On Crasstalk’s Day of Women Things, let’s take a moment to highlight some films that showcase strong female characters.
women
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The following is from our very own LimeCat, Didactics Tactics, who is currently traveling but still had something to say to The Ladies.
Dear Women-peoples,
I’d like to apologize on behalf of a large majority of the living, mouth-breathing species for which I am a card-carrying member.
Just how is it exactly, that you put up with us? Continue reading
When you first meet Janine, your overall impression is of softness – she speaks clearly in modulated Midwestern tones, her hair is a honey-colored cloud, and she has the kind of posture your Grandmother yelled at you for not having. Her casual clothes are sweet and feminine. Today she has on a denim skirt on which she hand-stitched a few tiny flowers, and a gauzy white eyelet blouse more befitting a high school sophomore than the 43 year old medical secretary she once was. And she’ll talk about that to me today, while she tells me all about what it’s like to be on public assistance for the first time in her life.
There’s the shame, of course, and we’ll get to that. But first, more about Janine. She moved to New York to follow a man. He was a contractor redesigning the billing system in the Midwestern hospital where Janine worked, and by their third date she was smitten. Continue reading
Askmen.com surveyed 70,000 men who claimed they would ditch a partner who gained too much weight. Only 20% of women made that same claim via Cosmopolitan, Askmen.com‘s sister site. Shocker! Continue reading
On a day when we remember the Founding Fathers of America, let’s try to remember the Founding Mothers, too.
Abigail Adams, our second First Lady, wife of John Adams. Abigail famously wrote her husband, as he served as Massachusetts’ representative to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, to ‘remember the ladies.’ Abigail was an enormous proponent of women’s property rights, among other things, long before it was cool. Continue reading
In a 5-4 vote today, the Supreme Court decided a lawsuit claiming Wal-Mart discriminated against 1.5 million of its female employees did not qualify as a class-action lawsuit and will not be going foward. According to the justices, the plaintiffs were unable to show Wal-Mart had any common policies in place for discriminating against women workers, and individual store managers were allowed to promote and give raises at the manager’s discretion.
Tired of looking at barren white walls? Want to liven up your place, but don’t know where to begin? Coffee and cigs and I believe that starting an art collection may be the solution you’ve been avoiding. Continue reading
Correction: Though the observations below were correct at the time of writing, they have now been rendered somewhat moot as Jezebel acknowledged International Women’s Day in an article posted at 12:35 P.M. My apologies.
In what must have surely been a lack of judgment borne of caffeine deficiency, I checked Jezebel for the first time in months this morning to see if they’d have a post about the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, seeing as how they are supposedly a feminist blog. The sound of crickets was as palpable as it was predictable, though they did have some lovely posts about Lily Allen’s eating disorder and how sharing photos on Facebook affects your self-image.
But I’m not here to compare Western feminism to the late Roman Empire or lament its decadent decline into a trendy and degenerate blogosphere variety that is devoid of any sense of history or intellectual underpinnings and relies mainly on shallow sarcasm and a fixation on policing the most vapid aspects of our culture as an attempt to justify and intellectualize one’s interest in them. Because today is not about that. Today is about the achievements of women worldwide, and the serious struggles many of them still face.
To say it’s ironic that many in the United States have never heard of this holiday would be an understatement. For although the first official celebration of International Working Women’s Day took place in 1911 across several German-speaking nations, its origins lie in the National Women’s Day organized and celebrated by the Socialist Party of America in 1909. Rosalind Rosenberg, a history professor at Barnard College traces it back even earlier, to a protest held on March 8, 1908 by 15,000 female garment workers in New York City’s Lower East Side. It was in 1910, at an international women’s conference in Copenhagen, that the day acquired its international character.
As the holiday gained recognition and popularity across Eastern Europe, particularly in the newly established USSR, it quickly lost ground in the United States, first with the unpopularity of the Socialist Party’s opposition to US participation in World War I, and later when the Red Scare made the word “Socialism” into anathema. But even in the Soviet Union, where I grew up, the socialist character of “8 Marta” was never in the forefront – at least no more than it was in any of our other holidays. Rather, we mainly celebrated it as an all-around “Women’s Day” – Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day rolled into one. But we also remembered the unimaginable sacrifices and hardships our mothers and grandmothers had endured during World War II and their invaluable contributions to our victory.
International Women’s Day was not formally recognized in the United States until it was established by the UN in the 1970’s, and even since then, it has barely registered on the radar. However, on the eve of today’s centennial celebration, President Obama not only called on Americans to observe the day, but proclaimed the entire month of March to be Women’s History Month. On the same day, Secretary of State Clinton launched the “100 Women Initiative”, gathering 100 women from 92 countries for a three-week professional exchange program in the US.
It is as important today as on any other day to take note of the injustices that still keep one-half of the world’s population in a subordinate state. But in light of recent events in Wisconsin and Ohio, I think it is also particularly relevant to remember this holiday’s origins as International Working Women’s Day, and to stand against the obstacles that workers – especially female workers – face in their struggles for a more just and equal society.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta go call my mom, and then my grandma.