Ferrah Fawcett dead at 62

While the world mourns Michael Jackson, my thoughts are with a woman who began her career as one of a nearly naked trio of angels belonging to Charlie. She is remembered for being the subject of the best-selling poster of all time, with more than 12 million copies sold.

Fawcett played one of three undercover, underclothed crime fighters and "Charlie's Angels" became an enormous hit and cultural phenomenon, working to redefine gender roles.

"What we had for the first time were women operating in what was heretofore a man's world," Goldberg said.

But after only one year, Fawcett walked away from the show at the height of her fame to explore a career in film -- a move, the star told Walters, she did not regret.

But she knew she was more than just a body; she knew women were more than just bodies and deserving of consideration and respect as human beings.

I will always remember her for her role in bringing the horrible treatment of women to the public's attention.

Tired of being the sex symbol, Fawcett wanted to be taken seriously, so she dove into an unrecognizable role, playing an abused wife, Francine Hughes, driven to kill her husband in the 1984 movie "The Burning Bed."

"I knew that if I wanted to stay in the business, I had to change. I mean, I wanted to change," she told Walters in a later interview.

The TV movie became one of the most highly-rated in history and earned the actress the first of three Emmy nominations. http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/FarrahFawcett/story?id=7464123&page=1

She will always be my hero - a woman who found riches and fame as a sex symbol yet rejected it to find herself and the real essence of womankind.

NB - Please! I someone feels the need to illustrate this with a picture of her, make it from her role in the Burning Bed - there are plenty of pics on the Net of the pin-up. Thank you for your consideration.

The Boxer Rebellion

Senator Barbara Boxer is not a fav of mine although I do respect much of what she has done and is doing. When I heard that she made a polite, reasonable request that a military man testifying before her committee address her as Senator, I anticipated she would be attacked in the most vile, misogynist way. I had to look around awhile before I found anything even faintly understanding of her position.

http://alanagkelly.blogspot.com/

About time women had the pride and courage to stand up for themselves. I've watched many hearings and male senators are generally called senator and sometimes sir. Many times I have heard women senators called Mrs [husband's name].

One needs to understand that ma'am and mrs are detrimental terms. I know many women feel that having a husband is a mark of success but history and society tells us this is not so. They signify possession.

Etymology dictionary

ma'am
1668, colloquial shortening of madam (q.v.). Formerly the ordinary respectful form of address to a married woman; later restricted to the queen, royal princesses, or by servants to their mistresses.

sir
1297, title of honor of a knight or baronet (until 17c. also a title of priests), variant of sire, originally used only in unstressed position. Generalized as a respectful form of address by c.1350; used as a salutation at the beginning of letters from 1425.

I've gone through it all my life as male professionals at meetings and elsewhere were always called Dr. or Professor X but I, and other women, were called mostly by Mrs or Miss [with an occasional Ms snearingly thrown in and also by our first names.

Asking that one's title be used is asking for a load of manure to be dumped on you as I know from experience. Women are supposed to take it, after all we let them get an education but that does not mean that it is equal to any man's. Yeah, I know that some women think being one of the boys means being a good sport. If he tweaks your breast, you can just tweak his genitals - he'd just love it and you'd be fulfilling the slut profile every woman has emblazoned on her chest.

In the alanagkelly blog linked above, the author tells of instances where males are allowed to demand how they are addressed. Yeah, it happens but it is so OK that one seldom notices.

It is going to take prominant women standing up and protesting and the rest of us cheering them on instead of dumping on them to even begin to make changes in the way women are respected for their abilities. They must be given the same respect as men in public office, professional status and, of course, as wife and mother. Slavery of women [possession] must be outlawed and battering of her mind and body must be stopped.

Elizabeth, Susan and Lucretia - Mothers of our Revolution

So in case you've missed all the media hoopla, we are coming up on another Mother's Day. A day to honor only those women who have done what women are supposed to do. All the rest - forget you!

We've watched and waited for generations now to have a holiday proclaimed that honored one of the many heroic, courageous American females. If we must stick to honoring only mothers, it would be great if they were The Mothers of our own revolution. There is a monument of these three women which spent most of its time in the dungeons of the Capitol Crypt while Rotunda space was reserved to the glorification of male heroics.

It seemed to be just as well that this monument stayed hidden - when it was brought out and put on display in the Capitol Rotunda, it was promptly labeled, "Three women in a bathtub" and the laughs just kept on coming.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), president of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1865 to 1893; author of the woman's bill of rights, which she read at the Seneca Falls, New York, convention in 1848; first to demand the vote for women.

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), abolitionist, temperance advocate, and later president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, who joined with Stanton in 1851 to promote woman suffrage; proposed the constitutional amendment passed many years after her death.

Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), Quaker reformer and preacher, who worked for abolition, peace, and equality for women in jobs and education; organizer of the 1848 Seneca Falls, New York, convention, which launched the women's rights movement.

This group portrait monument to the pioneers of the woman suffrage movement, which won women the right to vote in 1920, was sculpted by Adelaide Johnson (1859-1955) from an 8-ton block of marble in Carrara, Italy.

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/rotunda/suffrage.cfm

Inscription Originally Stenciled on the Portrait Monument
THE THREE GREAT DESTINY CHARACTERS OF THE WORLD WHOSE SPIRITUAL IMPORT AND HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE TRANSCEND THAT OF ALL OTHERS OF ANY COUNTRY OR AGE.

LUCRETIA MOTT AND ELIZABETH CADY STANTON IN THE CALL OF THAT FIRST WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION OF 1848 INITIATED AND SUSAN B. ANTHONY MARSHALLING THE LATENT FORCES THROUGH THREE GENERATIONS DOWN MORE THAN A HALF CENTURY OF TIME GUIDED THE ONLY FUNDAMENTAL UNIVERSAL UPRISING ON OUR PLANET. THE WOMAN'S REVOLUTION.

PRINCIPLE NOT POLICY; JUSTICE, NOT FAVOR; MEN, THEIR RIGHTS AND NOTHING MORE; WOMEN, THEIR RIGHTS AND NOTHING LESS, WAS THE CLARION CALL TO THE MOST ASTOUNDING UPHEAVAL OF ALL TIME. A CALL WHICH WAKED THE WORLD, SIGNALED AND INAUGURATED A REVOLUTION WITHOUT TRADITION OR PRECEDENT, AND PROCLAIMED THE FIRST INCONTROVERTIBLE CONCEPT OF HUMAN FREEDOM-THAT OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY-PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, INCLUDING WOMEN.

WOMAN, FIRST DENIED A SOUL, THEN CALLED MINDLESS, NOW ARISEN DECLARED HERSELF AN ENTITY TO BE RECKONED.

THIS MIGHTIEST OF REVOLUTIONS ENCIRCLING THE GLOBE ACCOMPLISHING WITHOUT BLOODSHED THE OVERTHROW OF ENTRENCHED DOGMA AND HOARY BIGOTRIES REACHED TO THE FARTHERMOST ROOTS OF BEING. HERE INDEED WAS THE FIRST, THE ONLY IMPEACHABLE DEMAND FOR RIGHT AS MIGHT EVER MADE.

SPIRITUALLY THE WOMAN MOVEMENT IS THE ALL-ENFOLDING ONE. IT REPRESENTS THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMANHOOD. THE RELEASE OF THE FEMININE PRINCIPLE IN HUMANITY. THE MORAL INTEGRATION OF HUMAN EVOLUTION COME TO RESCUE TORN AND STRUGGLING HUMANITY FROM ITS SAVAGE SELF.

HISTORICALLY THESE THREE STAND UNIQUE AND PEERLESS.

A SHAKEUP OF THE SHIBBOLETHS?

N.E. Hills are alive with the debate on whether marriage must be restricted to one husband and one wife - lesbian and gays need not apply. In Vermont, both Houses have passed bills that allow same-gender marriage but the Governor has promised a veto.

Vermont does have Civil Unions, which at the time of passage, appeared to be a big step forward but now as more states are making marriage legal, the push is on to join in or be left behind.

It is interesting to read the pros and cons and compare them to the hissy-fits that emerged during the Civil Union debates of yore. All the dire predictions of Vermont turning into California just never happened. Somehow those same gender couples that lived among us were remarkable just like us and the fervor died down to the plaintive bleating of a few diehards and of course the Fundies.

Today the debate is showing something quite different and it seems to me that it is pointing to the real fear of what same gender marriage will precipitate. Possibly this is because of the changes made by having Civil Unions and more people came to think of them as pals living together rather than a threat to their own marriage and children.

Now the caption under pictures of same gender couples identify them as Mary Roe - husband; or John Doe - wife. This has brought out one more of those hidden prejudices that manifest in sexism and misogyny. Man and his society, aided and abetted by women, have spent eons defining and enforcing gender roles. A woman husband! ? A man wife! ?

Oh, no! Our well entrenched patriarchy screams. This cannot be allowed because it will forever endanger our carefully constructed male superiority meme and challenge the Biblical admonition that: God is the head of the husband and man is the head of his wife.


Many may profess not to believe this but it is only buried in a shallow grave in the amygdala [Limbic System of the brain] because it is reinforced daily by our language, our customs, our laws and our fears.

Is it just possible that tearing down the old definition of marriage will force our society to re-evaluate women and men and gender rolls? Maybe all the Women's Movement needs is a shakeup of the shibboleths.

RAMEY III - WOMEN DOCTORS A TRAVESTY

Women doctors? Ya gotta be kidding! Yet for the early years of the 25 that I spent in a medical school teaching and doing research that was sadly a fact. But strong women pushed and prodded to get in and one or two were finally accepted only to face a hell few people today can imagine.

“There was recently an obituary in The Lancet of a famous woman physician. The obituary writer describes her going on one of her clinical rotations, and the professor saying, "I don't want you here. They say you have to be here, but you are not welcome here. I don't want any women on my service."

One woman, Dr. Estelle Ramey, just took the all-male medical establishment on in their own science, leading the way for more women to study medicine in very difficult times.

The early anatomy lectures I audited were difficult to endure as many professors showed pornographic slides ostensible to teach about the skin. These were greeted by hoots and ribald comments from the med students – all male. As first one woman and then more were accepted in my State’s medical school, the Professors confined these fun and games to private lectures given only to the males in the class – females were not invited. Most women got around this by getting the notes from a male classmate in order to pass the exams.

Things certainly got better every year as more women instructors were hired but it was still shocking to us when a new anatomy textbook came on the scene in 1971. Anatomy faculty as is usual, got advanced complimentary copies. Understand now that the human body and all its parts was no stranger to those of us in anatomy, but this book by three anatomy professors from Duke did more that raise eyebrows, it created a storm of protest all over the country and Dr Ramey led it.

This textbook was titled: “The Anatomical Basis of Medical Practice. So you have a picture of a male torso, in which the head, the arms, and the genitals are cropped out, and little arrows point to where the muscles are of the male torso. But for the female torso, you have a full frontal nude shot, head to toe, of a woman in a seductive pose, with little lines pointing to the linea alba and the other muscles of the abdomen. You have women, nude, swinging on garden swings, with towels wrapped around their head, and splashing in the surf, ostensibly to show the effect of ultraviolet ray on the skin.

The short review above does not even begin to describe the pornography throughout a textbook written under the guise of teaching human anatomy.

This book engenders a national boycott organized by the American Association of Women in Science. Their president is Dr. Estelle Ramey-who was a physiology professor at Georgetown. She organizes a boycott of the Duke anatomy textbook. It is decried in Time magazine and Newsweek magazine, and eventually Williams and Wilkins chooses not to reprint it.

The Anatomical Basis of Medical Practice disappears from the bookshelves about six months to a year after it’s published. But the story of the pornographic anatomy book, The Anatomical Basis of Medical Practice, is a story of how women are subjected to victimization, how they’re portrayed in medical illustration, about how some professors thought there was no big deal. They were “just being cute.” By the 1970s, women were prepared to push back. If this episode had occurred a generation earlier, women would have simply looked down at the floor, and hoped the unpleasant would have gone away.”

http://medspace.mc.duke.edu/medwmn/bground.php?bid=3&body=trans

Certainly if it happened today, lacking the strong convictions and leadership of Dr Ramey in the Women’s Movement, it would be just dandy to publish such a book. After all, so many women of today seem to feel it’s old fashion to protest sexism and misogyny or even battering.

Just imagine what Ramey’s reaction to Obama’s campaign against Clinton would have been. Unlike all the present women leaders in science, industry, politics and our Movement for Equality [like NOW] she would have had his guts for garters and women would have a leader in the White House.

Her wit and wisdom are still valid today and it took immense courage to say things like this during the early years of women’s self-revival:

“If it’s testosterone the public wants in a president, as an endocrinologist I can’t recommend a 70-year-old man in the White House. They should get a 16-year-old boy instead,” she said. “It seems the only thing the public doesn’t want to see in a president is estrogen.”

Men, she said, are clearly the weaker sex, and Mother Nature may well be a radical feminist, based on the biological evidence. The female of every species, she noted, is stronger in terms of stamina, longevity and performance under stress.

“Men were designed for short, nasty, brutal lives. Women are designed for long, miserable ones,” she opined.

We are the only animal that cries. It is a God-given emotional outlet. When men aren’t allowed to cry tears, they cry blood. They bleed internally.

I have worked all my life with men, and I have discovered that some of them are very smart, some of them are very stupid, and most of them are mediocre hacks. Women fall into the same categories. We will have equality when a female schlemiel moves ahead as fast as a male schlemiel. That’s equality, not when a female Einstein gets promoted to associate professor.

Asked once by a sneering lawyer if she preferred the title “chairperson,” Dr. Ramey responded, “I’d rather be a chairman. They make more.”

“I am appalled at the fact that men have not studied the differences between males and females for their own advantage,” she said in the 1980s. Such studies would help men as well as women and society, she said, because women outlive men by seven to nine years.

“Now, I like testosterone. Every home should have some,” she said. “But it becomes damaging as a man gets older. I’m trying to help men live longer, although I’m not sure all of them deserve it.”

Dr Ramsey’s medical contributions to both women and men have earned her an honored place in medical history. However, the leadership of our movement for equality has largely ignored her and few women of today have even heard of her. Perhaps this is because she spent her time bravely and forthrightly promoting women’s abilities and value rather than the political posturing we see among women in the Movement today.

RAMEY II - SAVING MEN FROM THEMSELVES

Dr. Estelle Ramey turned academia and corporate America on it's collective ear - head over teakettle. Some may think as they read about her, "Oh that was 40 years ago" and they would be right, but most thinking women and men know that things have only changed on the surface.

Below the surface, tradition fiercely battles any attempt to acknowledge the human-ness of women. Proof positive of this is how openly misogyny and sexism is flaunted with very little blow back; the continued need for battered women's shelters and the lusty slave trade in women's bodies.

Dr Ramey's pithy comments, like this one, can stop people in their tracks and kick start thought:

"The women's movement has been greatly misunderstood. It's not a cause but a symptom. A symptom of social changes instituted by -- men."

In one of her lectures she explains that the way to make a man understand what it's like to be a woman is to have him remember what it was like when he was a young teenager and completely dependent on his father. He would have to ask him for everything; wheedle, pout and manipulate just to get the use of the car or increase his allowance etc . He was reduced "to be essentially an outsized child". That's the situation women are forced to be in all their lives; our society never allows them to grow out of it without a huge struggle on their part.

As women started to get out into the work force in positions higher than secretary or nurse or cleaning woman, they found that it was necessary to tread lightly. But while being careful not to wound the male's fragile ego, their own ego was being pummeled.

Some women have networked and shared their common experiences. Every woman remembers being the only female in a group of males charged by management to come up with ideas. After grabbing her courage in both hands, she offers a suggestion and is ignored. At the next meeting, Pete or Fred offer the same suggestion and it is hailed as a super idea. Ramey never let herself be cowed by men. She went right up into their faces with science.

In a 1973 lecture, Professor Ramey flung the gauntlet at her male colleges.

"Testosterone is not a bad hormone as hormones go and is is said by some to be the `take charge' hormone. But what it does to the heart and blood vessels bears thinking about. However, very little research has been done on what testosterone does to the blood vessels - that's because men do the research.

"In order to do research on the effects of testosterone, these men would have to face up to the fact that there may be a weakness in males, so they don't do the work. Out of sheer altruism, I have put in a application to the NIH to work on this problem. I care about the men in my life; I care about my husband, my son, my grandson. I think they are pretty valuable people and I would like to know what can be done to keep them alive longer."

That challenge and the telling results of her studies of the male hormone got male scientists off their collective, egotistical asses nearly 40 years ago. It also resulted in better studies of female hormones.

"As far as intelligence is concerned, everything we know about intelligence says that women are indeed members of the species Homo sapiens: IQ's average out the same for both sexes. Women can think. It is a disadvantage to them to do so, but the potential is there ...

"If all the rare genius that resides in human brains, including female brains, had been utilized, might we have a cure for cancer, or a cure for the aging of male blood vessels? Excellent minds are so rare. Can we afford to waste any?"

In the 40 years since she wrote this, countless women's minds were wasted. How much has civilization lost by denying women's leadership, women's voices and women's creativity? Well, for one thing, sexism and misogyny deprived us of a president who would have brought women and men as equals into the White House with her.

The United States Senate Sep 18, 2006 Section 24

Sen. Hillary Clinton [D-NY]: Mr. President, on September 8, our Nation lost a great American and my husband and I lost a wonderful friend of over 20 years. Dr. Estelle R. Ramey was a respected endocrinologist, physiologist, and feminist. She was a woman of great wit and wisdom who fought gender discrimination in the scientific professions and in the conduct of medical research. Dr. Ramey died of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 89.

Estelle Rubin Ramey was born in Detroit and raised in New York City. Her mother, a wise but impoverished and illiterate immigrant, insisted that her daughter be educated. At the age of 15 in the midst of the Great Depression, Dr. Ramey was able to attend Brooklyn College for the price of a library card. [ for the rest of this tribute, click on this link] http://www.govtrack.us/congress/record.xpd?id=109-s20060918-24

Truck Accident Lawyer

MY MENTOR AND FRIEND, DR. ESTELLE RAMEY

Estelle was a fantastic person, as protective of men as she was adamant for the recognition of women's rights. She approached the gender discussion with wit and science. She died three years ago but stands as an example of someone who would have been a great choice for any Council leader. Reading some of the comments on blogs, I found that she would be called a dinosaur - sadly many women have bought into the idea that any woman with experience, actions and intelligence is passe.

From the 70's on she influenced many women's lives - certainly mine as I was introduced to her while studying in medical school [not as a med student - not allowed in them there days] taking courses to get a MS. She was an endrocrinologist who told it like it is, I discovered, after I contacted her for some info on the thymus.

I intend to do a series of posts using her words and the words of others who knew her. It seems that few women or men remember much of what the recent past was like and about the women that "were the change". The following is from her obit - note how the attitudes of the DNC have not changed much.

Ramey burst into the national limelight in 1970 when she sharply contradicted a Democratic leader’s assertion that women could not perform key executive jobs because of their “raging” hormones.

The controversial comments were made by Dr. Edgar F. Berman, a retired surgeon and confidant of former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. At a session of the Democratic Party’s Committee on National Priorities, he dismissed Hawaii Rep. Patsy T. Mink’s call for action on women’s rights with a diatribe on what he saw as crippling differences between the sexes.

“Suppose,” Berman conjectured, “that we had a menopausal woman president who had to make the decision of the Bay of the Pigs?” (He was referring to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, during John F. Kennedy’s presidency.) “All things being equal,” he continued, “I would still rather have had a male JFK make the Cuban Missile Crisis decisions than a female of similar age.”

He insisted that women’s “raging storms of monthly hormonal imbalances” made them unfit for high office.

Hormonal imbalances happened to be Ramey’s specialty. When a friend told her about Berman’s comments, the endocrinologist wrote letters to the Washington Evening Star and the Washington Post criticizing the Democratic advisor. The Star published her letter, in which she wrote that she was “startled to learn that ovarian hormones are toxic to brain cells.”

She pointed out that during the Cuban missile scare, Kennedy suffered from a serious hormonal disorder — Addison’s disease, which affects the adrenal gland — and that the medications he took were capable of causing severe mood swings.

A short time after Berman made the offending remarks, he accepted an invitation from the National Women’s Press Club to debate Ramey. She claimed the advantage from the outset: When Berman opened by saying, “I really love women,” she clobbered him with “So did Henry VIII.”

The Washington Post, in its story on the debate, reported that Ramey “mopped up the floor” with Berman. He ultimately resigned his post on the Democratic National Committee and Ramey became a popular public speaker on women’s issues.

You may think this settled the hormone question but most men still think women's homones affect their brains adversely.

MY WILD IRISH VERONICA

Veronica Guerin, right, pictured with son Cathal and husband Graham Turley

One thing we generally agree about is the lack of dedicated, or even honest, reporters in our country. It seems that all they do now is sit in their office, take phone calls and cue videos of the horrors that abound.

Although some do get off their bums during a presidential campaign, the truth seldom is in them and they are far from even-handed in their coverage of the candidates. Especially true in the recent campaign where they fell head over teakettle in love with one of the candidates. Some even admitted their bias.

Investigative reporters seem to be a dying breed so we are thrilled one did exist fairly recently. That’s part of what makes the story of Ireland’s Veronica Guerin so fascinating despite the fact that her reporting ended tragically 13 years ago followed by attempts to discredit her.

For two years, Reporter Guerin single handedly went after the drug lords in her city of Dublin. She and her family were harassed and threatened. She was beaten up but she kept on digging and reporting the facts. Her life ended in a hail of bullets.

“When the renowned crime reporter Veronica Guerin was gunned down on the outskirts of Dublin in June 1996 she became a modern-day Irish saint.” A movie was made about her and authorities vowed to punish her killers.

Two years later another Irish reporter, Emily O’Reilly wrote a book claiming that Guerin was “ruthless, devious and – worst of all – a bad mother”.

"Mrs O'Reilly says Ms Guerin blurred the line between journalist and detective in her hunt for a story and made herself and her son a target.

Veronica had a child-like ignorance of danger. No Gardai would have done what she done without back up from six squad cars and a direct phone line to the commissioner of police _ I think it was done to disarm these hard men she was interviewing."

While reluctant to criticise Ms Guerin outright she says: "It's always difficult for journalists but (former BBC war correspondent) Martin Bell didn't bring his children along to the frontline in Bosnia. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/86191.stm

It’s not difficult to see the pattern here, a pattern of squelching the important work and life of a woman who was doing what no man dared to do. And of using a woman to do it so hopefully no one will notice the blatant sexism employed to rob a brave woman of her rightful place in history.

Expect more of this kind of reporting as SoS Clinton continues to be extreamly effective.

"NBC's Andrea Mitchell utilizes the International Women of Courage award ceremony to compare the First Lady careers of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and current First Lady Michelle Obama. Andrea presents Michelle as clearly more traditional, or wifely, than Hillary." TGW