 26 November 1971, 17 qtd. in Livia 3)…
Detailed study of the proposed alternative "womyn" leads me to conclude, regretfully, that it fails to adequately separate "woman" from "man"… There are two possible morphological interpretations of the word "womyn". The first is to consider it a completely new word; a free morpheme that cannot be broken down into smaller units. Yet, can anyone read "womyn" without reading "woman"? I think the more honest and accurate analysis is to treat "wo" as a derivational prefix to "myn" which is merely an alternative spelling of the free morpheme "man". "Womyn", while it does not succeed as a viable alternative to "woman", does serve the valuable purpose of protesting the linguistic inferiority of women and highlighting the need for language reform.
It is no surprise that "womyn", when recognized at all, retains its non-standard, alternative status. "Womyn" was not listed by the on-line dictionaries of American Heritage, Cambridge or Dictionary.com. The effort to separate "woman" from "man" linguistically is, of course, socially symbolic, highly controversial and certain to meet with resistance. It would be extremely difficult to replace "woman" with an entirely new word. Donald Hook in discussing the need for an English epicene pronoun, notes the rejection of "neologisms" and suggests that the "utilization of familiar constructs used in new ways" is a more amenable solution. Can the familiar existing units of "woman" be used in a new way that will disassociate "woman" from "man"?
I propose "wom" as an alternative to "woman" or "womyn". "Wom" unlike "womyn" succeeds in reducing the word for woman to one morpheme and eliminates man completely rather than just altering the spelling of "man". "Wom" as a three letter word beginning with "w" is morphologically closer to "wif" and would return to the original meaning of "wif" of an adult female. Femaleness would be the essence of the word in contrast to "woman" in which the essence is human first and female only secondarily. I would offer "wom" not as an abbreviated form of "woman" but as cognate with the word "womb" to entirely disassociate it from the word "man". "Wom" from "womb" would represent not just women's anatomical reproductive capabilities but would symbolically represent women as a "place of origin, development and growth" ("Womb," def. 1.b.) It is not a strange new word nor is it a deviant spelling. It can be viewed as an abbreviated form of "woman" which makes it both familiar and non-threatening. "Womyn" only distinguishes itself from "woman" in written language but "wom" distinguishes itself in spoken language as well. "Wom" is just the sort of hip linguistic shorthand that might become popular with today's young people, especially in e-mail and instant message exchanges. It flows from the instant message to the spoken language and by the time today's adolescents reach their golden years we will write and speak the word "wom" as naturally and effortlessly as we use "woman" today. "Wom" defines woman independently from man, restores to women the reproductive powers denied them by the creation myths and, finally, gives us a word of one's own.

-Deborah Hauser

Full essay at meowpower.org

Mary, Mary II

The novel, Frankenstein, bears little resemblance to the movies we’re familiar with. It raises ethical issues about the powers and responsibilities of science that our society continues to grapple with today. It was published anonymously in 1818 and was assumed to be the work of Percy Shelley. Mary wrote the book in 11 months after she and Percy spent an evening with Lord Byron reading ghost stories and Byron suggested that they each write their own ghost story.

Bio at http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_mary/

Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley (1797-1851), English Romantic novelist, biographer and editor, best known as the writer of Frankenstein (1818). Mary Shelley was 21 when the book was published.

Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, in London. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died in childbirth, was one of the first feminists. Her father was the writer and political journalist William Godwin.

In her childhood Mary Shelley was left to educate herself amongst her father's intellectual circle. She published her first poem at the age of ten. At the age of 16 she ran away to France and Switzerland with the poet Percy Shelley. They married in 1816 after Shelley's first wife had committed suicide by drowning. Their first child, a daughter, died in Venice, Italy, a few years later. In the History Of Six Weeks' Tour (1817) the Shelleys jointly recorded their life. Thereafter they returned to England and Mary gave birth to a son, William.

In 1818 the Shelleys left England for Italy, where they remained until Shelley's death - he drowned in 1822 in the Bay of Spezia near Livorno. In 1819 Mary suffered a nervous breakdown after the death of William - she had also lost a daughter the previous year. In 1822 she had a dangerous miscarriage. Of their children only one, Percy Florence, survived infancy. In 1823 she returned with her son to England, determined not to-re-marry. She devoted herself to his welfare and education and continued her career as a professional writer…

Mary Shelley died in London on February 1, 1851, probably of a brain tumor.

Mary, Mary

Closing out the month with a mother/daughter duo. Today Mary Wollstonecraft, tomorrow her daughter.

Mary Wollstonecraft
(1759-1797)

A self-taught native of London, Mary Wollstonecraft worked as a schoolteacher and headmistress at a school she established at Newington Green with her sister Eliza. The sisters soon became convinced that the young women they tried to teach had already been effectively enslaved by their social training in subordination to men. In Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) Wollstonecraft proposed the deliberate extrapolation of Enlightenment ideals to include education for women, whose rational natures are no less capable of intellectual achievement than are those of men.

Following a period of service as a governess to Lord Kingsborough in Ireland, Wollstonecraft spent several years observing political and social developments in France, and wrote History and Moral View of the Origins and Progress of the French Revolution (1793). Her A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) is a spirited defense of the ideals of the Revolution against the conservative objections of Burke. Upon her return to England, she joined a radical group whose membership included Blake, Paine, Fuseli, and Wordsworth. Her first child, Fanny, was born in 1795, the daughter of American Gilbert Imlay. After his desertion, she joined the radical activist William Godwin, a long-time friend whom she married in 1797. Wollstonecraft died a few days after the birth of their daughter…

Wollstonecraft's lasting place in the history of philosophy rests upon A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). In this classical feminist text, she appealed to egalitarian social philosophy as the basis for the creation and preservation of equal rights and opportunities for women. The foundation of morality in all human beings, male or female, is their common possession of the faculty of reason, Wollstonecraft argued, and women must claim their equality by accepting its unemotional dictates. Excessive concern for romantic love and physical desirability, she believed, are not the natural conditions of female existence but rather the socially-imposed means by which male domination enslaves them. The posthumously-published Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman develops similar themes in a fictional setting, by showing that the plight of working women differs little from imprisonment.

http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/woll.htm

Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare's Sister Judith

Over sixty years after her death, the writings of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) are a source of continuing power and ever-increasing influence. Recognized in her own time and country as one of the most significant of the Modernists, Woolf has achieved a stature, in the twenty-first century, of international prominence. Admired first in the era of New Criticism as a supreme formalist writer, Woolf has since been recognized as one of the most important and influential feminist writers of the twentieth century and as a writer whose works are dynamically engaged with the political, philosophical, historical and materialist issues of her time.
http://www.utoronto.ca/IVWS/

A Room Of One’s Own: Surprisingly, this long essay about society and art and sexism is one of Woolf's most accessible works. Woolf, a major modernist writer and critic, takes us on an erudite yet conversational--and completely entertaining--walk around the history of women in writing, smoothly comparing the architecture of sentences by the likes of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, all the while lampooning the chauvinistic state of university education in the England of her day. When she concluded that to achieve their full greatness as writers women will need a solid income and a privacy, Woolf pretty much invented modern feminist criticism.
Amazon.com

Woolf imagines how the talent of Shakespeare’s sister would have been stifled in Shakespeare’s time: “I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee's life of the poet. She died young - alas, she never wrote a word… She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so - I am taking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals - and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think;…, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down…But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.”

Woolf, Virginia; A Room of One's Own. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1929.

http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/psych214/woolf.room.html

The Feminine Mystique-Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan (1921-2006) has been central to the reshaping of American attitudes toward women's lives and rights. Through decades of social activism, strategic thinking and powerful writing, Friedan is one of contemporary society's most effective leaders.

Friedan's l963 book, The Feminine Mystique, detailed the frustrating lives of countless American women who were expected to find fulfillment primarily through the achievements of husbands and children. The book made an enormous impact, triggering a period of change that continues today. Friedan has been central to this evolution for women, through lectures and writing (It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement in 1976 and The Second Stage in 1981). She was a founder of the National Organization for Women, a convener of the National Women's Political Caucus, and a key leader in the struggle for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Friedan published her latest book, The Fountain of Aging in Fall, 1993 and is co-chair of Women, Men and Media, a gender-based research organization that conducts research on gender and the media.

http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=62

What happens when Rosie the Riveter is sent home after the war?

“There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to confirm, the image that I came to call the feminine mystique.”

Betty Friedman-The Feminine Mystique

The Virgin Queen

Elizabeth I (1558-1603 AD)

Elizabeth I was born in 1533 to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Although she entertained many marriage proposals and flirted incessantly, she never married or had children. Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors, died at seventy years of age after a very successful forty-four year reign.
Elizabeth inherited a tattered realm: dissension between Catholics and Protestants tore at the very foundation of society; the royal treasury had been bled dry by Mary and her advisors, Mary's loss of Calais left England with no continental possessions for the first time since the arrival of the Normans in 1066 and many (mainly Catholics) doubted Elizabeth's claim to the throne. Continental affairs added to the problems - France had a strong footland in Scotland, and Spain, the strongest western nation at the time, posed a threat to the security of the realm. Elizabeth proved most calm and calculating (even though she had a horrendous temper) in her political acumen, employing capable and distinguished men to carrying out royal prerogative.

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/eliza.htm

Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues

EVE ENSLER (Playwright/Performer/Activist), award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues, is touring 20 North American cities from October 2005-April 2006 with her newest play The Good Body, following engagements on Broadway in NYC, at ACT in San Francisco, and in a workshop production at Seattle Repertory Theatre (http://www.thegoodbody.com). The Good Body has been been published by Villard/Random House. The Good Body addresses why women of all cultures and backgrounds -- whether undergoing Botox injections or living beneath burkhas -- feel compelled to change the way they look in order to fit in, to be accepted, to be good.

Ms. Ensler's The Vagina Monologues has been translated into over 35 languages and running in theaters all over the world, including sold-out runs at both Off-Broadway's Westside Theater and on London's West End (2002 Olivier Award nomination, Best Entertainment.) Her experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. Ms. Ensler's performance in The Vagina Monologues can be seen in the HBO original documentary of the play (2002).

Ms. Ensler has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive. The Vagina Monologues is based on Ensler's interviews with more than 200 women. With humor and grace the piece celebrates womens' sexuality and strength.

Today, V-Day is a global movement that supports anti-violence organizations throughout the world, helping them to continue and expand their core work on the ground, while drawing public attention to the larger fight to stop worldwide violence (including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual slavery) against women and girls. V-Day exists for no other reason than to stop violence against women. In just seven years, it has raised over $30 million and was named one of Worth magazine's "100 Best Charities."...

Ms. Ensler's play Necessary Targets, set in a Bosnian refugee camp, opened Off-Broadway at the Variety Arts Theater in February 2002, after a hit run at Hartford Stage. Other plays include Conviction, Lemonade, The Depot, Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man, and Extraordinary Measures. The Good Body, The Vagina Monologues, and Necessary Targets have been published by Villard/Random House, as will Ms. Ensler's upcoming new works, Insecure at Last: Guidelines to Groundlessness and I Am an Emotional Creature. Vagina Warriors, words by Eve Ensler and photos by Joyce Tenneson, was published by Bulfinch Press for V-Day 2005...

http://www.vday.org

-----
This article may be found on vday.org at
http://www.vday.org/contents/vday/aboutvday/eveensler

V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a palpable energy, a fierce catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money, and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. For more information about V-Day, visit us at http://www.vday.org/.

copyright (c) 2000-2006 V-Day.

Unbought and Unbossed-Shirley Chisholm

Shirley St. Hill Chisholm was born on November 30, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York to Charles and Ruby St. Hill. Her father was from British Guiana and her mother was from Barbados.

British education in Barbados.

At Brooklyn College where she majored in sociology. Shirley encountered racism at Brooklyn College and fought against it. When the black students at Brooklyn College were denied admittance to a social club, Shirley formed an alternative one. She graduated in 1946 with honors. … she obtained a job at the Mt. Calvary Childcare Center in Harlem.

In 1949, she married Conrad Chisholm, a Jamaican who worked as a private investigator. Shirley and her husband participated in local politics, helping form the Bedford-Stuyvesant political League. In addition to participating in politics, Chisholm worked in the field of day care until 1959. In 1960, she started the Unity Democratic Club. The Unity Club was instrumental in mobilizing black and Hispanic voters.

In 1964 Chisholm ran for a state assembly seat. She won and served in the New York General Assembly from 1964 to 1968. … In 1968, After finishing her term in the legislature, Chisholm campaigned to represent New York's Twelfth Congressional District. Her campaign slogan was "Fighting Shirley Chisholm--Unbought and Unbossed." She won the election and became the first African American woman elected to Congress.


During her first term in Congress, Chisholm hired an all-female staff and spoke out for civil rights, women's rights, the poor and against the Vietnam War. In 1970, she was elected to a second term. She was a sought-after public speaker and cofounder of the National Organization for Women (NOW). She remarked that, "Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes."

On January 25, 1972, Chisholm announced her candidacy for president. She stood before the cameras and in the beginning of her speech she said,

"I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States. I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or special interests. I am the candidate of the people."

The 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami was the first major convention in which any woman was considered for the presidential nomination. Although she did not win the nomination, she received 151 of the delegates' votes. She continued to serve in the House of Representatives until 1982. She retired from politics after her last term in office. …

Shirley Chisholm passed away on January 1, 2005.

http://nh.essortment.com/shirleychisholm_ruol.htm

Literary Sisters

The Brontës are the world’s most famous literary family. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë were the authors of some of the best-loved books in the English language. Charlotte and Emily are ranked among the world’s greatest novelists and Anne is a powerful but underrated author....

After accidentally discovering a manuscript of her sister Emily’s poems in 1846, Charlotte persuaded both her sisters to allow their poems to be published along with her own. The sisters hid their real identities behind false names; Charlotte became Currer Bell, Emily became Ellis Bell and Anne became Acton Bell. The volume of poems was a failure and only two copies were sold.

*Charlotte’s first attempt at writing a novel for publication, The Professor, was rejected by several publishing houses, but her next novel, Jane Eyre, was accepted immediately and published in 1847, gaining instant success. Charlotte was to publish two more novels, Shirley in 1849 and Villette in 1853...

Tragically, her happiness was not to last and she died in the early stages of pregnancy on 31 March 1855 at the age of 38.

*Emily’s only novel Wuthering Heights was published in 1847, but she died a year later from tuberculosis on 19 December 1848 at the age of 30.

*Anne began her first novel Agnes Grey whilst still at Thorp Green and it was published in 1847. Her second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published the following year. Anne was not to enjoy her success for long; she died of tuberculosis only a few months later on 28 May 1849 at the age of 29.

http://www.historytoherstory.org.uk/index.php?targetid=7

Susan B. Anthony-Every Cent

March 13, 1906
OBITUARY

Miss Susan B. Anthony Died This Morning

End Came to the Famous Woman Suffragist in Rochester

Enthusiastic To The Last

Wished All Her Estate to Go to the Cause for Which She Labored--Her Deathbed Regret

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
…Miss Anthony was taken ill while on her way home from the National Suffrage Convention in Baltimore. …

"Write to Anna Shaw immediately, and tell her I desire that every cent I leave when I pass out of this life shall be given to the fund which Miss Thomas and Miss Garrett are raising for the cause. I have given my life and all I am to it, and now I want my last act to be to give it all I have, to the last cent. Tell Anna Shaw to see that this is done." …

Miss Shaw said:

Susan Brownell Anthony was a pioneer leader of the cause of woman suffrage…

… She paid much attention to dress and advised those associated in the movement for women suffrage to be punctilious in all matters pertaining to the toilet. For a little over a year in the early fifties she wore a bloomer costume, consisting of a short skirt and a pair of Turkish trousers gathered at the ankles. So great an outcry arose against the innovation both from the pulpit and the press that she was subjected to many indignities, and forced to abandon it…

Miss Anthony had become impressed with the idea that women were suffering great wrongs, and when she abandoned school teaching, having saved only about $300, she determined to enter the lecture field. People of to-day can scarcely understand the strong prejudices Miss Anthony had to live down. In 1851 she called a temperance convention in Albany, admittance to a previous convention having been refused to her because it was not the custom to admit women. The Women's New York State Temperance Society was organized the following year. Through Miss Anthony's exertions and those of Elizabeth Cady Stanton women soon came to be admitted to educational and other conventions, with the right to speak, vote, and act upon committees.

Miss Anthony's active participation in the movement for woman suffrage started in the fifties. As early as 1854 she arranged conventions throughout the State and annually bombarded the Legislature with messages and appeals. She was active in obtaining the passage of the act of the New York Legislature in 1860 giving to married women the possession of their earnings and the guardianship of their children. During the war she was devoted to the Women's Loyal League, which petitioned Congress in favor of the thirteenth amendment. She was also directly interested in the fourteenth amendment, sending a petition in favor of leaving out the word "male." …

In order to test the application of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments she cast ballots in the State and Congressional election in Rochester in 1872. She was indicted and ordered to pay a fine, but the order was never enforced…

She was the joint author with Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, and Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage of "The History of Woman Suffrage." She also was a frequent contributor to magazines.

Complete NY Times Obituary at:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0215.html

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company

Women of Steel

During World War II, so many men were sent off to war, and so much new production was needed to support that war effort that there was a gross shortage of manpower to staff factories and manufacturing plants. As a result, propaganda was distributed through print, film and radio to encourage women to take over their jobs for the duration of the war. There was a catch, however. When the war was over, they were supposed to give the jobs right back.

Rosie The Riveter was the name given to the woman depicted on many of the propaganda posters. In the most famous one, she is wearing a red and white bandana to cover her hair, and she has rolled back the sleeve of her blue coverall to expose a flexed bicep. The expression on her face was confident and determined. The caption above her head reads, "We Can Do It!" in bold letters.

Women who had been employed in fields predominated by women- pink collar secretarial positions, domestic jobs and lower paying industrial positions were eager to try their hands at the new opportunities. Soon they were successfully doing things only men had done before. Women became taxi and streetcar drivers, operated heavy construction machinery, worked in lumber and steel mills, unloaded freight, built dirigibles, made munitions and much more. Men's jobs always paid more, and this was women's only chance to step up and earn more.

The slogan, "Do the job he left behind" said a lot. She could do it as long as he didn't want it or wasn't around to do it. As soon as soldiers began to return home, women were forced out of these jobs, even if they had no other means of support. A great many women would have preferred to stay in their industrial jobs, but the influx of men and the attitudes of the day prevented it.

Despite the way they were discarded at the end of the war, these female workers had much to do with the success of the United States during World War II and their contribution should not be forgotten. In a very direct way, women helped win the war.

http://de.essortment.com/whowasrosieri_rslx.htm

Norma McCorvey aka Jane Roe

Title: Roe v. Wade
US Citation: 410 U.S. 113 (1973)
Docket: 70-18
Events: Decided - January 22, 1973
Reargued - October 11, 1972
Argued - December 13, 1971

Subjects: Privacy: Abortion, Including Contraceptives

Facts: Roe, a Texas resident, sought to terminate her pregnancy by abortion. Texas law prohibited abortions except to save the pregnant woman's life. After granting certiorari, the Court heard arguments twice. The first time, Roe's attorney -- Sarah Weddington -- could not locate the constitutional hook of her argument for Justice Potter Stewart. Her opponent -- Jay Floyd -- misfired from the start. Weddington sharpened her constitutional argument in the second round. Her new opponent -- Robert Flowers -- came under strong questioning from Justices Potter Stewart and Thurgood Marshall.

Question Presented: Does the Constitution embrace a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy by abortion?

Conclusion: The Court held that a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy (recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut) protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision gave a woman total autonomy over the pregnancy during the first trimester and defined different levels of state interest for the second and third trimesters. As a result, the laws of 46 states were affected by the Court's ruling.

http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/334/print

South Dakota has banned abortion and Mississippi is close behind. Protest here http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/mississippi_abortionban2

What happens when abortion is outlawed? Rent the movie Vera Drake: http://www.veradrake.com/

Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe, is now a pro-life activist
http://www.barf.org/articles/0080/

Estelle Griswold, Penumbras and Reproductive Rights

Griswold v. Connecticut
381 U.S. 479 (1965)
Docket Number: 496

Abstract

Argued:
March 29, 1965

Decided:
June 7, 1965

Subjects:
Judicial Power: Standing to Sue, Personal Injury

Facts of the Case
Griswold was the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Both she and the Medical Director for the League gave information, instruction, and other medical advice to married couples concerning birth control. Griswold and her colleague were convicted under a Connecticut law which criminalized the provision of counseling, and other medical treatment, to married persons for purposes of preventing conception.

Question Presented
Does the Constitution protect the right of marital privacy against state restrictions on a couple's ability to be counseled in the use of contraceptives?

Conclusion

Though the Constitution does not explicitly protect a general right to privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy. Together, the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments, create a new constitutional right, the right to privacy in marital relations. The Connecticut statute conflicts with the exercise of this right and is therefore null and void.

From:
http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/149/
More at:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/griswold.html

Pirate Queen of Connacht

Pirate Queen of Connacht 1530-1603
Grace O'Malley or Gráinne Ni Mháille was a famous female pirate, seafarer, trader and chieftain in Ireland in the 1500's. Twice widowed and imprisoned, she fought all comers at the head of a force of 200 sea-raiders to protect her rights and those of her people. At one time condemned to death, Queen Elizabeth I later pardoned her after a meeting between the two...

Grace left England with a pardon and an order for Sir Richard to supply her with a pension. Her son was soon released by order of the Queen and Sir Richard was replaced in two years. Grace remained a pirate as her fleet continued to sail the sea, but this time it sailed without her, as her advanced age no longer permitted her voyages. Grace died in 1603, a pirate to the end.

http://www.irishclans.com/articles/famirish/omalleyg.html

Taking the Heat-Women Firefighters

TAKING THE HEAT: The First Women Firefighters of New York City

By Bann Roy

ITVS Community is proud to support TAKING THE HEAT with a variety of community outreach events and materials, in anticipation of its national broadcast on Independent Lens on March 28, 2006.

SHOW DESCRIPTION:

They faced death threats on the job—from some of the men they worked with. With the story of Captain Brenda Berkman of the Fire Department of New York at its core, TAKING THE HEAT explores the history of women firefighters in America and the price these women paid to serve their communities

Broadcast premiere Tuesday, March 28 at 10 p.m. on PBS

http://itvs.org/outreach/takingtheheat/

Who was the first woman firefighter? The first woman to become a modern, paid firefighter was Judith Livers, who was hired by the Arlington County, Virginia, Fire Department in 1974. Helping her firefighter husband study for his fire science classes, Livers learned about the devastation fire can cause, and was motivated to become a firefighter herself. Now Judith Brewer, she retired from Arlington County in late 1999 as a Battalion Chief.

However, many other women were in the fire service before 1974. The earliest were volunteer firefighters in urban and small-town settings dating back to at least the 1800's. Molly Williams was the first known firefighter, an African-American woman held under slavery, who worked on Oceanus Engine Company 11 in New York City in 1818. Women have also worked as fire lookouts since the early 1900's and, beginning in the mid-1970's, as seasonal firefighters in the wildland sector.

In the U.S., approximately 5,200 women currently work as full-time, career firefighters and officers. Several hundred hold the rank of lieutenant or captain and about 60 are district chiefs, battalion chiefs, division chiefs, or assistant chiefs. (All of these numbers increase every year). While accurate figures on volunteer firefighters are difficult to obtain, it is estimated that 30,000-40,000 women are in the volunteer fire service in the U.S.

http://www.cobbfire.org/women.htm

Frida Kahlo-Turning Pain Into Art

Frida Kahlo is a Mexican painter, born on July 6, 1907 and dead on July 13, 1954.

Frida claimed to be born on 1910, the year of the outbreak of the Mexican revolution, because she wanted her life began together with the modern Mexico.

This detail well introduces us to a singular personality, characterized since her childhood by a deep sense of independence and rebellion against social and moral ordinary habits, moved by passion and sensuality, proud of her "Mexicanidad" and cultural tradition set against the reigning
Americanization: everything mixed with a peculiar sense of humour.

Her life was marked by physical suffering, started with the polio contracted at the age of five and worsen by her life-dominating event occurred in 1925. A bus accident caused severe injuries to her body owing to a pole that pierced her from the stomach to the pelvis. The medicine of her time tortured her body with surgical operations (32 throughout her life), corsets of different kinds and mechanical "stretching" systems.

Lots of her works were painted laying in the bed. Because of these physical conditions Frida was never able to have any children and this was a great sorrow for her.

She had a great love, Diego Rivera (she married twice with this man and dedicated to him a passionate diary) but also a lot of lovers, men and women, such as Leon Trotsky and André Breton's wife.

http://www.fridakahlo.it/

online gallery http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/kahlo_frida.html

Rent the movie Frida at
http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=60024997&trkid=
189530&strkid=29724638_0_0

The Power of An Ordinary Woman-Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks turned the course of American history by refusing in 1955 to give up her seat on a bus for a white man.

In 1999, former President Bill Clinton presented Parks with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, she married Raymond Parks in 1932. By the early 1950s, Rosa Parks and her now deceased husband were long-time activists in Montgomery Alabama's chapter of the NAACP.

Parks worked as a seamstress at a local department store, and on her way home from work one day, she engaged in a simple gesture of defiance that galvanized the civil rights movement.

It was nearly 50 years ago, Dec. 1, 1955, when Parks challenged the South's Jim Crow laws -- and Montgomery's segregated bus seating policy -- by refusing to get up and give her seat to a white passenger.

When the police officer boarded the bus, Parks, who was 42, had one question for him: "I said, 'Why do you push us around?' He said, 'I do not know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest.' "

The NAACP had been looking for a test case to challenge segregated busing and Parks agreed to let the group take her case.

Parks lost her job and had trouble finding work in Alabama after her public stance. She and her husband moved to Detroit. For many years she worked as an aide to Congressman John Conyers, and she remained a committed activist. In the 1980s, she worked in the anti-apartheid movement and also opened a career counseling center for black youth in Detroit.

She received numerous awards and in 1999, President Clinton presented her with the nation's highest civilian honor, a Congressional Gold Medal. "We must never ever, when this ceremony is over, forget about the power of ordinary people to stand in the fire for the cause of human dignity," Clinton said.

Parks died Oct. 24, 2005, in her Detroit home of natural causes.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.
php?storyId=4973548&sourceCode=gaw

Let Flowers Fall Upon the Tomb of Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn
July 1640 - April 16, 1689, London

Esteemed as a writer in her own time, upon her death, Behn was buried in the East cloister of Westminster Abbey. In A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf wrote that all women should "let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2001/behn.html

Aphra Behn broke every rule. She was a spy, she was a writer, she was thrown in prison several times for her debts and her politics, she may or may not have been married and she had a live-in lover for nine years.

Her origin a mystery, an unidentified child named Aphra traveled with a couple named Amis to Surinam (Dutch Guiana), then an English possession. Upon her return to England around the time of the Restoration, she may have married a London merchant named Behn. Her wit and beauty caught the eye of the royal court and she was employed by Charles II in secret service in The Netherlands. Unrewarded, and imprisoned for debt, she began to write to support herself.

From 1670 until her death in 1689, Aphra Behn enjoyed commercial triumph. Her witty, vivacious comedies, such as The Rover (two parts, produced 1677 and 1681) and The Lucky Chance, were highly successful. She was well read, fluent in French and Italian with some Spanish, and she often adapted work by older dramatists. Her versatility, like her output, was immense, and in her day was rivaled only by that of her friend and colleague, John Dryden.

Aphra Behn is considered the first professional English woman writer and originator of the novel in its modern form. This honor is often bestowed on Daniel Defoe, but Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688)(based on her stay with an English colony in Surinam in 1664) predates Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719). Her most famous play is The Rover (1677), which is still being seen today in productions all over the world. Her gifts as a poet, playwright and novelist earned her the sobriquet "The Incomparable Astrea."

http://www.nyct.net/cosmicleopard/Behn_bio.html

Read her works on line:
http://www.lit-arts.net/Behn/docs.htm

Women's History Month in Iran

Iran: Police Attack Women's Day Celebration
09 Mar 2006 18:27:40 GMT
Source: Human Rights Watch

(New York, March 9, 2006) – Iranian police and plainclothes agents yesterday charged a peaceful assembly of women's rights activists in Tehran and beat hundreds of women and men who had gathered to commemorate International Women's Day, Human Rights Watch said today. The attack took place shortly after participants in the celebration assembled at Tehran's Daneshjoo Park at 4 P.M. on Wednesday, March 8.

Full story at : http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/
HRW/0ead934ab6f2e9e124df8d9cb1bdddca.htm

Heretic, Witch, Cross Dresser? Burn, Baby, Burn

Some claim she was convicted not for heresy but for wearing men’s clothes, so give thanks to Joan next time you step into a pair of pants, ladies.

Moreover, as one of the points upon which she had been condemned was the wearing of male apparel, a resumption of that attire would alone constitute a relapse into heresy, and this within a few days happened, owing, it was afterwards alleged, to a trap deliberately laid by her jailers with the connivance of Cauchon.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08409c.htm

Joan of Arc (1412-1431)

Joan of Arc, in French, Jeanne d'Arc, also called the Maid of Orleans, a patron saint of France and a national heroine, led the resistance to the English invasion of France in the Hundred Years War. …

When Joan was about 12 years old, she began hearing "voices" of St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret believing them to have been sent by God. These voices told her that it was her divine mission to free her country from the English and help the dauphin gain the French throne. They told her to cut her hair, dress in man's uniform and to pick up the arms.

By 1429 the English with the help of their Burgundian allies occupied Paris and all of France north of the Loire. The resistance was minimal due to lack of leadership and a sense of hopelessness. Henry VI of England was claiming the French throne.

Joan convinced the captain of the dauphin's forces, and then the dauphin himself of her calling. After passing an examination by a board of theologians, she was given troops to command and the rank of captain.

At the battle of Orleans in May 1429, Joan led the troops to a miraculous victory over the English…

Charles VII was crowned king of France on July 17, 1429 in Reims Cathedral. At the coronation, Joan was given a place of honor next to the king. Later, she was ennobled for her services to the country.

In 1430 she was captured by the Burgundians while defending Compiegne near Paris and was sold to the English. The English, in turn, handed her over to the ecclesiastical court at Rouen led by Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English Bishop of Beauvais, to be tried for witchcraft and heresy. Much was made of her insistence on wearing male clothing. She was told that for a woman to wear men's clothing was a crime against God. Her determination to continue wearing it (because her voices hadn't yet told her to change, as well as for protection from sexual abuse by her jailors) was seen as defiance and finally sealed her fate. Joan was convicted after a fourteen-month interrogation and on May 30, 1431 she was burned at the stake in the Rouen marketplace. She was nineteen years old. Charles VII made no attempt to come to her rescue.

In 1456 a second trial was held and she was pronounced innocent of the charges against her. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.

Contributed by Danuta Bois, 1999.

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/joanarc.html

Back to Radicals, Susan Brownmiller

I had lunch with Susan last month. I met her at a conference and had no idea what a big deal she was.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Susan Brownmiller (b. February 15, 1935) is a radical feminist, journalist, and activist. She is best known for her pioneering work on the politics of rape in Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1975). Brownmiller also participated in civil rights activism, joining CORE during the sit-in movement and volunteering for Freedom Summer in 1964. She first became involved in the Women's Liberation Movement in New York City in 1968, by joining a consciousness-raising group in the newly-formed New York Radical Women. Brownmiller went on to co-ordinate a sit-in against Ladies' Home Journal in 1970, began work on Against Our Will after a New York Radical Feminists speak-out on rape in 1971, and co-founded Women Against Pornography in 1979. She continues to write and speak on feminist issues, including a recent memoir and history of Second Wave radical feminism, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999).

As of 2005, she is an Adjunct Professor of Women's & Gender Studies at Pace University in New York City.

Susanbrownmiller.com

Mommies Write! J. K. Rowling

J. K. Rowling, Author of the Harry Potter Novels

“The idea that we could have a child who escapes from the
confines of the adult world and goes somewhere where he
has power, both literally and metaphorically, really appealed to me” says Rowling.

When Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter novel in a café she was a divorced, single mom living on public assistance. She received a grant from the Scottish Art Council to finish the book which won The British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year and the Smarties Prize. More importantly, kids were suddenly excited about reading again.

A graduate of Exeter University, a teacher, and then an unemployed single parent, Rowling wrote Harry Potter when "I was very low, and I had to achieve something. Without the challenge, I would have gone stark raving mad." But Rowling has always written; her first book was called "Rabbit." "I was about six, and I haven't stopped scribbling since."

For Rowling, the change in her fortunes has been slightly bewildering. But her daughter has no doubt about her mother's new career: when asked what mommies do, she replies without hesitation, "Mommies write!"

™ & © 2000–1996 Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved

------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.gigglepotz.com/hpauthor.htm

More at http://www.jkrowling.com

For kids http://www.kidsreads.com/harrypotter/jkrowling.html

Alice Paul, Iron Jawed Angel, and the ERA

"I always feel....the movement is a sort of mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end."
-Alice Stokes Paul (1885-1977)
Suffragist and author of the Equal Rights Amendment

HBO's "Iron Jawed Angels" A docudrama of the suffragist struggle includes a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged. The film also depicts Woodrow Wilson and his cronies trying to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. It is inspiring to watch the doctor admonish the men. “Alice Paul was strong and brave, but that didn't make her crazy. Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

1913
Alice Paul and Lucy Burns organize a major suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. with over 5,000 women attending. The mistreatment of the marchers by the crowd and the police led to a great public outcry and the event was a media coup for the suffragists.


The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923, is still not part of the U.S. Constitution.
The ERA has been ratified by 35 of the necessary 38 states. When three more states vote yes, the ERA might become the 28th Amendment.

http://www.equalrightsamendment.org).
http://www.alicepaul.org/
http://www.hbo.com/films/ironjawedangels/community/

Funny Woman in Women's History

Lucille Ball
(1911 - 1989)

Year Inducted:
2002
Achievement In:
Arts / Business

Born in Jamestown, NY, Lucille Desiree Ball left her hometown at the age of fifteen to study drama in New York City and began her entertainment career with stints as a model and Goldwyn Girl.

In 1951, Lucy and her husband, Desi Arnaz, launched a comedy television series, I Love Lucy, based on their own lives. The show pioneered technical aspects of a comedy show, using three cameras, a set, and a live audience. It also became the launching pad for the endearing comic talents of Ball.

Lucy went on to win four Emmy Awards for her work. Proving that her talents extended beyond the realm of comedy, the entrepreneur became the first female studio head in Hollywood. As president of Desilu Productions, she broke the glass ceiling for women executives in the film and television industry.

In 1986, Ball received a Kennedy Center Honor for her work and her shows live on in syndication even today.

National Women's Hall of Fame:
http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=179

A Women's History of The World for Women's History Month

Who Cooked The Last Supper? The Women’s History of the World by Rosalind Miles
Rosalind.net

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0609806955/sr=8-1/qid=
1141338716/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-8853112-8920730?%5Fencoding=UTF8

“Who cooked the Last Supper? If it had been a man, wouldn’t he have a saint’s day by now, with a fervent following of celebrity chefs?”

So begins Miles history of the world from a women’s perspective. You may not agree with some of her more radical theories, but that’s not the point. The importance of this book is that it presents an alternative interpretation that prompts us to re-examine our view of the world.

“Women are the race itself, the strong primary sex, and man the biological afterthought…woman’s the basic “X” chromosome…while the creation of a male requires the branching off of the divergent “Y” chromosome, seen by some as a genetic error…Women therefore are the original, the first sex, the biological norm from which males are only a deviation…femaleness is the norm, the fundamental form of life.”

Why Women's History Month?

The Beginning
As recently as the 1970's, women's history was virtually an unknown topic in the K-12 curriculum or in general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a "Women's History Week" celebration for 1978. We chose the week of March 8 to make International Women's Day the focal point of the observance. The activities that were held met with enthusiastic response, and within a few years dozens of schools planned special programs for Women's History Week, over one-hundred community women participated in the Community Resource Women Project, an annual "Real Woman" Essay Contest drew hundreds of entries, and we were staging a marvelous annual parade and program in downtown Santa Rosa, California.

Local Celebrations
In 1979, a member of our groups was invited to participate in Women's History Institutes at Sarah Lawrence College, attended by the national leaders of organizations for women and girls. When they learned about our county-wide Women's History Week celebration, they decided to initiate similar celebrations within their own organizations and school districts. They also agreed to support our efforts to secure a Congressional Resolution declaring a "National Women's History Week." Together we succeeded! In 1981, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Rep. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) co-sponsored the first Joint Congressional Resolution.

Overwhelming Response
As word spread rapidly across the nation, state departments of education encouraged celebrations of National Women's History Week as an effective means to achieving equity goals within classrooms. Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Oregon, Alaska, and other states developed and distributed curriculum materials all of their public schools. Organizations sponsored essay contests and other special programs in their local areas. Within a few years, thousands of schools and communities were celebrating National Women's History Week, supported and encouraged by resolutions from governors, city councils, school boards, and the U.S. Congress.

The Entire Month of March
In 1987, the National Women's History Project petitioned Congress to expand the national celebration to the entire month of March. Since then, the National Women's History Month Resolution has been approved with bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. Each year, programs and activities in schools, workplaces, and communities have become more extensive as information and program ideas have been developed and shared.

Growing Interest in Women's History
The popularity of women's history celebrations has sparked a new interest in uncovering women's forgotten heritage. A President's Commission on the Celebration of Women in History in America recently sponsored hearings in many sections of the country. It took reports about effective activities and institutions that are promoting women's history awareness and heard recommendations for programs still needed. The Women's Progress Commission will soon begin hearings to ascertain appropriate methods for identifying and then preserving sites of importance to American women's history. In many areas, state historical societies, women's organizations, and groups such as the Girl Scout of the USA have worked together to develop joint programs. Under the guidance of the National Women's History Project, educators, workplace program planners, parents and community organizations in thousands of American communities have turned National Women's History Month into a major focal celebration, and a springboard for celebrating women's history all year 'round.

Expanding the Focus
The National Women's History Project is involved in many efforts to promote multicultural women's history. We produce organizing guides, curriculum units, posters and display sets, videos, and a range of delightful celebration supplies. We also coordinate the Women's History Network, conduct teacher training conferences, and supply materials to people wherever they live through a Women's History Catalog.

http://www.nwhp.org/about_nwhp/mission/mission.html