Women of Protest: A Feminist History Refresher
It wasn’t until 1920 that women were granted suffrage, but it was 1917 when members of the National Women’s Party — Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and others — picketed outside the White House, burning copies of Woodrow Wilson’s speeches and demanding the right to vote. What resulted — mass arrests (most for “obstructing traffic”), unlawful imprisonment and bloody beatings — became known as the Night of Terror, though it’s fair to say most among my generation don’t know it.
The Night of Terror took place on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Workhouse Prison, in Occoquan, Virginia, ordered his guards to teach the suffragists a lesson. For weeks, the women’s only water had come from an open pail. Their food had been infested with worms. But on this night, some 40 prison guards wielding clubs beat the women senseless — grabbing, dragging, choking, kicking and pinching them, according to affidavits recounting the attacks.
November is Native American Heritage Month
All photos by Edward S. Curtis via the Library of Congress, original captions:
Top: O Che Che, Mohave Indian woman, Qahatika girl, Selawik Woman
Middle: Chaiwa—Tewa, Klamath woman, Cayuse woman
Bottom: Wisham female, Tsawatenok girl, Yaqui girl
"Women are increasingly the bread-winners in the family. This is not just a women’s issue, it’s a family, a middle class issue, and we have to fight for it."
— President Obama, speaking in support of equal pay for women, and highlighting his signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which improved the ability of women to sure their employers for pay discrimination. (via blogofhorses)
(Source: shortformblog, via andticks)
Painting the Women of the 112th — Powersuit by Powersuit
Political portraiture doesn’t often feature women, so artist Emily Nemens decided to paint all 90+ female members of Congress — in watercolor. The result is 47 linear feet of women in power — and a stark display of uniform power suits, bouffant hair, and toothy smiles. Read more
(via jessbennett)
One more thing about Nora
In my mind, what she said meant this: In feminism and in writing and in life, righteous indignation alone—divorced from action or a sense of the absurd—will not be cute for long. It will ripen, and it will rot. And who among us likes to clean up rot?
—The wonderful Sarah Ball, on what Nora Ephron told us. She put it better than anyone, it’s stuck with me since she wrote it, and it deserves a shout-out, even months after the fact.
(Source: jesseellison)
"In the early ’90s, it was grunge, everybody was fully clothed. Alanis Morissette was one of the biggest artists in the world, never wore make up, wearing Doc Marten boots, and then the Spice Girls turn up, and suddenly it all looks a bit burlesque, suddenly they’re the biggest band in the world. … And as you go all the way through the ’90s, the clothes just fall off the women until you get to the year 2000, and Britney Spears is just wearing a snake."
—
‘How To Be A Woman’: Not A Feminist? Caitlin Moran Asks, Why Not? : NPR (via blogofhorses)
Truth.
(via jessbennett)
newsweek: Columbia Journalism Review’s July/August cover pays tribute to Newsweek’s 1970 “Women in Revolt” cover.
(via jessbennett)
Nora Ephron’s first job was as a Newsweek “mail girl” in 1962. In her interview, she was asked why she wanted the job.
“I want to be a writer,” she told the woman.
“Women don’t write at Newsweek,” she was told.
“That was what it meant to be a girl then,” Ephron later told us.
(Photo via the NYT)
"Maybe young women don’t wonder whether they can have it all any longer, but in case any of you are wondering: of course you can have it all. What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don’t be frightened: you can always change your mind. I know: I’ve had four careers and three husbands."
— The always brilliant and wry Nora Ephron, in a 1996 Wellesley Commencement Speech, which is worth reading in its entirety.
(Source: jessbennett)
"I’d been the one telling young women at my lectures that you can have it all and do it all, regardless of what field you are in. Which means I’d been part, albeit unwittingly, of making millions of women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot)."
— WHY WOMEN STILL CAN’T HAVE IT ALL (The Atlantic)
(via jessbennett)
So begins the lead of this New York Times piece, about the gender discrimination lawsuit shaking Silicon Valley. Kind of an odd way to start a piece about sexism, no?
(Source: jessbennett)
Planned Parenthood is on Tumblr!
Planned Parenthood is excited to be launching our new Tumblr that’s all about sexual and reproductive health – bodies, birth control, relationship issues, “is it normal for this to do this?” type things. In the coming weeks and months we’ll be sharing what we know, answering questions, and just… tumblring.
We hope you like it! And we hope it helps.
Welcome to the neighborhood!
