DO NOT FOLD, SPINDLE OR MUTILATE REDUX

Redux of Friday, March 19, 2010

DO NOT FOLD, SPINDLE OR MUTILATE

There has to be at least one skunk at the picnic so while all the joyous shouts go out about how far women have come and how things are getting better, I raise my virtual tail and spray some reality.

 

This month, our fore-mothers who gave so much will be lauded for a few short days and then forgotten as usual.  They are only heroes in March, the rest of the year they are human sacrifices.  We'll all join them soon on the pile of discards that our gender may become.  Men are always looking for that perfect woman and many times, not in a good way.  Some signposts -

 

In the 60's, a nasty ditty, with variations and multiple authors, was sung to thunderous applause. It wasn't funny then and it isn't funny now so I'm not quoting or citing it on purpose, it's done enough damage already.  It suggests making a woman out of parts of tables, chairs, horsehair and bottles etc.

 

The 70's brought forth the perfect woman in the Stepford Wives - I refuse to cite that one too.  If you like that sort of thing you can google it. 

 

Glimpses of the future are recounted in landmark books by women that tell of a dire future for women that differs greatly from Huxley’s, Brave New World.  These authors lived a woman’s life that Huxley did not.  Just check the reading list of Women’s Studies for title and authors.

 

Eerily prophetic is, “The architects of Gilead began their rise to power in an age of readily available pornography, prostitution, and violence against women…” from The Handmaiden’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

 

Today from the advances science has made, it is possible that gorgeous, willing robotic, female-like slaves and science-produced, male-only babies will replace the nagging, screaming, smelly, skanks from hell that men have always privately called women.  They only tolerated them this far for getting laid, making heirs, ego stroking and working for their comfort.

 

Too strong?  Listen to your society and what it tells you in blogs, advertisements and nearly all media, of the negative worth placed on women.  It gets worse and it won't change, it never has.  That is because women will continue to complain about the treatment they get from men but still hold fast to the idea that their own men really do support them and would go to the wall to help them achieve parity.

 

Bull-ony!  The societal pressure on men may be even more fierce and intimidating than it is on women.  Have you seen the character of the "hen-pecked husband" or seen how males will reject another man brave enough to wear an apron?  Have you seen and heard how our sons are raised in sports and military and life to denigrate women?  They are called girlies, momma's boys and worse by their mentors, their coaches if they show any humanity.  "Common, ladies", yells the coach or drill sergeant to embarrass and urge them on.  Boys and men will work themselves to death to avoid being labeled that hated thing, a female.

 

Supporting this hatred for women is the myth that men have egos but women do not.  It gives men “permission” to “act out” destructively against women who talk back to them, show them up, earn more money or any number of other reasons.

 

Women have been, and are, contained and controlled by jailers who are the men they believe are siding with them in their quest for parity.  The thing is that these men just give that illusion until they are challenged, then they quickly show their true face by stepping on any woman who dares call them on their perfidy.  They'd better because the Brotherhood will not allow them to do otherwise. 

 

This system keeps the women's movement from blowing up and threatening the status quo, by letting small puffs of steam out of their boilers of discontent now and then.  Men who avow support of women have not only gained women's trust but also their protection.  Women will run roughshod over any opposition to these men - they protect their jailers.  They often give men a pass for things they excoriate women for. 

 

Women in the military are subject to rape and harassment enforced by the chain of command.  Whenever there is a male superior officer over them who uses his power to demand her “service”, she is unable to resist without the full force of tradition coming down on her.  "Resistance is futile" in most cases, and you'd better believe it.  Fortunately there are exceptions.

 

Despite all of this there are always some men who will stand by women no matter what they are threatened with.  But when push comes to shove, most do not want to lose their position of superiority passed down to them by their fathers and incorporated into their laws and their religion.  Women are patronized and paralyzed by these global weeds.  Their roots, stems and branches are like crabgrass, virtually impossible to eradicate.

 

Women's struggle for equality has come so far yet remains essentially at the starting line.  There are those that will argue that many advances have been made, but they have no answer to the basics.

 

·        Second class status of women.  The stifling patronizing of men.  Women's bodies owned by State.

 

·        Women generally will not fight for their rights in the law because lawsuits take money they do not have.

 

·        Women are still paid less than men and treated differently than men doing the same job. 

 

·        Sexism and misogyny are rampant.

 

Answers might be found in history - but women do not have any.  As the saying goes: "Marriage makes two people one and there is no doubt which one."  So it follows that the two genders [mankind] are one and there is no doubt which one.

 

Essentially, society, customs, women and men have not changed toward the status of women.  Because society and custom is male directed, only men's history comes through, while what would be women's history is not considered important and if it is written down it is usually a footnote - she is his property and she lives in his shadow and only by his permission.

 

Possible changes in the status quo are discouraged by threats and are fiercely fought.  It is only when a movement or a person breaks the barrier and substantial change is in the offing that we see and experience the massive forces at work to keep women from ever uniting with a common goal - their own personhood.

 

One very recent example was publicly demonstrated when an extremely intelligent and qualified woman sought the office of president of the United States.  For some time she overcame the many huge barriers that the patriarchal, system-driven media raised against her and her supporters and they were formidable.  Then just as it seemed she would surely win the Primary of her Party, the Party itself rose up and buried her under its own broken rules.

 

Wouldn't you think the media and much of the public would complain if a small group of people took the votes of two states from one candidate and gave them to another?  Wouldn't you think that when a political party broke its own rules and the federal laws to stop this woman that someone in high places would shout, "NO!"

 

But few think anything of the sort.  Women's present is set in the concrete of the past and there aren't enough women or men with guts or will to change this.

 

It is still mostly women who teach kindergarten and grade school.  Why do so few of them protest the absence of women in History and other textbooks?  Why is only one ineffective month given over to promote the interests of women when they are more than 50% of the population?  One would think, considering the state of the nation that their interests should be promoted 12 months of the year.

 

We as people tend to honor and relate to the blocks that form the structure of our society.  We seldom see or honor the mortar that holds the blocks together.  We go apeshit over a battlefield hero or a movie star or construction workers but women's existence and their daily heroics and horrors are mostly ignored because they are taken for granted - because most women take themselves and their situation for granted.

 

There is, and unless something drastic happens, no women's history and there shouldn't be.  We are human beings and the history of our people should include us.  The fact that it does not stands out like a festering blister on the big toe of humanity and it is easier for the system to buy a bigger shoe than treat the infection.

 

Most women have learned to fear the repercussions of doing anything that changes them and thereby changes others. Most women are content to go along to get along - making the yearly prayer march to the 30 days of March where hopefully the word, "woman", is used more than, ho, bitch, girl, chicks or any of the pejoratives that fill the streets and blogways.

 

Women's bodies, and their children, are held hostage.  We hear daily about what happens when a woman defies a man.  His social structure tells him that she is his property and he is just enforcing his rights.  For women to do anything about this on a large united scale would amount to carnage worse than the Witch Burnings of women by the Christians.

 

Men have the MONEY, police forces and the army, not to mention the government and the legal system.  Police are the worst abuse offenders - their wives and girlfriends who protest are met with the full force of his buddies if they report a cop's abuse.

 

The law says get a Restraining Order to keep the batterer/killer away legally.  How'd that work out for you - all you women carved up/shot down/choked and dead?  Where are all the metals of valor given to women who died protecting battered women in safe houses?

 

Can women make a future?  Possibly.  But not until they unite and insist that every baby girl born is given the same supportive training and respect during her formative years as every baby boy.  When the female starts out life in parity, there is great hope that she can become a force to be reckoned with.  She will no longer think of herself as not-human but as a competent member of the human race.  Gender will be an expression of one's genes, NOT one's status, intellectual capacity or ability.  Neither gender will believe itself superior to the other.  Now boys are conditioned and trained from the crib to become men; girls are conditioned and trained from the crib to become dolls.

 

Is giving girls the respect and training now given to boys, Utopia?  Not so much.  But I have seen the results when parents, despite the criticism they get, train and treat their girls and boys equally, not according to their gender, and demand that each respect her/himself and the other.  These children could change the world around them.  The girls grow up to be healthy, formidable people who don't need cloths by Whosis or Botox by the barrel to define them.

 

But they stand out as targets - as prime threats to Paternalism.  Will the present system allow them to live and procreate in any appreciable numbers?  All the years of teaching, all the training, all the religions, government, all the money, all the male bonding to enforce conformity of thought and dress that has conditioned men to take their own superiority for granted and all the years of female bondage leading to women's compliance argues against it. 

 

Men will not give up that ego trip that is always there for them - that no matter how little they succeed or how badly they do in life, they are superior to and better than more than half the population of the world.  If women had been born into that lofty environment, they wouldn't give it up either.

 

 

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Which religion is bad for women?

By LeeAnn Cox 2/15/2011



“When you look at such a large range of countries and have such robust findings that religiosity consistently leads to worse outcomes for women,” says economcis professor Stephanie Seguino, “it’s striking.” (Photo courtesy of Seguino)
"Inequality has real effects on the economy. It’s not just attitudes but attitudes that translate into unequal access to resources."

Take your pick. It might seem intuitive that the more religious a person is, the more likely he or she is to believe that men are more deserving of scarce jobs or a university education and that the primary role of women is motherhood. More remarkable, however, according to a new study published in World Development by University of Vermont economist Stephanie Seguino: no single religion stands out as being more distinctively patriarchal than other major religions. Protestants, Orthodox, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Catholics are all likely to hold more unequal gender attitudes than the non-religious.

The research, which examined gender wellbeing in up to 76 countries, controlled for a number of factors, including income. Contrary to expectation, religiosity and gender inequality are not related to whether a country is rich or poor. The study also separated splinter groups from mainstream religions, so evangelical Christians, for example, do not impact the results for other Protestants.

Despite the persistence worldwide in wage discrimination between men and women with similar qualifications, economists have not been able to find a “smoking gun” to explain it, says Seguino, perhaps until now. “When you look at such a large range of countries and have such robust findings that religiosity consistently leads to worse outcomes for women,” she says, “ it’s striking.”

This phenomenon, which runs the gamut from individual attitudes to public policy, is not restricted to developing countries. Whatever the dominant religion, there is less spending on maternal health care, for instance, in countries that are more religious than those that are less religious. The United States, which is far more religious than places such as Sweden, is the only industrialized country without any paid maternity leave.

Even where discrimination may be overtly illegal, religion has a “stealth” effect on gender norms that affect women’s access to jobs, education, political leadership and public services. Seguino’s is not the first study to correlate religiosity with gender equality, but it goes a step beyond.

“What my study does uniquely,” she says, “is finds evidence that inequality has real effects on the economy. It’s not just attitudes but attitudes that translate into unequal access to resources.”

Policy Puzzle

The implications for developing public policy, Seguino believes, are clear. First, funneling aid and social assistance through faith-based organizations should, at a minimum, be accompanied by an investigation of the impact of their practices on women. “The question is,” says Seguino, “are the institutions we are funding actually undermining our broader goals of promoting equity?”

Second, investments in women’s education, once believed to be the core issue limiting advancement, have not worked. The influence of the culture and its institutions, embedded with gender norms and stereotypes, is too ingrained.

More helpful interventions could include affordable childcare, affirmative action, presenting positive role models of working women -- normalizing in a variety of venues the idea that women can combine work with family.

Seguino, despite an equality gap she says is the widest we’ve seen since the 1930s, sounds hopeful. The organizing principle of her research is finding the macroeconomic policies that will facilitate rising gender -- and racial -- equality with rising living standards and economic growth. She feels she’s being heard. Seguino is frequently invited to speak at the United Nations and to policy organizations worldwide.

“They are very much interested in new thinking on how to move forward,” she says, “recognizing that the policies of the last 20 years have not borne fruit. I’ve given several talks (on this religion paper) and I don’t get pushback, I think because the study doesn’t condemn any one religion.”

It’s about understanding where the fundamental issues lie and then creatively addressing them.

“Once you identify that the problem of gender inequality has religious roots,” Seguino says, “then it suggests that public policy can be used to overcome cultural rigidities. Stereotypes are dynamic, not fixed.”

http://www.uvm.edu/~sseguino/ Professor Seguino's Web page

http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=news&storyID=11600 Source of this article

Military rape trial starts on Susan B. Anthony's B-Day

Hardly noticed, just like any celebration of Susan B. Anthony's birthday, is the filing of a lawsuit - finally - calling attention to the crimes against women by the military.

Gates, Rumsfeld Sued Over U.S. Military's Rape Epidemic

By Jesse Ellison
February 15, 2011 | 9:01am


A landmark lawsuit filed Tuesday against Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, alleges that the military's repeated failures to take action in rape cases created a culture where violence against women was tolerated, violating the plaintiffs’ Constitutional rights.

“There are three types of women in the Army,” says Rebecca Havrilla, a former sergeant and explosive-ordnance-disposal technician. “Bitch, dyke, and whore.” During the four years that Havrilla was on active duty, she was called all three—by fellow soldiers, team leaders, even unit commanders. Once, during a sexual-assault prevention training, the 28-year-old South Carolina native claims, she watched a fellow soldier—male—strip naked and dance on top of a table as the rest of the team laughed. While deployed in Afghanistan, Havrilla spent four months working under a man she alleges bit her neck, pulled her into his bed, and grabbed her butt and waist—on a daily basis. When, on the last day of her deployment, she alleges she was raped by a soldier she considered a friend, it was, she says, “the icing on the cake.”





But Havrilla calls herself lucky: the end of her military commitment was in sight. In other cases, soldiers have had to keep fighting alongside, or even under, the person who assaulted them; been ostracized by their units for reporting an attack; or, as another woman says, simply “shoved to the side.” Havrilla and 16 others are now plaintiffs in a class action suit filed Tuesday against Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, alleging that their failure to act amounted to a violation of the plaintiffs’ Constitutional rights. The suit, brought by Washington, D.C. Attorney Susan Burke, and filed in the Eastern Virginia federal court, charges that despite ample evidence of the problem, both Gates and Rumsfeld “ran institutions in which perpetrators were promoted; … in which Plaintiffs and other victims were openly subject to retaliation… and ordered to keep quiet.” The plaintiffs, in turn, have been “directly and seriously injured by Defendants’ actions and omissions.” “It’s shocking,” the case’s lead investigator, Keith Rohman, tells The Daily Beast. “And it’s just hard to understand why they’ve held off. Families all over America send their young men and women to serve and they do that at tremendous personal risk and danger. But this is not a risk that those families want to assume.”

http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/96-96/4963-gates-rumsfeld-sued-over-us-militarys-rape-epidemic

DO NOT FOLD, SPINDLE OR MUTILATE

"It’s more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier."

-- Feminist placard, seen in 2010 at a Feminist demonstration in Trafalgar Square

There has to be at least one skunk at the picnic so while all the joyous shouts go out about how far women have come and how things are getting better, I raise my virtual tail and spray some reality.

This month, our fore-mothers who gave so much will be lauded for a few short days and then forgotten as usual. They are only heroes in March, the rest of the year they are human sacrifices. We'll all join them soon on the pile of discards that our gender may become. Men are always looking for that perfect woman and many times, not in a good way. Some signposts -

In the 60's, a nasty ditty, with variations and multiple authors, was sung to thunderous applause. It wasn't funny then and it isn't funny now so I'm not quoting or citing it on purpose, it's done enough damage already. It suggests making a woman out of parts of tables, chairs, horsehair and bottles etc.

The 70's brought forth the perfect woman in the Stepford Wives - I refuse to cite that one too. If you like that sort of thing you can google it.

Glimpses of the future are recounted in landmark books by women that tell of a dire future for women that differs greatly from Huxley’s, Brave New World. These authors lived a woman’s life that Huxley did not. Just check the reading list of Women’s Studies for title and authors.

Eerily prophetic is, “The architects of Gilead began their rise to power in an age of readily available pornography, prostitution, and violence against women…” from The Handmaiden’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Today from the advances science has made, it is possible that gorgeous, willing robotic, female-like slaves and science-produced, male-only babies will replace the nagging, screaming, smelly, skanks from hell that men have always privately called women. They only tolerated them this far for getting laid, making heirs, ego stroking and working for their comfort.

Too strong? Listen to your society and what it tells you in blogs, advertisements and nearly all media, of the negative worth placed on women. It gets worse and it won't change, it never has. That is because women will continue to complain about the treatment they get from men but still hold fast to the idea that their own men really do support them and would go to the wall to help them achieve parity.

Bull-ony! The societal pressure on men may be even more fierce and intimidating than it is on women. Have you seen the character of the "hen-pecked husband" or seen how males will reject another man brave enough to wear an apron? Have you seen and heard how our sons are raised in sports and military and life to denigrate women? They are called girlies, momma's boys and worse by their mentors, their coaches if they show any humanity. "Common, ladies", yells the coach or drill sergeant to embarrass and urge them on. Boys and men will work themselves to death to avoid being labeled that hated thing, a female.

Supporting this hatred for women is the myth that men have egos but women do not. It gives men “permission” to “act out” destructively against women who talk back to them, show them up, earn more money or any number of other reasons.

Women have been, and are, contained and controlled by jailors who are the men they believe are siding with them in their quest for parity. The thing is that these men just give that illusion until they are challenged, then they quickly show their true face by stepping on any woman who dares call them on their perfidy. They'd better because the Brotherhood will not allow them to do otherwise.

This system keeps the women's movement from blowing up and threatening the status quo, by letting small puffs of steam out of their boilers of discontent now and then. Men who avow support of women have not only gained women's trust but also their protection. Women will run roughshod over any opposition to these men - they protect their jailors. They often give men a pass for things they excoriate women for.

Women in the military are subject to rape and harassment enforced by the chain of command. Whenever there is a male superior officer over them who uses his power to demand her “service”, she is unable to resist without the full force of tradition coming down on her. "Resistance is futile" in most cases, and you'd better believe it. Fortunately there are exceptions.

Despite all of this there are always some men who will stand by women no matter what they are threatened with. But when push comes to shove, most do not want to lose their position of superiority passed down to them by their fathers and incorporated into their laws and their religion. Women are patronized and paralyzed by these global weeds. Their roots, stems and branches are like crabgrass, virtually impossible to eradicate.

Women's struggle for equality has come so far yet remains essentially at the starting line. There are those that will argue that many advances have been made, but they have no answer to the basics.

· Second class status of women. The stifling patronizing of men. Women's bodies owned by State.

· Women generally will not fight for their rights in the law because lawsuits take money they do not have.

· Women are still paid less than men and treated differently than men doing the same job.

· Sexism and misogyny are rampant.

Answers might be found in history - but women do not have any. As the saying goes: "Marriage makes two people one and there is no doubt which one." So it follows that the two genders [mankind] are one and there is no doubt which one.

Essentially, society, customs, women and men have not changed toward the status of women. Because society and custom is male directed, only men's history comes through, while what would be women's history is not considered important and if it is written down it is usually a footnote - she is his property and she lives in his shadow and only by his permission.

Possible changes in the status quo are discouraged by threats and are fiercely fought. It is only when a movement or a person breaks the barrier and substantial change is in the offing that we see and experience the massive forces at work to keep women from ever uniting with a common goal - their own personhood.

One very recent example was publicly demonstrated when an extremely intelligent and qualified woman sought the office of president of the United States. For some time she overcame the many huge barriers that the patriarchal, system-driven media raised against her and her supporters and they were formidable. Then just as it seemed she would surely win the Primary of her Party, the Party itself rose up and buried her under its own broken rules.

Wouldn't you think the media and much of the public would complain if a small group of people took the votes of two states from one candidate and gave them to another? Wouldn't you think that when a political party broke its own rules and the federal laws to stop this woman that someone in high places would shout, "NO!"

But few think anything of the sort. Women's present is set in the concrete of the past and there aren't enough women or men with guts or will to change this.

It is still mostly women who teach kindergarten and grade school. Why do so few of them protest the absence of women in History and other textbooks? Why is only one ineffective month given over to promote the interests of women when they are more than 50% of the population? One would think, considering the state of the nation that their interests should be promoted 12 months of the year.

We as people tend to honor and relate to the blocks that form the structure of our society. We seldom see or honor the mortar that holds the blocks together. We go apeshit over a battlefield hero or a movie star or construction workers but women's existence and their daily heroics and horrors are mostly ignored because they are taken for granted - because most women take themselves and their situation for granted.

There is, and unless something drastic happens, no women's history and there shouldn't be. We are human beings and the history of our people should include us. The fact that it does not stands out like a festering blister on the big toe of humanity and it is easier for the system to buy a bigger shoe than treat the infection.

Most women have learned to fear the repercussions of doing anything that changes them and thereby changes others. Most women are content to go along to get along - making the yearly prayer march to the 30 days of March where hopefully the word, "woman", is used more than, ho, bitch, girl, chicks or any of the pejoratives that fill the streets and blogways.

Women's bodies, and their children, are held hostage. We hear daily about what happens when a woman defies a man. His social structure tells him that she is his property and he is just enforcing his rights. For women to do anything about this on a large united scale would amount to carnage worse than the Witch Burnings of women by the Christians.

Men have the MONEY, police forces and the army, not to mention the government and the legal system. Police are the worst abuse offenders - their wives and girlfriends who protest are met with the full force of his buddies if they report a cop's abuse.

The law says get a Restraining Order to keep the batterer/killer away legally. How'd that work out for you - all you women carved up/shot down/choked and dead? Where are all the metals of valor given to women who died protecting battered women in safe houses?

Can women make a future? Possibly. But not until they unite and insist that every baby girl born is given the same supportive training and respect during her formative years as every baby boy. When the female starts out life in parity, there is great hope that she can become a force to be reckoned with. She will no longer think of herself as not-human but as a competent member of the human race. Gender will be an expression of one's genes, NOT one's status, intellectual capacity or ability. Neither gender will believe itself superior to the other. Now boys are conditioned and trained from the crib to become men; girls are conditioned and trained from the crib to become dolls.

Is giving girls the respect and training now given to boys, Utopia? Not so much. But I have seen the results when parents, despite the criticism they get, train and treat their girls and boys equally, not according to their gender, and demand that each respect her/himself and the other. These children could change the world around them. The girls grow up to be healthy, formidable people who don't need cloths by Whosis or Botox by the barrel to define them.

But they stand out as targets - as prime threats to Paternalism. Will the present system allow them to live and procreate in any appreciable numbers? All the years of teaching, all the training, all the religions, government, all the money, all the male bonding to enforce conformity of thought and dress that has conditioned men to take their own superiority for granted and all the years of female bondage leading to women's compliance argues against it.

Men will not give up that ego trip that is always there for them - that no matter how little they succeed or how badly they do in life, they are superior to and better than more than half the population of the world. If women had been born into that lofty environment, they wouldn't give it up either.

MANSPLAINING!

The following article by Karen Healey explores a topic that is rampant in reality and in blogs but something many women try to ignore.

I would add to it only an example, which might be called, Mansplaining by Patronizing and Condescending. This occurs many times on blogs that are owned by males who profess to be feminists. Their prime motive is to control women and censor whatever she writes.

Under the gise of "just helping out these mental pigmies ie women", they will change or add to a woman's post and then post this comment: "I fixed it for you!"

Mansplaining!
Such a great word. I expect most of you are already familiar with the term, but because every time I think that someone proves me wrong, and because I think it's fantastic, I elaborate.

Mansplaining isn't just the act of explaining while male, of course; many men manage to explain things every day without in the least insulting their listeners.

Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate "facts" about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does.

Bonus points if he is explaining how you are wrong about something being sexist!

Think about the men you know. Do any of them display that delightful mixture of privilege and ignorance that leads to condescending, inaccurate explanations, delivered with the rock-solid conviction of rightness and that slimy certainty that of course he is right, because he is the man in this conversation?

That dude is a mansplainer.

Sadly, many of these dudes are our bosses or supervisors or other authority figures to whom we cannot give much crap. But if it's someone you know in a social setting, etiquette experts agree that the appropriate thing to do is to roll your eyes and say, "Oh, please, mansplain to me some more."

You are doing him a favour. Friends don't let friends foster mansplaining.
http://karenhealey.livejournal.com/781085.html

Whatever the form Mansplaining comes in there will usually be women who enable Mansplainers, one or more women protectors of the Mansplainer who will protect, defend and 'splain why he is basically an OK dude.

These enablers will rush in to translate ie tell you what he really means or to protect him on the basis of how most of the time he helps and is good to women.

Blog comments by many men report that they are hurt for being singled out like this -that women do it too and the term should be gender neutral - like douche bag. Yes, some women do but not from the position of privilege and superiority accorded to men in our society.

Long before the terms came into being [Google goes back no further than the '80's] - Mansplainin was going on. For a brief definition and recent history -
http://wiki.fandomwank.com/index.php/Mansplain

Here is an early example of near universal Mansplaining:-

Women who are obviously battered and broken asking help from God's representative on Earth as they ask the male preacher, confessor, minister to make her husband stop the constant beatings resulting in broken jaw, concussion and abdominal and breast injuries - In addition they may tell of other injuries from the near constant rape by him or by his buddies.

Mansplaining: "It is your duty to do as your husband demands. If he is hurting you then it must be that you are shirking your duties. You must submit to your husband in all things - it is God's will."

Every woman has other examples. The past is the present and appears to also be the future where Mansplainin is concerned.

It is interesting to read the comments on blogs from some males as they Mansplain why the term is incorrect - actually it is hilarious.

The term, Mansplain, is correct and should stand. Alternative suggestions are specious or sexists, such as douche bag, which has become a pejorative against both genders but mostly denigrates women.

Men should "Man up!" or shut up with the Mansplaining - their enablers should shut up and let them suffer the consequences of their own actions.

First egg

November 2, 2009 at 9:30 EST

Winkum laid first egg for the Black Stars. For comparison, the one on the left is a store-bought large egg. The one on the right is from pullet Winkum - not bad for a beginner, Wot?

O Canada!

Wednesday, October 07, 2009
World First: Canadian Scientists Decode Breast Cancer Tumour's DNA

Here's Canada causing problems for the USA again. Since cancer and all other illnesses are big business in the USA, a potential cure could cause some serious problems, or loss of profit here in the land of the free market gone wild. If we don't want Canada's cheap drugs and universal health care system, we sure as hell don't want anything that might lead to a cure for cancer. (Full disclosure, I lived in Canada for 13 years and enjoyed universal health care. Canadian health care was far superior to the care my family and I have received in the USA.)

TORONTO - In a world first, Canadian scientists have decoded all three billion letters in the DNA sequence of a metastatic breast cancer tumour and identified the mutations that caused the original tumour to spread.

The landmark study by researchers at the B.C. Cancer Agency is a major step towards unravelling the mysteries of how cancer begins and what makes it move to other parts of the body.


There are more Canadians who believe that Elvis lives than there are Canadians who want the U.S. health-care system.

http://guerillawomentn.blogspot.com/

Happy Re-birthday to all of us

A new birth of freedom

Quite a few bricks had to drop before the 19th Amendment became law on August 26, 1920

In 1878, a constitutional amendment was proposed that provided "The right of citizens to vote shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." This same amendment would be introduced in every session of Congress for the next 41 years.

In May, 1919, the necessary two-thirds vote in favor of the women suffrage amendment was finally mustered in Congress, and the proposed amendment was sent to the states for ratification. By July 1920, with a number of primarily southern states adamantly opposed to the amendment, it all came down to Tennessee. It appeared that the amendment might fail by one vote in the Tennessee house, but twenty-four-year-old Harry Burns surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification. At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother urging him, "Don't forget to be a good boy" and "vote for suffrage." Women had finally won the vote. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/nineteentham.htm

Since that time, the bricks that were thrown at women and their supporters increased in frequency and intensity. Despite this many women have put themselves out there and become powerful and influential, always facing the wrath of a society that resents and resists their claim to equality.

There are many people that were born on August 26th besides me; some even hold this day with the awe and reverence that I do because of the sacrifices of the women who came before me, most of whom never lived to see the results of their travail.

In a larger sense, August 26th is every woman's birthday. "... A new birth of freedom", such as Lincoln celebrated in his Gettysburg Address. So on August 26th, I celebrate everywoman's re-birth and thank Susan B. Anthony, for whom the Amendment was named, and all the other women who struggled by her side to give us such a great gift. For all their names and what they did, please see the timeline here:

http://www.thelizlibrary.org/suffrage/index.html

In the years following the passage of that Amendment, those of us that had to struggle with the increasing sexism and denial of human rights are either dead or in our 80's and 90's+ - soon to shuffle off the planet. Despite the qualifications and deeds of women over the years, not one of our founding mothers has been honored with the public recognition given to men.

There is still no calendar date with a holiday in honor of a woman. Efforts have been made to make the date the 19th Amendment passed a Holiday in tribute to Susan B., OUR great emancipator, but to no avail. We all watched as the most qualified presidential candidate with the most votes lost because of her gender and the continued misogyny of the country, its media and the denial of many women to support their own and their sister's progress.

All around us are women who still try to tear down our advances in the recognition of our personhood, who aid and abet misogyny and allow/protect the use of harmful and hurtful words that demean women.

The terrific people that formed Anthony's Army opened the gates allowing all the women who came later to fight job discrimination; made it possible for girls and women to have an education and play sports; to woman the shelters for battered women; to make us all aware of our abilities and our potential - the list goes on.

Susan et al would have been so proud of all the women who continued their struggle; women that didn't just settle for second class citizenship - women who continued to push the boundaries with the all consuming goal of equal, civil and reproductive rights, and respect for all who follow after them.


Women gained the vote in 1920 after 72 years
of the LARGEST civil rights movement
in the HISTORY of the world.
What are we going to do with it now?

Black Stars - 3 months old

The 5 Black Stars are now nearly 3 months old and hard at work ridding my gardens of bugs, scratching and aerating the soil, providing lots of compost, mowing the lawn and sometimes driving me up the wall. All feather out now, they can be distinguished from one another as they have different manifestations of their parents genes. Three, mostly show the black of the barred cross parent with some neck and chest bling; two display a contrast with lots of NH Red feathering.

With the approval of another Virgo, I named three of the blacks for a favorite childhood poem by Eugene Field [1850-1895] - Wynken, Blynken and Nod. You can hear a beautiful rendition of this here: my choice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49clc2eqkBg or read it here:
http://myhomeoflove.tripod.com/nurseryrhymes/winkinblinkinnod.html

The other two with lots of bling, are named Twinkle and Comet. These two stand out from the others as the golden red on their chests is continued into their backs, edging their feathers with gilt so they appear more bronze than black.

Here they are sitting on their favorite outdoor resting place - an old plastic cart that I rescued from the landfill to carry garden stuff in. As you see, they have other plans for it. On your left from back to front are Comet and Wynkum. On your right from back to front are Blynkum, Nod and Twinkle. One of these days the sun will shine and I can get a good pic of the bling that outlines the back feathers of Twinkle and Comet.


The chicks outgrew their brooder in about a month so I transferred them to the hen house with the brooder light set up in one corner that they could run under if they got cold. Then as the weather got warmer, I made an lane from their door to the lawn. Fenced the lane and a portion of the lawn as a corral, with the temp fence I use - you've doubtless seen the stuff around construction sites. It's a plastic mesh and with 5' long, half inch bamboo poles, I could set up a fence in about 10 minutes.


When chicks had chewed that grass up, the fence was moved to another area. After 2 months the temp fence came down and they got most of the whole backyard and were chasing down bugs in one of the gardens with gusto. They also enjoyed dirt baths and it turned out that they are communal bathers. In this photo there are really 5 chickens here, all scratching at the dirt and ruffling it through their feathers.


Mostly, they go everywhere as a flock but sometimes one breaks away and shortly afterwards it starts a game of Marco Polo. Lone chick makes a croaking sound then pauses to listen for the peep peeps answer. Lone chick then runs to the others.

We have had one scary encounter with a neighborhood cat who jumped the fence and scattered the chickens in all directions. Chickens are not silent when frightened - they voice their displeasure loudly and so I was out of the house in time to see the cat going after one of the chicks. The cat saw me and left the yard in a hurry, then I looked for the chick which had flown over the gate and was now in the front yard hedge.

It took some convincing that I was one of the good guys but finally I was able to capture the chick who turned out to be Winkym. She calmed down as I stroked her soft velvet-like feathers and we went looking for the other four that had hidden in the back. They soon showed themselves and everyone got together for an after fright discussion while I tried to figure out how to prevent it from happening again.

Until the next report, here are a few facts about free range chicken eggs: Grass and insects can make up about 20% of a chicken's diet during the growing season.

Eggs from free range poultry have been found to have as much as...
●4 to 6 times as much vitamin D; 1/3 less cholesterol , ¼ less saturated fat , 2/3 more vitamin A

● 2 times more omega3 fatty acids, 3 times more vitamin E , 7 times more beta carotene

...compared to supermarket eggs from hens raised in isolation.

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