08-05 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Runs imminent risk of being ravished
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Indira Mahindra, Andrea Dworkin, and Deborah Crombie.
Rape was Common in American Revolutionary
War on BOTH Sides
British Captain Francis Rawden wrote his uncle
in a letter dated 08-05-1776:
"A girl cannot step
into the bushes to pluck a rose without running the most imminent risk
of being ravished [raped], and they are so little accustomed to these vigorous
methods that they don't bear them with the proper resignation, and of consequence
we have most entertaining courts martials every day. To the southward they
behaved much better in these case, if I may judge from a woman who, having
been forced by seven of our men, made a complaint to me 'not of their usage,'
she said -- 'No, thank God, she despised that' - but of their having taken
an old prayer book for which she had a particular affection.' "
-- [Rawden's letter taken from Evans, Elizabeth. Weathering
the Storm, Women of the American Revolution. New York: Scribner's Sons,
1975]
Rapes of women were common by both the British
and American troops, particularly since so many women were alone with their
menfolk away at war and often living in isolated areas - as well as the
prevailing culture that blamed a woman, not the man.
Documents in the Library of Congress support the
charges of mass rapes. The U.S. Congress placed Benjamin Franklin in charge
of having a report published about rapes by British troops, but he never
did it, perhaps because it might have opened the door to charges of American
rapes - or simply that he didn't think rape was important. He was a known
"womanizer," who could not have held a post in the American government
of the 1990s.
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08-05 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 08-05-1846, Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby -
U.S. suffragist.
B. 08-05-1861, Mary Ellen Richmond - U.S. social
worker who favored private rather than government help for the disadvantaged.
B. 08-05-1876, Mary Ritter Beard - U.S. historian
and writer on women's roles in society. She believed women were central
to human society and that much of the feminist movement had devalued women
by emphasizing their victimization.
MRB did not believe that women should conform to men's
standards of behavior. She believed that the more women knew of women's
past, the more they could develop their own future.
Her books that claimed women's history has been distorted
to lower their contributions were soundly condemned by male historians
at the time. It has only been recently that women have rediscovered her
viewpoint. Her marvelous Woman as Force in History (1946) is a must-
read.
MRB's mother had been a school teacher, a well-educated
woman who guided MRB's early education.
B. 08-05-1880, Ruth Sawyer - U.S. children's
author and storyteller.
B. 08-05-1897, Virginia Salgado Fiuza - Brazilian
teacher and composer who became deputy director of the Brazilian Conservatory
of Music (1948).
B. 08-05-1907, Irene Rice Pereira - U.S. geometric
abstract painter. IRP was important in the art movements of the 1930s
and 1940s. She defined her work as based on the reality of light and space.
Her mother was an artist, primarily of sketches.
B. 08-05-1914 Anita Colby, U.S. model-actor.
B. 08-05-1920 Selma Diamond - U.S. comedic
actor.
Event 08-05-1924: The long running comic strip
Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray, made its debut.
B. 08-05-1926, Betsy Jolas - Franco-American
composer of more than 100 classical works. She became professor of
Advanced Musical Analysis at the Conservatoir National Supérieur
de Musiqu (1975), and professor of composition (1978). Born of American
parents in Paris, her mother was a noted singer.
BJ won the Grand Prix National de La Musique award
(1974) and was composer in residence at Tanglewood and the Berkshire Music
Festival (1976-77).
B. 08-05-1933 Joan Weldon - U.S. actor.
B. 08-05-1933, Vera Katz - U.S. legislator
and mayor. She was a member of the Oregon House of Representatives
and was elected mayor, City of Portland, Oregon, 1993.
B. 08-05-1941, Andrea Seastrand
- U.S. Congressional Representative from
California. Her official biography states she graduated DePaul University,
B.A., 1963; elementary school teacher; California Federation of Republican
Women, President; member, California State Assembly, 1990-1994; Assistant
Minority Leader; elected as a Republican to the One Hundred Fourth Congress
(January 3, 1995-January 3, 1997); was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection
to the One Hundred and Fifth Congress. [Biographies of women
in Congress can be found here.]
B. 08-05-1943, Sammi Smith - U.S. country singer.
B. 08-05-1946, Shirley Ann Jackson - U.S. theoretical
physicist. SAJ was the first African American female to receive a doctorate
in theoretical solid state physics from MIT. SAJ was appointed as Commissioner
of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by President Bill Clinton and became
its chair 05-02-1995. She was a research associate with the Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory, with Bell Telephone Laboratories and Professor
of Physics at Rutgers University.
Clinton also appointed another brilliant woman, Greta
Dicus to the commission.
B. 08-05-1946 Loni Anderson - U.S actor.
B. 08-05-1950, Rose Mittermaier - German-French
athlete who won the 1976 Olympic gold for the slalom/downhill.
B. 08-05-1950, Holly Palance - U.S. actor.
B. 08-05-1953, Samantha Sang - U.S. singer.
Event 08-05-1962: Actress Marilyn Monroe, 36,
was found dead in the bedroom of her Los Angeles home. A cottage industry
that supports many writers has grown up around the events surrounding her
death even though her death was ruled a suicide. Through the constant retelling
and quoting from other books and authors that has turned speculation into
folk truth, even in death, she remains a woman abused and taken advantage
of by men.
Event 08-05-1967: Bobby Gentry releases her
only hit "Ode to Billy Joe" and the American people began
the national debate on the imponderable question: "what was dropped
off the Tallahachee bridge?"
B. 08-05-1975, Ami Foster - U.S. actor.
Event 08-05-1986: Artist Andrew Wyeth revealed
that he had, over a 15-year period, secretly created 240 drawings and paintings
of a woman named Helga Testorf, a neighbor in Chadds Ford, Penn. The critical
furor, other than that caused by the adultery, was fueled by the (indignation)
fact that Helga was not young and not beautiful.
Event 08-05-1993: The first piece of legislation
Bill Clinton signed as president was the Family Leave Act which went
into effect on this date. It provides up to 12 weeks of emergency unpaid
family leave to care for newly born infants or sick relatives with a guarantees
that the person's old job (or equivalent) is there.
Most European countries provide up to 36-week guarantees
- three times the U.S. guarantee that was supposed to destroy the economy.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
MAHINDRA, INDIRA:
"When self-respect
takes its rightful place in the psyche of woman, she will not allow herself
to be manipulated by anyone."
DWORKIN, ANDREA:
"I would like
to see us stop trying to be so damn civil to the people who are hurting
us. I would like for us to stop thinking we need to prove anything to them.
They need to prove to us that they can respect our lives enough
to make social policy that stops battery."
-- Andrea Dworkin, "Freedom Now", in Life and Death, 1997
CROMBIE, DEBORAH:
In her book Leave the Grave Green, Deborah
Crombie's character Gemma is a divorced woman reflecting of her ex-husband:
"Gemma thought of
Rob's automatic assumption that she would provide for his every need, both
physical and emotion0al. It had never occurred to him that she might have
a few of her own."
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