This remarkable woman! She is the best known for her extemporaneous speech on racial inequalities, “Ain’t I a woman?” delivered at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in 1851. And we don’t even realize how dangerous it was for a black woman to pronounce these words at that time.
But even nowadays the most courageous act is to tell the truth…
American Muslim complains about discrimination she faced on a board of the aircraft company Delta Airlines.
A woman, who was sitting in front, asked Muslim woman to control the behavior of her children, and then another passenger turned to her and emotionally pointed out that she is in America....
This is why we needed feminism - this is why we know that feminism works
I just want to reiterate this stuff, because I legit get the feeling there are a lot of younger women for whom it hasn’t really sunk in what it is today’s GOP is actively trying to return to.
Did you go to a good college? Shame on you, you took a college placement that could have gone to a man who deserves and needs it to support or prepare for his wife & children. But if you really must attend college, well, some men like that, you can still get married if you focus on finding the right man.
Got a job? Why? A man could be doing that job. You should be at home caring for a family. You shouldn’t be taking that job away from a man who needs it (see college, above). You definitely don’t have a career – you’ll be pregnant and raising children soon, so no need to worry about promoting you.
This shit was within living memory.
I’M A MILLENIAL and my mother was in the second class that allowed women at an Ivy League school.
Men who are alive today either personally remember shit like this or have parents/family who have raised them into thinking this was the way America functioned back in the blissful Good Old Days. There are literally dudes in the GOP old enough to remember when it was like this and yearn for those days to return.
When people talk about resisting conservativism and the GOP, we’re not just talking about whether the wage gap is a myth or not. We’re talking about whether women even have the fundamental right to exist as individuals, to run their own households and compete for jobs and be considered on an equal footing with men in any arena at all in the first place.
I was a child in the 1960s, a teenager in the 1970s, a young adult in the 1980s.
This is what it was like:
When I was growing up, it was considered unfortunate if a girl was good at sports. Girls were not allowed in Little League. Girls’ teams didn’t exist in high school, except at all-girls’ high schools. Boys played sports, and girls were the cheerleaders.
People used to ask me as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be a brain surgeon or the first woman justice on the Supreme Court. Everyone told me it was impossible–those just weren’t realistic goals for a girl–the latter, especially, because you couldn’t trust women to judge fairly and rationally, after all.
In the 1960s and 1970s, all women were identified by their marital status, even in arrest reports and obituaries. In elementary school, my science teacher referred to Pierre Curie as DOCTOR Curie and Marie Curie as MRS. Curie…because, as he put it, “she was just his wife.” (Both had doctorates and both were Nobel prize winners, so you would think that both would be accorded respect.)
Companies could and did require women to wear dresses and skirts. Failure to do could and did get women fired. And it was legal. It was also legal to fire women for getting married or getting pregnant. The rationale was that a woman who was married or who had a child had no business working; that was what her husband was for. Aetna Insurance, the biggest insurance company in America, fired women for all of the above.
A man could rape his wife. Legally. I can remember being twelve years old and reading about legal experts actually debating whether or not a man could actually be said to coerce his wife into having sex. This was a serious debate in 1974.
The debate about marital rape came up in my law school, too, in 1984. Could a woman be raped by her husband? The guys all said no–a woman got married, so she was consenting to sex at all times. So I turned it around. I asked them if, since a man had gotten married, that meant that his wife could shove a dildo or a stick or something up his ass any time she wanted to for HER sexual pleasure.
(Hey, I thought it was reasonable. If one gender was legally entitled to force sex on the other, then obviously the reverse should also be true.)
The male law students didn’t like the idea. Interestingly, they commented that being treated like that would make them feel like a woman.
My reaction was, “Thank you for proving my point…”
The concept of date rape, when first proposed, was considered laughable. If a woman went out on a date, the argument of legal experts ran, sexual consent was implied. Even more sickening was the fact that in some states–even in the early 1980s–a man could rape his daughter…and it was no worse than a misdemeanor.
Women taking self-defense classes in the 1970s and 1980s were frequently described in books and on TV as “cute.” The implication was that it was absurd for a woman to attempt to defend herself, but wasn’t it just adorable for her to try?
I was expressly forbidden to take computer classes in junior and senior years of high school–1978-79 and 1979-80–because, as the principal told me, “Only boys have to know that kind of thing. You girls are going to get married, and you won’t use it.”
When I was in college–from 1980 to 1984–there were no womens’ studies. The idea hadn’t occurred in many places because the presumption was that there was nothing TO study. My history professor–a man who had a doctorate in history–informed me quite seriously that women had never produced a noted painter, sculptor, composer, architect or scientist because…wait for it…womens’ brains were too small.
(He was very surprised when I came up with a list of fifty women gifted in the arts and science, most of whom he had never heard of before.)
When Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro as a running mate in 1984, the press hailed it as a disaster. What would happen, they asked fearfully, if Mondale died and Ferraro became president? What if an international crisis arose and she was menstruating? She could push the nuclear button in a fit of PMS! It would be the end of the WORLD!!
…No, they WEREN’T kidding.
On the surface, things are very different now than they were when I was a child, a teen and a young adult. But I’m afraid that people now do not realize what it was like then. I’ve read a lot of posts from young women who say that they are not feminists. If the only exposure to feminism they have is the work of extremists, I cannot blame them overmuch.
I wish that I could tell them what feminism was like when it was new–when the dream of legal equality was just a dream, and hadn’t even begun to come true. When “woman’s work” was a sneer–and an overt putdown. When people tut-tutted over bright and athletic girls with the words, “Really, it’s a shame she’s not a boy.” That lack of feminism wasn’t all men opening doors and picking up checks. A lot of it was an attitude of patronizing contempt that hasn’t entirely died out, but which has become less publicly acceptable.
I wish I could make them feel what it was like…when grown men were called “men” and grown women were “girls.”
Know your history.
So this, too, is what they mean saying “make America great again” and/or the good old days.
REBLOG FOREVER.
I’m a feminist and I’m a proud woman.
Thank to all the women who fight for us so far. Fighting👊A woman is not written in braille, you don’t have to touch her to know her.
to my dearest
it’s been a while.
i seem to remember we used to exchange letters often, but thanks to sns and such, these days we can casually send off our feelings even without the trouble of writing long messages. the world has become quite convenient, hasn’t it?
i think we’ve become that much more desensitized, but who cares.
we can still occasionally tickle each other’s hearts through long letters such as this,
and that’s all that matters.
how are you doing these days?
though we see each other nearly every day, i still wanted to ask you that at least once.
for me to simply contain you within the assumption of ‘she’s probably fine,’
the blaze of my curiosity spreads far too endlessly;
so much so that it torments me with fever.
so, hurry and answer me.
collect each drop of every moment of your day and soak me with them.
please, put this fever of mine to sleep.
of course, i enjoy being tormented by that happy fever,
but the time i spend with you that seeps into me, refreshingly and tenderly,
is always welcome, too.
we think of each other as precious,
but whether it’s from getting used to each other or being desensitized,
at times, we inadvertently hurt one another.
by any chance, have the wounds i’ve inflicted on you not healed yet?
if so, i’m sorry. for not sensing it right away.
so please, hurry and show them to me.
if i’m the one who inflicted the wounds, only i can heal them,
so you don’t have to be ashamed.
all people who are in love would likely do the same.
they’d look at each other’s scars and feel pain.
still, i hope you wouldn’t cover up your scars for fear of causing me sadness.
they, too, are a part of us;
they are our memories, and proof of our love.
if, perhaps, you’re too shy to show me all your wounds right away,
please hold me tightly.
even if i can’t see them, i want to know you so entirely that i’ll be able to feel them through my skin,
and i believe you would feel the same.
we’ve shared a long time together, and will be together even longer from now.
please answer me. that you feel the same way that i do.
i seem to have said the words ‘i love you’ in quite the roundabout way.
that’s right. i love you.
and just like the verse of poetry you once read to me
i need you.
p.s.
i found lyrics that are just like my heart, so i’m sending them along with this letter.
tomorrow, let’s hold hands and listen to this song together.
< lyrics: always there (honesty) >
❀❀❀
the woman finished reading his letter and gazed out the window.
the cowardly sun had disappeared without a trace from what had been the perfect day off, and the gloomy night’s moon poked its head out from behind blackened clouds.
‘that goddamn romantic.’
truthfully, the woman had liked that side of the man.
out of all the countless charms he possessed, his romanticism — which had made him seem like someone who didn’t live in reality — had been his most shining trait.
‘you don’t have to force yourself to cry.’
she felt as though she could hear his voice.
the woman was crying.
I hate getting flashbacks from things I don’t want to remember
Dear future significant other,
I feel like you’re hiding from me. Where are you?
Last night I think I met you in my sleep, you made me laugh and your smile lit up the whole world.
I wonder if you think about me, too, not knowing that one day, it will be me.
-overemotional girl
More Cake Plaese
galina-ulanova
books0977
The Pink Sash (1913). Louis Kronberg (American, 1872-1965). Oil on canvas. Met.
Although Kronberg is considered a Tarbellite because he trained with Tarbell and Benson, he was highly influenced by the French Impressionists and especially the pastels and oils of ballerinas painted by Degas. His work shows the influence of his French training - his compositions are good and his colours soft and harmonious, yet with decided contrasts.
