Well, folks. Women’s history month is almost over. Whew! Soon we can get back to celebrating real history - his-story - by men and for men.I believe every month should acknowledge the herstory of women (who make up more than half of the population). Women's brave and successful (although incomplete) struggle toward self-ownership should be common knowledge, don't you think? Maybe that explains my strange silence about March being Woman’s history month. What happened to April through February?
(I know at least one good woman who was born in March. Me!!)
But I’ll throw a bone to the cause and tell you a few things that EVERY American should know about the history of women in this country:
- It took women 80 years to secure our constitutional right to vote (53 years after black men). Toward the end of this campaign, some women campaigners were imprisoned and force fed when they protestively refused to eat. The original suffragist women died before their right to vote was achieved in - 1920 (19th Amendment).
- Many (white) women found economic independence during WWII when the nation called for their patriotic loyalty to paid labor while their husbands were at war. These same women were fired and sent home to do their patriotic duty of (unpaid) reproductive labor (repopulating the race) as soon as their husbands came home from battle.
- Until 1960 newspapers publish separate job listings for men and women, leaving the higher paying, more prestigious jobs available for men only.
- Until 1964 it was legal to discriminate against someone at work based on their sex
- In 1977 sexual harassment became illegal.
- In 1993, marital rape became a crime in all 50 states.
- The U.S. lags behind the following countries in appointing a woman as their President (or the equivalent): Mongolia, Argentina, Bolivia, Malta, Guinea-Bissau, Philippines, Haiti, Germany, Nicaragua, Ireland, Switzerland, Burundi, Sri Lanka, Liberia, Ecuador, Ireland, Guyana, Latvia, Panama, Finland, Philippines, Indonesia, Georgia, San Marino, Liberia, Chile
These are just some of the things that those man-hating-feminists have been busy taking care of in between taking care of their husbands, babies, and households.
"No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion." - Carrie Chapman Catt , Suffragist (1900)
"She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older - the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning." - Jane Austen , Author (1818)
For more information on US women's history click here.
For more quotes by "notable" women click here.
4 comments:
The "marital rape" thing shocked me the most. Who cares if she wants it or not, she married you! grrrrrrrr!
This would be a good time to announce that my 6 year old niece just won the gold metal in her wrestling tournament. She is the undefeated champion of her weight division. AND... it is co-ed.
That's right, folks. She kicked ALL the boy's booties to get that gold metal.
Here comes the next generation of women who haven't (yet) learned that there's something strange about this.
Here's another one:
1996--the US enacted its first legislation against female gential mutilation (largely practiced in developing countries throughout Africa). Now, 16 states in the US prohibit FMG. Approximately 130 million women in the world have had the procedure done to them, many as children (around age 5-7, some older as teenagers). In the states without legislation, immigrant families can still force the procedure on their daughters.
Thanks for the info, Grace!
Thanks for that important addition, Sib. Some people in THIS country practice female genital mutilation (also known as "female circumcision”). This is a cultural practice that initiates girls into womanhood and ranges from slicing some part of the vagina with a razor to completely cutting off the clitoris and sewing up the outer labia – leaving only small wholes for urination and menstruation/penetration. In the latter case, women are cut open again when they give birth and sewn back up afterward. Women are taught that proper/prudent women have this done and typically women do this to their own daughters/nieces, etc… This has become an ethical debate among US doctors – “Should we be sewing these women back up after birth?”
And Scrunch, I’m glad you enjoy my blog. Other than my life’s recurring theme of unwanted sexual attention/assault by men, I have had very good relationships with them. In fact, my relationships with men have historically been more successful and long-standing than they have with women - I’m not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the limited space that women compete for to be considered the “good kind of woman”. We have a hard time seeing each other’s humanity because doing so means there’s less space for our selves in what gets counted as human or good.
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