| 04-25 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Does Veteran Whittaker Rest In Arlington
A Suffragist by Another Name
Maat, the Egyptian GAWD
Margaret, the Maid of Norway
Kathleen "Kitty" McKane
Crystal Macmillan Fought for Equal Rights
Irene Morgan Refused to Give Up Her Seat
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Edna Buchanan, Vita Sackville-West, Geneva Overholser, and Shana Alexander.
Does Veteran Whittaker Rest In Arlington or Was She Barred
by Old Prejudices
At 19 Helen Margaret Whittaker of Lebanon, Pa.,
was a stenographer in the U.S. Navy in World War I - Navy Yeoman Helen
Whittaker.
In 1996 at age 97 she requested future internment
in Arlington National Cemetery, her right as a veteran.
But officialdom refused to agree to it or even rule
on her request until after her death because of new regulations at the
cemetery that automatically bar all women veterans of World War I.
Whittaker wants to be the first representative of
the 12,000 women who served the armed forced in World War I. However, the
women were immediately discharged or fired when the war ended. None were
allowed to choose the armed services as a career.
Never married, she says she would have chosen a career
with the Navy but women were not allowed to do that at that time.
Arlington cemetery has been closed in recent years
to anyone who hasn't died on active service, retired after 20 years service,
received high military decorations or the Purple Heart, or served in high-level
government jobs.
Only 70,000 grave sites remain. About 235,000 people
including hundreds of women are buried in the Virginia cemetery. Most of
the women buried at Arlington are the wives of veterans.
These new regulations automatically bar any women
who served in World War I since they were all prevented from putting in
their 20 years by being forced to retire against their wills.
Whittaker's case went to the deputy assistant to the
President / director of the Women's Initiatives and Outreach. The only
way Yeoman Helen Whittaker would rest in Arlington is through Presidential
intervention.
Stefan Presser, Legal Director of the Pennsylvania
ACLU is following the case.
"I think we have to redress
the initial wrong inflicted on women - and on her," Presser
said in a 1996 Philadelphia Inquirer article written by Edward Colimore.
[WOAH comment: We have attempted
to find out what happened to Wittaker's case. President Clinton's papers
from that period are in boxes waiting to be inventoried for his library.
The Pennsylvania ACLU does not return our queries and no one at the Phialdelphia
Inquirer seems to know anything about the story.
We would sure like to know what happened.
By the way, more than 200 American women died in World
War I. Although none are credited with being with the armed services (except
as nurses), they were with ancillary units such as the women of the YMCA
who set up hospitals and food services close to battle lines.]
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A Suffragist by Another Name is a Radical Suffragette
In 1906, when the English newspapers were still
censoring and refusing to publish most information about women's battles
to get the vote, the [London] Daily Mail referred to suffragists
in an insulting way, calling them suffragette.
Scathingly they referred to the women as not real
suffragists. By adding the "ette"
diminuitive, it tried to ridicule the women as something small, almost
like an imitation of the real thing such as one would compare a kitchenette
to a real kitchen.
The young radicals whose education was not always
the best embraced the suffragette term as a way to differentiate themselves
from the staid constitutionalists who sought political equality through
negotiation and lobbying.
Within a few years the young militant suffragists had
redefined the term suffragette from a diminutive put-down to a violence
activist who broke windows, set fire to buildings, and went to jail. They
were also leaders in the radical sexual politics, breaking new ground in
women's relationships.
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Maat, the Egyptian GAWD of truth, justice, and law
Maat or sometimes called Mayet is the Egyptian's
ancient goddess of truth, justice, and law. As with many female deities,
her powers eroded through time and she is today primarily reported to be
the judge of the dead.
However, Maat, the daughter of Ra the supreme god who
created the world was actually seen as the one who made order of that universe
both in nature and in the actions of people.
This position of deciding the way everything must
be for an orderly world made Maat a near supreme goddess who made the rules
for all the other gods to obey.
Symbolized by an ostrich plume, she is shown in the
Book of the Dead opposite a human heart indicating that her rules are what
a human's actions must be judged in the afterlife.
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Margaret, the Maid of Norway, Queen of Scotland at Age Four
At four years of age, Margaret known as The Maid
of Norway (1282-1290), was proclaimed Queen of Scotland as the last of
the Scottish rulers descended from King Malcom III who ruled the Scots
in the 11th century.
At age eight she was betrothed to Edward, soon to
be King Edward II of England and died on the trip tp England from Norway
before she was nine.
Even though the marriage was not consummated since
she never reached England and part of the marriage contract stated Scotland
would remain independent of England, Edward II would claim Scotland as
his right. Scotland fought more than 20 years to repulse the foreign overlords/invaders.
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Kathleen "Kitty" McKane of Great Britain won the ladies
doubles tennis gold in the 1930 Olympics and the silver in 1924. She won
the mixed doubles silver in 1920 and in both 1920 and 1924 won the bronze
in ladies singles
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Crystal Macmillan Fought for Equal Rights for Women in England
Crystal Macmillan who earned a degree in mathematics
and natural sciences from Edinburgh University was still not considered
qualified to cast a vote in the parliamentary elections of 1908.
Active in woman's suffrage, she took her case to the
House of Lords where she became the first woman to address that august
body. After a seven-day hearing, the lords turned down the rights of women.
After that CM joined the National Union of Suffrage
Societies led by Millicent Garrett Fawcet, the less radical wing of the
suffrage movement that actually did most of the political manuevering that
actually won the vote rather than the confrontational actions of the Pakhurst
contigent.
(The Fawcett group parellelled the American-National
Woman Suffrage association in the U.S. while Alice Paul and Lucy Burns'
group followed the Pankhurst style.)
In 1923 CM resigned from the women's movement and founded
the Open Door Council that aought the removal of all egal restraints against
women. In 1929 she headed the Open Door International for the Economic
Emancipation of the Woman Worker.
Along with Carrie Chapman Catt of the U.S., CM was
one of the main organizers of the International Women s Congress at The
Hague in 1915, which led to the foundation of the Women s International
League for Peace and Freedom.
CM also waged a long campaign for English women to
retain their citizenship if they married a foreign man - again a law that
was in effect in the U.S. as well.
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Irene Morgan Refused to Give Up Her Seat on a Bus in 1944
It seems impossible that only fifty some years ago
in the United States there were a class of white people who actually believed
a black woman should give up her seat on a bus to a healthy white male
- or that in Virginia it was illegal for a black to sit next to a white
person even if the black was there first.
Irene Morgan, born in 1917, changed that when she was
only 27. She stood up to such laws - rather *refused* to stand and enabled
NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court then struck down segregation in interstate
transportation.
Irene Morgan's rebellion against Jim Crow laws occurred
more than a decade before Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat in an
Alabama bus in 1955 as part of the planned NAACP challenge to the Jim Crow
bus laws. [See WOAH 02-14]
According to reports in Virginia in 1944,
"It was a muggy July morning when Morgan,
then a young mother, boarded a Greyhound bus in Hayes Store, took a seat
in the back and headed for home in Baltimore. She was recovering from surgery
and had brought her two children to stay temporarily with her mother in
Gloucester.
"A few miles down the road, the bus driver told
Morgan to move because a white couple wanted to occupy her row."
" 'I said, Well,
no,' recalled Morgan, who now lives on
New York"s Long Island. 'That was a seat
I had paid for.'
"Morgan was jailed for refusing to move and resisting
arrest. She refused to pay the $100 fine that included kicking one deputy
who arrested her and scratching another. Her mother put up the $500 bail.
"Soon the NAACP and Marshall were appealing her
case.
"When asked how she had the courage to do what
she did, Irene Morgan answered, 'I can"t
understand how anyone would have done otherwise.' "
[WOAH comment: EVERY single decision that enabled
blacks to enjoy equal rights in the United States has come from the federal
government. The same for women's rights. Those who favor state's rights
over federal rights are generally those who want to control people by force
such as shown by the Klu Klux Klan and unregulated domestic violence.
Also, in almost every incident regarding black civil
rights, it was a woman or girl who stood against - generally alone
- the laws that precipitated the later legal battle.]
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04-25 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 04-25-1816, Eliza Daniel Srewart - U.S. temperance leader.
Appointed by her brother, the postmaster of Piketon,
Ohio, as assistant postmaster, she was the first of her sex to hold such
a position officially.
She became devoted to the cause of temperance. Durign
the Civil War she gathered supplies and medical needs and distrbuted them
to Union solders and the wounded becoming known as Mother Stewart.
In 1872, she gave a temperance lecture urging the
public to encourage wives of drunkards to bring suit against liquor dealers
under the Adair Act, an Ohio statute that allowed such suits for damages
to be brought by the wives or mothers of drunkards.
She continued her temperance work and speeches and
in 1873 she locally organized the first Woman s Temperance League. The
idea went statewirde and a lossly formed national organizaion emerged that
became known as the "Woman s Crusade."
In 1874 when the general convention to organize was
called, she played a prominent part in the founding there of the Woman
s Christian Temperance Union.
She made a highly effective lecture and organizing
tour of Great Britain and helped organize British Women s Temperance Association
and the Scottish Christian Union.
On 1895 she was the keynote speaker of the World's
WCTU convention in London. She wrote a number of books on temperance and
how the movement spread.
Event 04-25-1861: Emma Edmonds alias Frank Thompson became a
male nurse in the Second Volunteers of the United States Army.
She later wrote Nurse and Spy, published in
1865, a rather lurid and perhaps not too accurate an autobiographical account
of her exploits as a Union field nurse :in northern Virginia and Kentucky
but who was also a spy for the union forces.
It has been estimated that approximately 400 women
succeeded in enlisting in the army (either Union or Confederate) during
the Civil War.
The exact number will never be known because there
are a number of women who obviously served without ever being "unmasked"
as women - and there are those "male" soldiers who died in battle,
unknown as women.
There were also a number of women who served in military
posts and even led troops into battle as WOMEN, generally the wife of a
military man or a relative, but not always.
EE not only succeeded in remaining in the army for
several years but also served as a successful Union spy while impersonating
a man.
A Canadian by birth, she was forced to impersonate
a male during her childhood because of her father's resentment that she
had not been born a boy. He finally drove her from her home and she fled
to the U.S. settling in Michigan.
At the outbreak of the war, EE either cut her hair
and changed into men's clothing or was already passing as a man and enlisted.
She was turned down three times but the fourth time she was sworn in. It
might be noted that there were no physical examinations for soldiers at
the time (or any time before in any nation) so her sex was not an issue.
It wasn't until near the end of the war that enlistes and draftees were
forced to strip to the waist to prove their sex. Such a chance in rules
indicates that perhaps many more than 400 women were found to be in the
armed forces. It must also be noted that many of the women posing as men
worked around officers as aides and secretaries which again indicates some
knowledge of their true sex.
On 04-25-1861, EE became Frank Thompson, a male nurse
in the Second Volunteers of the U.S. army.
She became part of McClellen's army in Virginia. Private
Thompson was assigned as a male nurse to the hospital unit of the 2nd Michigan
Volunteers and was said to have had no trouble in maintaining her masculine
pose - although being assigned nurseing duties indicate that her masculinity
was not macho.
According to EE, a McClellan spy was caught and executed
at just about the same time an old friend of hers from Canada died. She
then volunteered as a spy to prepare the way for McClellan's planned offensive.
She said she studied all available material on weapons,
tactics, georgraphy, etc., before interviewing for the position of spy.
The studying impressed the officers and she was accepted.
Her disguise for crossing the lines and blending into
the background was to make herself into a black man. She used silver nitrate
to darken her skin. She used a minstrel wig and the name Cuff.
On the confederate side she was assigned with local
blacks to build ramparts to protect against the expected union offensive.
Her hands were badly blistered from the work and she got transferred to
kitchen duty.
On the third day she was assigned as a confederate
picket and was able to escape back to the union lines and reported that
the confederacy was using "Quaker guns," or logs crudely shaped
and painted like cannons from afar to make it appear they were better defended
than they were.
She wrote that her information was eagerly received
and she even spoke to General McClellan himself.
For two months she continued her male nurse duries
and thend was ordered back to the confederacy to spy. This time she went
as a Irish peddler woman by the name of Bridget O'Shea.
She sold her good in the Confederate camps while gathering
information. She then stole a horse she named Rebel to return to the Union
lines and was shot in the arm. The arm wound did not expose her as a woman.
Transferred to the Shenandoah Valley and under the
orders of General Phlip Sheridan, EE described a number of other trips
she made into the confederacy, sometimes as Cuff which she admired
as a plucky fellow with grit. She also went as a black mammy and a laundress.
As a laundress she found a packet of dispatches in an officer's pocket
and quickly returned to the union headquarters with them.
Near the end of 1862, she was transferred to Kentucky
under General Ambrose Burnside and was ordered to assume the role of a
southern sympathizer in Louisville, Ky., and spy on the military there
just before the campaign to defend Vicksburg.
Under General Grant at Vicksburg she contracted malaria
and went to Cairo, Illinois and checked into a civilian hospital as a woman
to avoid detection at a military hospital.
Her plans to return to duty were cancelled when she
found out she had been declared a deserter. According to her autobiography,
she then went to Washington, DC where she worked as a nurse until the end
of the war.
Her book that included the details of her 11 spy missions
into the Confederacy became an instant bestseller and she reportedly gave
all the earnings to the U.S. war relief.
She then returned to Canada and married Linus Seeyle
and returned to the U.S. She raised three sons, one of whom is said to
have enlisted in the army "just like Mama did."
Encouraged by her sons and friends, EE petitioned
the War Department to get her name cleared of the desertion and be recognized
as a union soldier.
On March 28, 1884, the House of Representatives passed
House Bill Number 5335 validating EE's case. The bill, in part reads,
"Truth is ofttimes stranger than fiction,
and now comes the sequel, Sarah E. Edmonds, now Sarah E. Seelye, alias
Franklin Thompson, is now asking this Congress to grant her relief by way
of a pension on account of fading health, which she avers had its incurrence
and is the sequence of the days and nights she spent in the swamps of the
Chickahominy in the days she spent soldiering. That Franklin Thompson and
Mrs. Sarah E.E. Seelye are one and the same person is established by abundance
of proof and beyond a doubt. She submits a statement... and also the testimony
of ten credible witnesses, men of intelligence, holding places of high
honor and trust, who positively swear she is the identical Franklin Thompson..."
On 07-05-1884 by a special act of Congress granted
Emma Edmonds alias Frank Thompson an honorable discharge from the army,
plus a bonus and a veteran's pension of twelve dollars a month. The resulting
Special Act of Congress read:
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
That the Secretary of Interior is hereby, authorized and directed to place
on the pension roll, the name of Sarah E. E. Seelye, alias Frank Thompson,
who was late a private in Company E, Second Regiment of Michigan Infantry
Volunteers, at the rate of twelve dollars per month."
EE wrote, "I am naturally
fond of adventure, a little ambitious, and a good deal romantic-but patriotism
was the true secret of my success."
Sarah Emma Edmonds was born in December 1841.
Before she enlisted in the army she was an itinerant Bible salesman and
dressed in men's clothing.
In the army she took part in the Battle of Blackburn's
Ford, the First Battle of Bull Run, and the Peninsular campaign of May-July
1862. At Fredericksburg she was an aide to Colonel Orlando M. Poe.
EE lived until 09-05-1889 at LaPorte, Texas.
She is buried in Washington Cemetery, Houston Texas,
in lot G-26. This is a GAR lot that belonged to George B. McClellan Post
of the Grand Army of the Republic. She is the only female member of the
organization formed after the Civil War by Union veterans-The Grand Army
of the Republic (GAR).
There is also a biography of EE, She Rode With Generals,
by Sylvia Gannett. Also, Richard Hall in Patriots in Disguise has
some biographical information on Edmonds, including her postwar career,
but the source of Hall's comments appear to be from Gannett's book.
B. 04-25-1838, Sarah Ann Dickey - U.S. educator who devoted her
efforts in the post-Civil War United States to creating and enhancing educational
opportunities for African-American students.
She founded Seminary for Black Girls in 1875 in spite
of opposition by white supremacists. She got no church or state funds and
had to do it all herself. She was ordained in the United Brethren in Christ
in 1896.
B. 04-25-1900(?), Edith Gregor Halpert - Russian-born American art
dealer, collector.
Without any family or inherited money or support, EGH's
widowed mother brought EGH and her sister to the U.S.and raised them on
money she earned herself.
EGH opened the Downtown Gallery of Contemporary Art
after a very sucessful business career wanting to showcase young American
modern artists and to collect American art. The sisters established the
Edith Gregor Halpert Foundation which lobbied for the right of artists
to control the sale and reproduction of their work. They endowed universities
with pieces of art that the universities could sell to create scholarships
in American art. Her devotion to the recognition of the once-scorned American
art was such a success that her personal collection brought $3 million
at her death.
 B.
04-25-1912, Iris Faircloth Blitch,
U.S Congressional Representative from Georgia 1955-63.
Her official congressional biography reads:
"Following
an unsuccessful run for the Georgia General Assembly in 1940, Blitch was
elected to the Georgia senate in 1946 and to the state house of representatives
in 1948. After her defeat for reelection in 1950 she was again elected
to the state senate in 1952 and served until December 1954.
"She also served as secretary of the Georgia
Democratic executive committee and represented Georgia on the Democratic
National Committee. Running as a supporter of Governor Herman Talmadge,
Blitch defeated incumbent Representative William M. Wheeler in the September
1954 Democratic primary, a contest tantamount to election in Georgia's
Eighth District. She was reelected three times.
"In March 1956 Blitch joined ninety-five senators
and representatives from eleven southern states in signing the 'Southern
Manifesto,' which pledged the signatories to work to reverse the Supreme
Court's 1954 decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools.
"Seeking to protect the jute-backing industry
in her district and encourage the growth of industry throughout southern
Georgia, Blitch favored amending the 1930 Tariff Act to make it more difficult
for foreign-made jute to enter the country.
"In August 1961 she responded to attacks from
Iowa Representative H.R. Gross and defended the use of the comic strip
character "Pogo," a native of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp and
consequently her district, in a government pamphlet aimed at parents concerned
with the television viewing habits of their children. Because of ill health,
Blitch declined to run for renomination for a fifth term in 1962.
"In August of 1964 she announced that she would
leave the Democratic Party and support the Republican presidential candidacy
of Senator Barry M. Goldwater.
"Blitch was a resident of St. Simons Island,
Georgia, but subsequently moved to San Diego, California, where she resided
until her death on August 19, 1993."
 B.
04-25-1917, Ella Fitzgerald - U.S. black jazz and scat singer who became
world famous for the wide range and rare sweetness of her voice. Her singing
style was much imitated in the 1950s and '60s
This fabulous talent developed the scat singing style
that enabled the singer to do solo trills in the manner of musical instruments
- one of the marks of jazz.
Revered by several generations of musicians and fans,
she was one of America's greatest treasures who will will continue to awe
and pleasure us for decades to come because of her almost 250 recordings.
Her scat singing when she recorded "A-Tisket,
A-Tasket" in 1938 made her famous. She won awards by the bushel (12
Emmys) from evey conceivable organization and was awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom (1992).
Oh lady, you were good!
B. 04-25-1921, Margaret Gowing - English scholar, CBE, FRS, FBA.,
founding Professor of the History of Science, Oxford University.
The London Times obituary paid tribute to her
scholarship.
"Margaret Gowing enjoyed the rare distinction...
of being a Fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society. Her
remarkable reputation was made in four different fields: as an official
economic historian; as an authority on public records; as the doyenne of
nuclear historians; and as Oxford's first Professor of the History of Science."
B. 04-25-1923, Melissa Hayden-Canadian-born U.S. ballerina who
was the star of the Balanchine's American Ballet Theatre and ballet presentations
throughout Europe.
B. 04-25-1932, Lia Manoliu - Romanian track and field athlete.
LM won the 1968 Olympics gold for discus throw. She won the bronze in 1960
and 64 and was sixth in 1952. With her ninth places in 1956 and 1972 she
holds the female record for the number of participations in the Olympics.
Her latest throws were longer than the one in Mexico
City that won the gold showing the continued improvement of women athletes.
Event 04-25-1940, the right to vote and stand for political office
for men of the Canadian Province of Quebec was validated. The general nfranchisement
of women in Canada occurred 05-24-1918 and all the other nine provinces
had enacted the suffrage of women in the nine-year time period from 1916
to 1925.
B. 04-25-1942, Rubye Doris Smith Robinson - U.S. black civil rights
reformer and activist whose short life proved to be a powerful influence
on the Civil Rights Movement. She died at 25.
 Event
04-25-1945: Ann Stringer became the first war correspondent to let
the world know of the linkup of American and Russian forces in the closing
hours of World War II. The news as greeted worldwide as a reality that
the war in Europe was almost over.
Her exploit shows the inventiveness necessary for women
correspondents...
She was covering the First Army's front but was ordered
back to Paris. She had been traveling with them through the mud and filth,
and now that the BIG story was at hand, she was being pulled out. Instead,
she persuaded friends in Army Intelligence to lend her a plane and a pilot
who then flew her over the lines to the village of Torgau where she knew
the fighting and linkup was about to occur.
Landing she spotted a man coming away from the Elbe
River and (probably using a bit of bribery) convinced him to row her across
to the east bank in a racing shell (not the safest thing under ideal conditions,
but in a war, pure foolishness.)
On the other side she met the Russian troops.
While the boy reporters were celebrating with the guys
and riding back with champagne in jeeps and not worrying about competition
because all the guys were partying together, Mrs. Stringer bummed a ride
to Paris on a C-47 cargo plane and was thus able to beat her competitors
with a flash across the world that the armies were linked - the Russians
having conquered across Germany from their homeland and the Americans from
the invasion points in Normandy across France into Germany.
Ann Stringer died in 1990 at age 71, unheralded.
Bet you thought all the brave, big-time, breaking news
war correspondents were men... no, they just get written about more by
other men.
[WOAH note: As one who heard that first
bulletin, I can't begin to tell you its importance and stupendous good
news. The war was horrible, long, bitter and the casualties were mounting
- and the horrors of the concentration camps were becoming known. It would
be a few days until V-E day (Victory-Europe) but from this day forward
we gratefully knew it was only a matter of time. -- IS]
B. 04-25-1946, Talia Rose Shire - U.S. actor and producer. She
was nominated for best supporting actress in her role in The Godfather:
Part II.
However, she is probably best known for her role of
Adrian, the girlfriend of Rocky in the series of films. She also garneredd
an Oscar nomination for one of the Rocky films.
TRS is the aunt of director Francis Ford Coppola and
of Nicholas Cage, the actor in a close family that believes in helping
each other.
B. 04-25-1950, Karen Nussbaum - director, U.S. Labor department's
Women's Bureau and director, AFL-CIO working women's department.
In 1993 KN was appointed by President Bill Clinton
as head of the U.S Department of Labor's Women's Bureau. In a survey she
commissioned, more than 200,000 working women's replies indicated that
women shared the same aspirations of men: fair pay, health insurance, help
with the dual responsibilities of home and work - and RESPECT.
Her biography claims that workplace discrimination
did not exist for women as an issue until 1973 when KN began organizing
her clerical working collegues in an organization that would be called
9 to 5.
[WOAH would hate to disagree with Nussbaum or Working
Women magazine that published such drivel, BUT it was an issue in the
19th century and in the 20th century as well as throughout history for
all working women of which there were always many. The problem was, of
course, that wage payers and unions were controlled by men and they ignored
or ridiculed women's concerns or need for equal money in a solid wall.
The unity of men against women's equality or fair play is one of the greatest
wonders of civilization.
In the labor movement until the 1980s, most unions
INTENTIONALLY set women's wages at 20% or more under the rate pay for a
man doing EXACTLY the same job. WOAH's compiler's mother was a union organizer
- I speak from first-hand experience... as well as common sense. What thinking
person is going to believe that women were content to be paid less than
men for the same work? Or not get paid enough to live on. History agrees
that women have ALWAYS been discontent with their treatment. -- IS]
B. 04-25-1961, Agnetta Andersson - Swedish athlete. AA won three
gold Olympic medals in Kayak racing in 1996.
Event 04-25-1967, Colorado became the first state to officially
liberalize its abortion laws when pregnancy resulted from rape or incest,
endangered a woman's physical or mental health, or was likely to result
in the birth of a child with severe mental or physical defects. The abortion
approval had to be a unanimous decision with three doctors. Similar bills
were passed in North Caroline and California.
 Event
04-25-200: Five women were appointed to the newly formed Japanese cabinet
of maverick reformist Junichiro Koizumi.
In a newspaper article by Colin Joyce, Makiko Tanaka
(see 01-14) was named Japan's first female foreign minister "Makiko
Tanaka, a notorious critic of the political status quo, is the daughter
of the former prime minister, Kakuei Tanaka. She is often compared to Lady
Thatcher for her tough image and withering attacks on her party's old guard.
She is a key supporter of Mr Koizumi and her appointment may help revive
the ruling Liberal Democratic party's fortunes ahead of elections to the
Diet's upper house in July.
"Opinion polls consistently
show Mrs Tanaka as the person Japanese would most like to see as prime
minister but, despite her popularity, she has been excluded from the LDP's
upper reaches until now. Her only previous cabinet post was as science
and technology minister in 1994 and critics point out that she has little
experience of diplomacy."
Partially educated in the U.S., the foreign
minister had harsh words about President G. W. Bush's abilities. It is
now widely believed that the price of U.S. financial help to Japan is tied
to Mrs Tanaka's removal from office for denigrating Bush II.
B. 04-25-1969, Angel Martino - U.S. swimmer. AM won the Olympic
gold in swimming in both 1992 and 1996.
B. 04-25-1980, Hoang Thanh Trang - Vietnamese international master
and woman international grandmaster of chess.
Event 04-25-2000: the Vermont state legislature enacted a legal
civil unions bill and beginning 07-04-2000 gay and lesbians couples could
pledge a legal equivalent of heterosexual marriage. The right wing religious
who think only their way is the correct way launched a campaign to discredit
the actions and the legislature rescinded the law. [See
WOAH 12-20]
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QUOTES DU JOUR
BUCHANAN, MATILDA:
"Language is
real. It is powerful. It defines existence. What we allow ourselves to
be called is how we allow the world to view us.
"I doubt that few thinking adults would quarrel
with my condemnation of addressing any female by the generic, 'Hey
you bi*ch!' It is harder to explain the more
subtle reasons why only close family members should address a female over
the age of 12 as 'Honey'
or 'Sweetheart.'
The reason is that keeping females 'cute'
by calling them endearing names is a very
effective way of keeping them powerless.
"The generic grouping of females by language
into either 'cute'
groups or 'sex'
groups denies their identity as individuals. The effect of this is damaging
to males because it teaches them to view females as less than people. More
disastrous is the effect on females because they learn to view themselves
as beings without individual self-worth...
"Females are not anybody's 'honey,'
'sweetheart,' 'bi*ch,' 'ho,' or 'slop.'
First and last, a psychologically healthy female belongs only to herself.
Any act that is destructive to her self-worth is destructive to her humanity."
-- Matilda Buchanan, English teacher, Central High School, Little Rock,
Arkansas.
SACKVILLE-WEST, VITA:
"As you know,
I am not a feminist, but there are limits."
--Vita Sackville-West, English
poet and writer, when she was referred to in a newspaper as merely the
wife of Harold Nicolson.
OVERHOLSER, GENEVA:
"It is a great
deal easier to depict women as either social or professional, motherly
or ambitious, public or private, feminist or anti-feminist. This has been
unforgettably apparent with another eminent woman of our time, Hillary
Rodham Clinton - the human battleground for our anxieties over feminism
and the changing role of women, not to mention our fear of a first lady's
power. Carl S. Anthony, an authority on first ladies, suggested at the
beginning of the Clinton era that Hillary's move into the White House might
help the nation understand at last that what most women hope for is options.
'Perhaps,' he
said, 'it really is time for the American
people to fully permit this last holdout of female expectations, this role
of first lady, to also be one in which a woman has choices.'
"But the continuing presence of choices is so
untidy, so confusing. Journalism prefers its choices made. We like clarity,
simplicity, symbols, strong story lines. Consider the sound bite that gave
birth to Hillary the Anti-Mom and Anti-Homemaker. Challenged about connections
between her law firm and Bill's governorship, she replied in frustration:
'I suppose I could have stayed home, baked
cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession.'
But there's a catch here - the rest of the quote was conveniently dropped
from the sound bite in the name of clarity. 'You
know,' Hillary went on to say,
'the work that I've done as a professional, as a public advocate, has been
aimed in part to assure that women can make the choice that they should
make - whether it's full-time career, full-time motherhood, some combination.'
The other day, I was
introduced by a mutual friend to Don Jones, Hillary's youth minister from
her high school years in suburban Chicago. I asked what he thought of the
press portrayals of Hillary. Well, for one thing, he said, the position
of first lady is 'the most unevolved' position
in contemporary America. Then there was the fact that Hillary was too modern
for some, not feminist enough for others. Finally, something had struck
him as particularly odd: The things that Hillary accomplished that did
fit the feminine stereotype didn't receive the coverage he'd have expected.
Take the fact that she is 'an absolutely wonderful
mother,' or that, like Jackie Kennedy, she
redecorated the White House extensively and, he added, introduced contemporary
art to the residence.
"But those things didn't fit the story line.
We in the media, confronted with complexity, could only deal with it serially.
We could see Hillary as bristling with power one day, chastened and changing
her hairstyle the next, and we felt sure that the one came in reaction
to the other. We could see her going from white to black and back, but
never imagine that she was gray all along."
--
Nationally syndicated Washington Post columnist Geneva Overholser
who edited the Des Moines Register to a Pulitzer prize with a series
of article about women confronting rape and speaking out. She resigned
the Register over a dispute regarding the lowering of staff salaries
and joined the Post.
ALEXANDER, SHANA:
"Roughly speaking,
the President of the United States knows what his job is. Constitution
and custom spell it out, for him as well as for us. His wife has no such
luck. The First Lady has no rules; rather each new woman must make her
own."
--
Shana Alexander, U.S. writer, editor, and TV commentator in her 1968 article
"The Best First Lady."
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