REMEMBERING REBECCA WEST

LET'S NOT FORGET REBECCA WEST 1892-1983
HAPPY SOLSTICE to all.

Remembering Rebecca West, born on December 21, 1892.
Most of us remember this quote:

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

Here are more quotes: I especially like the one about the difference between men and women.

A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.
But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.

Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.
He was every other inch a gentleman.

It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
Journalism: an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.

The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_West

Comment:

Where have all these magnificent role models been all my life? Why at near middle-age am I just hearing about them now?

by: catfish

There are many reasons but IMO, as women became aware that their movement to equality was opening doors or revealing doors they never knew were there, many just settled. Birth control, abortion, college education, able to get credit without dad's or husbands permission, keeping one's name after marriage and many other things made many women satisfied.
Also at this time the good 'ol msm was pummeling the hell out of the word and meaning of "Feminist", just the way they did "Liberal" and with the same results.

This divided women who feared repercussions as the feminist tag became another word for lesbian. Many backed away, left off the fight for equality. Black women righfully resented the lack of color in the leadership and IMO the lack of guts in the women who settled. Since these groups were the movers and shakers, the decline and fall of the women's movement [notice how I avoid the word feminist], fell like the Roman Empire.

Catfish, all those women you speak of were thrown into the dump of history as the msm from without and the cowardness of the leadership from within prevailed.

Leadership at the National level further eroded the movement as it perpetuated class, that is, it set itself above most of us in the ranks. It talked with each other, not us. It hob knobed with politicians. It embroiled itself with it's own writings and the movement became enshrined in Women's Studies at colleges and universities and died. It split into fractions ie new wave, radical etc. as it became a corps for academic vultures to ravage.

Women do not have a history, they never did as they were deemed by men and by themselves as an adjunct of men - put here to serve and entertain mankind. We have no statue of a woman in Congress or a Holiday set aside in honor of a woman. We have no Equal Rights amendment. Our sisters who still strive are treated like prostitutes by pretty frat boys and cheered on by a society that believes a woman's place is still on her knees.

I wished you could have known and been thrilled by hearing Rita Mae Brown, Alice Walker and Bella Abzug and so many others as I did when they spoke at my University. They were giants.

by: twandx