4/3/09

Talk, talk, talk, gossip, gossip, gossip…That is what women do. This belief holds true today more then ever especially with the continuing rise of the show Gossip Girl, a show about vindictive girls who spread gossip (or so I’ve heard, I’ve never actually watched it). ‘Girl Talk’ has received such a reputation of being nothing but giggles and gossip, when a bunch of women get together what else would they talk about? In women’s history some of the biggest decisions-whether to strike, write, speak out, campaign…- have been made during this so called ‘girl talk’. Whether these talks took place in the home around the kitchen table, or in the fields carrying 100 pound bags on their backs these women felt a need to change the situations they were finding themselves in. Also seeing as many historians and writers (now and then) have brushed over the women’s aspect and neglected to keep records of their efforts, memories of these talks and those women telling younger generations about them is what has kept their history alive. “Oral histories help answer (and re-conceptualize)  fundamental questions about class, gender, life and work, cultural changes, values, and perceptions neglected in traditional, sources.”1                   

  It is a bit ironic; these women were forced to stay in these social ‘prisons’ of housewife, lower class, factory/field worker and so on, when you are surrounded by bars eventually you are going to notice. These women were realizing that they had a voice and a power, “We are the mythical thing called the public and so we shall demand a hearing”.2  These movements did not just pop out of no where, they had been stewing and bubbling for a while they just moved from the kitchens into the streets. Once these militant women were burning meat and dumping out flour in the streets there was no more ignoring the problem, this made news. Women’s movements were making their way from underground newspapers to the mainstream media, even if some of them were mockingly.3 News coverage is news coverage, and even if some people were laughing at the notion of a ‘housewife uprising’ they were taking notice that other people did not think it was funny and that these jokes or articles had truth behind them. The ‘girl talk’ not only started the movement, it unified it- Spreading from house to house bringing all of these mothers, housewives, women together.       “Raiz Fuerte: Oral History and Mexican Farmworkers”, Weber Anne, Devra Stovel, Jean, organizer of flour boycott, Seattle, 1936 “We are the Mythical Thing Called the Public”, Militant housewives During the Great Depression, Orleck, Annelise

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3/11/09

Looking back at the suffrage movement and the civil rights movement of the first half of this century people comment, "I can’t believe how blind we were." "how could we have had such inequality, such segregation"- When they are saying this they are referring to the country and the laws in place, and when these people do look back they see a strong wave of activists working together to make the world a better place. When in reality the segregation and the inequality were present in that strong force; there was no united force. Almost all of the activism that was seen in this era was incredibly divided between different classes, genders, races… There were upper class white women wanting the right to vote, they did not raise their numbers and strengthen their cause by uniting with working class women wanting the same thing. Pretty much none of the white women’s suffrage groups wanted to merge with black women wanting the vote, let alone equality. None of these groups, though all looking for civil rights in one way or another, merged or joined to help one another. Each group focused on their own agenda and battled against each other to try and ensure that theirs was the one on the front of the news paper. One issue was too important to try and tie it in with another, no one wanted to risk losing focus on their cause- fear that it would get lost in the headlines.

Harriot Stanton Batch spent a lot of time trying to not only get the vote for women but to unite some of these divided groups, something new to the suffragist movement. "…there are five million women earning their livelihood in this country and it seems strange that feudal customs should still exist here" (Batch, H.S.)Other suffragists shared the view of uniting movements, but their efforts were not always successful. The problem with trying to merge groups to fight one unified cause is that each group wanted to do it their own way. "The elite women were interested in women suffrage, but they had their own ideas about how to work for it" (Dubois, E.C., Working women, class relations, suffrage militance)

Black women across the country were having similar problems; some wanted to join white movements in hopes of strengthening them, while others felt that a separate movement was the best way to get results. Delilah Beasley "stressed the need for black women to develop their own leadership, separate from whites", whereas "Ohio black women opposed racial separatism…the Ohio Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs had hoped to integrate various local leagues" (Higginbotham, E.B., In Politics to Stay)

There are books, essays, movies portraying a wonderful unification of people under one cause, the good rising up to fight the intolerant. When in reality most of the people trying to make changes were the ones most unwilling to unify, the ‘intolerant’ were for the most part unified and that is why they were able to keep the laws and government the way it was for so long.

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2/20/2009

On Memorial Day people immediately think of the men who fought in battles passed and their contribution to the country; Heroic war stories, glamorized in writings and film. That was not always the case - yes soldiers have and always will receive praise and commendation- but there was a time when people thought the true sufferers of war were the mothers, the wives, the sisters, the women impacted by the loss of the men in their lives. Right after the Civil War the widows who lost their soldiers became individual memorials for their lost loves.

Even though women were active in the war (nurses, seamstresses…) their efforts were minimal in comparison to the men who left them behind. Therefore after the war they were remembered for the men they had lost, instead of how they helped save others. Still they were receiving recognition that they had suffered and lost, just as the men. The years started passing and the country was nearing the turn of the century, women were getting more and more freedom- they were getting more jobs outside of the home, getting more educated and in general getting more power. To return some of that power back to the men the image of Decoration Day was changed; from a weeping widow to "aged veterans decorating the graves of their fallen comrades…wounded Yankee and Confederate, both ordinary soldiers, embracing on a monument…" (Fahs, The Feminized Civil War) No longer was the pain of war shared by both sexes (in the eyes of the media) it was back to being a man’s burden to bear. People become increasingly interested in writings about ‘the real war experience’, the battlefield. "The idea of war as a whites-only brotherhood masculinized the memory of the war in popular literature…the idea of Civil War sacrifice for the nation to men only, gendering the memory of the war…"

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2/13/2009

Madam Velazquez, originally from Cuba, immigrated into this country with her husband during the Civil War. They both fought for the confederates. Loreta Velazquez dressed as a man and took on the persona, Harry T. Buford. She was never ‘found out’ and after the war went on to live as a man. Many women in history have dressed as men to gain access to the privileged world that only men inhabited. Whether it was to join the military, work, marry or even join sporting events- such as the Olympics.

Only recently have women found less of a need to dress as a man to get into certain circles, but there are still cases of women dressing as men today. Ever since women started getting more power and more equal rights it has been making men more and more uncomfortable. When a woman climbs up and becomes respected in business, medical or any other traditionally male role-they are more or less expected to become more masculine. There are books, websites, videos and work-shops directed towards women who want to get a ahead, and in almost all of those medias the biggest piece of advice is to dress more masculine, be less feminine, try to be ‘one of the guys’. An article in the Wall Street Journal, about a year ago, was comparing Hillary Clinton to Margret Thatcher. The bulk of the article was pointing out how Thatcher doesn’t show a feminine side (maybe a lady side, but never just a woman) and that Clinton is too quick to flaunt her own.

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1/28/09

For years students in history classes have learned and studied about the massacres in the pre/post American Revolution days, not between the colonies and the British, or the colonies at all- between the Spanish and the Natives. Text books are filled with tales of the Comanche raids in Spanish villages, men being tortured and killed in the name of vengeance…oh yes and a few women were taken captive. The capture and trading of women among tribes and villages was "the most violent and exploitative component of a long term pattern of militarized socioeconomic exchange between Indian and Spanish societies" Brooks, "This evil extends especially to the feminine sex"

As their husbands and eldest sons were being slaughtered, these women were being forcibly removed from their homes; not speaking the language or even knowing which tribe they would end up with in the end. Like a rustler stealing cattle, these women were tamed and ‘re-branded’. The process of taming could range from beatings, hard labor, isolation, all or even more.

Most women were married off and assimilated into the culture. They had children and learned skills, each step bringing themselves more and more into their new culture. The more involved and accepted they were in the community the more power they had and the more they (some of them) liked being a part of it. They contributed to the community, they added to the population and they continued even furthered the traditions of their tribe. Also these women were bi or even trilingual, making them the perfect link between communities.

Not all women were married off some were adopted by older women and made into companions and workers for the lonely elders. Because these women were not married they were prime choices fro sexual abuse, having these older women on their side protected many of them from such cruelties.

These abducted women were treated as money, passed from person to person in exchange for various goods, some were lucky and were eventually accepted others were continually traded and used for hard labor. Ripped from one family and put in another, taken from a lesser recognized form of slavery and put into an established type. Yes the men were brutally murdered and sometimes tortured, but many women had to live with the torture and pain -albeit in another form- which was worse?