| 08-12 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Examples of Sexual Harassment
Delivery Made Easier for the Doctor!
Will Make the Journey Yet Another Time
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Gloria Steinem and Lillie Devereux Blake.
Sexual Harassment Examples
For those congressmen and
senators who said they didn't understand what sexual harassment was, this
list was prepared by the Capitol Hill Women's Political Caucus.
It defined sexual harassment in the workplace and
set forth guidelines for offices on Capitol Hill.
It was part of a campaign by the women's caucus to
make sexual harassment visible on Capitol Hill following the confirmation
hearings of Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas during which Anita Hill
testified he'd sexually harassed her.
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Delivery Made Easier for the Doctor!
Most women midwives prior to the mid 1800s insisted
that a woman birthing "be delivered while
standing, kneeling, or sitting on a pillow in the lap of a strong woman
in an armchair." Delivery while lying
down, especially if there were complications was discouraged.
It was not until the mid 1800s (and through most of
the 20th century) that male doctors who took over the bulk of birthing
(for the money) insisted that women lie flat on their backs. Why did the
"modern" doctors insist on a position that defied logic and thousands
of years of experience? To make it easier on the physician: so he didn't
have to strain his back and tire himself!
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Will Make the Journey Yet Another Time
When the night mask takes center stage
When the overwhelming rage
Takes you over the edge of humankindness
The sink holes that were once your eyes
pierce
their way into my being
and
deaden my soul
I go to the Island of Catatonia
Where the voices of despair cry
This can't be happening
again
Where the waters of forgetfulness
lap
the shores of unconsciousness.
Until I remember the trick
of
jumping out of my body
So that I can slip through the crack in the wall
where
my soul becomes whole once again.
I wait.
The fury will subside.
I ride the current.
The mask will dissolve and nest back into
your
face.
I return to untie the knots in my stomach
to
ice the burning of my bruises
To face the aftermask.
The calm after the storm -
A relief.
But my eyes scan the wall
mapping
the spot where the crack appeared.
For I know in the dark corner of my heart
That I will have to make the journey
yet
another time.
-- Anonymous
This poem was written by an anonymous woman who
experienced battering in an adult relationship. It was brought to the attention
of WOAH Lew Olson.
(We must continue to help our sisters with their self-esteem
and give them the support they need to escape through the door to freedom
from harm rather than just temporarily through a crack in the wall while
he batters and abuses her. Please support your local battered women's shelter
with personal care items, food, and, of course, money.)
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08-12 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 08-12-1566, Isabella Clara Eugenia of Austria - archduchess
of Austria and governor of Spanish Netherlands (1598-1621). Her father
made an unsuccessful claim to the thrones of England and France for her
since she was related to Mary Queen of Scots and France's King Henry III
and was - individually - the Catholic alternative following the deaths
of both of them.
B. 08-12-1591, Saint Louise deMarillac - cofounder of the Daughters
of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. The order developed a revolutionary
idea that enlisted laywomen who lived outside the cloister into religious
service. They devoted themselves teaching and medical work. She was canonized
in 1934 when the Daughters of Charity were the largest group of women in
the Catholic church. LdM was widowed with one child.
DIED 08-12-1679, Marie de Rohan-Montbazon - duchesse de Chevreuse,
conspirator against Cardinal de Richelieu and other religious ministers
who ruled in place of the weak Louis XIII and during the regency of Anne
of Austria (1643-51).
Historical notes on the
duchess appear to leave out a lot. For one so "corrupt," one
wonders why she never "died suddenly" as was the usual fate for
traitors and meddlers, especially women. (She lived to age 79.) Instead,
she was exiled, allowed to return, sent away, etc., always "allowed"
to return. Richelieu, a man of many tricks and loyalties, also accused
Anne of Austria of treason.
B. 08-12-1831, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky - principal founder of the
Theosophy movment.
B. 08-12-1833, Lillie Devereux Blake - U.S. writer and suffrage activist.
Widowed, she turned to writing to support herself. Prolific, she used a
dozen pseudonyms as she churned out newspaper and magazine articles and
novels.
She was a main contributor
to Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Woman's Bible that may be found in WOAH's
library - http://www.undelete.org/library/library0041.html
See some quotes below in Quotes du Jour.
Unlike most women who
retired to "private life" when she remarried, LDB lectured widely
and headed the New York suffrage association.
She led successful campaigns
to have women matrons or physicians on duty at public institutions and
police stations where it was customary to have males supervise jailed women
in ALL aspects of their lives, often alone. The women had no way to object
to any kind of treatment by the male guards, including rape or beatings.
She also was successful
in having wives declared joint guardians of minor children in New York
state, a provision that soon spread to other states. Up to the late 1890s
(in spite of propaganda today by ultra- conservative forces) men had SOLE
custody of his children and the mother had NO rights. LDB was a freethinker.
B. 08-12-1854, Edith Matilda Thomas - U.S. poet who wrote in
the classic form. Her poetry was widely published and much in demand during
her lifetime but has all but disappeared from modern anthologies.
B. 08-12-1859, Katharine Lee Bates - U.S. poet, writer, and professor
of English at Wellesley College for 34 years.
Inspired by the view
from Pike's Peak, she wrote the poem "America the Beautiful"
was then set to the music of Samuel A. Ward.
A movement to make "American
the Beautiful" the national anthem replacing the martial "Star
Spangled Banner" was almost successful until Bates' lesbianism surfaced
and the movement died. It remains, however, "America's hymn."
She published more than
a dozen books.
B. 08-12-1865, Emma Eames - celebrated U.S. operatic soprano.
B. 08-12-1867, Edith Hamilton - U.S. classicist, author and authority
on ancient Greece and mythology. EH was headmistress of Bryn Mawr school
in Baltimore (founded by Mary E. Garrett and M. Carey Thomas). She remained
headmistress for 26 years until what has been termed a "disagreement"
with Thomas in 1922.
In her retirement, she
was able to devote herself to her classical studies and writing and a second
career that has made her a popular writer even today.
At age 90- she was made
an honorary citizen of Athens in recognition of her scholarly writings.
EH wrote a number of
articles before being urged to publish book length studies. She started
The Greek Way (1930) and published a series of astoundingly easy
to read yet scholarly books including the ever-popular Mythology
(1942) that is still in print. Her other books are The Roman Way
(1932), The Prophets of Israel (1936), Three Greek Plays, translations
from Aeschylus and Euripides (1937), Mythology (1942), Witness
to the Truth: Christ and His Interpreters (1949), The Great Age
of Greek Literature (an expansion of The Greek Way,1943), Spokesmen
for God (an expansion of The Prophets of Israel, 1949), and
The Echo of Greece (1957).
EH was the first woman
to attend classes in Munich, Germany.
After "a
confrontation with Thomas" in 1922 at age 55, she left Bryn
Mawr to live with openly with Doris Field Reid for the rest of her life,
"staying home to keep house" and write while Reid continued as
a noted investment banker.
The couple bought a summer
home on Mount Desert Island and later moved to New York city from Baltimore
when Reid received the opportunity to go with a noted Wall Street firm.
Later EH followed Reid to Washington when Reid was made head of the firm's
offices there.
EH's daughter was the
famed Dr. Alice Hamilton, developer of industrial medicine. EH never considered
herself a scholar, simply a writer and translator of ancient information.
Reid's biography Edith
Hamilton: An Intimate Portrait (1967) is a selective biography.
B. 08-12-1876, Mary Roberts Rinehart - U.S. novelist and playwright
who was a war correspondent during World War I.
The Circular Staircase
(1908), the first of her more than 50 novels and mysteries, may be her
best known work - although with sales that exceeded ten million copies
in her lifetime (with many still in print and being reissued) it's really
hard to pick a definitive favorite. Her autobiography My Story (1931)
was revised in 1948.
A number of her more
humorous novels featured the redoubtable "Tish," Miss Letitia
Carberry.
B. 08-12-1880, Radclyffe Hall - British writer whose novel The
Well of Loneliness sent shock waves through society. It was banned
in Britain for one line: "and that night she
did not sleep alone." The ban was finally lifed on appeal after
RH's death in 1943.
A U.S. court case to
ban it failed. It is the best known of any book that feature lesbians and
it is still in print today.
Although best known for
the "Well," and her openly lesbian lifestyle, RH was a fine writer
and anyone interested in literature should explore her other novels, The
Forge, The Unlit Lamp and Adam's Breed (1926) (that won
her the coveted Prix Fémina and the 1927 James Tait Black Memorial
Prize for fiction), The Master of the House (1932), and The Sixth
Beatitude (1936).
Radical lesbians condemn
"Well" because it portrays lesbian life as depressing and many
of its characters unhappy. They fail, however, to look at it in its historical
context and the "courage" that it gave so many lesbians of the
day who read for the first time of the existence of "like people."
It remains one of the major publishing events of the 20th century according
to most critics.
B. 08-12-1883, Pauline Frederick - U.S. actor.
B. 08-12-1886, Lily Ross Taylor - U.S. classical scholar, educator,
editor, and dean.
B. 08-12-1893, Bashka Paef - Russian-American sculptor know for
her bas-relief portraits.
B. 08-12-1908, Nina V. Makarova - Russian composer with great
interest in Russian and Mari folksongs. She composed ballads and choruses,
as well as symphonies and the opera Courage.
B. 08-12-1912, Jane Wyatt - U.S. film and TV actress. Best known
as the suffering wife in the TV series Father Knows Best although
most remember her acting in the film Lost Horizon (1939).
Event 08-12-1918: Opha May Johnson enlisted as the first woman
marine reservist and worked as a headquarter clerk and advanced to (provisional)
sergeant before being discharged in 1919. All women who enlisted in the
armed service during WWI were discharged soon after the end of hostilities.
No women were allowed to stay in the armed services.
B. 08-12-1919 - Eleanor Margaret Peachey Burbidge - Anglo-American
astronomer and 1982 Bruce Medalist, director of the Royal Greenwich
Observatory and a major developer of the instrumentation for the Hubble
Space Telescope.
EMB gained particular
renown for her studies in the spectroscopic studies of quasars. In 1957
in conjunction with several other astronomers, EMB showed how certain elements
are produced in the interior of stars. Educated in England, she worked
at several California observatories including the University of California
at San Diego.
B. 08-12-1921, Marjorie Reynolds - U.S. actor. (Peggy - Life
of Riley)
Event 08-12-1936: Diver Marjorie Gestring is youngest Olympic gold
medalist (13y 268d)
Event 08-12-1953: Ann Davidson, the first woman to sail solo
across Atlantic, arrives at the Port of Miami.
B. 08-12-1959, Lynette Woodard - U.S. athlete. LW is consider
one of the all-time great women's basketball player. At the University
of Kansas she consistently led the nation in scoring, rebounds and just
about everything else.
LW set the women's college
scoring record of 3,649 points and was elected collegiate All-American
(1978-81). LW followed her collegiate career by playing on a number of
teams that captured gold and silver medals in international play. LW then
captained the 1984 team that won the first Olympic gold medal in women's
basketball for the United States. In 1985 she signed as the first woman
player with the Harlem Globetrotters, playing for them (mostly on the bench
as the token female) for two years before leaving over a contract dispute.
Her position on the globetrotters
broadened the public's awareness that there were women who played
good basketball and helped pave the way to today's professional basketball
leagues. "There are a lot of other women who had the same dream I
had, but they don't have any place to go after their college days."
She has been honored
widely for her playing and roll model abilities.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
STEINEM, GLORIA:
"Some
of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry."
BLAKE, LILLIE DEVEREUX:
"In
the detailed description of creation we find a gradually ascending series.
Creeping things, 'great sea monsters,' (chap. I, v. 21, literal translation).
'Every bird of wing,' " cattle and living things of the earth, the
fish of the sea and tile 'birds of the heavens,' then man, and last and
crowning glory of the whole, woman.
"It cannot be maintained that woman was inferior
to man even if, as asserted in chapter ii, she was created after him without
at once admitting that man is inferior to the creeping things, because
created after them."...
"In verse 23 of Genesis, Adam proclaims the eternal
oneness of the happy pair, 'This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my
flesh;' no hint of her subordination.
"How could men, admitting these words to be divine
revelation, ever have preached the subjection of woman!
"Next comes the naming of the mother of the race.
'She shall be called Woman,' in the ancient form of the word Womb-man.
She was man and MORE THAN MAN [emphasis WOAH]
because of her maternity.
"The assertion of the supremacy of the woman
in the marriage relation is contained in verse 24: 'Therefore shall a man
leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife.' Nothing is said
of the headship of man, but he is commanded to make her the head of the
household, 'the home, a rule followed for centuries under the Matriarchate...
"Abraham has been held up as one of the model
men of sacred history.
"One credit he doubtless deserves, he was a monotheist,
in the midst of the degraded and cruel forms of religion then prevalent
in all the oriental world; this man and his wife saw enough of the light
to worship a God of Spirit.
"Yet we find his conduct to the last degree reprehensible.
While in Egypt in order to gain wealth he voluntarily surrenders his wife
to Pharaoh.
"Sarah having been trained in subjection to her
husband had no choice but to obey his will. When she left the king, Abraham
complacently took her back without objection, which was no more than he
should do seeing that her sacrifice had brought him wealth and honor.
"Like many a modern millionaire he was not a
self-made but a wife-made man.
"When Pharaoh sent him away with his dangerously
beautiful wife he is described as, 'being rich in cattle, in silver and
in gold,' but it is a little curious that the man who thus gained wealth
as the price of his wife's dishonor should have been held up as a model
of all the patriarchal virtues."
-- The above are some of LDB's comments in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's
The Woman's Bible.
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