Women’s History Month

Most Commented On During 2012

March 9, 2013 By Elin and Hennie Weiss Leave a Comment

Now that we are celebrating women’s history month we thought we would take a look at our own history and check out which articles got the most comments during 2012.

The clear “winner” for 2012 was a piece by Amy called Tosh.No Why Rape Jokes (And Daniel Tosh) Are Never Funny which received over 50 comments and is still being commented on. Many of these comments were made by upset Daniel Tosh fans who just wanted us to know how boring we feminists are and that we all have “sticks up our asses” and are hateful bitches. On the other hand, the post received a lot of comments from people that were equally upset about rape jokes and discussed how hurtful rape jokes and rape culture is.

A second much commented on piece, written by Serena, was titled Would You Choose Abortion If Your Baby Had Down Syndrome? The comments on this piece were very constructive as different readers discussed the issue of being strong enough and having the financial stability to care for a child with special needs. [Read more...]

Filed Under: History Tagged With: most commented 2012, Women's History Month

Women’s History Month: Josephine Lowell

March 30, 2012 By Janice 1 Comment

When it comes to the field of social work in the United States, it is women who have really been the pioneers. Starting with what is commonly referred to as the Progressive Era, women have led the fight to improve conditions for the less fortunate and for and entire industry to be built around helping others.

History changers from the Progressive Era included notable women such as Jane Addams, Margaret Sanger, Lillian Wald, Margaret Fuller, Eleanor Roosevelt and Josephine Lowell. I have been familiar with the name Josephine Lowell for quite sometime, and I recently had the opportunity to learn more about her and found her story to be one I needed to share this Women’s History Month.

Like many trailblazing women from the Progressive Era, Josephine was born to a well-to-do family, and like many other social activists of the time, her parents were Unitarian Universalists. She was born in Massachusetts in 1843, and had the opportunity to travel around Europe with her family before they settled in Staten Island.

Josephine came of age during the Civil War and began her public service career as a teenager volunteering for the U.S. Sanitary Commission. It was during this time that she met her husband Charles, who she would soon travel with to Virginia where he served as Colonel and she volunteered tending to injured troops. Josephine faced the devastating consequences that many did during this time, losing both her new husband and brother to the war.

After the death of her husband Josephine gave birth to their daughter and moved in with her family back in Staten Island. She soon took it upon herself to starting working on behalf of communities who, especially during Josephine’s time, had few people standing up for them. She became involved early on as an advocate for Philippine independence and the Anti-Imperialist movement before working to improve education for African Americans, and then went on to organizing to improve conditions in hospitals, jails, and mental institutions. [Read more...]

Filed Under: History Tagged With: Josephine Lowell, Progressive Era, Settlement House Movement, women's history, Women's History Month

Women’s History Month: Harriet Hosmer

March 29, 2012 By Jodi 1 Comment

Harriet Hosmer (1830-1908) is probably the most famous American artist you’ve never heard of, and I think that should change. I came to Harriet Hosmer by way of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The two women were expatratriates together in mid-nineteenth century Italy; both were extremely popular in their day and all but disappeared from popular memory a generation later. (Only Elizabeth Barrett’s marriage to Robert Browning seems to have kept her from disappearing from the British canon completely.)

I’m here to do my small part in returning Harriet Hosmer to her rightful place in American history. I can only hope that we finally live in an era where there are too many women participating in public life for a generation of female achievement to be buried again.

Historian Kate Culkin, the author of Harriet Hosmer: A Cultural Biography, believes “Harriet Hosmer’s life resonates with those of us in the 21st century as she was so interested in and adept at shaping her image for the public. She was an international celebrity, and she and her supporters took great care to ensure that Hosmer, an ambitious, single woman who had moved to Rome with no intention of returning to the United States, was depicted an patriotic and genteel.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Book Shelf, History Tagged With: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, female marriage, Harrier Hosmer, lesbian, women artists, women's history, Women's History Month, zenobia in chains

Women’s History Month: First Women in Law

March 28, 2012 By Kimberly Leave a Comment

Determining women firsts in the legal profession is difficult because at the turn of the 20th century several women across the country were making their way into the profession, each with their own obstacles. Belle Babb Mansfield is often considered the first woman lawyer because she was the first woman to be admitted to the bar in the United States, though she never really practiced law. There were several women practicing law before Mansfield was officially recognized, though they had to practice without official recognition. The recorded history of women lawyers is somewhat scattered and inconsistent. I’ve chosen to highlight four of the early female lawyers though the list is by no means exhaustive but each one has an inspirational story.

Women’s History Month: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

March 27, 2012 By Jodi 3 Comments

Chances are, you don’t need me to introduce you to Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861). In the Victorian era she was famous, a literary superstar whose first poems were published when she was just fourteen, and a serious candidate to succeed William Wordsworth as Britain’s poet laureate upon his death. Unless your heart is made of stone, you know her most popular piece, one of the best-known love poems in the English-speaking world from Sonnets from the Portugeuse (1850):

XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with a passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: History Tagged With: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Italy, marriage, poetry, robert browning, Women's History Month, writers

Pro-choice News Roundup

March 23, 2012 By Janice Leave a Comment

Occupying the Waiting Room: 40 Years of Healthcare Needs. On the Issues.

Arizona GOP Legislator Says Women Should Witness Abortions. Huffington Post.

Idaho Lawmaker Sparks Anger with Abortion Comments. Boston.com

Anias Nin, Diary Writing, and Women’s History Month. Huffington Post.

5 Reasons the GOP’s Attack on Birth Control Screws Men. Alternet.

Filed Under: News Roundup Tagged With: Anias Nin, Arizona, Arizona abortion bill, birth control, idaho, Women's History Month

Women’s History Month: Marie Trintignant

March 21, 2012 By Manis 2 Comments

Chère Marie, merci*

Letting you discover Marie Trintignant is something that means a lot to me because this will tell you about my first feminist model. This woman was a French actress engaged in feminist issues, under the aegis of her mother, a national feminist figure. Marie Trintignant died in 2003, beaten to death by her partner. She left four children.

Marie Trintignant was the daughter of the French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant and of the filmmaker and writer Nadine Trintignant, who is one of the signatories of the Manifesto of the 343 in April 1971 for abortion rights.

Marie began to act in her parents’ movies very early, and in 1988, she performed in a supporting role, playing a prostitute in Une affaire de femmes. This film tells the true story of a mother during the German occupation of World War II who, in order to survive, became an abortionist, and was guillotined for that work.

Women’s History Month: Marie Stopes

March 19, 2012 By Maria 2 Comments

Marie Stopes as a young palaeobotanist

Marie Stopes is the ultimate ideological yin and yang, a woman who was the perfect mix of the best and the worst of an activist. She started the first family planning clinic in the British Empire in 1921 and sent personal poems expressing her infatuation to Adolf Hitler. She campaigned for women’s right to make their own fertility choices while claiming that the poor and sickly should not be allowed to have children. She even disowned her own son and cut off all contact with him for marrying a myopic woman. Stopes realized that control of her fertility is key for a woman who wants to be able to make her own way in life, but felt a deep connection to a man who thought that an Aryan woman’s place is in the home and there should be no place at all for Roma, Polish or Jewish women.

In August 1939 the world was on the brink of World War II and Marie Stopes was busy with her clinics and politics (campaigning for eugenics and family planning), but she still found a little time to send a letter to her hero:

“Dear Herr Hitler, Love is the greatest thing in the world: so will you accept from me these (poems) that you may allow the young people of your nation to have them?” (August 1939)

Classy, eh?

Women’s History Month: Margaret Edson and Wit

March 16, 2012 By Jodi 1 Comment

Today I want to celebrate the playwright Margaret Edson, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama in 1999. Last weekend I saw her play Wit starring Cynthia Nixon; and if it were not closing this weekend, I would urge you to grab a wad of tissues and get thyself to the theater. I do recommend you do the second best thing —read Wit—and the third or fourth—ponder the ideas about women and achievement it stirred up in me. Mind you, these are not the play’s primary concerns. The main character, renowned Donne professor Vivian Bearing, loves to point out that metaphysical poets like Donne contemplate the most rarefied matters of human existence: “Life, death, soul, God… past, present.” The biggies, I want to say. The play makes it impossible to ignore them, but with a little distancing trick (the cutesie of “biggie”) I’ve managed to put them in the (im)proper perspective this many days later.

That’s not to say I haven’t been thinking or feeling. I can very happily say that I can’t identify first-hand with the main character’s plight; but I have had a second-hand seat and no crystal ball to see into the future. All the same, watching the play was like watching a former version of myself. A smarter, more articulate, more imposing version, to be sure, but still: Vivian Bearing is a word-lover. I’m a word-lover. Vivian is a scholar. I was a scholar, and then I decided to leave the academy behind. I got out into the world in a way that Vivian did not, not when her mentor tells her to do exactly that, and not in the life she recounts during the course of the play. Or did I?

Vivian’s life seems to begin and end with her work. And much of the play is weighted towards her realizing that there is much more to life than the sum of one’s greatest deeds. But from where I was sitting in the not-facing-cancer-today seats, Vivian’s research and world-renowned scholarship brought on a serious case of the “What ifs,” even though I have a sneaking suspicion the answer is, “Not a chance, not in a million years.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: History Tagged With: Margaret Edson, Pulitzer Prize, Wit, Women's History Month

Women’s History Month: 5 Royal Women I LOVE

March 15, 2012 By Janice 5 Comments

I have always been interested in monarchies, especially royal women. Like many a young American girl, the notion of being a princess appealed to me on many levels. The interest in royalty has continued into my adult years and as a lover of historic biographies I have devoured many books on the lives of various royal figures and often find myself falling asleep to David Starkey’s Monarchy (as you can see, when it comes to entertainment, I prefer it as dry as it comes). As a feminist I have come to view the lives of many royal women in a different lens than many, and respect many of them in profound and personal ways.

In honor of Women’s History Month, here is a tribute to five of my favorite royal women:

Queen Elizabeth 1: Probably my most favorite historical figure. Lacking any type of female example, Elizabeth beat the countless odds stacked against her and became one of the most successful heads of state England has ever known. After numerous decades of turmoil and instability, Elizabeth propelled England into what would come to be known as The Golden Age for its prosperity and relative peace.

We all know about Elizabeth’s refusal to marry, which was a remarkable decision. What many don’t realize is not only did she continue to receive proposals late into her life; she did in fact allow herself to fall in love more than once and had more than one love affair. She was, however, a career woman at heart, and never lost sight of her true purpose in life, to serve her country as she saw fit. Her life and legacy are still an inspiration to strong women today. [Read more...]

Filed Under: History Tagged With: Anne Boleyn, Jane Gray, Marie Antoinette, Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth, royal women, women's history, Women's History Month