Women's Issues

[nlhome]

Apparently it was a celebration, so solemnity and quiet might not be appropriate either.

[Steph]

I honestly believe that the selfies in public are all inappropriate..

[BarbStAubrey]

Interesting because I am thinking of using selfies to track my efforts and the slow change that is not easily seen for a couple of adjustments to my life - I have a secret blog that I plan on uploading to like, a diary of photos of me carrying out the daily tasks like I have promised myself for years to walk all the trails in Austin - there are at last count 79 so that is more than one a week and with some of the summer temps too high for a long 5 mile or better walk I need to walk two a week while the weather is cool. Anyhow without a partner who wants to do this I will be logging a lot of selfies for my blog

[maryz]

Be sure to post a link to your blog when you upload it, Barb. 

[Steph]

You are using selfies to track progress and that sounds interesting.The public ones are the ones I find awful.. No one cares except you if you have a selfie with someone famous..
I too say do post us a place to enjoy the blog. I know so little about blogs.

[MaryPage]

It occurs to me this morning, while contemplating an ABC special interview on television news about Andrea Elliott of The New York Times and her fantabulous article titled THE INVISIBLE CHILD, that the forces of male evilness, abetted by female instincts favoring abasement (if they could only SEE themselves!), have had literally thousands of years of experience in terrorist sabotage of any attempt to allow women to exercise control over their own bodies and over the direction their lives and those of their children take.
Yes, let us face the truth:  some women enjoy a frisson of inclusion and almost sexual excitement when they desert their own sex and become cheerleaders for those masculine dictators forcing degradation upon females of the human species.  These women bask in imagined favorable treatment from these big, tough male icons of power, not realizing the price they have had to pay or the misery of the women and children who have had to put up most of that price.
I have long wondered at, and remarked upon in here, the failure of our medical community to give voice loudly and plainly to the many, many instances in pregnancy when abortion is absolutely necessary to save a mother's life.  A woman's life.  Your life or my life.
And today it struck me forcibly:  they shoot and kill doctors and nurses involved in providing abortions.  There is a long and sordid history of this.
So there is no reason to believe the lives of any doctors (and their families) who would speak Truth to Power would be safe.
Coming or going, we women are encircled, ambushed and enslaved.  Only those of us who manage to get our fertile years behind us and live into an old age are safe from further intrusions into our being.
But our daughters and granddaughters and great granddaughters are not being made aware of their peril.

[Steph]

Oh MaryPage, I do agree. Doctors and nurses who aid abortions have been killed in way too many cases.

[MaryPage]

The story of Santa Claus begins with Nicholas, who was born in the 3rd century in the village of Patara (today the southern coast of Turkey). His wealthy parents raised him to be a devout Christian. Obeying Jesus' words to "sell what you own and give the money to the poor," Nicholas used his whole inheritance to assist the needy, sick, and suffering. He dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. Bishop Nicholas became known throughout the land for his generosity to those in need and his love for children.

Saint Nicholas died December 6, 343 and was buried in his cathedral church. The anniversary of his death became a day of celebration, St. Nicholas Day, December 6th.
Through the centuries many stories and legends have been told of St. Nicholas' life and deeds. It became a custom throughout the European Christian world that children received gifts in their shoes or stockings on the 6th day of December.  This is still the custom in many places.  The Dutch brought St. Nicolas with them when they founded New York.  The way they pronounced his name led to English speaking settlers calling him Santa Claus.
Clement Moore wrote A Visit From Saint Nicholas in 1823.  We now call it “Twas The Night Before Christmas.”  In it, he makes Saint Nick a small elf who can get down chimneys and puts him in a red suit.
I can remember when almost all greeting cards and decorations portrayed Santa as an elf or Saint Nicholas in his bishop’s robes.  Gradually, the Coca-cola ads made Santa Claus bigger and bigger and ever bigger!
Saint Nicholas himself was not of Caucasian descent.  He was of and from the Middle East.

[Steph]

The des piles were not Caucasian either many early Christians were not

[BarbStAubrey]

Yep and Jesus was not a white man either being Jewish and speaking Aramaic there is no way he would be considered white - maybe not black but certainly not white.

[MaryPage]

Brown.  Brown is the color Jesus would have been.
He was a Jew.
He lived in the Middle East.
The Jews were a Semitic tribe that had, through a religion they founded, broken off from the other semitic tribes.
We call most of the rest of those tribes still living there today, Arabs.

[Steph]

Yes,I am amazed at the conservative evangelicals.. Where the heck do they think Jesus and the disciples came from.. Baltimore?? Oh well, ignorance is common.

[MaryPage]

The art of the Middle East did not include portraits of humans or images of an imagined god or person as a rule, as they thought this led to idolatry.
So it was left to the Italians and their ilk to portray Jesus and God The Father and the Holy Ghost.  We know what they began and continued to do right up to this day.  God wears a white robe and has white hair and beard.  Jesus has fair skin, long blond hair and blue eyes, and is tall and slender.  The Holy Ghost is a white dove.
ART, in short, from one group of creatively gifted people gave the world its first images of the Divine.
It was all a matter of culture and taste, and had nothing whatsoever to do with what Jesus of Nazareth looked like.

[Steph]

Hmm, seems to me in some museum or another ( I am a museum freak and have been to way too many),,, but anyway, there were so very old religious paintings that depicted Jesus and disciples are swarthy, dark, big nosed.. semitic in other words. Wish I knew or could remember the artist. Anyway I was much impressed that someone had actually thought of the real people.

[mabel1015j]

Will we never get this issue resolved???

NEWSFLASH: The newest Disney princess (Anna from Frozen) has eyes bigger than her wrists.

Yep — thanks to work by sociologist Philip N. Cohen — we can now chew on that fact for a while.

While cartoons certainly aren’t the number one source for realistic portrayals of the human form, Cohen’s work finds surprising patterns in the way Disney films portray male and female characters‘ bodies. Male characters boast hands that dwarf female counterparts, and female leads have eyes sometimes twice the size of their male partner — trends that romanticize wide-eyed innocence for girls and strength and dominance for boys.

Mr. Cohen isn’t the only person disrupting our ideas on popular kids’ movies. Last year, TEDxBeaconStreet’s own Colin Stokes gave this fascinating talk on how movies teach manhood, which totally challenged how we look at gender in kids’ movies.

Over at the TED Blog, Colin unpacks the messages he sees in more movies that are favorites for kids — and recommends some great picks for enlightened watching. Here’s a sampling:

Movie formula: The Quest
Typical Version: A boy’s world is threatened by an evil male force. He must train and mobilize other boys to defeat the enemy in a violent conflict. There is essentially one female, who is granted to the hero as a prize.
Examples: Star Wars, The Hobbit, The Lion King
—-
Enlightened version: A boy or girl (or team) seeks to heal an injustice in the world. They must make friends who share their goal to change the culture of an older generation, by modeling a better way.
Examples: The Wizard of Oz, The Muppet Movie, The Dark Crystal, Castle in the Sky (Japan), Spy Kids 1 & 2, Tangled

Read his whole guide here»

[MaryPage]

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND WISHING YOU ALL OF THE BEST IN 2014.

[Steph]

Hmm. I can see whre Harry and his friends, although not cartoons fit into his plan.

[JeanneP]

As the Jews start out as Etheopion.  I would think of the people of Jesus time being very dark. (They are still very dark to this day) would not have the long blond hair. Blue eyes , perfect teeth, always shown. People picture people looking back then like they were looking more like the Nordic people of today.  I have not seen one picture , statue in any gallery or church that would be correct.

[Steph]

Happy New Year.. May women forge ahead this year and work at getting a woman ready to run for President. It should be our turn..

[BarbStAubrey]

Disappointed in Judge Sotomayor holding up Obama care for women's reproductive aids - she took on a case by a group of Nuns in Colorado who are still fighting that an Catholic institution that serves the public must have health insurance for their employees that includes Birth Control coverage. Which says a women has no rights over her reproductive system it is the right of the government to control or not control - if these various religious institutions were for only Catholics and not public I could see their complaint but they want the benefits of a religious status and the profits of a public business and now they want to skip their responsibility as a public business and cry religion. No word though about Viagra only birth control - we are not talking abortion we are talking birth control a daily pill that allows women to have a normal sex life.

[MaryPage]

Well, it looks as though the Vatican is of a mind to allow homosexuality (as IF they have ever been able to disallow it, since there has always been a surfeit of it in their own ranks!), but that, galfriends, is a gift to the guys.  They are not about to loosen the restraints on those of our gender.  We are primarily baby machines and no birth control or even lifesaving abortion is to be countenanced!

[Steph]

I too am disappointed in Sotomayer and I note that she also is the judge to go to in the Utah case as well. Had hoped that being a catholic would not sway her, but Ican see that it did. I note as far as I know. she has no children.

[MaryPage]

Have you ever entertained the whimsical thought that if EVERY human male and every never married female, nuns, priests, whatever, were suddenly pregnant and had to go through the nine months and the birthing procedure and then find themselves with this hungry, screaming and fragile creature to care for, that the laws regarding birth control and abortion would suddenly be totally revised?

Pity, but true:  there can never be empathy from those whose condition in life bars them forever from the same fate or condition. 

If it CAN'T happen to you, you just aren't going to worry about the riff raff it is happening to!

[BarbStAubrey]

Never mind the age old arguments it is immoral to have extra children who like the flu germ can take hold - we are living on a fragile plant without enough water and even now the main portion of the Philippians that is so controlled by the Catholic Bishop and his case against birth control there is  police patrols daily on the surrounding water to attempt to stop the fishing which is the main source of food for the poor with most families having upwards of 13 children and few are educated - as compared to Culion island that decided with government OK to limit the number of children in a family to three with the cooperation of the men. The children are all being educated and they have land they can farm without shanties competing for space and the fish are plentiful.

http://www.wri.org/philippines-social-programs-reduce-pressure-culion-island%E2%80%99s-reefs

[MaryPage]

Ah, but Barbara,

IGNORANCE RULES!

[MaryPage]

I was very troubled to learn there is a Christmas carol in Romania that is sung in Christian churches and contains the words:
"The kikes, damn kikes, Holy God would not leave the kike alive, neither in heaven nor on earth;  only in the chimney as smoke, this is what the kike is good for, to make kike smoke through the chimney on the street."

And a choir performed it on the state sponsored television!

http://abcnews.go.com/International/anti-semitic-christmas-carol-uproar/story?id=21205371

[Steph]

Eastern Europe seems to still display the old hatred against anyone different than they are.

[BarbStAubrey]

And the problem is deeper - evidently after the Spanish Jews set up their communities in the Netherlands after they were kicked out of Spain the prosperous and educated Sephardi Jewish community had severe punishment for themselves if they helped, gave employment or housing to those Jews who were coming from the Baltic's, Poland and what is eastern Germany today.

Bits and pieces I have been attempting to trace the history of Jews in Europe - on the surface the complaint was competition among the emerging Middle Class merchant that grew to isolating them from communities - so far the best I have found is that Rome always had a superior attitude to the Jews and were the ones who demolished the Temple in Jerusalem.

I look at this attitude of blaming the Jews for Christ's death and it makes no sense - it had to have been a rallying cry established a couple of hundred years later since at the time of the Crucifixion there were no Christians - they were Jews who followed Jesus - the first time the word Christian is used is in the late 200s - even the early martyrs were not labeled Christian.

The best I can put it together when Constantine and the Pope just before him stopped the persecution of the Christians and Constantine converted himself and all his people he also took the small Jewish symbol off the flag and replaced it with a Christian symbol.

My gut says that the Christians were going to strongly support this leader who lifted their 300 years of oppression and persecution by local authorities according to the whims of the local community than it was ordered by the imperial authority and the newly legalized Christians were going to join the Romans in spades partnering with their attitudes of being superior to the Jews.  

I have not found it yet, but I even bet the idea of justifying this partnership in superiority, with Christians now also blaming Jews for every mishap came about at this time - they were too busy earlier protecting their own skin -  and I bet this is when the Jews Killed Jesus story was shared as logical justification.

[BarbStAubrey]

MaryPage I could buy "IGNORANCE RULES!" if this came from the people but we are talking educated - in fact far more educated than a 4 year degree leader of the Church who join other educated leaders of the church in this convoluted thought pattern that justifies Misogyny.

[MaryPage]

My study of history tells me this:  at first, they were all called Jews and went by that name.  But gradually, after the death of Jesus of Nazareth, those groups who gathered together and came to believe that he was the Son of God, were called followers of Jesus.  And then, because these groups called him The Christ, they began to be called Christians and accepted converts from among the gentiles, that is to say, those who had never been Jews.  And so it was that gradually, and then quickly, they no longer called themselves Jews, but "Christians."

And when you want to start a new religion and gather many followers, you have to have a scape goat.  Someone to despise.  They chose those Jews who did not convert.

And the new church forbade Jews in the Holy Roman Empire to own land.  They could not buy or sell any type of real estate.

So they had to deal in movable goods and put their money in jewels, gold, silver and cash.  They became mostly merchants.  Christians liked to say they cheated them, and further their bad reputation.

[MaryPage]

Then the Church passed a rule that a good Christian must not receive interest on loans, as that would be usury and a mortal sin.  And Christians could not PAY interest!

So most of your first bankers were Jews and Lombards.  And it became so that the Jews of Europe financed all the wars the Christian kings wanted to wage.

Then, when these kings could not pay up their horrendous debt, they would declare a pogram and expell the Jews!

This happened over and over and over and over again!  Truth!  I am telling it like it was!

[BarbStAubrey]

Could be MaryPage however, the Roman Bishopric was not a legal governing body affecting more than religious expression until after Constantine in 313 however it was  in 380, under Emperor Theodosius I, that Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. Before then the church had no power although they were called on to judge deputes, and the people followed the results there was no legal power to make laws.

The Siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE was the decisive event of the First Jewish-Roman War.

Christ is crucified in the 1st century

The First Council of Nicaea in 325 promotes using the word Christian and it is when the word is used in Rome where as yes, there were groups in Cyprus and Cyrene, that when they came to Antioch described themselves as Christian and yes, it was in pockets - and could be those pockets had enough influence to sway all Christians to use the Jews as scapegoats - to me it has more a link to the traditional quarrel between Rome and the Jews since when you read the old information from Justine and Constantinople there is not this visceral hatred blaming Jews for every fire and epidemic.

During the first 1000 years the fight was between the five supposedly equal Bishoprics with Jerusalem having lost its power early on -

It is an interesting trail to find how this started - there is still too much history during the first approximately 600 years that affects and dips into this phenomenon - The Germans along with the other tribes north and east of Rome had a huge impact and pretty much turned the Roman church into their version of Christianity and became the most influential leaders within the Church from just before the year 400 for about a 1000 years. With so much of the hatred in the traditional culture from this part of Europe this has been my most recent focus reading about the Goths, Vandals, Angles, Saxons, Lombards, Suebi, Frisii and Franks.

You would think if it was a Roman ingrown hatred than western Europe with direct ties to Rome would be the most guilty culprits but instead we find this hatred strongest in the east from Russia south.

A big influence was the Muslims who when the swept across the Mediterranean and especially in Spain they convinced the Jews to fight for them since they came without their army and the Jews were hired to fight the Christians and so you have the nucleus of Isobel and Ferdinand kicking the Jews out of Spain. Before the arrival of the Muslims in Spain history shows a working relationship between the Jews who make things and farmed so the Christians could be soldiers.

Have tons to learn and we can all have our idea of how this happened but the idea it originated soon after the Crucifixion blaming as if the Jews killed Christ just does not add up. Heck Nero blamed both Christians and Jews for the 6 day fires burning in Rome and that was I think 67 CE

[Steph]

I am overwhelmingly not liking Sonia.. She turned it over to the court and that was a disaster since there are too many catholics on the court.. So now they took away Utahs ability to marry anyone and now they are worried if the marriages will be legal. She is proving very disappointing to me.

[rosemarykaye]

Having been 'absent' I have only just come across this discussion thread - fantastic!  My daughters and I talk a lot about how women are portrayed in books, films, etc.  Madeleine is reading Caitlin Moran's books - she is a strident feminist, very funny - I haven't read the books but I'e read columns in newspapers that she writes for. 

Has anyone read Cassandra At The Wedding by Dorothy Baker?  It is a strange, fascinating (and easy to read) book about a woman returning from the city to her family home to attend her identical twin's very conventional wedding.  It is possible, I think, to interpret Cassandra & her sister as two versions of the same woman, the one conforming, the other struggling as a very much not conforming outsider.  I loved it.  Here is what Amazon UK says:

'Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding.
 
Dorothy Baker’s entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events in which her heroine appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, absurd, and heartbroken—at once utterly impossible and tremendously sympathetic. As she struggles to come to terms with the only life she has, Cassandra reckons with her complicated feelings about the sister who she feels owes it to her to be her alter ego; with her father, a brandy-soaked retired professor of philosophy; and with the ghost of her dead mother.
 
First published in 1962, Cassandra at the Wedding is a book of enduring freshness, insight, and verve. Like the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides and Jhumpa Lahiri, it is the work of a master stylist with a profound understanding of the complexities of the heart and mind.'

Madeleine & I have also recently been to two exhibitions in Edinburgh of Louise Bourgeois's work - drawing,s etchings, sculptures and some writing.  She grappled all her life with what it meant to be a woman.  She felt she had failed as a wife, mother, sister, daughter, etc.  Some of her stuff is decidedly weird, but gripping, and strangely moving.  Daughter loved it and fortunately was able to explain at least her own interpretation of some of the works to me!

Rosemary

[MaryPage]

Welcome, Dear Rosemary.  Delighted to receive your input.

I have not previously heard of the book you mention.  Fascinating.

It is a matter of great joy to me to hear every variety of opinion on a subject, and most especially to obtain new thought ranges to mull over.  That being stated, and I do mean every word, it is the deepest of mysteries to me to contemplate what I see as an absolute:  namely that the female of our species has been treated as of less importance for thousands upon thousands of years of known history.  This has been true in almost every culture and civilization, and was true when we lived as animals.  The feature of this truth that really staggers me is the fact that such a large portion of women themselves accept this as the original, inevitable and proper truth of proportional values.  I do not accept being valued less, albeit millennial upon millennial of my bloodlines have done so.

And this, to me, is what being a feminist is all about.  Ergo:  one can be a feminist regardless of one's gender.

"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." Approved by Congress, March 22, 1972.

This oh so simple law has never become law.  Our states did not ratify it.

[Steph]

Oh me, I read Cassandra many years ago and it was roundly booed when first published. It is somewhat scattered as I remember and Cassandra would be a truly difficult person to try and love.

[JoanK]

I've ordered a sample of Cassandra for my kindle. Although as a twin (though not identical) I get impatient with those who assign mystical significance to twinness.

[rosemarykaye]

I'm more interested in the idea that Cassandra and Judith are two opposing aspects of a woman's life - especially in the 1960s, when to be different was so much less acceptable than it even is now.

I look forward to hearing what you think Joan 

[nlhome]

I checked on Cassandra on Amazon - looks like a good book. Thanks for bringing it up. And I'm glad you're back, Rosemary.

[MaryPage]

THIS IS JUST UNBELIEVABLE!

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/gop-bill-irs-abortion-audits