Just over two years ago, I got in contact with an amazing woman – writer Julie K Taylor. She had an idea for a new strong, black female superhero, someone young women of colour could look up to.
Now, two years later, we celebrate having released the first promotional issue of Lady Phantom.
We hope to make the Lady Phantom comic inclusive and diverse, focusing on deeper issues in addition to providing four-color superhero comic book action!
In recognizing the International Women’s Day I thought it fitting to share this, about the first known poet:
http://writing-the-words.com/post/158158202631/enheduanna-earliest-known-poet
Are you a man?
If so, Chuck Wendig has something he wants to you to read – something that should be self evident, that should be common sense, but that daily seems to be just the opposite.
Go on, Dear Reader – check out what he has to say:
While this may not be a blog post per se it is something that is important enough to share: Jennifer Aniston‘s response to the speculations about her personal life, published this Tuesday by the Huffington Post. This goes beyond one celebrity being fed up with the media – it speaks about how society in general values and objectifies women.
Take a moment and listen to what she has to say:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/for-the-record_us_57855586e4b03fc3ee4e626f
— A doodle in honour of International Women’s Day —
Sharpies on rough paper, ca 10×5 cm
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
–Oscar Wilde
“Neomasculinity”
Have you heard that term, Dear Reader? If you haven’t, be glad! The term is a misnomer, attempting to justify the lowest form of sexist, misogynist, chauvinistic supposedly ‘manly’ behaviour that seems to be on the rise behind computer screens in basements, garages and bachelor pads all over the world.
Where did this asshattery come from?
Some will blame patriarchal structures, some will blame the entitlement modern society instills in its citizens, others will blame multiculturalism or feminism or bad parenting or the downfall of politeness in society. I don’t think it is that easy.
I am a man.
I was brought up with a mix of traditional values an modern thinking, adopting both gentlemanly chivalry and gender equality. I was surrounded by strong women and strong men, by socialism and libertarianism, by traditional values and progressive thinking. I am very confident in myself – in my gender, in my sexuality, in my masculinity. I don’t feel a need to prove myself to others and I know I’m not perfect.
Maybe that’s why I can’t understand this femophobic trend.
As a long time student of the human psyche and culture, I think I have a fair understanding of the more traditional expressions of manhood and patriarchal structures. Some of my views and conclusions may be controversial or speculative, but until I find convincing evidence to the contrary I will stand by them. I can understand the desire to buy sex, to dominate and humiliate (as well as the desire to be dominated and humiliated), to assert control and exaggerate expressions of gender. I can even understand why some resort to violence in the pursuit of such things, though I will never condone or excuse it. But I cannot understand for the life of me understand the reasoning of those who support and express the “neomasculine” views.
They call themselves real men, but they aren’t men at all.
A real man doesn’t need to oppress women to assert himself – real men celebrate strong women instead of feeling threatened by them. A real man is in control of himself and has no problem accepting rejection or accepting a ‘no’ – even if it comes in the middle of intercourse. A real man makes his partner feel safe, cared for and respected – whether it’s a life partner, a a friend with benefits, a one-night stand or hell, even a prostitute! The lowbrows who demean, belittle, ridicule and threaten women (and usually lgbt-people as well) from behind their keyboards and aliases aren’t men at all.
They are excitable boys.
Insecure, immature, insolent children with a false sense of importance and entitlement. They seem to think the world owes them something and they act as if they are they are the ones who are mistreated.
What’s worse is, they aren’t all sociopaths, uneducated halfwits or isolated extremists either. Many of them are educated, intelligent, functioning members of modern society. That’s what frightens me the most. Their level of ignorance cannot be fought with reason and education, nor can it be conquered by violence or be legislated away.
Their mindset is a disease, and it seems to be spreading.
But how can we treat it?
Depending on the literary circles you find yourself in you may or may not have heard of Dorothy Richardson, but I’ll hazard the guess that most of you haven’t read her.
Dorothy was born in Abingdon on May 17th, 1873. Before her 23rd birthday she had lost her mother to suicide and her father went bankrupt – young Dorothy moved to Bloomsbury to work as receptionist and assistant in a dental office. During the next decade she associated with several writers, european exiles and political radicals – including the Bloomsbury group – becoming a supporter of feminism, socialism and vegetarianism. During this time she had a brief affair with H. G. Wells, getting pregnant by him and suffering a miscarriage. This seemingly gave her the final push toward becoming a writer, and between 1908 and 1914 she published several reviews, essays and journalistic pieces in the Saturday Review, as well as two books on the Quaker movement.
In 1915 she published Pointed Roofs, the first part of her literary masterpiece The Pilgrimage, and became one of a very small group of authors – along with Proust, Joyce, Woolf and Faulkner – who forever changed the literary scene by creating modernist literature.
Richardson’s The Pilgrimage was the first literary work to be described as stream of consciousness writing – though the author herself objected to the term, preferring to call it “inner monologue'”, and even said her work wasn’t a novel at all. In 1923, Virginia Woolf said that Richardson “has invented, or, if she has not invented, developed and applied to her own uses, a sentence which we might call the psychological sentence of the feminine gender.” and today The Pilgrimage is considered a feminist classic as well as one of the first modernist novels.
The semi-biographical work spans 13 novel-length parts, published with decreasing frequency from 1915 until 1967, when the final unfinished part she had been working on up before her death was published. It features a protagonist (modeled after Richardson herself) uncomfortable with the established femininity of nineteen century England, who explores the city whilst also crafting her own identity somewhere between the feminine and masculine, using the posibilities offered by the big city to further her cause.
For years, Richardson supported both herself and her husband, Alan Odle – a bohemian artist 15 years younger than her – mainly on freelance work for periodicals.
Iaia of Cyzius – also known as Marcia Varronis – was a Roman painter and ivory carver active sometime in the around 100 BC.
Not much is known about her. Pliny the Elder mentioned her in his writings and she was one of 106 women featured in De mulieribus claris (aka On Famous Women – the first collection in Western literature devoted solely to biographies of women) written by Giovanni Boccaccio in the 14th century.
Iaia was born in Cyzius and remained unmarried her entire life (Pliny states she remained a virgin, but let’s be realistic here – he couldn’t have known that and neither can we). She was known for her portraits of women, including a self portrait created with the aid of a mirror and a large panel painting of an old woman.
Aside from ivory engraving and regular painting, Iaia specialized in encaustic painting – a technique where color pigment is mixed with hot wax, which allows the artwork to be both painted and sculpted at the same time – applying the hot wax with a cestum (a sort of spatula) and brushes. The technique was used at the time to color marble sculptures and produce paintings on wooden panels.
Reportedly, Iaia’s hand was faster than that of any other painter and this, as well as the high quality of her works, ensured that she was paid more than most other celebrated painters of the time.
Sadly, no works attributed to her survives to this day.
This week’s installment of my important women series unusually holds three women. It was not my intention to begin with, but as I was researching the one I initially chose the two others appeared on my radar. Since all three of them did more or less the same thing I figured one post for all of them would have to suffice. Please do not see this as them not being important enough to get their own entry – they are – see it as a bonus.
I’m sure all of you have heard the name Rosa Parks, but perhaps you aren’t aware that there were several other black women (and one man) who did pretty much the same thing, long before she did.
In 1944 Irene Morgan, 27-year old mother of two, was on a Greyhound bus headed for Baltimore when she refused to move to the segregated section. Interstate bus travel was supposed to be non-segregated, but certain states still enforced segregated seating within its borders – a practice which caused several problems as passengers could be rearranged during their travel, possibly several times.
In Middlesex County in Virginia, Morgan refused to abide by the local laws and the bus driver stopped the bus and summoned the Sheriff. When he tried to arrest her, Irene Morgan first tore up the arrest warrant and then she kicked the Sheriff in the groin. With the Sheriff nursing his family jewels, the Deputy tried to pull Irene off the bus, so she fought him as well. She was convicted, pleading guilty to resisting arrest but refusing to plead guilty to violating Virginia’s segregation law. She was fined $100 dollars and appealed her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. This resulted in a landmark 6-1 ruling in 1946, when the Supreme Court ruled that state law enforcing segregation on interstate buses was illegal.
But in the south, states refused to follow the ruling.
On August 1st in 1952, WAC private Sarah Keys sat in the white section on a Carolina Trailways bus pulling into Roanoke Rapids in North Carolina. A new driver took the wheel and demanded private Keys to give up her seat to a white Marine and move to the colored section of the bus. Keys refused.
In response, the driver emptied the bus and transferred the passengers to another vehicle, preventing private Keys from boarding. Keys was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, and fined $25 after spending the night in jail. Refusing to accept the verdict, Sarah Keys brought the case to the attention of the NAACP. The resulting court battle lasted three years, and was brought to the Interstate Commerce Commission who ruled that the Interstate Commerce Act prohibited segregation:
“We conclude that the assignment of seats on interstate buses, so designated as to imply the inherent inferiority of a traveler solely because of race or color, must be regarded as subjecting the traveler to unjust discrimination, and undue and unreasonable prejudice and disadvantage…We find that the practice of defendant requiring that Negro interstate passengers occupy space or seats in specified portions of its buses, subjects such passengers to unjust discrimination, and undue and unreasonable prejudice and disadvantage, in violation of Section 216 (d) of the Interstate Commerce Act and is therefore unlawful.”
The ruling was made public one week before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus.
On March 2nd 15 year old Youth NAACP-member Claudette Colvin was heading home from school on a Capital Heights bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was sitting at the front of the colored section, but when the bus became too full she and the rest of the people in her row were ordered to give up their seats to the standing whites. This was in accordance with the local segregation laws, but Colvin refused to get up. Even when police came to the scene, the 15 year old student refused to move, and she was carried off the bus and arrested, reportedly yelling ‘He has no civil right…this is my constitutional rights…you have no right to do this.’
Colvin and four others from the bus were involved in the resulting court case, which went to the U.S. Supreme Court on November 13, 1956. The Supreme Court came to the conclusion that bus segregation in Montgomery was unconstitutional, and a week later they ordered Alabama to end all bus segregation.
After the incident, Colvin was deemed a troublemaker. She was not considered as suitable as Parks to serve as a front figure for the NAACP, which is why everyone has heard of Rosa Parks and not of Colvin, who was the true catalyst for the ruling.
Claudette dropped out of college largely because of how she was treated in her community and eventually moved from her home town to Bronx. She stayed in New York – working as a nurse and never marrying, raising her two sons alone – and still lives there today.