Dare To Be A Feminist

It’s easy to forget how important women’s studies was to reshaping what knowledge looked like. In part this is because there are fewer and fewer of us who remember what universities that were almost entirely run by and for men looked like. But the success of women’s studies has led to its transformation — into feminist studies, gender studies, queer studies — and to inevitable (as well as important) critiques of what those early years looked like. It’s also very difficult to convey how exciting those early years were — you read every book as it came out, you dived into an archive and practically every piece of evidence you could find on women was a potential article, and groups of faculty and graduate students formed spontaneously in methodology seminars.

The women born between 1905 and 1909 were the same young girls who grew up during the years of the women’s suffrage movement in the US. They would have seen the struggle, heard the talk, and knew they could have greater freedom of choice in living their lives. They too would see, if not quite be, part of the flapper movement. Activism and parenting being almost completely at odds with one another, some may have opted not to have children — and at this time, birth control, thanks to Margaret Sanger, was becoming a realistic option.

And, just as these young women were perhaps thinking of starting a family…

Along comes The Great Depression — the one of that started about 1929, not the one some say we are approaching now — and the birthrate fell about one-tenth globally from the rate during the “prosperous” 1920′s. In America, the birth rate dropped below the replacement level for the first time in history.

For today, we don't even have the right to enjoy our homes, our private spaces, without fearing violence, rape, or worse. And when we dare to point that out, we are not merely dismissed, we are punished.

So many of us are still having to say, "That's life."

I always knew this was the longest revolution, one that would take a century or more to unfold. It's upended most of our lives, and significantly improved so many of them. Nothing will ever be the same. Yet there's still such a long way to go. I doubt I'll see full gender equality in my lifetime.

By Ruth Rosen, a former columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, is Professor Emerita of History at the University of California at Davis and a Scholar in Residence at U.C. Berkeley. She is the author, most recently, of The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America.

This video looks at just a few of the things women have been told they can't do, through actual legal prohibitions (e.g. voting) or social norms (riding bicycles).

History & news combine to explain the status of women as "crazy."...

by DEANNA, Kitch-slapped

When I was in college I was a single parent. Finding myself struggling personally with the demands of continuing education and single parenting (a special needs child too yet) was challenging enough; but this was at the time that Tommy Thompson was governor & he made bashing single moms & welfare a public sport. (Yeah, some of us fought back; like the Welfare Warriors.)

It was incomprehensible how those of us left with children were not only held accountable while biological dads walked away Scott-free, but were to blame for all of society’s ills. Even those who raised children alone by design & without public assistance were vilified, a la Murphy Brown. It wasn’t just moral outrage (though that did & does exist); it wasn’t an ignorance — these were educated people saddling us with unrealistic responsibilities and ludicrous outcomes. We were being scapegoated with such an intensity that it must be hiding a deep fear of some sort… Was it simply another way to display the classic fear & hatred of “female,” or was there more?

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High priestesses embodied the goddess, and had ritualistic sex with the ruler of the country to bless him as the caretaker of the people. ...

"Having a female body was the factor most likely to render one vulnerable to being called a witch...the truth about the majority of persons accused of [witchcraft]: old, unattractive, disliked, and FEMALE"

— Witchcraze: A New History of European Witch Hunts by Anne Llewellyn Barstow

The past few months the GOP has waged a war on women that places them firmly in bed with religious lobbyists, treating women like they are subhuman all in the name of patriarchal religion. N

 Must We do this all over again?  [MORE]