| 10-04 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Unmarried Mothers Punished
The Quaint Tradition of the Ducking Stool
Things are Really Changing
October is Banned Book Month
Beloved was Not
Violins Not Approved for Women
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by Dalma Heyn,
Carol Gilligan, and Diane Feinstein.
Unmarried Mothers Punished
"Throughout
the American colonies women who bore children outside of marriage could
be taken into court and sentenced to public whipping, branding, or fines.
I"f a woman could not support her child, the
court might demand that she reveal the father's name to force him to support
his offspring.
"If she refused, there would be further punishment.
If the woman did not know who the father was, or if she refused to say,
the child was often taken from her and apprenticed to a tradesperson until
the age of 21... In strongly religious communities there was an attempt
to treat male and female adulterers alike. Both were forced to go to church
and confess.
"In New England confession was the only punishment
demanded from those of high rank, while those of less social distinction
often were branded, whipped, or dunked in the river."
-- Excerpt from A History of Women in America, by Carol Hymowitz
and Michaele Weissman, Bantam Books, 1978. [Emphasis added by WOAH. Sexual
harassment, rape, and incest did exist in those days and in those places
just as it does today, only the women involved had NO rights; her word
was useless against most men, in fact, some jurisdictions codified the
number of women's testimony that was needed to offset the testimony of
one man. And if the man were powerful, few women dared testify against
him because they would not be believed. ]
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
The Quaint Tradition of the Ducking Stool
Mentioned above is "dunking"
that refers to the Ducking Stool, a quaint mechanism made SPECIFICALLY
for the punishment of rebellious women, women prostitutes (never their
male clients), and "witches."
It was used by local governments (c. 1600-1830) in
England and America's New England as an instrument to tame women who stepped
outside their appointed subservient rolls. It was considered more humane
and used most often as a lesser form of punishment - and therefor used
more commonly - than other forms of punishment such as whipping and jailing.
Physical beatings often incapacitated a woman so she could not cook and
care for her husband/family. Therefor the ducking stool was considered
more feminine and family friendly.
The Ducking Stool consisted of a chair mounted on
the end of a long, levered beam or pole that enabled the operator to drop
the woman who was strapped to the chair to be immersed. The punishments
were carried out winter or summer.
Ducking mechanisms were often permanently installed
along rivers or ponds and some had a portable stool mounted on wheels so
the women could first be paraded through the streets of the town where
they were jeered, had rocks and rotten food thrown at them, or were humiliated
in various other ways.
Sometimes the stools were arranged so the offender
was tipped backwards into the water where she spent more time nearly drowning
than when she was merely being dipped straight down when her head was the
last and first in and out of the water.
The woman was strapped into the chair so she could
not fall out or escape and she was immersed a specific number of times
prescribed by the sentencing magistrate (always a man) and a jury (always
men).
Ducking was a favorite punishment for shrewish or
scolding women. Often the punished were women who objected to being mistreated
instead of "being content with their lot."
Modern research has shown that many women condemned
as witches were holders of properties that influential men coveted or were
past child bearing age and seen as no use to the community.
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
Things are Really Changing
"...In
1970, Dr Edgar Berman, who was an appointee to the Democrat Party's Committee
on National Priorities, raised a storm of protest when he attacked the
statement of Patsy Mink, Hawaii's Congressional Representative, that she
'wouldn't see anything wrong with a woman president.'
"Dr. Berman raised the specter of women's alleged
instability. 'Suppose,' he speculated, 'that we had a menopausal woman
president who had to make the decision of the Bay of Pigs...'
"Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, and even Dr.
Berman's wife (who were in the audience) rose up in protest. "Patsy
Mink requested Dr. Berman's ouster from the committee. His response was
to attack this as a typical example of an ordinarily controlled woman 'under
the raging hormonal imbalance of the periodical lunar cycle.' "
-- The Menopause Book, edited by Louisa Rose, Hawthorn, 1977 [NOTE:
Dr. Berman resigned from the committee, but herstory does not record whether
the Mrs. Dr-Berman resigned from him.]
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
October is Banned Book Month
October is Banned
Book Month - visit your local library to view exhibits of the many books
that have been judged inappropriate for you to read by those who have read
them and know what's best for you.
But those who wish to control your mind usually fail
to get the books they oppose censored so many authorities think they are
going at it a different way - simply stealing the books. (It's not a sin
if it's done for a good cause.)
Many libraries are reporting an abnormal stealing
rate for the following books:
Heather has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman; Daddy's
Roommate by Michael Willhoite, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret
Atwood, most of Judy Blume books, Beloved by Toni Morrison, The
Bridge to Terabithia by Katharine Paterson, Revolting Rhymes
and The Witches by Roald Dahl, Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam,
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and The Catcher in the Rye
by Pierre Salinger.
Libraries have a hard time keeping books on vampires
and witchcraft as well as books favorable to women's self-esteem on their
shelves. They are stolen more than any other kind of books.
Many books on minority religions in an area also disappear.
Check your local library's shelves... are you being
censored without your knowledge? Ask your librarian what you can do to
help stop this unlawful attempt to control your mind.
We've noticed many modern books are being defaced
by the blacking out of words, phrases, even paragraphs that a previous
reader didn't think anyone else should see.
There is also a growing censorship movement that those
connecting to Internet should be aware.
Some Internet providers are censoring the material
that their customers can receive. Often the customers are too unsophisticated
in the ways of Internet to realize it. The subscriber may even ask for
the censorship package thinking it only hides pornography. In reality,
the censorship programs generally blackout many sites about feminism, and
topics vital to women's welfare such as health, anti-rape defenses, harassment,
etc.
One major on-line company began to censor its subscribers
by blacking out references to breast, etc. Their boards on breast cancer
disappeared as did the cooking boards that featured chicken in its recipies.
They quickly rescinded the censorship but since then highly sophisticated
programs have been developed that are less obvious.
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
Beloved was Not
This is a lesson on how and
why books are banned.
In 1995 the Anaheim Union High School District banned
Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved from the district's
curriculum after a community member complained the story was too graphic
for high school students.
Board trustee Katherine Smith said, "I
think that there are so many other wonderful creative works of literature
out there we could use.
"We need literature that is uplifting and positive,
and I don't think this book is.''
Beloved is about
a woman who kills her own daughter to keep her from becoming a slave.
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
Violins Not Approved for Women
According to Christine
Ammer in her excellent Unsung, A History of Women in American Music,
the accepted musical instruments for women before the late 19th century
were those that could be played demurely such as the piano and harp. Not
the organ because the pedals required an "ungainly posture.
"Playing the violin
or flute was considered unsuitable as late as 1874, but by 1901, George
Lehmann said, 'Only a little more than a quarter of a century earlier...the
mere thought of a refined young gentlewoman playing the violin, either
in private or in public, was indeed intolerable.' "
The harp, on the other
hand, has always been considered a woman's instrument. Mrs. Blessner in
November of 1846 received praise for her performance on a harp to a large
public gathering while women on other instruments were banned. Ammer points
out that orchestras that are reluctant to admit women players of other
instruments usually have a woman harpist. In 1977, women outnumbered men
in the American Harp Society about five to one.
-- Ammer, Christine. Unsung,
a History of Women in American Music. Greenwood Press, 1980
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
10-04 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS
B. 10-04-1810, Eliza McCardle Johnson - U.S.
wife. EMJ taught her husband, Andrew Johnson how to read when he was
already an adult. He went on to become the 17th president of the U.S. Historically,
she is not given any credit for his rise to political prominence
B. 10-04-1837, Mary Elizabeth Braddon - British
novelist. MEB's Lady Audley's Secret (1862) was wildly successful.
She followed with almost 70 other novels and stories that hinted at scandal
but always stayed within society's boundaries for proper behavior by a
woman.
B. 10-04-1841?, Agnes Booth - U.S. actor.
Event 10-04-1859: In a statewide vote of the
men of Kansas, the Wyandotte Constitution under which Kansas was admitted
to the Union as a free state January 29, 1861 was adopted by a 2 to 1 margin.
It denied suffrage to women but did agree to allow them property rights.
It also rejected slavery.
B. 10-04-1864, Eliza Kellas - U.S. educator.
As principal of the Emma Willard School, she restored it to its former
high scholastic standards. She also served as the organizing president
of the Sage College of Practical Arts.
B. 10-04-1887, Miriam Van-Waters - U.S. penologist
and social worker.
B. 10-04-1893, Fannie Cook - Afro-American
author. FC was the winner of the first George Washington Carver award
for her novel Mrs. Palmer's. The Carver award goes to the outstanding literary
contribution that shows "the importance
of the Negro's place in American life."
B. 10-04-1904, Sybil Goulden Bach - British
suffragist, niece of Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the UK radical suffrage
movement.
SGB graduated with a degree in economics and became
a world respected authority on Chinese agriculture and her predictions
on its crop totals were astoundingly accurate. Her mother modelled the
Pankhurst statue in Victoria Tower Gardens. After her retirement she became
chair of the Suffragette Fellowship following in her sister Enid's footsteps.
 Stanton
and two Blatches - Elizabeth Cady Stanton, center, granddaughter
Nora Blatch, left, and daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch on the right.
Event 10-04-1907: Harriot Stanton Blatch,
the first woman elected to the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1906
was barred from dining at the Hoffman House Hotel in New York City because
she had no male escort. HSB as the daughter of woman's right crusader Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and caused a "bit of a fuss."
B. 10-04-1912, Elisa Bialk - U.S. writer,
primarily of children's books.
B. 10-04-1941, Anne Rice - U.S. author.
AR has gained a cult following by popularizing the erotic vampire genre.
A string of best sellers began with her Vampire Chronicles.
B. 10-04-1944, Patti LaBelle - U.S. singer
of contemporary music.
B. 10-04-1946, Susan Sarandon - U.S. actor.
SS is one of the few actors who became more famous as she aged. In Hollywood
where youthful women are valued and older (30+) women are ignored, SS has
cut out an amazing career but most women will remember her for her work
in movie Thelma and Louise.
B. 10-04-1955, Kim M. Robak - U.S. politician.
KMR was elected Lieutenant governer, State of Nebraska, 1993.
B. 10-04-1976, Alicia Silverstone - U.S. entertainer.
Event 10-04-1988: U.S. House of Representatives
amends its rules to give employees protection against discrimination,
including sex discrimination
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
QUOTES DU JOUR
HEYN, DALMA:
"[Women
lose their sexual selves in marriage] very insidiously. Women lose the
egalitarian relationship. Even sexually experienced women still adopt this
mode of goodness called the Donna Reed syndrome. A woman still aspires
to be the good wife and mother, so much so that she loses track of her
own feelings, her pleasure, her sexuality, the whole package."
-- Dalma Heyn in Erotic Silence of the American Wife (1992).
GILLIGAN, CAROL:
"As
we have listened for centuries to the voices of men and the theories of
development that their experience informs, so we have come recently to
notice not only the silence of women but the difficulty in hearing what
they say when they speak.
"Yet in the different voice of women lies the
truth of an ethic of care, of the tie between relationship and responsibility,
and the origins of aggression in the failure of connection.
"The failure to see the different reality of
women's lives and to hear the differences in their voices stems in part
from the assumption that there is a single mode of social experience and
interpretations."
-- Carol Gilligan, In A Different Voice, Cambridge: Harvard
University Pres, 1982. WOA believes CG is one of the top three feminist
philosopher of our generation. Many later feminists are merely paraphrasing
her.
FEINSTEIN, DIANE:
"[Women elected to
public office] earn the right to work for change through the vote of the
people, but by our actions and relationships we develop the clout and reputation
to bring about change. We are evaluated all along the way and the criteria
for women are often more stringent than those for men. As I have said,
respect and credibility are hard for women to achieve, and this difficulty
has its consequences throughout the political world. For example, legislation
is often evaluated on the basis of its author. A good bill by someone who
is not respected by her or his peers may die a lonely death in committee,
while a poor bill by a respected author will gain a floor vote."
-- Diane Feinstein commenting
about her 1969 election to the 11-member legislative Board of Supervisors
which governs the city and county of San Francisco. From the forward to
Women in Power - The Secrets of Leadership, by Cantor, Dorothy W.
and Toni Bernay with Jean Stoess. 1992: Houghton Mifflin Company, New York.
| PRIOR DATE |
| HOME |
| WOA INDEX |
| NEXT DATE |
| RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
|
|
