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“Wollstonecraft concentrated on describing the state of ignorance and servility to which women were condemned by social custom and training. The passionate feeling with which her book is imbued give it wide social appeal and persuasive power. […] Wollstonecraft’s acute question – “how many generations may be necessary to give vigour to the virtue and talents of the freed posterity of abject slaves?’ – still has pertinence. “
Excerpts from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman –
“And if it be granted that women was not created merely to gratify the appetite of man, or to be the upper servant, who provides his meals and takes care of his linen, it must follow, that the first care of those mothers or fathers, who really attend to the education of females, should be, if not to strengthen the body, at least, not to destroy the constitution by mistaken notions of beauty and female excellence…
To preserve personal beauty, woman’s glory! the limbs and faculties are cramped with worse than Chinese bands, and the sedentary life which they are condemned to live, whilst boys frolic in the open air, weakens the muscles and relaxes the nerves. As for Rousseau’s remarks… that they have naturally, that is from their birth, independent of education, a fondness for dolls, dressing, and talking – they are so puerile as not to merit a serious refutation…
I have, probably, had an opportunity of observing more girls in their infancy that J.J. Rousseau – I can recollect my only feelings, and I have looked steadily around me; yet, so far with coinciding with him in opinion respecting the first dawn of the female character, I will venture to affirm, that a girl, whose spirits have not been damped by inactivity, or innocence tainted by false shame, will always be a romp, and the doll will never excite attention unless confinement allows her no alternative. Girls and boys, in short, would play harmlessly together, if the distinction of sex was not inculcated long before nature makes any difference. I will go further, and affirm, as an indisputable fact, that most of the women, in the circle of my observation, who have acted like rational creatures, or shown any vigour of intellection, have accidentally allowed to run wild… ”
-Ed. Miriam Schneir. Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. pp 13 – 14.
Let it be known that in the 18th century the processes of female socialization were known to women. Fast forward to the present and we are still presented with arguments about how biology plays an overarching role in determining female social status in society. Of course, admitting that society and the socialization that goes along with it is inherently unjust to women, as opposed to calcified biological fact, would lead us to conclusion that society has been set up for the benefit of one sex, at the expense of the other. Social norms are malleable, biology not so much. I know which case I would rally around if I was trying to justify the inherent injustice that exists.
“In 1776, when the letters reprinted below were exchanged, John Adams was in Philadelphia attending the Continental Congress. Within months of receiving his wife’s request that the “new code of laws” give some consideration “to the ladies,” he was hard at work, with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and others drafting one of the world’s great statements of human liberty – the Declaration of Independence. Yet, for the rights of women, he could summon only a smile. “
(to John Adams)
31 March, 1776. … in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute; but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend. Why, then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity and impunity. Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your sex.
***
(to Abigail Adams)
14 April, 1776. As to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh. We have been told that our struggle has loosened the bonds of government everywhere; that children and apprentices were disobedient; that schools and colleges were grown turbulent; that Indians slighted their guardians, and Negroes grew insolent to their masters. But your letter was the first intimation that another tribe, more numerous and powerful than all the rest, were grown discontented.
***
(to John Adams)
7 May, 1776. I cannot say that I think that you are very generous to the ladies; for, whilst you are proclaiming peace and good-will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken; and, notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims, we have it in our power, not only to free ourselves, but subdue our masters, and, without violence, throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet; – “Charm by accepting, by submitting away, Yet have our humour most when we obey.”
Ed. Miriam Schneir. Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. pp 3 – 4.
Well thanks for that John Adams. One might question your dedication to freedom, equality, and other shiny words that were bandied about at the time, considering the hearty F-you delivered to womenfolk. :/
Cultural analysis at its finest.
“Cultural mythology is often used in this way to distort what goes on between subordinate and dominant groups. It enables dominant groups to avoid seeing how much they depend on others to perform disagreeable labor in return for the low wages that help make privilege possible. Members of the upper class, for example, typically are portrayed as ‘wealth producers,’ the ones who build buildings, bridges, and empires, even though most of the work is performed by others, by ‘little people’ who pay taxes and often live lives of chronic anxiety about making ends meet. Donald Trump, we are told, ‘built’ Trump Tower, just as turn-of-the-century robber barons ‘built’ the railroads and steel mills that made vast personal fortunes possible. Entire nations also indulge in this kind of magical thinking. In the United States, for example, we rarely realize how much third world poverty subsidizes our own standard of living. We like to believe that our affordable abundance is solely our own doing, unaware of how much it has always depended on a steady supply of cheap labor and raw materials provided by countries in which much of the world’s population lives in poverty.”
— Allan G. Johnson, The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy
History is awesome! So rich, so vibrant…and mostly so amazingly garbled and riddled with inaccuracies. Here today is a modest start in correcting the damage. :)
This is a heroic tale of a brave woman who sacrificed her saving children from terrorists. Can you ever imagine a Hollywood film portraying this kick ass female hero’s life?
…
Yah, me neither. It’s too hard for the hollywood dude establishment to tart up the heroine and tell a serious story at the same time. :( Instead we get more of the tight sexy skinsuit phenomena (bleh):
Let’s not go there. Onward to the real hero.
“Yesterday would have been her 52nd birthday, but PAN AM Flight Attendant Neerja Bhanot of Chandigarh, India died at 23 being a hero. She is credited with saving the lives of 360 passengers onboard PAN AM 73. When radical Islamic terrorists hijacked her A/C in Karachi, Pakistan she informed the pilots (who used their escape hatch to runaway) and kept both the passengers/remaining crew calm. When the terrorists demanded to know who the Americans were on the flight so they could execute them she gathered all the passports and hid the ones belonging to Americans under seat cushions. The terrorists confused and unable to determine the national origins of the passengers didn’t execute anyone. When Pakistani police raided the plane she was able to nearly singlehandedly evacuate all the passengers as the firefight ensued. She being one of the last people on board did a last check and found three children still hiding. As she led the children to safety the surviving terrorists spotted the children and opened fire on them. Neerja jumped in the way of the bullets and was mortally wounded. She was able to evac the children to safety before dying from her wounds. Neerja was awarded the Ashok Chakra Award by India, the highest peacetime gallantry award possible. She was the youngest and first civilian to ever be awarded this honor.”
There is some good news, there is a film being made outside of Hollywood about this fine female hero.
I’m probably already reprinting to much, but frack it. This shit is too important not to repeat. Go to the Ottawa Citizen’s webpage and read the entire article by Shelly Page.
“I was 24, sent by the Toronto Star to write about the slaughter of female engineering students, all around my age; fourteen of them.
Looking back, I fear I sanitized the event of its feminist anger and then infantilized and diminished the victims, turning them from elite engineering students who’d fought for a place among men into teddy-bear loving daughters, sisters and girlfriends.
Twenty-five years later, as I re-evaluate my stories and with the benefit of analysis of the coverage that massacre spawned, I see how journalists— male and female producers, news directors, reporters, anchors — subtly changed the meaning of the tragedy to one that the public would get behind, silencing so-called “angry feminists.” We were “social gatekeeping,” as filmmaker Maureen Bradley later asserted in her 1995 film, Reframing the Montreal Massacre: A media interrogation.”
[…]
“That evening, I thawed my feet in my hotel and watched the late Barbara Frum, one of Canada’s most respected journalists, refuse to admit that the massacre was indeed an act of violence toward women.
“Why do we diminish it by suggesting that it was an act against just one group?” Frum asked on CBC’s The Journal.
Frum was puzzled that so many women insisted the massacre was a result of a society that tolerates violence against women.
“Look at the outrage in our society,” Frum said. “Where is the permission to do this to women?
“If it was 14 men would we be having vigils? Isn’t violence the monstrosity here?”
She refused to even utter the word feminist. But then, her neutralizing of feminist anger must have resonated, and perhaps was reflexive. Bradley, in her documentary, wondered about Frum’s stance: “Was it necessary to deny any shred of feminism in herself in order to get where she was in this bureaucratic, media institution, boys’ club?”
Bradley also pointed out that the national media did not cover an emotional vigil the day after the massacre, where there was an angry confrontation between Montreal feminists and male students from the Université de Montréal. It would have made great content. Intelligent women voicing their outrage. But the story didn’t make it out of campus newspapers and local TV coverage onto a national stage. This story was not allowed to resonate with angry women.
When I review the stories I wrote, I almost never used the word feminist; I never profiled the achievements of one of the slain engineering students or the obstacles she’d toppled. I never interviewed a single woman who was angry, only those who were merely sad. Why? No one told me what not to write, but I just knew, in the way I knew not to seem strident in a workplace where I’d already learned how to laugh at sexist jokes and to wait until a certain boss had gone for the day before ripping down Penthouse centrefolds taped on the wall near his desk.
My stories were restrained, diligent and cautious. For years, I remembered one of my sentences with particular pride. Reading it now, it shows everything that was wrong with how I covered the event:
They stood crying before the coffins of strangers, offering roses and tiger lilies to young women they never knew.
I turned the dead engineering students into sleeping beauties who received flowers from potential suitors.
I should have referred to the buildings they wouldn’t design, the machines they wouldn’t create and the products never imagined.
They weren’t killed for being daughters or girlfriends, but because they were capable women in a male-dominated field.
I should have written that then.”
Remembrance day is supposed to remind us of the horrors of war and the terrible sacrifices that were made by people and nations. The hope for the future is not to tread again on these grim paths of barbarity.
Yet we do.
Repeatedly.
Syria
Yemen (drone massacre of a wedding party)
Iraq
So remembering isn’t enough.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…