International Women's Day Is Tomorrow

       . . . . We arrive in Madrid tomorrow morning. This morning we received this email --

We kindly inform you that on Wednesday the 8th of March, due to the International Women’s Day, will take place a demonstration from 7pm which will cause major traffic disruptions in Paseo del Prado, Plaza de Cibeles and the Gran Vía up to Plaza de España. Therefore, from 4pm onwards these traffic diversions will apply for accessing the hotel area. We will be pleased to help you organizing your transportations if needed.

We in the USA do forget that International Women's Day is a very large observance in many countries, even though we don't bother much with it here

Europe: Demonstrations and rallies marking International Women's Day planned in European cities March 8

Events

Women's rights activists in parts of Europe will hold rallies and demonstrations to mark International Women's Day on March 8. Organizers have confirmed demonstrations in the following cities:

Austria, Vienna: Yppenplatz from 17:00

Belgium, Brussels: Place de l'Albertine from 14:00

France, Paris: Palais de Justice from 13:00

Germany, Berlin: Invalidenpark, 13:00

Greece, Athens: Klafthmonos Square to Syntagma Square from 13:00

Italy, Bologna: Piazza XX Settembre, 17:00

Italy, Milan: Piazza Duca d'Aosta from 18:00Italy, Naples: Piazza del Gesu Nuovo from 16:00

Italy, Rome: Piazzale Ostiense to Largo Bernardino da Feltre from 17:00

Italy, Turin: Piazza XVIII Dicembre from 15:30

Portugal, Lisbon: Alameda Dom Afonso Henriques from 18:30

Spain, Barcelona: Placa Universitat 18:3

Spain, Madrid: Atocha to Plaza de Espana from 19:00

Turkey, Istanbul: Taksim Square from 19:30

Turkey, Izmir: Cultural Center from 18:30

Further protests will almost certainly occur in additional towns and cities throughout Europe on March 8; demonstrations could take the form of marches through city centers in many locations. Attendance will vary by location but will reach into the thousands at larger actions. In some locations, women's rights activists may also take part in short-term strike actions, possibly causing business and transport disruptions.

Additional police will likely deploy to all demonstrations. Large crowds and associated security measures could prompt localized disruptions, including possible road closures and movement restrictions. Most demonstrations are likely to pass off peacefully, though isolated clashes between police and protesters cannot be ruled out.

Hmm.  They didn't say from which direction the possible violence might start.  One thinks of the cops and the suffragette demos back in the last century ....  Some serious beatings and torture from the cops dealt out to the women, including prison.

A friend in Madrid tells us that particularly around our hotel things are going to be very fraught tomorrow due to these reasons as described in the Washington Post:

Spain gov’t parties vie for feminist flag before Women’s Day

BARCELONA, Spain — Spain’s government presented Tuesday a plan to mandate gender quotas in elected government bodies and companies’ executive boards, on the eve of International Women’s Day when thousands will take to the streets of Madrid and other cities for women’s rights.

But the buildup to the annual women’s march comes amid a political spat inside Spain’s ruling coalition over which of the two left-wing parties best represents the feminist cause in an election year where Spain’s Right will try to reclaim power.

The Socialist Party of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the anti-austerity United We Can are sparring over one of their government’s banner causes: a sexual violence law proposed by the latter party that, while increasing support and resources for victims, has inadvertently led to the reduction of sentences of over 700 offenders since taking effect in October. ....

In London --

Celebrate International Women’s Day 2023 with the best things to do, events and activities happening across London

In the US capital International Women's Day will be virtual:

Various activities scheduled for International Women's Day in New York:

I Say, You Say, They Say, All Say "Abbott (Who Needs Costello)"

 

Why, yes, as we say, say we all, so says AOC

‘He is not familiar with a female body’

Cortez went on to explain the basic biology surrounding pregnancies, and that many pregnancies are often undetected at six weeks. She said: “In case no one has informed him before in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late on your period. And two weeks late on your period, for any person with a menstrual cycle, can happen if you’re stressed, if your diet changes, or for really no reason at all. So you don’t have six weeks.”

Cortez added: “He speaks from such a place of deep ignorance, and it’s not just ignorance. It’s ignorance that’s hurting people.”

Recall the New York woman who waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day said, "If men got pregnant abortion would be a sacrament."? That was Gloria Steinem They (the blobmedia) was determined to tell us, but Steinem said it was Floryence Kennedy who said, she had heard it in Boston from an elderly Irish lady taxi cab driver.

And even further back than that in New York there were Susan B. Anthony and Cady Stanton.  The staging of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson's opera re Anthony, The Mother of Us All in February 2020, was the last time I've been there.  Sigh.

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     . . . .  Brain's been in a funk the last several days.  I hope I'm coming out of this state in which I just don't wanna bother because why bother?  A weekend without a hurricane, without a hurricane watch, without a hurricane, all of which were disasters to so very many of our near and dear, after three in row, has helped. El V insisted we Go Out to observe our Carnalversary, which is Labor Day Weekend (why yes, that was a date that lasted the entire long weekend!) helped too.  There's just been so much death, delta, destruction, voter suppression, and all around wickedness in the last few weeks that my processing capacitors seemed to have needed to shut down for a while.  All I want to do is watch old Poirets on Acorn tv and read novels.

Books, we have them.  I brought home two from the library this afternoon.

I'm going to re-read Sharon Kay Penman's second Plantagenet novel Time And Change (2002), now I've finished the re-read of When Christ and His Saints Slept (1995) -- well that one I listened to while working out.  This one I'll read with mine own eyes. Henry II and Eleanor have courted and married, he's become king.  In this second novel Henry and Beckett's alliance-friendship fails in murder; Henry and Eleanor's brilliant erotic, romantic, strategic marriage alliance of equals goes to hell yet with love abiding. Can there be anything more dramatic that that?

The second novel I brought home is The Personal Librarian (2021) by Mare  Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. This historical fiction is centered upon the mixed race, passing for white, brilliant woman, who was John Pierpont Morgan’s first librarian, in charge of his magnificent collection in the building that is now the Pierpont Morgan Library.  I've been looking forward to reading this novel since late spring / early summer.

Delivery brought three non-fiction books today too.  

Toby Green's A Fistful of Shells: West Africa From the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (2019) a history of the African slave trades -- not only the Atlantic slave trade.  I wish we'd had this book back when we were writing the bodies as money sections of The American Slave Coast (2015).  

We received Ada Ferrer's latest book, just released, Cuba: An American History.  We will not be suprised if she gets the Pulitzer for it. She's speaking tomorrow night at a NYPL event, but tomorrow night is Postmambo Movie Night, so we cannot participate.

September 9 and 16, 2021

NOLA Reconnect Sessions and Postmambo Movie Night present

 

Cuba and Africa: Ivor Miller and The Rumba Kings [Some serious Congo Guitar Godding going on' here! ]

The bidirectional flow of music between Cuba and Africa, with Abakuá and Congo perspective

And, a book that can't be more New York if it tried, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destablized America and Produced Trump (2021) by Spencer Ackerman. OK, so it's not just about New York, but it is stuffed with what we experienced up close and personal.

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      . . . . As for watching, I'm continuing with King of Boys (2021), Season 1, Netflix Original and the re-watch of The Last Kingdom, 4 seasons, the best 'period' television going. 

Brain, heart, soul in funk though, so bad has it been, that I missed working out one day last week, I keep wanting My Life Is Murder, season 2 (2021), in sunny, colorful Sydney, featuring Lucy Lawless as police consultant, Alexa Crowe.  In the latest episode we here learn that even if successful enough for Las Vegas, Sydney? New Zealand? drag queens cannot compare to the stunning, talented, spectacular drag beauties we are used to. Also, by time the drag duet was to go to Las Vegas, Las Vegas was closed, but they evidently didn't know that, even though Alexa's assistant, Madison called Vegas to learn for who rooms were booked. 

Thus -- I'm most confused.  Supposedly they are now somewhere in New Zealand ... for ... reasons? Family?  But it still looks like Sydney.

We  learn Alexa has a brother in prison and her father was something of a crook and con man -- just like Miss Fischer's dad!  The bro is played by the dude who plays Sam on Netflix's northern California soap opera, Virgin River. He isn't convincing as an Aussie, New Zealander, whatever.  

Alexa and Madison

They Say that Renee O'Conner will show up in one of the episodes, so Xena fan service, I guess? Alas, only a single episode released per week, just as with Vera's season 11. So I began re-watching the earlier BBC Suchet Poirots too. 

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     . . . . This afternoon I officially began preparing for the long cold winter ahead.  I have discovered REI Co-op, an outdoor activities store.  This means they carry some serious cold temperature kit.  I started with the over the calf heavy duty merino sox, with extra layers on the soles.  I'll pick up more items like caps and more sox, particularly for el V in the next few weeks, as it couldn't be more convenient to do so, located between here and one of the library branches where I pick up ordered materials.

Keep on truckin' all we all!  

Suffragette - Film

The opening here of the film, Suffragette, I've been looking forward to for quite some time.  Here's an article that describes one of the reasons for my anticipation. The characters in the film are a mixture of historical personages in the movement, with additional fictional figures, as both our heroines and their opponents.

Helena Bonham Carter, evidently giving better than her character, Edith Ellyn, takes.

Trailer for Suffragette:

Suffragette opens here on Friday.  But on Friday I'll be leaving Charlottesville, VA where we did the New Dominion Bookstore on Thursday at 5:30, on the way to Raleigh - Durham, where we have several events for the next few days, including at but not exclusive to Duke and Chapel Hill, such  Quail Ridge Bookstore at 2:PM on Sunday, the 25th.

So no movie going for moi.  Maybe Halloween weekend there might be time? But so much packing and preparation for the following week, when we'll be out all week in Virginia, Maryland and D.C.  That week is going to be a killer, just like next week will be.

China Beach, Season 1 (1988) ABC

China Beach had four seasons. Only season one (1988), composed only of six episodes including the pilot, seems available from netflix.*  

It stars Dana Delany.

The location of the series is the Da Nang evacuation hospital and R&R center, at My Khe, nicknamed by the occupying forces, "China Beach." However, the locations for the video shoots were in California and Hawaii.

Inevitably, China Beach got associated with with the eternally beloved series, Mash (1972 - 1983)  -- which was transferred for television from the original setting Altman's 1970 Mash, which was intended to be read by all as Vietnam, not Korea.  It was savage, and most savage of all to women.

China Beach is dark, less satirical, very cynical and, while sharp and witty, unlike Mash, this series is not a comedy. Nor is it a "war" series.  The fighting, the consequences of which the hospital and the shipment center of dead bodies deal with most days and nights happens off screen.

Most of the focus is on the women at the hospital base, who are there to clean up the messes made by and of men, whether of their bodies, their lives, their quarters, and war – while also providing all emotional support, nurture and healing -- and of course, entertainment and recreation. Who thinks of doing any of this for them?  Generally speaking, tentatively and experimentally, only each other.

These experiences of the women who worked the bases as nurses, administrators, services personnel, such as the young Vietnamese woman at the community center which the Red Cross My Khe director, Lila, is attempting to build, are based on the book Home Before Morning (1983) written by former U.S. Army Nurse Lynda Van Devante.  They too have PTSD.   Lynda Van Devante died in 2002.

While anti-war in Vietnam protest is full blown, and both protest and the war are highly criticized at the hospital, on the base, and among the men as irrational, useless and terrible waste, feminism has not yet raised its terrible head in the military.

This dark cynicism about war and the top-bottom military organization  made this series, while popular with critics, unpopular with viewers ....

The episodes are written with the multiple characters in the traditional manner of network television, following each character's various fracas, conflicts and problems, as well as their shifting relationships with each other. However, there is arc in the telling over the season, as well as nuance and dimension in the conflicts that weren't as expected from a television series then. So, like Homicide, Xena and Babylon-5, China Beach too, might be one of the early indicators that a new golden age of television was dawning. 

The penultimate episode of China Beach is titled "Brothers."  It principally creates a denoument of two of the characters' through-lines of the season.

Michael Boatman plays Beckett on China Beach

Beckett is the African American grunt in charge of the base's GRU -- Graves Registration Unit. His job, dealing hands on with the dead, makes him a pariah among those who go in country.  Even his shadow falling on them might put them next in the body bag shipment home. Isolated mostly by the other soldiers, he has come to commune with "my men," the dead. The other principal arc is that of Cherry, the wide-eyed, blonde from Iowa, a Red Cross volunteer, who serves doughnuts in the canteen and talks to the men back from in country -- the young women who have volunteered for such jobs are called "Dolly Girls."  She came to Vietnam to find her missing older brother, whom she has hero-worshipped all her life.

Through Beckett we can figure out how humanity gets religion from death and the dead, transmitted from those who live with them, who take on the dead's terror and taboo. Beckett walks through worlds. When some of his "brothers" attempt to recruit his dead as transport for heroin, he won't do it, no matter how much he's appealed to in the name of brotherhood. "My men don't want this." They aren't going to participate in the killing of other brothers, in the burned over ghettos of back home.

Cherry's wide innocent eyes see the the truth, faces it with courage, that her beloved brother has become a criminal, preying on everyone, via violence and his enterprise of guns, drugs and whores. The episode is powerful, not sy sll sentimental. There's not closure. Nor is there redemption for dealers or for Cherry's brother.  There's no punishment either, other than the hell of their own heads. Both of these men, who don't know each other, have made by the corrupt enterprise that this war is, but they also made their choices to wallow in the filth, as much as Beckett and Cherry have made their other kinds of choices..

The vast amount of the series’s budget spent on music permissions.

Worth it though, particularly for the title cut – “Reflections,”  the first single released as Diana Ross and the Supremes, in the Summer of Love, July 24th, 1967. "Reflections" is also notable for being the first time Motown incorporated a bit of the psychedelic touch, as heard in the opening bars. Highly effective – every time the opener comes on my screen, I get a lump in my throat.  But the series, like the song, never ever overdoes psychedelia, slang or any of the 60's, or uses them in a cliched manner.  The reality everyone is in, there in one of the armpits of the world, is already sufficiently irrational.

The audio values of the China Beach production are brilliant -- loudness of the insect and amphibian life after dark, the churn and thud of choppers, screech, wail and thunder of various weaponry, the constant thump of fans, dehumidifiers, generators, and if, a character is lucky, a whistle of an air conditioner, are as omnipresent source audio as are the hit songs of the day spontaneously sung acapela, out of radios, on tapes, by cover entertainers, and, when the troops are lucky, the actual performers, such as Nancy Sinatra.

This season one of 6 episodes, including the pilot, make for a coherent and satisfying arc themselves, and are more than worth watching.  I sure wish I could see the rest of the other seasons.

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*  Might this have something to do with Time-Life having issued the entire run of China Beach, thus locking up the rights? 

Where Did the Sisterhood Go?

Was there ever a Sisterhood of powerful women?  Will there ever be?

In the New Yorker, Susan Faludi, who was born rather later and thus not a part of what she describes, runs down the breakdown of the first radical feminist movement(s), via the breakdown of one its most brilliant original leaders, Shulamith Firestone.  That was a large part of the problem: she, with Robin Morgan, Kate Millet and some others, did emerge via the meda as much as their own achievements from the nameless, unknown others in the movements, in NYC, Chicago and other cities.  That was a betrayal of the principles, some thought, and these women needed to be punished for it, forced to confess the error of their ways (too much communism without understanding it seems to me, and it is particularly shocking that feminists of the era would fall into ... such error ....).

Whether or not that was a betrayal, whether other women betrayed Firestone and Millet in particular (they both broke down), or whether it was their own minds and early experiences that betrayed them, that's not for me to say, or judge.

And neither does Faludi.  She just runs it down, to best of her ability, having read all the books, talked with everyone who would talk with her.

It is very sad, but also very interesting.  In many ways much of what goes on on the internet with mobbing and trolling, by both males and females, around social justice and professional matters, has reminded me of this dreadful failure. But no one is as much a target for these behaviors as are women and girls.

From Faludi's article:

The women were in Washington to attend the New Left’s Counter-Inaugural to Richard Nixon’s first Inauguration. Late in the protest, under a large tent set up near the Washington Monument, the antiwar leader Dave Dellinger, serving as master of ceremonies, announced, “The women have asked all the men to leave the stage.” They hadn’t, but his words gave a nasty impression, made worse by the sight of a paraplegic Vietnam veteran being carried off to make way for the “women’s libbers.” Marilyn Webb, a local feminist who was slated to speak, remembers thinking, “Holy God, how did I get here?” Webb was three sentences into “the mildest speech you can imagine,” she said, when men in the audience began to shout, “Take her off the stage and fuck her!” and “Fuck her down a dark alley!” All the while, she recalled, “Shulie is on my right saying, ‘Keep going!’ ” Firestone tried to speak next, but was drowned out by a howl of sexual epithets.

This is so much like what goes on these days when women object to being demeaned by popular entertainments or display expertise.

Then came the trashing by one's own:

Like a cancer, the attacks spread from those who had reputations to those who were merely strong; from those who were active to those who merely had ideas; from those who stood out as individuals to those who failed to conform rapidly enough to the twists and turns of the changing line.

“Trashing” had surfaced in New York Radical Women just weeks after the group’s founding.

As says one who was there and experienced the process:

Carol Giardina, who now teaches women’s studies and American history at Queens College, said, “I don’t know anyone who founded a group and did early organizing” who wasn’t thrown out. “It was just a disaster, a total disaster.” She was ousted from her Florida group by “moon goddess” worshippers who accused her of being “too male-identified.”

I was not where any of these things took place and I wasn't old enough either.  I came along later, after leaving the farm and getting to college, and wanting desperately to be a part of the women's movement, to join the Women's Studies departments and so on.  Fail, complete failure on my part. I was too different to fall in line.

I was a farm girl and not a single woman I ever met even realized there were farm women and farmers' daughters.  All of them had mysterious money from parents and family -- none of them had my financial concerns. There were other obstacles.  It didn't work out between us.

I didn't give up my principles, as far as they went.  I have loved / love many women, been betrayed by many women for no reason or great reason, and done the same myself surely.

But I cannot help continuing to wonder, what I wondered at the top:

Was there ever a Sisterhood of powerful women?  Will there ever be?

Or, being women, always controlled by that fact, will there ever be only cliques,  excluders and includers, mean girls and the other girls? Are we women of the 'comfortable' classes and prospects, of whatever age and experience, always doomed to re-enact the 4th grade?\

Sometimes I consider whether we women are terrible judges of each other's mis-steps, failings and sins.  We will forgive our lovers, our partners, our children, our parents, but we will not forgive each other.  Why, I wonder.  Why.

All We Ladies Prefer A Pros-ti-tute! To You! Hoo Hoo!

Ny-ah Lord Grantham, you fool.

Fool he is, but he's so frackin' entitled he's not embarrassed he's a fool. Rather he is outraged that certain person might think being a fool is a negative characteristic of his lordly grand self.This is the only episode in all the seasons that contains actual content, by golly.

We are speaking of Downton Abbey, episode 5 of season 3. I'd seen the earlier episodes this fall over there, and what else is there to do in a blizzard trapped with a Pitifullness From Sickness el V, who though very sick is not in the least quiet? (Thank goodness for Scandal, though, which, for sheer entertaining preposterousity cannot be beat!)

Ha-ha Grantham, we point and laugh at you. It was grand that none of the women would obey either Robert the Lord or Carson the Butler in shunning Ethel the Former Pros-ti-toot-toot.

It's the men who are morally outraged by Ethel's period as a sex worker, who insist she cannot be re-enter 'decent' society even though she's no longer a sex worker. Pray, tell, who do these men think are the customers who demand pros-ti-tutes as part of the free market?  Those customers certainly are not Mrs. Hudson or Mrs. Patmore, though surely at least one footman (not Thomas, of course) avail themselves of such services. Let us not forget how poor Ethel got herself in the family way in the the first place, and who was responsible, and forcing her then into becoming a pros-ti-toot.  Gads, they prolong the enunciation of the word prostitute, and repeat the word, in every other utterance. It comes to mind that this is, in it's own context, quite like QT's childish delight in having his characters scream, shout, drawl, order, etc. the n-word in every godayemed sentence.

So the content of this episode dramatizes the long known facts that men expect and utilize women to keep women in line with what men have decreed is women's acceptable behavior.  If the women of the community do not condemn a 'bad' woman, what ever shall men do to keep all the rest of the women from rebelling about -- well, everything? While, of course, continuing to have -- and even create themselves -- the constant supply of 'bad women' to service their constant market demand. But then, as already proven, Robert the Lord is too stupid to understand the market or finances or economics or anything else -- and, further, Robert Our Lord is proud of his stupidity, considering it a signalling virtue of his class superiority and his gender supremacy.

Stupid Robert the Lord has been a financial investment fool, an estate management fool, a medical childbirth fool, a father fool (this business about Edith not being allowed to write for the papers), a religious bigot fool (my God, baptize my granddaughter a Catholic -- this shall never be allowed because, and we quote, "... Catholics all have something of the foreign johnny about them")  He's offended every single woman of his family and everyone else with his asshatness. So this was a satisfying episode additionally because finally we see the actress playing Lady Cora do something other than smirk, "Oh, Robert!"  I'm sorry Cora reconciled so soon with Our Lord.  It's implausible, as implausible as Matthew being paralyzed and then he wasn't any more.

But it was such a joy to see every woman he's offended, and even his mother, who he hasn't offended, ignore his commandments about Ethel the Pros-ti-toot. Ha hah hah.

Boudica!

Hey Ho HahHah!

Did Our FLOTUS Rock - Or - DID SHE ROCK! + Ted Strickland

Her speech last night in support of her husband.

Though the truth is, I always prefer her. But he does try to live up to her expectations. :)

She really was good. And so beautiful. Also, one who is as addicted to nail polish as I am could not but help noticing her choice of a non-trad nail polish color. She's the best First Lady I've ever experienced. Jackie Kennedy was adored, from all I read, but I wasn't there, you know? This First Lady -- not only am I there, but I have enough life experience to See her in her various aspects.

And boy, did former governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, tear it up and set it on fire! Nobody hates reThugs more than Ohio Democrats and activists, I swear. Having some personal contact due to our Big Name Fashion Designer sort-of-friend (it's a member of her immediate family who is the real friend) with the Ohio Democrat politicos, I can vouch for that. It's all very person to them.

The floor of the auditorium was as diverse as it could get, inclusive from yarmulkas to head scarves to bald heads and maned heads and you name it. The one group though that seemed fairly scarce in crowd filled with inter-racial couples and same sex couples, older women as well as the general over-all sense of youngish, was white men.

They seem to have a decent campaign slogan: "Forward, not back!" It kinda rolls. It tells the truth too: same sex marriage, end of don't ask don't tell so you can honestly be yourself in the military; it recognizes the reThug voter suppression activity (Ohio is a ground floor state for that, and they've been working on voter suppression and outright election stealing since the 2000 campaign), as well as the war on the settled law about women's reproductive rights.

So the Dems are rolling good convention. It's sad they can't point to more than "Saved the auto industry" re the economy. Yet that stimulus bill, which included the tax cut on small business and under $100,000 incomes really did save a huge number of us. Just not enough of us. They can do better. One hopes that they will, if we give them four more years. Because, you know the reThugs will have been so over-contributed by the 1% and even the .01%k, and the Dems will be so out-spent, that if the Dems win, they've got some serious leverage with which to break the gridlock in D.C. by The Party That Just Says NO. NO To Everything, except hatred of women and everyone who isn't a white man, and war, more war, everywhere on everything, and stealing from everyone else to inflate the obscenely bloated wealth of the masters of the financial and corporate crime syndicates.

I began my attention to the first night of the Democratic Convention with NPR, and switched to CNN on my computer for the speeches.
NPR -- as usual, what stooges and plants for the ReThugs they are. They were shocked at what Strickland included in his speech, such as voter repression and ever using the word "Lies." "That's outside the boundaries," the NPR paid stooges whispered. They even managed to sneer a bit at the First Lady's admiration for hers and the President's families. They need to be fired.

Because this is what is wrong with our politics and how it has been going wrong for such a long time in this nation. It's wholly owned by the Fat Cat Corporation of America, and refuses to even recognize a lie as a lie, much less call out a lie as a lie. Unless it is as a lie about someone like Shirley Sherrod -- a Democrat, a black activist, a woman, appointed by our first black president -- four for one!

Angry Black Lady and Team Uterati -- Reproductive Rights & Other Matters of Women

Team Uterati ("TeamU") was founded and conceived by Imani Gandy (AngryBlackLady ) as a community-based organizing tool for feminists fighting for equal rights and reproductive justice. Frustrated that up-to-date information regarding various anti-women state policies and legislation is not readily and easily available online, Imani (Angry Black Lady) sought to compile information about specific anti-choice, anti-women's health, and anti-reproductive rights legislative measures being advanced in various states. What started as a spreadsheet on Imani's blog, Angry Black Lady Chronicles, became the TeamU Wiki: a robust database which ultimately will contain every piece of anti-choice and anti-reproductive rights legislation at the state and federal level, as well as the legislators responsible for that legislation.
TeamUWiki is also a community, allowing activists and supporters of women's rights to socialize and organize, forming the lasting bonds that make long-term activism efforts more effective. TeamUWiki is the next step in a grand tradition of women's rights activism, bringing the radical can-do spirit of the Suffragists, the Second Wave, and the Third Wave into the twenty-first century to carry on the fight for equal rights.
"What is TeamU? Glad you asked! This is the website where you can archive and find all the information you'd want to know about those nasty anti-woman bills that keep popping up like Whack-A-Moles all over the country. Check out our databases."

It's an incredible site that gives you state-by-state information on the status of bills, regulations and laws that are anti-woman, anti-contraception, anti-civil rights of women throughout the country.

Frank Rich, *The Republican War on Women

In New York Magazine. It's long. There's a lot to say about this hydra-headed war the rethugs & / or tbaggers are waging on the X chromosome bearers.

From page two of the article:

Note that she [meaning Peggy Noonan] found Limbaugh “destructive” not because he was harming women but because he was harming her party. But the problem wasn’t that Limbaugh confused the issue. His real transgression was that he had given away the GOP game, crystallizing an issue that had been in full view for weeks. That’s why his behavior resonated with and angered so many Americans who otherwise might have tuned out his rant as just another sloppy helping of his aging shtick. It’s precisely because there is a Republican war on women that he hit a nerve. And surely no one knows that better than Noonan, a foot soldier in some of the war’s early battles well before Rush became a phenomenon. In her 1990 memoir about her service in the Reagan administration, What I Saw at the Revolution, she recalls likening Americans who favored legal abortions to Germans who favored killing Jews—a construct Limbaugh wouldn’t seize on and popularize (“feminazis”) until Reagan was leaving office and Anita Hill and Hillary Clinton emerged on the national stage.

Clover Adams and Kate Chopin's *The Awakening*

I’ve been reading deeply in Henry Adams’s work as part of research for The American Slave Coast, particularly his nine volume history of Jefferson and Madison’s administrations, The History of the United States of America, and all he has to bring to them around the Constitution, the Louisiana Purchase, the San Domingue Revolution and the War of 1812. An historian whose great grandfather was the second POTUS, whose grandfather was the POTUS ousted by the Jacksonians and notable among the very many Bloody Andy’s personal nemeses -- Jackson referred to John Quincy Adams as the Arch-Fiend of Hell -- whose own father was a co-founder with Charles Sumner of the abolitionist Free Soil Party, Henry Adams brings the perspective of the actors in these subjects that other historians cannot.

As well as history Adams wrote two novels, Democracy, during the happy days of living in Washington D.C. with his wife Clover, and Esther, when they both were no longer as happy -- and neither of them really knew why they were no longer as happy. Partly because of Clover's nature, and partly due to Henry's. I keep seeing them quite like Newland and Mary Archer in Wharton's The Age of Innocence.


Esther was published in 1884, modeled to a degree on Clover's frustrations with the condition of being a woman in this world that allows so little scope for independent action and agency. Clover Adams famously committed suicide in 1885 by drinking one the chemicals that she used to develop her famous photographs. Though Esther is a painter, while Clover was a photographer, there are too many similarities in their condition not to notice them. One then thinks of Kate Chopin's The Awakening in which the artist- protagonist, Edna Pontellier, commits suicide, the reason for which has remained a puzzle for many readers to this day.

There are many reasons Kate Chopin may have known about both the novel Esther and Clover Adams's suicide, if only because at some point her social circles likely included, if not personal acquaintances, someone who knew someone who knew the Adamses and their sad history.
Natalie Dykstra's Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life (2012),covers the novel Esther in pp. 151 - 159.There's no mention of Kate Chopin or The Awakening's Edna in this biography of Clover Adams. Once one knows both sets of work and circumstances, it is hard not to speculate.

There are problems with this biography. As one example, Dykstra says Henry Adams practiced journalism after his post-Harvard study in Europe in 1859, but he did not. Henry says in his Education of Henry Adams that he read law in a prestigious Boston law firm from which he was rescued by his father, Charles Francis Adams. His father had been called upon by Lincoln to become minister of the U.S. Legation in London, charged with the mission to keep Britain from recognizing the Confederate States of America, and get the Liverpool shipyards to stop building ironclads for the CSA. Charles Francis Adams took Henry, his youngest son along as his private secretary, a well-established Adams’s pattern by then.
Nevertheless this work is a useful addition to the reader looking to learn more of the culture and manners of polite society in the Gilded Age.

It's International Women's Day. It's the Full Moon. It's A Massive Solar Flare

Is it the Full Moon? Is it A Massive Solar Flare? Why is this country so insane?


It's barely March and:

[ ... 430 abortion restrictions ... have been introduced into state legislatures this year, which is pretty much in the same ballpark as 2011,” says Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy group that focuses on health and reproductive rights. ]

These are the latest:

[ The Texas Tribune/New York Times: Women In Texas Losing Options For Health Care In Abortion Fight

The cuts, which left many low-income women with inconvenient or costly options, grew out of the effort to eliminate state support for Planned Parenthood. Although the cuts also forced clinics that were not affiliated with the agency to close -- and none of them, even the ones run by Planned Parenthood, performed abortions -- supporters of the cutbacks said they were motivated by the fight against abortion (Belluck and Ramshaw, 3/7).

And lawmakers in New Hampshire and Georgia pass legislation that exempts religious institutions from having to provide contraception coverage in their health plans --

Reuters: New Hampshire House Passes Birth Control Exemption

New Hampshire's Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to exempt religious institutions from having to include contraceptive coverage in health insurance plans. The move was the latest in a national effort by Republicans opposed to provisions of President Obama's 2010 national health care reform law that would require all insurance plans -- even those sponsored by religious institutions -- to provide coverage for birth control pills and other contraception for women (McClure, 3/8).

Many San Carlos patients struggle to reach Edinburg from their homes in

impoverished neighborhoods called colonias. Maria Romero, a housecleaner with four children, who had a lump in her breast discovered at the San Carlos clinic, has no way to get there.

Ms. Parra, 33, the mother of five, managed to borrow a car to get to Edinburg after a pap smear at the San Carlos clinic indicated she might have cervical cancer. Further tests showed she was cancer-free.

Both women worry about getting birth control pills; the clinic may now have to charge them up to $20 for a month’s supply.

“I will have to go without,” Ms. Parra said as she left an English class at a community center and was walking to pick up her two youngest children from a Head Start program. “If I get pregnant again, God forbid.” ]

This is a very bad country to live in if you're female, a child and / or poor.

Yet some faux naif will write articles wondering why women don't get really good agency roles in superhero flix.

The Deep Resentment of Having to Think About It: Rush Limbaugh and Sandra Fluke

This is the title of a well-written, carefully thought out essay on the ZunguZungo website. Here is the heart of "The Deep Resentment of Having to Think About It: Rush Limbaugh and Sandra Fluke":


[ " This is a small point, but still worth making: Rush Limbaugh didn’t attack Sandra Fluke because of her or anyone else’s sexual behavior. Given his personal history — and his more general ideological proclivities — it’s fair to say that he is vigorously protective of behaviors which are, as a function of what they are, fundamentally dependent on women who behave precisely in the manner of the straw-woman he is attacking. That’s not what this is about. Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut” because she asserted her right to speak publicly about and make publicly thinkable a set of experiences and problems that he has a very direct and personal interest in excluding from public space



The broader ideological question which Congress was ostensibly discussing — the question of whether a religious institution can object to covering forms of medical care on the basis of religious belief — is also a red herring. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity neither know, nor care, about the intricate and unstable conjunction of government, insurance, and medicine that might make this a tricky debate if grown-ups were ever to debate it. And the fact that Limbaugh doesn’t even understand how female contraception works doesn’t diminish his rhetorical position a whit. On the contrary, he is defending precisely his right not to know how it works (or what things like Ovarian Cysts are), and the right of those for and to whom he speaks to be similarly ignorant. He is defending his right for that to be a woman’s problem, one which he (and a “we” constituted in his image, as his public) doesn’t need to be concerned. And so he needs to attack Sandra Fluke, personally, all the more because she wasn’t even going to talk about herself. By speaking on behalf of “women,” she threatened to render “women” a member of the body politic. Slut-shaming her — making it about her, personally — changes the subject from a generalizable woman’s public concern to a specific set of personal desires (which he can then moralize about, and use to silence her


Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, in short, because her voice threatens to reconstitute the nature of the American public: if she were heard — if the specificity of woman’s health were publicly speakable in the hallowed halls of Congress — then we could no longer pretend that this is simply an abstract and legalistic question of “religion,” “government,” and “medicine.” It would suddenly be apparent that the female public and the male public actually have different interests and concerns when it comes to issues like sex and contraception, that contraception means something different to people with different reproductive organs. The fact that (heterosexual) men’s enjoyment of consequence-free sex is dependent on the privilege of those consequences being borne by someone else might become thinkable, if those “someone else’s” had a public platform to speak about it. " ]

This post, "Won't Anyone Think of the SexBots?!" from Athena Andreadis's Astrogator's Logs, illuminates these issues even more brightly. It's a long essay too, and the discussion that follows must also be read.
Athena Andreadis, a molecular biologist, is very concerned with women as writers and protagonists and characters in Science Fiction. She points out in the response - discussion section about blaming women for the decline of science in Science Fiction, this, which is also how the southern states managed to keep the poor(er) whites aligned with the minority slaveowning wealthy power elite, despite the visible harm this economy did to the poor(er) white worker:
[ " As Francesca points out, the persistence of Michael Flynn, the transhumorists, MRAs and other suchlike on patently self-serving definitions of feminism speaks to a deep-seated and abiding fear of losing unearned perks awarded automatically and collectively to the gender based solely on visual inspection of primary genitalia. If even the worst man (by whatever definition, including resemblance to the local tribal god) is assumed to be better than even the best woman, it’s easy to see why that would be hard to give up. " ]

And then there's this, "Male Hysteria: A Comprehensive Handbook," on the I Am Aware of My Own Hypocrisy blog. The (male) author begins with this:

[ " Caveat: The following PSA can’t be considered sexist or biased against men in any way, shape of form. My male slave said it isn’t sexist*, so it can’t be. Charges and accusations thereof will be ignored or laughed at.


*Granted, I had to adjust the nipple clamps and use the whip a few more times, but he said it. I win!

Hysteria has for centuries been proclaimed a condition that affects only women, but a male version does exist and it is not only a lot more virulent and a lot more common, but also a lot more dangerous. Its correct name is testeria.

CAMaB = coercively assigned male at birth.

Testeria. n. Medical condition that affects only CAMaB, but disproportionately white CAMaB among the 12-48 age group. It involves estrogen levels dropping drastically. As a result, without nothing to stop it, cortisol levels go up. To prevent irreparable damage to the nervous system, the body creates antibodies. These antibodies are so aggressive that they eat brain cells, causing the patient to say and do things that defy common logic and, more often than not, endanger the patient and those around him.

Physical symptoms: excessive sweat, trembling hands, dialted pupils, flustered face, clenched teeth.


Psychological symptoms: persecution complexes, tendency to get defensive, diminished capacity of reasoning, verbosity, tendency to repeat oneself, persistent self-aggrandization, tendency to see the world at large in terms of black and white, solipsism. For some reason, which remains still unexplained, this condition affects disproportionately CAMaB in developed countries. " ]

Does this not describe to the nth degree figures such as Breitbart, Limbaugh, etc.? Not to mention the Apostles of Disunion ....

The Bloody, Twisted, Inverted World of Twilight + Discovery of Witches

"Violent Vampire Sex, Demon-Babies and Overwhelming Female Desire. Twilight is saturated with sexist tropes--to the point of being disturbing. But that disturbing element is compelling, too."

I have been thinking about Twilight a lot because of the author of A Discovery of Witches appears to have studied it carefully. Deborah Harkness seems to have broken out all the parts that seem to be the most appealing wish fulfillment for the adolescent reader, and then transmuted them to an adult woman's fantasy wish fulfillment.

Sarah Seltzer at Alternet recently has been thoughtfull about Twilight, sparked by the professional obligation to screen the latest Twilight movie franchise:

[ " But as for the substance of her wants, therein lies the perversely haunting twist. I’d argue that Bella's desires are direct responses to the patriarchy we actually live in. In fact, Meyer has created for her heroine an inverted version of our unjust society. In this invented, inverted world, Bella is allowed to want sex, and vocalize it, and initiate it, while her partner is the gatekeeper who makes sure she is safe and married before she gets “hurt.” In her world, the men around her urge her to abort her fetus for her own safety, but she gets to “choose” to deliver it even though it kills her. In her world, her boyfriend can urge her to attend college and better herself while she can push for an early marriage--and be right! In her world, she can reject her body and trade it in for a new one that is agile, strong, lithe. Her choices are consistently to fall into the arms of the patriarchy and trust that it will catch her, and her faith is validated: she gets a perfect husband, angelic child, new body.

What if we could do this, the fantasy suggests? What if we could just will ourselves to accept the prescribed roles society gives us (damsel in distress, object of protection, vessel for childbearing) and make it okay through the power of our wills? And what if the men in our society were horrified by their power: physical, social, sexual, and curbed it themselves and we didn't constantly have to be on our guard? " ]

It's interesting in terms of fantasy and what women want to compare and contrast Bella with the witch Diane. Bella starts as human. Diane starts speshul as can be, a witch, a witch is even speshul among witches. But Diane is an adult with a highly successful career, who in childhood, eschewed her witchy  heritage of specialness. Or so it seems. What makes it so interesting a contrast and comparison is what Diana wants vs what Bella wants -- what an intelligent, educated, curious, adult woman wants is very different from what an incurious, uneducated, non-disciplined teenager wants.

A Discovery of Witches (2011), Book 1 of The All Souls Trilogy is the most engrossing sf/f  (as opposed to sf or f -- sf/f here referes to a novel that is both science fiction and fantasy) I've read in some time. It's only rival for excellence is in this cross genre of science fiction and fantasy is this year's World Fantasy Award winner, Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor.

Now, many whose judgment I tend to agree with have hated A Discovery of Witches and made great big fun of it. I had read the first chapter excerpt on Tor, and what we got from that seemed to confirm that this was yet another version of the Twilight tiresomes: the special snowflake helpless as can be but firming her feisty chin in determination to take care of herself instead of allowing the gorgreous, brilliant, unbelievably ancient, powerful and wealthy vamp protect her -- and who loves her because -- why? since the love object is a zero, lacking all qualities other than shallow and ignorant, without curiosity, intelligence, education, knowledge of the world, interests or achievements.

But that's not what Discovery of Witches turns out to be. For once we have two lovers who are equally matched, who don't pull that I hate you but I love you o what will I do garbage. In fact, that they are matched equalities and agencies who truly love each other actually matters to the plot -- and not in that simple-minded when will they do it with each other? way. These are The Lovers, that you feel are worthy of the Tarot Major Arcana card named "The Lovers."

A Discovery of Witches is a fiction infused with intelligence. It's well-written, well-structured. For once I'm not going "They should have cut out at least 125 pp. of the 579 pp. that make up this novel."

I am enthusiastically looking forward to the second volume, Shadow of Night, which comes out next summer. I'm expecting this second volume in the projected trilogy will not fall into 'disappointing trilogy middle volume' syndrome as Deborah Harkness is highly intelligent, deeply and broadly educated, and she's also an experienced author.

Later I'll try to break down in particulars and specifics why this book worked so well for this reader at least. A lot of it has to do, alas, with all the wrongs it did not commit, that are embedded in almost all fantasy novels now, it seems, whatever variety of fantasy they are. But even more has to do with what all the rights the book commits.

*Sleeping Beauty* - Catherine Breillat’s Film Retelling of the Fairy Tale

Catherine Breillat opened her projected triology of fairy tale films with "Bluebeard." She plans to conclude the trilogy with "Beauty and the Beast." Her middle filmed fairy tale is "Sleeping Beauty."  The New York Times Movie section review includes two clips from Breillat's "Sleeping Beauty," one of which is exclusive to the Times.

"The story of the adolescent princess cursed to fall into a deep sleep has been told by Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm and many others, including of course Walt Disney, who gave her a blond mane and not a single memorable song. Ms. Breillat’s version begins similarly to Perrault’s, with the birth of a princess. A wizened, cackling fairy greets the child by cursing her, declaring that she will die on her 16th birthday after being pricked by a spindle. Fortunately three good fairies flutter in, and with a few waves of their sparkling wands change fate: instead of dying, the princess will sleep. Then Ms. Breillat waves her own magic wand and takes the princess somewhere completely unexpected.


As she did in “Bluebeard” Ms. Breillat puts a child at the center of “The Sleeping Beauty,” almost as if she wanted to get her hands on the girl (who can be seen as a stand-in for all girls) before the fairy tale has its way with her. In her version of “Bluebeard” Ms. Breillat switches back and forth between two young sisters shivering along to the gruesome tale (one is reading it, and the other is listening, sometimes reluctantly) and two young women playing parts in a period version of the story. Here the figure of the girl is more active (or so it initially seems). Instead of reading the fairy tale she plays the central role: On her 6th (rather than 16th) birthday, Anastasia pricks her hand and then, surprisingly, she sets off."

Watching this you cannot but hope this could be part of the antidote to the Pink Princessfying Poisoning of our daughters and grand-daughters that appears to have no end in sight, particularly as women's achievements to be fully integrated equally into all parts of our economic, cultural, legal and political systems keep rolling back at ever more rapid pace (just here in the U.S. more women have lost their jobs in the public and private sectors than men, and have a harder time finding a new job -- as men are now being hired in their place even in the sorts of work that has traditionally been filled by women).  However, I have no hopes for that in this nation, at least, because here  the little girls, under six, who are mass infected with Pink Princess, via Disney, and Disney animations never fall out of favor.  Breillat's "Sleeping Beauty" is in French, with English subtitles and many of the little girls six and under not be able to keep up with the English subtitles.

Ah, well, at least little girls in the U.S. will arrive in the poorhouse wearing rags in that fetching filmy pink.