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.