feminist blogs

“No one has ever given me a good reason why we should obey unjust laws.” Helen Keller, 1914.

The same year that Helen Keller made the above statement, Margaret Sanger was publishing articles advocating birth control in her journal The Woman Rebel, and knowingly breaking anti-obscenity laws by doing so.

Margaret Sanger and Helen Keller shared more than a love of justice. The two women had remarkable lives that were intertwined in many ways.

The women’s names were first associated in 1915 when Keller publicly commented on the Bollinger baby case. In a manner similar to the Terri Schiavo controversy, the Bollinger’s story acted as a line in the sand for individuals to publicly proclaim their position on birth control and eugenics. And just like the Schiavo case, everyone in America seemed to have an opinion, making it one of the year’s biggest news stories.

Keller sympathized with the Bollinger’s and cited the Sanger’s efforts to help poor families control the number of children they had through birth control. Keller applauded the Sanger’s efforts and even blamed capitalists for trying to keep poor families in poverty with many children in order to supply cheap labor to their factories.

Keller concluded that “Only by taking the responsibility of birth control into their own hands can they roll back the awful tide of misery that is sweeping over them and their children.”

Some of the other ways the lives of these two remarkable women were connected included:

• Both joined the Socialist Party and Industrial Workers of the World within a year of each other.
• Both were outspoken pacifists and wrote for New York Call (a leading Socialist paper).
• FBI kept files on both women.
• Hitler burned both of their books in the mid-1930s.
• Both saw birth control as a way to liberate women.
• Both named in Time Magazine’s “Most Important People of the Century.”
• Both women had offices on the same block, just a door away from each other. Despite this, the women did not meet until 1944 when a mutual friend introduced them in upstate New York.

I find it odd and almost disturbing that these two politically influential women would not have made a stronger effort to meet. I find it hard to understand how and why they did not meet while working a mere door away from each other. After all, Helen Keller was one of the most respected Americans during the time when Sanger faced the most backlash for her birth control activism. Surely Keller would have made a formidable ally for Sanger. Both women were highly connected in liberal New York circles, leaving one to wonder about the reason for the delay in their introduction.

After they finally met in 1944 the two remained close friends, socializing often and constantly making public tributes to each other. The women died two years apart, Sanger in 1966 and Keller in 1968.

When we think of spies, the image of a man in a black trench coat, or a dashing gentleman in a tuxedo usually comes to mind. Women are not the first thing that comes to mind, and that’s perhaps why they make such excellent spies.

Aline Griffith was born in Peal River, New York in 1923. She was a model before she obtained a job with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was a precursor to the CIA. Griffith had been eager to join the military after the outbreak of World War II, but she was repeatedly rejected because of her age. Her age eventually became an invaluable part of her cover as a spy.

Griffith worked by day in the American code room of Madrid, enciphering messages, carrying out missions, and supervising a group of agents. At night she traveled in Spain’s elite social circles and used her social standing to glean intelligence from Nazi sympathizers. After the war, Griffith remained in Spain, married into the Spanish aristocracy and became the Countess of Romanones.

Griffith wrote three books about her life in espionage: The Spy Wore Red, The Spy Went Dancing, and The Spy Wore Silk.

For More Info:
People

I just finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  The book has been highly praised and rightly so.  Rebecca Skloot is a poised and passionate storyteller who doesn’t absent herself from that which she weaves, nor does she impose upon it.  The story is so compelling that she is at once [...]

Sometimes it really feels like this is the extent of some people's understanding of the importance of reclaiming women's history, doesn't it?

Please put up the transcript in comments if you've got the time!

If you’re interested, I wrote a piece for The Daily Mirror about my recent trip to the LAPD’s “Behind the Scenes” exhibit here in Vegas (which got a lot of media attention when the Kennedy family protested the inclusion of bloody clothing from Robert Kennedy’s shooting). My friend Larry was interested in the politics involved–whose personal tragedy gets put on public display? Were the displays as sensationalistic as he suspected they would be? He was particularly interested in how the case of the Black Dahlia (aka Elizabeth Short) would be presented, and what the LAPD would think was appropriate to display for public consumption.

So I agreed to go take a look. And I was horrified in so many ways. Absolutely stunned. You can find the piece here.

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The Sexual and Reproductive Rights Situation Report is a monthly column devoted to international policy issues and current events around these critical rights. Although each disaster is unique, the humanitarian community, including NGOs, government agencies and multilaterals, has begun to attempt to learn from previous disaster response efforts to improve upon outcomes.  After the earthquake in [...]

The women’s suffrage movement was characterized by many outrageous acts, but one of the most radical had to be a speech that was given by Sarah Walker Fitzgerald. The content of the speech wasn’t so radical – she was simply demanding that women be given the right to vote. What made this speech so scandalous was that Fitzgerald delivered it in her bathing suit.

Fitzgerald majored in political science at Bryn Mawr, where she founded the Student Government Association. This set the stage for Fitzgerald to become one of the first women elected to the House of Representatives after women finally obtained the vote. She served as an officer of several suffrage associations, and was a popular speaker on the suffrage campaign circuit.

In 1912, Fitzgerald argued that women were not equal to men, but that they should be given the right to vote in order to uphold the value of fairness.

The Government touches upon every phase of our home life and largely dictates its conditions while at the same time the woman is held responsible or them and is working with her hands tied behind her back . . . she asks the vote in order to do her woman’s work better.

For More Information:
Susan Walker Fitzgerald Papers at Bryn Mawr Special Collections
Wikipedia

2010 is the Bicentennial year for Margaret Fuller, one of the most influential women in American history. A committee of historians, authors, congregations, and activists is using the occasion to ensure that Margaret Fuller is not only remembered this year, but for many years to come.

The committee has planned a year of celebrations in several states to honor this fearless feminist. Readings, dramatic presentations, worship services, and guided tours of New York City, Boston, and Florence, Italy are among the events.

There are also several ongoing and upcoming exhibits in honor of Fuller’s Bicentennial. Additionally, Unitarian Universalist congregations nationwide will be holding “Margaret Fuller Sunday” worship services on May 23rd, Fuller’s birthday. (Fuller had a lifetime involvement with both Unitarian and Transcendental societies.)

So what’s all the fuss about?

Although currently less celebrated than Susan B. Anthony and other early feminists, Margaret Fuller was one of the most influential women in American history. Fuller is the proud “first American to…” of several impressive categories. Fuller’s book, Women in the Nineteenth Century, was the first book about women’s rights ever written by an American. Generations before Rosie the Riveter, Margaret Fuller was the first American female foreign correspondent, writing under combat about the revolution in Italy. In a time when colleges were closed to women, Fuller became the first woman to enter Harvard Library for research. She was also the first full-time book reviewer in the U.S. and the first woman writer for the New York Daily Tribune.

My favorite fun fact about Margaret Fuller: by the time she reached her 30s she had gained a reputation for being the best-read person in New England. I can think of fewer things I would rather have a reputation for than being well read!

Fuller’s supporters and friends included Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Bronson Alcott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Henry David Thoreau. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a close friend, cared deeply for Fuller and called her “my vivacious friend.”

While Fuller boasted an impressive range of supporters, her critics often accused her of being arrogant, outspoken, and aggressive. Sounds like my kind of woman!

Fuller’s book Women in the Nineteenth Century was very ahead of its time, criticizing marriage and other institutionalized forms of sexism. The book is thought to have greatly influenced the women’s rights movement, which began a mere three years later in Seneca Falls.

Yet Margaret Fuller did more than pay lip service to the cause of women’s rights. Fuller used her talent as a writer to bring attention to important social causes of her day. Among the causes she took up Fuller did an extensive investigation into the world of women’s prisons, even sleeping overnight at Sing Sing prison to complete research. Following her investigation she became a lifelong advocate for prison reform and halfway houses.

This amazing feminist pioneer truly deserves to be recognized, both for her Bicentennial and because of Women’s History Month. To learn more and to see how you or your organization can honor Margaret Fuller this year check out the following sites:

Margaret Fuller Bicentennial official site.

Full list of Bicentennial events.

Get Involved.

Margaret Fuller U.S. Postage Stamp Nomination Letter.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Laurie James, the chairperson of the Margaret Fuller Bicentennial. The interview will be featured in an upcoming post.

Our online host, Contexts magazine, is offering some free content, a selection of essays on aging, now through March 15th.  I borrowed the material below from the essay, “Facts and Fictions About an Aging America.”

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The average American is aging… and fast.  Advances in public health — especially related to childbirth, infant mortality, and infectious disease — have led to longer lives.   “The result is that death has been permanently shifted from a phenomenon among the young to one of the old.”  This means that the age distribution in the U.S. has shifted from one shaped like a neat pyramid (in 1900), to one shaped kind of like a house (in 2000), to whatever shape that is they’re predicting in 2050:

The great news is that “active life span is increasing faster than total life span.”  That is, even though we live longer, we spend fewer of our years sick or disabled than ever before.  This is called (so you can impress your friends) the “compression of morbidity.”

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International Women's Day has been celebrated for almost a century around the world. While it remains a more popular (and government sponsored) holiday abroad, many organizations and activists in the US also celebrate it.

International Women's Day has been observed since in the early 1900's, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

To read a timeline of International Women's Day history, go here.

For events happening in the United States, go here.