Thursday, July 07, 2005
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Labor is hard work. Forcing women to labor against their will - is slavery.
"I'm not afraid of storms,
for I'm learning to sail my ship."
-Louisa May Alcott
"No person is your friend who demands your silence." -Alice Walker
"I never expect men to give us liberty. No, women, we are not worth it until we take it." - Voltairine de Cleyre
"The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed." -Edna O'Brien
"The dogma of woman's complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind." -Mary Ritter Beard
"They sicken of the calm that know the storm." -Dorothy Parker
"I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn't mine." -Rita Rudner
"Adventure is worthwhile in itself." -Amelia Earhart
"Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin." -Grace Hansen
"I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex." -Katharine Hepburn
"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow talent to the dark place where it leads." -Erica Jong
"I have always had a dread of becoming a passenger in life." -Margareth II, Queen of Denmark:
"I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing." -Dorothy Parker
"You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you." -Mary Tyler Moore
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." -Anais Nin
"No more tears now; I will think about revenge." -Mary, Queen of Scots
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." -Eleanor Roosevelt
"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -Muriel Strode
"People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute." -Rebecca West:
"If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression." -Toni Morrison
"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." -Delores Ibarruri
"Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow." -Maria Mitchell
"This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes." -Hannah Arendt
"If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it." -Toni Morrison
"I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say." -Ingrid Bergman
"We know that we can do what men can do, but we still don't know that men can do what women can do. That's absolutely crucial. We can't go on doing two jobs." -Gertrude Stein
"The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off." -Gloria Steinem
"It's all make believe, isn't it?" -Marilyn Monroe
"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman." — Virginia Woolf
"I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body." -Elayne Boosler
"Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn't have what it takes.' They will say, 'Women don't have what it takes.'" -Clare Boothe Luce
"Soon they'll be telling you you can't be Batman, Shakespeare, President, or God. Little fat baby, going on schoolgirl, you can be anyone, but it won't be easy." -Marilyn Hacker
"We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters." -Gloria Steinem
"Remember our heritage is our power; we can know ourselves and our capacities by seeing that other women have been strong." -Judy Chicago
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there." -Indira Gandhi
"I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it." - Alanis Morissette
"Nothing will work unless you do." -Maya Angelou
"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people." -Cheris Kramare and Paula Treichler
You pack the guns. I'll make the pancakes.
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Labor is hard work. Forcing women to labor against their will - is slavery.
"I'm not afraid of storms,
for I'm learning to sail my ship."
-Louisa May Alcott
"No person is your friend who demands your silence." -Alice Walker
"I never expect men to give us liberty. No, women, we are not worth it until we take it." - Voltairine de Cleyre
"The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed." -Edna O'Brien
"The dogma of woman's complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind." -Mary Ritter Beard
"They sicken of the calm that know the storm." -Dorothy Parker
"I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn't mine." -Rita Rudner
"Adventure is worthwhile in itself." -Amelia Earhart
"Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin." -Grace Hansen
"I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex." -Katharine Hepburn
"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow talent to the dark place where it leads." -Erica Jong
"I have always had a dread of becoming a passenger in life." -Margareth II, Queen of Denmark:
"I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing." -Dorothy Parker
"You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you." -Mary Tyler Moore
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." -Anais Nin
"No more tears now; I will think about revenge." -Mary, Queen of Scots
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." -Eleanor Roosevelt
"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -Muriel Strode
"People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute." -Rebecca West:
"If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression." -Toni Morrison
"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." -Delores Ibarruri
"Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow." -Maria Mitchell
"This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes." -Hannah Arendt
"If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it." -Toni Morrison
"I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say." -Ingrid Bergman
"We know that we can do what men can do, but we still don't know that men can do what women can do. That's absolutely crucial. We can't go on doing two jobs." -Gertrude Stein
"The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off." -Gloria Steinem
"It's all make believe, isn't it?" -Marilyn Monroe
"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman." — Virginia Woolf
"I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body." -Elayne Boosler
"Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn't have what it takes.' They will say, 'Women don't have what it takes.'" -Clare Boothe Luce
"Soon they'll be telling you you can't be Batman, Shakespeare, President, or God. Little fat baby, going on schoolgirl, you can be anyone, but it won't be easy." -Marilyn Hacker
"We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters." -Gloria Steinem
"Remember our heritage is our power; we can know ourselves and our capacities by seeing that other women have been strong." -Judy Chicago
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there." -Indira Gandhi
"I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it." - Alanis Morissette
"Nothing will work unless you do." -Maya Angelou
"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people." -Cheris Kramare and Paula Treichler
9 comments so far. What are your thoughts?
Tony Blair, perhaps.
Posted by David
I don't live in England, let alone London, but I do live in the UK, and what is surprising me most about this is how low-key everyone is being about it all. No doubt sometime in the next few days a few loonies will rear their ugly heads, calling for Bush-style reprisals, but from what I can see so far, they will be in a very small minority.
Even the UK press, which I'm usually a harsh critic of, seems to be handling it all in a largely sensible way.
It's weird, and please don't take this the wrong way, all you Americans out there, but the most emotional responses I've seen so far have come from the US. Maybe Londoners have just seen all this before too many times?
Posted by Crys T
If you're right about the US responses, Crys T, I'd hazard a guess that at least some of the intense emotional reaction is feeling as if, to some degree, this is partly our responsibility. Subconscious guilt goes a long way.
Posted by jpjeffrey
Guilt? Oh, no, I totally disagree.
Look at the news, even talk to friends, and the general response isn't just, "Those fuckers, this is terrible," but is quickly followed by, "Shit, are they planning something here ?"
Media spirals it out of control here ("LONDON TERROR!!!") and immediately links it to us, stirring up fear and terror in our own country because we're worried about whose transit system is next.
I like the Brit attitude, frankly: FUCK those FUCKING FUCKTARDS.
The best way to cover something like this is to show how well people handle it, how soon it's cleared up, how quickly the city goes back to functioning normally.
Terrorism is a tactic used to, well, inspire terror. Putting TERROR on the front page and trying to inside hysteria is just what these fuckers wanted.
I, for one, am going, "Fuck you," and think living in London or NY will be pretty fucking neat, cause then I can say, "Fuck you!" from ground zero.
Assholes.
Posted by Kameron Hurley
I think a lot of it is that feeling of "oh God, does that mean we're next?!?" but......and this is probably going to come out wrong, so please bear with me....I think it's partly that for many Americans since 9/11 there has developed a sort of specific response to the word "terrorist" and any phrase that contains that word, especially "terrorist attack" that wasn't quite as strong as it was before. It's like since 2001, all those phrases seem *personal* in a way they might not have previously.
Also, one thing that is really bothering me in reading over my normal daily list of blogs: I tend to read left to far left blogs, written by self-described liberals, progressives, etc., and I'm seeing a lot of responses to this that are highly emotional in a way that they aren't on those occasions when terrorist attacks in non-Western (especially non-English-speaking) countries occur. I mean, how many incidents of terrorism are there every year around the world? Far, far more than make the news, even. And often with as many or more casualties. Certainly with similar losses of life. Yet most of them barely rate notice.
I don't want to say in any way that Londoners don't deserve compassion, but it does seem that for many, they rate MORE compassion than certain other victims of attack with other nationalities warrant. And this is from lefties!
I know I'm nowhere near the first person to point these things out, but right now it's really disturbing me that the people who should be seeing through the bullshit and pointing out that yesterday was par for the course in many places are responding....well....in the way that Bush & Co. want them to: seeing this as somehow a bigger, more important type of tragedy.
Posted by Crys T
Crys-T, I, too had to figure out why this one hit me more than daily bombings in Baghdad, and honestly, it was pretty easy to figure: I found out about the bombings because my roommate e-mailed me early that morning and said that a mutual friend of ours living in London was "OK."
Feeling a deep sense of foreboding, I clicked to CNN.com, and sure enough, Oh shit.
Most people in America don't *know* anybody in Baghdad (I have two cousins there, one flying missions, one on the ground, and a couple of friends who've since come home, but most other people don't). However, you get to London, and oohhhh shit.
I know people in London. I had a cousin who got off one of the stations that were hit about a half hour before the first bomb went off... ehhhhhh...
So I think a lot of the reaction may also come from the "Oh, shit, I fucking *know* people in London" variety as well.
Posted by Kameron Hurley
I've been offline for a couple of days, which is why the late response.
I understand in your case the feeling of relief that someone you actually know is OK. Again, I don't want to come across as minimising what the London victims and those who care about them have gone/are going through.
But in all seriousness, I doubt most people in the US actually do know people in London. I do think a lot of the emotional content of the response is due to the fact that Americans tend to see the British (or the English anyway) as "Like Us" in a way that most other nationalities aren't.
Posted by Crys T
Kameron,
You said:
" Guilt? Oh, no, I totally disagree.
Look at the news, even talk to friends, and the general response isn't just, "Those fuckers, this is terrible," but is quickly followed by, "Shit, are they planning something here ?" "
I'll grant that I have no idea what TV news is portraying the response in the US as, although I'd hazard a guess that it's nothing about guilt.
Talking with friends and reading the blogs that I do, however--knowing that they are skewed pretty far left--I do hear about the guilt. So, it seems that we just travel in different circles in this regard.
A lot of my friends have expressed--in addition to the sentiments that you note--guilt about 'allowing' Bush Jr. to go to war, and thereby making the world a less safe place to live, whether the recent attacks have anything to do with the war in Iraq or not (and it would be strange for somebody to say that they had NOTHING to do with it, at this point).
Crys T, yea, maybe there's a "like us" feeling to it, but if the same thing happened in France, I don't know how much we'd care (fewer people know people, commute to France). Of course, we don't share a language with France... OK... say somebody bombed New Zealand. I dunno that we'd "care" so much... I'm not sure it's a whiteness/lanaguage issue as much as a "Shit, I've been there/know people there" thing... eh... I'm not thinking coherently this morning.
Jeff, eh, yea, I think we just run in different circles. Knowing the history of bombings in London and Britain (the reason they're well equipped to handle this, and the reason many people say the mood's more like "carry on" is because they've got a history of terrorist activity that we don't, largely the IRA. Wow, did I just fuck up that acronym? Oh, who cares, it's 6:30am).
Britain's always a target.
Posted by Kameron Hurley
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