Women's Issues

[MaryPage]

Rush Limbaugh and his ilk NEVER figure in my imagining!

[Steph]

Oh Jean, you put it so well. I have been observing my own representative to the younger generation and my granddaughter mostly stands up for herself, but every once in a while, a total stranger puts her on her guard. I keep reminding her that her life and body are her own, no one elses.

[MaryPage]

Every once in a very great while, not often at all, mind you, I run into a bit of information about someone that tells me THAT is a person I have always aspired to be.

This happened again this week while I was reading, a week late, the September 1, 2014 issue of The New Yorker.  In shades of orange to red to brown to black, the front cover shows shadowy figures holding their arms in the air.

The article is written by Rebecca Mead (related to Margaret?) and is titled THE TROLL SLAYER.  The woman I wish I were is Mary Beard, a professor at Cambridge in England.  Beard is really, really into what we often talk about in here:  men's historical attitudes towards women.

Points to ponder:  Beard says the first RECORDED instance of a man telling a woman that her voice is not to be heard in public appears in THE ODYSSEY, where Penelope"s son tells her that "speech will be the business of men," and sends her upstairs to do her weaving.

Beard also points to a horrendous crime in METAMORPHOSES (Ovid) in which a man rapes a woman and then cuts her tongue out so that she cannot tell.

If you can possibly get a hold of this magazine, you will fall in love with Mary Beard.  Oh gosh, but I want to be HER!

[Steph]

Can you imagine how different history would be if women wrote it??

[mabel1015j]

MaryPage - i read that Mary Beard article too, here it is for anyone who would like to read it.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/01/troll-slayer

Steph - ironically, there is another Mary (Ritter) Beard - no relation to MB above - who was a historian in the first half of the 20th century who wrote many women's history books. On Understanding Woman is a comprehensive, easily readable, book. I read it in the 80s and especially remember a phrase she used "women launched civilization." Her theory being that many of the characteristics we attribute to being civilized would logically been begun by women. Because women and children lived in small groups and men roved in bands, women would have begun singing (soothing children,  funeral dirges, work songs); agriculture (these small groups moved from place to place for food and water - women may have noticed when coming back to a spot where they remembered a child spilled a basket of grain a few weeks before, grain is now growing, could they do that deliberately?); laws ( living in groups requires rules); painting (entertaining children); taming animals (to control vermin, to provide milk) etc, etc!

Makes sense to me!!!

Site with more info about Mary Ritter Beard and her books. Another one i liked was Woman as a Force in History She wrote several books with her husband James. The Beards were a famous historian family.

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

Jean

[Steph]

Jen, I will look for it. Sounds interesting and quite logical actually. Although I do remember when reading up on various indian tribes. Some stayed Hunters ( their example was Apache and Comanche) and other tribes settled into a fixed existence and grew crops and the men ranged out to bring home meat.. I thought that was interesting, although as I recall, they gave no dates on this.

[MaryPage]

Did you read the Jean Auel books?  There are six in the Earth's Children series.  I managed 4 of them, and still have the last two on my shelves.  Humongous volumns, but you sure do get a full sense of the history of this planet in the early years of the existence of human beings.

[Steph]

I read thre of the Auel books, but then they started getting silly, so gave them up.

[marjifay]

I read Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear years ago and loved it.  But I was disappointed in the next one and did not finish it.

Marj

[BarbStAubrey]

same here - the first one had me glued to the pages

[Steph]

Yes, no question but the first book was by far the best.

[MaryPage]

I read Jean Auel's first three books way back in the eighties.  I do not remember when the movie was made of the first book, but I do know I was very much looking forward to it and very disappointed in it.
I bought the next three books as they were published, and put them on my bookshelves.  I just could not garner up the interest, let alone the physical strength, to read such a gigantic tome as each one is.
Recently, I pulled out the 4th book, The Plains of Passage, and was surprised by two things:  (1) it was published clear back in 1990, and it has been on my shelves ever since then!  And (2) it is a signed first edition.  It was quite a pleasure to get back into her writing and that time period.
Now, this is how I view her books.  What I think she really set out to do was write a natural history of the period.  They are really textbooks jazzed up to make them readable to the general public.  I just flat out skip the long passages of lurid sex.  I do not like to see, read about, or hear about sexual activities of OTHER couples.  It feels like a dreadful intrusion to me, and really sets my nerve endings to jangling unpleasantly. And I agree that so many “firsts” and so many inventions on the part of that one woman ARE just plain silly.  Admittedly, she does encounter many other ways of doings things and tools to do them with along the way during her very long journey.  But again, I think the whole fictional account is just a long thread connecting the books and inserted for the purpose of making the learning process more palatable with a story line.  And, frankly, I loved the learning process.  I still have the last two books on hand, and perhaps will expire before finding the endurance to pick them up to read, but Jean Auel taught me just one awful lot about the ice age and the flora and fauna and so on.  I like possessing some understanding of what this planet was like during that era.

[Steph]

 I have been reading the twitter hashtag  "Why I stayed" amazing the ways women justify things. I also read the NYT account of  the now wife of the football player. Thus far every time, he does something dreadful to her in public, he got engaged?? now married?? and always defends him, but I suspect that some day she is going to end up dreadfully injured..

[BarbStAubrey]

and all this the result of little girls being trained out of habit by adults for a life as a second class citizen so that she has not gloried in her value except as attached to a man and his light is like the sun and her only his reflection as the moon. I am thinking it is time we roll up our sleeves and look closely at the ways of thinking and habits that we are not maliciously holding but are adding to this sad state of affairs.

How often we delight in how cute a little girl and not how strong and self willed she is or if as a small child. she begs for something and we feel a click in our own body as we think it is not cute like a little boy doing the same thing, rather we consider it rude and un-lady-like. We shudder if we see a little girl grab a cookie where as a boy we may be annoyed but too often it is expected behavior. We need to start listing the ways we treat little girls differently because, until we know the differences we will all unconsciously continue setting a socially acceptable standard that allows women to value themselves less than a man.

This business taught in so many churches that men are the leaders and a family is a pyramid in its structure has got to stop - a couple is equal with different tasks - decisions are a team effort with each, husband and wife a valuable part of the team - it is the system used by successful companies like how Apple runs their company and they have not fallen into the depths of the devils workshop.

We cannot do much about changing the behavior of the clergy, rabies and ministers nor anyone else for that matter but we can look at the way we react to the behavior of girls and what is lady like and what is actually repression. I keep thinking I am beyond the old ways of admiring a girl child and I am thinking I just do not want to be painted with the brush of repressing girl children but actual I am not even aware of habits so ingrained I do not even see them. If any of you have examples of behavior we think is only for girls please list them - it will help - its either continue seeing little girls as subservient in their lady like behavior that is training them to look at themselves differently and less than men - not so much as less than boys it all seems to shift when the are in their mid teens. But their behavior and thinking only changes into the attitudes that were sealed into them as little girls.

And guys need to learn early how to accept failures - their response has been when experiencing a failure to get back in a stronger revenge mode or to give up - look at how they play a sport, a game or their learning style in school - they must beat whatever and whoever was the cause of their last 'humiliating' failure or they walk away - as adults they turn on those weaker that they can win and feel they have beaten which sometimes is literally beaten. But to accept life as winning some and loosing some is considered being a sissy. Do girls have to match this competitive win all attitude or can boys learn that life is not all winning and that loosing is not a personal humiliation. But most of all the old attitude of not taking out your feelings on others that is no longer a feature attitude in even movies much less on TV that has replaced so much parenting.

[mabel1015j]

Examples all around me...........my grandson was being teasingly held tightly by his mother, he began to hit out at her, she said "Don't hit mommie, mommie is a girl, girls are fragile." ....... I didn't handle it well, i EXPLODED, "OH NO!" Then i caught myself and said "we don't hit anybody!" But my DIL said "Oh yes." ....... I have a lot of work todo there.  

Talking to a friend of my son's - a forty yr old, so again we have to train the next generation - who has 2 older sons and a 3 yr old dgt, i asked "is she different then the boys?" He said "Oh, yes! She rules the house, she's very bossy." I handled this one better. I said "let's think of that as assertive, or uses her leadership skills. " He immediately agreed with me, as did the woman sitting next to me who has two dgts and is a county prosecutor here in NJ.

The old habits ARE  hard to break as Barb says. These young people were just repeating oft said comments about women, it just rolled out of their mouths.

Sigh........

Jean

[MaryPage]

I think we women have to get into the habitual habit of calling this type of male a "BULLY MALE."  If we can spread this, and get all women and all decent men to do it, we will finally be labeling them in a way in which they do not want to be labeled.  AND we will be sparing the majority of men who do not resort to this type of behavior:  domestic violence, incest, rape, etc., but who have, like ourselves, been brainwashed into believing that ANYthing and EVERYthing that goes on in the privacy of the family is none of our business.
All of the public reacted ONCE THEIR EYES BEHELD what went on in that closed elevator.  And all of the public would react if they would only allow their inner eyes to imagine what they HEAR has happened to women, girls, children and babies.  You know that old saying:  "Seeing is believing."
Yes, there are a LOT of Bully Males who stand up and forcefully preach that a woman is subject to her husband.  In many cultures, all females in the family are subject to all of the males in the family, and these males have the RIGHT to kill them with so-called "honor killings."
Violence against our sex has been an urgent craving of Bully Males since time began for our species, and they have taken great pains to carefully arrange and control societies so that this craving can be justified and they can safely expect to be able to satisfy their needs without incurring exposure within the community.

[BarbStAubrey]

I agree MaryPage - and the idea that some guys are bullies is a good description however, I do think once we universalize the problem we do not face our own power to do something - the old adage about lighting one candle and the only candle I see is becoming more aware of how insidiously we perpetrate the acceptance of old ways that keep little girls as fragile therefore, cute and the apple of her father's eye and anything less makes her a tom boy that is not the cute vision we admire for girls - there has to be a way for a girl to assert herself without appearing like a tom boy and without appearing as a manipulative, out for herself with no care for others, kind of girl/women.

We cannot change other cultures - we can be horrified - but that changes nothing - we cannot even change the so called moral leaders in this country but we can learn how to change our own skill at how we see and accept power in a girls child and how we react to those we meet who make comments that keep girl children in the age old mold of so called lady like behavior, as well as, how we urge little boys to accept a loss without instigating a sense of needing a revenge win.

There is a difference in taking the loss as a message to get better at whatever the area of the loss but that is different then simply getting better to tit for tat win over the now declared opponent. Is that not what the Sunni and Shia have been doing for centuries - and when you look at the history of wars in Europe this same attitude of tit for tat has been going back and forth hundreds of years. Here football and to some extent basketball seems to be rife with this competitive attitude that is not about getting personally better but only improving with a will to beat the team or guy who beat them.  

Over and over we read how, usually in secret the strong abuse the weak - their abusive ways are supposed to increase the power of the already strong, who usually cannot own their own strength because they compare themselves to others who are yet stronger. There must be a way that revenge is taken away from competition because we know, men especially are driven by competition, and they have few skills to handle loosing.

So far, to get ahead, too many women have had to adapt to a man's competitive world which includes behavior that seems devoid of compassion and includes this revenge motive. It is not as visible but it is there. It is even showing up as girls have to show a guy who dumped them that they are more sexy. Even grown women are playing that game - and so to be able to stop the abuse my concern is not only how we unconsciously add to powerless women because of our built in bias for what we called Lady like behavior but also, that we look at losses in a way that does not feel weak and does not mean revenge.  I am not sure I know what that looks like.

[maryz]

We usually get Leonard Pitts, Jr.'s column in our Sunday paper, but it wasn't there today.  Another gal posted this link to his column about the NFL over on Seniors & Friends.  It's must reading.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/09/09/4338442/leonard-pitts-jr-as-if-we-didnt.html

[BarbStAubrey]

when you read some of the comments it opens our eyes to the fact we have a long way to go...

[mabel1015j]

I've been saying what the columnist said and am furious at tv channels that keep showing it.  I am also suspicious of all these blustering guys....if 1 out of 3 women have been slapped, punched or killed, some of those guys must have been the actors.

[Steph]

I realize how truly lucky I was as a child. I was a declared tomboy and my Dad and my Uncles encouraged it. I was brought up to believe I was strong and healthy and could and should do both boy and girls things.. I married a man who loved my independence and we were equals for our long marriage. Now both my sons have struggled with the protection gene, but realize finally that I can stand on my own two feet..
I encourage my granddaughter to regard herself  as strong and vital..
I still do not pretend to understand Janay.. Is it the money?? or the prestige?? How sad.. and she has a daughter and she is probably teaching her the same behavior.

[BarbStAubrey]

All sorts of discussion on Huffington in relationship to the various articles about Domestic Violence so at least the issue is in the open - Picking up on MaryPage's sharing how they are all Bullies - It has been a few years ago now since my one grandson was the victim for years of Bullying in school and then when my daughter first started to teach she too was looking at programs that schools could use to address Bullying - it all died away because of the cost of the approved program and school budgets were being cut till within a few years even teacher salaries were on hold - but I wonder do any of you know the cost of a school approved program -

Along those lines a group of us have gotten together to buy and donating,  we have started at the 6th grade level, programs about the Deer - sounds off the subject but most of the teachers are new to Austin and are not familiar with the wild life therefore, they have joined the many who want to irradiate the Deer and have all sorts of tall tales based in fear about the dangers of Deer - and so we thought at least if the two grade schools in this area had the program that is well produced by Texas A&M for kids so that it is interesting it would help to tamper the fear and now I am wondering if the cost of these programs about Bullying is something we could raise enough money to cover - the Deer program is just under $100 each and we have a total of two schools with 6 total 6th grade classes - eventually we want to get the one for High School but this is a start - who knows what we can do to influence kindness that we can only hope and pray kicks in when these children are adults. 

[Steph]

Hmm, school approved is probably the catch phrase, plus in Florida, because of all the required testing, they have no time for art, music, etc, things that are so necessary for the children to grow. baaa. this school testing really upsets me. I have a Asburgers grandson and tests are so impossible for him.

[BarbStAubrey]

From article by Kerry Washington

Financial abuse is a tactic often used by abusers to control and isolate their partners. It takes many forms: Abusers may drastically limit their victims' access to cash so they have no money of their own if they want to flee. They may sabotage their victims' ability to work, or pile up debt under their victims' names. Experts cite financial abuse as one of the top reasons why many victims are unable to escape abusive relationships.

"I think people just aren't as aware of financial abuse," Washington told HuffPost. "If a woman isn't even aware of the dynamics of financial abuse -- what it looks like, what it is -- she may not even know that that's part of the tools being used to control her and manipulate her and keep her trapped. When there is more information around it, people can begin to identify it and then get the help they need."

[MaryPage]

I am glad there is a national dialogue going on about this;  that can only be a healthy thing.  The laws must be made stronger to protect women and children from the bullies;  that's for sure.  And yes, where the man has the upper hand financially, that can be a ball & chain in itself, which is precisely why every woman should complete her education and have a profession or trade or license or whatever, before she ever marries,  which enables her to earn her own living and support her children in the event of any type of family set back.

But the public memory is catastrophically short, and the cultural mores are deeply stained into our human genes.  Not just humans.  The human fetus, for instance, and the chicken fetus look just alike for a while;  and it strikes me that the ingrained pecking order in the poultry yard is impossible to erase.  Well, of course, those living creatures do not go on to develop the brains we have, so there is hope for our kind.

I can remember my Bridge Club eons ago having a lively discussion about what was for just a matter of days a phenomenal front page story in The Washington Post about the wife of the second in command of the S.E.C. leaving him with her 5 children because she had a black eye and broken arm and so on and on.  She had been suffering physical spousal abuse for years.  She had no control over a penny of their income and no family to turn to.  One of our number knew him, and the rest of us were scandalized because she thought it outrageous that this battered woman had fled and put their family in the NEWS and ruined his career!  And Ladies, this was a lovely, charming and intelligent woman!  But she was adamant that it was wrong of this woman who had endured years of such abuse to ruin her husband's reputation!  The rest of us were speechless!  Well, almost.  We got over it.

[Steph]

Yes, I agree that there have been several brief scandals about abused women who are married to prominent men over the years.. And the abuse takes so many forms. There should be an answer, but when you look at all those football wives, playing.. oh,, she loves him sooo much. I suspect she loves being married to a football star.

[BarbStAubrey]

After reading this link that was included in Kerry Washington's article it is startling to realize that not agreeing to equal pay is financial abuse just as years ago when a women was forbidden to work - the chicken or the egg - did the men learn this from society that has and still holds abusive tactics for women or is politics about the will of the people and men still hold a trump card so their tactics which are abusive hold sway.

Kerry Washington's link that includes a list of financial abuses - http://nnedv.org/resources/ejresources/about-financial-abuse.html

[mabel1015j]

And Republican women senators vote against equal pay for the 4th time.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/02/1954381/gop-senator-i-voted-against-equal-pay-for-women-because-we-have-enough-laws/

REALLY!?!

Dorothea Benton Frank's book "The Hurricane Sisters" is not one of her best stories, imo, but it is about how charming some abusers can be and how they can manipulate the reasons for their behaviors. I think so many of us have seen over and over again - in movies, in books, on tv, heard from our family and friends - how a woman must have a man, or there is something wrong with her, or something missing in her life, that putting up with, rather then forcibly saying "this is not happening" meets the greater need. I think if some men thought, would be told,  there would be consequences, they would stop. But they have to be told at the first act of bullying, however it manifests it's self, that there will be consequences.

In Benton's book, a SC state senator, good-looking, charming, man-about-town, knows he can get away with it, no woman will ruin his career.

Jean

[MaryPage]

They overlook and undervalue women without so much as a flicker of guilt;  it is all par for the course on a daily basis, century after century after century.
You take the latest great Ken Burns series:  The Roosevelts:
Do you know, that blankety-blank Burns is just as bad as the rest of 'em!
It burns me up that he chose to go on and on and on about Teddy Roosevelt urging all 4 of his sons to get into the war;  and they did.  And he details how they came out of it and the heroism of Quentin, who did not.  We are even treated to a photograph of the dead pilot lying on the ground.  Strong flashes of patriotism and grief pour through us.
But Theodore had another child.  Yes, a child born of his marriage, a sibling to these 4 boys.  And that child got to France in World War I ahead of all the rest of them, and worked tirelessly in a WAR HOSPITAL there as a nurse for the duration.  Helped save many an American life, did SHE!
Google Ethel Roosevelt Derby's biography, and be amazed!
But oh, shoot!  She was just a GIRL, and her service does not deserve even a passing mention.  Girls don't matter.  Girls don't count.
I despair.

[Steph]

I knew about Alice, but Ethel?? not a word. Will look it up.

[mabel1015j]

Thank you MaryPage for that info about Ethel R D. I had never heard anything about her. Actually Burns hasn't mentioned much about Alice and TR's negative impact on her.

Yes, men's writing and documenting of history is very bellicose. I stopped watching the History Channel's "History of the World" because they were only talking about wars and conflicts of men, as though there was no arts, science, inventions, domestic life going on.

Jean

[mabel1015j]

http://feministing.com/2014/09/17/bartender-pens-awesome-open-letter-to-hedge-fund-bro-who-grabbed-her-ass/

I was just going to post this as "hoorah" to the woman who posted the letter and not comment..........until i read his delusional response! This is why we have to speak up assertively EVERY TIME, these oblivious guys just don't get it. "I'm not a sexist!" ...........oh, for god's sake, ask your mother/wife/dgt/woman friend if they consider that sexist! And then he admits he does it!?!?

Even though my husband is very much a supporter of equality, he argues with me sometimes about "how" to speak to these situations. I am never aggressive - name-calling, etc- but i have a strong voice and am assertive and clear in what i'm speaking about. Because of my strong, low pitched, sure voice, i have sometimes been told - always by men, by the way - that i'm intimidating. The nicest thing is that when it has happened in a group some woman has spoken up to say "I don't find Jean intimidating!" Thank you Sisters.

 

[MaryPage]

When I was growing up, Alice was THE grand dame of Washington, D.C.  Did you know that she got married in a blue wedding dress, at the White House,  and the song Alice Blue Gown was written in honor of that, and that to this day that particular shade of blue is known as "Alice Blue?"

She was called the Second Washington Monument.

The Longworth Building at the Capitol was named for her husband.

Her daddy said, when he was President, that he could manage Alice or the country, but not both!

She had a needlepoint pillow that said:  If you haven't got anything good to say about someone, come sit here by me!

I think I have that all right.  All correct, that is to say.  Anyway, right or wrong, that is the way I remember it, and you can check it out.

[mabel1015j]

Yes, i think you've got them all right!

[Steph]

I found Alice fascinating and I remember reading that Teddy indulged her enormously. Her Mother died either at her birth or rapidly after and Teddy adored his first wife.

[mogamom]

I think I remember them advertising a segment in the series on WWII devoted to Rosie the Riveter?  The discrimination she faced...her determination...but haven't caught when it'll be aired.


Interesting article:

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/09/181199-female-fighter-pilot-becomes-first-say-hey-isis-bombed-woman-nice-day/

[Steph]

I Loved the small squib I read yesterday. UAR.. has a female jet pilot.. an arab who is involved in the bombing.Their very first female pilot.

[marjifay]

I thought that was really interesting -- an Arab woman pilot!  Without a burka!
(from the United Arab Emirates)

I just heard the dumbest chatter on the ABC morning show.  (I'd only tuned in to get the weather.)  They were seriously asking whether Hillary Clinton would change her mind about running for president now that she was a grandmother!
Do you think they would ask that of a male candidate if he were a new grandfather?

Marj

[BarbStAubrey]

My sister just closed on a transfer of her site to The Society For the Study of Women Philosophers - here is the site with a nice kudo to my sister's work.

http://www.women-philosophers.com/

[mabel1015j]

Thank you Barbara, i will have to go to that page several times to read it all. Congrats to your sister.

Jean