| 11-26 TABLE of CONTENTS:
About those traditions...
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTE by
Joan Markdale.
"Golden Lilies," all:
Yes, women sometimes are
abused today because we don't know our proper place or because we don't
pay the proper homage, or whatever. Postmodern feminism via Paglia and
Sommers indicates we should wish we were back in the olden days when proper
women were "highly regarded"...
In 1891 - Traditionalists in India fought against
the reform law that sought protection for child-brides by raising the minimum
age at which marriage could be consumated (sexual intercourse) from ten
to 12 years of age. One of the primary causes of death of girls was their
pelvises being crushed by their husbands during coitus.
Golden Lily - We hear about the Chinese upper class
woman having her feet bound and how it was considered a mark of beauty.
Ah, but long was the foot allowed to grow?
The perfect Golden
Lily so admired in Chinese poetry and literature was three inches from
heel to toe. Obviously a properly bound woman could not walk on her "Golden
Lillies" without help. (Compare the 3.5" disk in your floppy
drive.)
During the hey-day of
the wasp waist styles in the U.S., many women had their two lower ribs
removed surgically to fit the ideal profile.
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11-26 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 11-26-1792, Sarah Moore Grimke, along with
her sister Angelina, drew audiences in the thousands, but were widely
criticized for addressing audiences of both sexes. Angelina's letters to
Catherine Beecher regarding slavery and abolition along with Sarah's letters
on the Equality of the Sexes and The Condition of Women,
published in 1838, constitute some of the earliest written advocacy for
women's rights in the US.
B. 11-26-1822, Lilly Martin Spencer, her paintings
sold for higher prices than George Caleb or John J. Audubon, but somehow,
her name no longer appears with notable artists... hmmm...
B. 11-26-1827, Ellen Gould Harmon White, author
of the nine volumes of the Seventh Day Adventist Testimonies for the Church.
B. 11-26-1832, (some say 11-25-1832) Mary
Walker, physician, surgeon or charlatan?
First woman to be awarded the Medal of Honor in 1865, rescinded by Congress
in 1917 and reinstated in 1972.
B. 11-26-1858, Mother Mary Katharine Drexel,
founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored
People. MKD inherited $14 million in 1880; she used her funds freely while
directing her order's work, which ranged from a school for black girls
in Virginia to schools for Indians in the West. In 1915 she endowed and
began forming Xavier University in New Orleans, the only Catholic college
for blacks in the U.S.
D. 11-26-1883, Sojourner Truth, black abolitionist
who is said to have adopted the name Sojourner as a symbol of her lecture
tours, which espoused abolition and women's rights. Her original name was
Isabella.
B. 11-26-1938, Judith Blecker Goldsmith, NOW
president 1982-1985, who attempted to move the National Organization
for Women (NOW) towards political strength and power rather than protests.
She was defeated for reelection by former NOW president Ellie Smeal, whose
protesting tactics stalled the ERA amendment three states short of ratification.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
MARKDALE, JOAN:
"Clearly,
'civilized' man cannot tolerate such memories within a male-ordered society
based on monogamous marriage and on total faithfulness of the wife. To
protect his patrilineal descent, his son must be the son of the father
and not the son of the mother. His affairs will not endanger the male line
of succession, but, given the same freedom, his wife might become pregnant
by somebody else and restore the supremacy of matrilineal descent.
"Interestingly, female succession was clearly
customary among the Celts, to judge by their mythological traditions. Still
half-way between gynocratic and androcratic society, they were much more
tolerant of female adultery than purely patriarchal societies. It is the
very freedom of the woman to use her sex as she likes that threatens masculine
authority, since it implies that woman is capable of everything."
-- Markdale, Joan. Women of the Celts.
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