Suffragettes and tea rooms

Who knew that researching the tea rooms where suffragettes held meetings would provide such a rich vein of historical information? Elizabeth Crawford at the Woman and her sphere blog has been researching this, and appeared on Radio 4 to discuss it.

• Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: The Eustace Miles Restaurant – and the Tea Cup Inn - this post looks at the cross-over between vegetarianism, socialism, the suffragette movement, and references in passing a lady giving a talk on "The Religion of the Great Mother".
• Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: The Gardenia Restaurant - this was a Quaker establishment and was involved in the temperance campaign, the suffragette movement and campaigns for social justice.
• Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: The Criterion Restaurant, Kate Frye, and the Actresses’ Franchise League - the Actresses' Franchise League and the Women Writers' Suffrage League met here
• Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes and Tearooms: Alan’s Tearooms - the proprietor of this tearoom was Marguerite Alan Liddle, whose sister Helen was imprisoned for a month in Strangeways prison in Manchester. Among other groups, the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society and the Forward Cymric Union (a militant Welsh suffrage society) met here.
• Suffrage Stories: The Suffragette 1911 Census Boycott: Where and What Was the Aldwych Skating Rink?

A bluestocking hero

It will soon be time for Finding Ada Day 2012. it's on 16 October. Start researching your favourite women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, medicine) now.

Alex Brown, administrative student in the Knowledge Transfer Group at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. He is also studying for the MSc Science Communication at the University of the West of England.

Meanwhile, a splendid chap called Alex Brown has blogged about how much he hates sexism in science. He is the new Bluestockings' hero. Oh yes. The blogpost also includes some rather fabulous pictures and videos of how to paint your fingernails in a sciencey way.

He makes the point that sexism in science is what is driving women away from it, diminishing the diversity (and therefore the creative potential due to different perspectives being applied) of science. His ire was aroused by a sexist comment posted on a photo of some fingernails painted with mathematical symbols in a science group on Facebook.

And I thought I would round up all my Finding Ada blogposts in one place.

• Wendy Hall
• Lisa Barone
• Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
• Hedy Lamarr
• Anita Borg

Great fictional tomboys

Following the excellent article by Dawn H Foster in The Guardian about why being a tomboy is completely marvellous, and praising some fictional tomboys, I thought it would be fun to make a list of great fictional tomboys. Here are my favourites:

• Nancy and Peggy Blackett in Swallows and Amazons
• Petrova Fossil in Ballet Shoes, Theatre Shoes and Movie Shoes
• Jo March in Little Women 
• Kaylee Frye in Firefly
• Idgie Threadgoode in Fried Green Tomatoes
• George in The Famous Five 

 Can't get enough tomboys? Here are some other people's lists:

• Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of fictional tomboys
• For Books' Sake lists three favourite tomboys 
• Entertainment Weekly has 24 favourite TV and movie tomboys

But what does being a tomboy mean?

• GLBTQ encyclopedia explores the history and sociology of the concept of a tomboy
• A thoughtful article from Feminist Philosophers on tomboys and gender identity
• Project Muse has an excerpt from The Story of Jo: Literary Tomboys, Little Women, and the Sexual-Textual Politics of Narrative Desire by Karin Quimby

Feisty fighting females

The British Pathé blog has a wonderful post entitled Ladies Who Lunge: Women Fighting Through History (great title too). It features early film clips of women stage fighters doing boxing, judo, and so on. I had rather hoped that it was about women fencers, which would have been a very bluestocking activity, but nevertheless these gals certainly have gallantry and gumption!

Women's rights around the world

The United Nations has just published a report on women's rights around the world, and The Guardian has created an interactive timeline of when women got the vote in various countries around the world, as this is a key indicator of women's rights being taken seriously.

However, women's rights more generally are still a work in progress:

More than half of working women in the world, 600 million, are trapped in insecure jobs without legal protection, according to the first flagship report of the new agency UN Women. A similar number do not have even basic protection against domestic violence, it finds, while sexual assault has become a hallmark of modern conflict.

Suffragette surveillance photos

BoingBoing has a great blogpost about surveillance photos taken by Scotland Yard of suffragettes in 1912.

The original article from which the photos came was in the BBC Magazine in 2003.

"On the one hand, the state considered them dangerous terrorists, but on the other it simply did not know what to do with them," says Ms Tulloch.

"The police and prison officials were so worried about what to do they made sure that every step they took was authorised by the Home Office. In the records you can find daily communications between the governor of Holloway Prison and Whitehall. In that era it was extremely rare for government to communicate so quickly."

But the police surveillance did nothing to stop the movement - nor did it dim the growing support they were finding in the country.

There's also a potted history of the suffragettes on the BBC site.

Alan Turing revisited

There's a fascinating blogpost about Alan Turing by Christopher Pressler, who is descended from another hero of Bluestockings, Charles Babbage - he who encouraged the Enchantress of Numbers, Ada Lovelace Byron.

Do peruse it, gentle readers.

Mary Wollstonecraft talk

On Sunday 22nd May, after morning service at 11 am in the chapel of Harris Manchester College (Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TD), there will be a talk at 1 pm by Lyndall Gordon, the author of Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, concerning the life and times and Unitarian connections of the 18th-century feminist (wife of William Godwin, mother of Mary Shelley, and “the foremother of much modern thinking about education and human rights, as well as about women's rights, female sexuality and the institution of marriage"). Please bring your own sandwich lunch; for directions to the college, consult the Chapel Society website.

Happy International Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day - sadly hardly even noticed in the UK. It has been celebrated around the world since 1910. In Russia and Italy, the mimosa or Silver Wattle flower is associated with International Women's Day.

The Bluestocking would like to wish all our readers a happy International Women's Day - and believes that we should continue to celebrate International Women's Day until gender equality is achieved.

Daniel Craig and Dame Judi Dench have teamed up for a two-minute film highlighting the need for gender equality:

Dench rattles through a grim list of statistics detailing continuing inequality of the sexes worldwide. "Every year 70 million girls are deprived of even a basic education and a staggering 60 million are sexually assaulted on the way to school."

The film concludes: "So are we equals? Until the answer is yes we must never stop asking."

There is also an International Men's Day on 19 November, just in case the chaps were feeling left out.

All About Eve

Recently two books about Eve have come to my attention... Eve, the Mother of All Living - the one who dared to eat the forbidden fruit and take the next step in evolution.

The first is Eden: the Buried Treasure by Eve Wood-Langford.

The author writes:

As a Unitarian, I was brought up not to believe in the concept of Original Sin based on the beautiful Genesis story of Adam and Eve. Moreover, this magical story, complete with speaking serpent, was accepted as an important myth-history long misinterpreted in the Judaic/Christian tradition. When the story of the naked couple was seen in the light of its pre-biblical origins in Abraham's country of Mesopotamia, however, it guarded an inspirational 'history' of value to all human beings.

Unfortunately, in the age of science a story complete with speaking serpent is seen in terms of fairy story, but this throws a valuable baby out with the bath water, for myth is a form of history. It cannot be interpreted correctly, however, in factual terms, or without cognisance of its integral images. In the pre-biblical world, the archetypal images of serpent and tree were important signposts associated with the Great Mother Goddess. They offered guidance to the illiterate polytheist populations of the world in which the garden paradise story had origin.

Nevertheless, as Eden: the Buried Treasure reveals, the garden paradise still guards its treasure of truth, and that meaning may yet be glimpsed when the story is seen in the light of its Mesopotamian origins. Look into the garden in an earlier, more pristine light, and the naked Eve that stands behind the biblical one, offers a gift from the ancestral world having nothing to do with the origin of sin.

Another book has recently been published, this time from a Jewish and Kabbalistic perspective, called Dancing in the Footsteps of Eve, by Heather Mendel. The author writes:

What if the story of Eve is wrong? Beneath the literal surface of text, Eve, the quintessential hero and positive feminine archetype for our evolving consciousness awaits our recognition, remembrance and reclamation. Symbolic of the innate curiosity that moves our human adventure forward, Eve can lead the way to hope and healing for the global human family as she reaches for the forbidden fruit once again. Dancing in her footsteps, we joyfully commit to taking the next step in the spiritual expansion of consciousness.

It Gets Better

Recently the media has been paying more media attention to teen LGBT suicides.

In response to this, Dan Savage has started a YouTube channel, "It Gets Better".

Nine out of 10 gay teenagers experience bullying and harassment at school, and gay teens are four times likelier to attempt suicide. Many LGBT kids who do kill themselves live in rural areas, exurbs, and suburban areas, places with no gay organizations or services for queer kids. (...)

I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

But gay adults aren't allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don't bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.

Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don't have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.

So here's what you can do, GBVWS: Make a video. Tell them it gets better.

This deserves wide publicity, so please blog about it, tweet it, and post it on Facebook.

(via Geeky Sex and sexgenderbody)

"Traditional" marriage

There's an excellent blog-post on the ever-changing tradition of marriage on a blog entitled "This is what I think", by Archie Levine.

It is quite similar to a blog-post that I wrote earlier this year entitled "The changing face of marriage". In fact, mine could be a sequel to his, as his is more about marriage from Biblical times to the 19th century, and mine focuses more on how marriage changed in the twentieth century.

The Secret Gender Test

This was quite an interesting test, and the results were not a surprise to me.

Your result for The Secret Gender Test...

Hermaphrodic/Androgynous

33% Masculine / 48% Feminine

Likelihood if you got this result, it's either because you have behavior equally matched of both genders or neither.  This result means your gender identity is androgynous.  This means that you can probably equally understand average men and women, but don't understand super-men and super-women all that well.  Your male and female side is either well balanced, or not present in the normal manner.  Your sexual inclination is either dual-role, or assexual.  This means you may very well be single because of a lack of the same compelling drives average men and women have in this world.  Your also very likely gender-queer, or non-gender conforming.  Meaning, male or female you dress androgynously.  Some people may even refer to you as a gender-bender.
This doesn't mean you won't, and there is a chance that your still have some growing up to do, and given a lack of experience of your gender has left you with little to speak of in the sense of what this test can provide.  Sometimes gaining experience with reference with the questions will result in a conclusion that is different from this one.  Either way, your balanced.  If this is what you want then you are happy, and among a fairly small group of people in the world satisfied by gender neutrality.
Whether you were born male or female, your brain is variably somewhat intersexed, and if you were born intersexed then this would also be consistant.  You have senses and abilities of both sexes likely to varying degrees.  You can date any other gender type easily, though the greater extremes will still be difficult.  There really isn't a gender type you can't date as long as you understand what dating that particular type intails. All this being said, your ideal types are likely as close to center as you, or gender neutral, or gender reversed.  Those groups are likely to have respect for your androgynous nature.  You have an experience where gender is concerned that makes you an ideal counselor for issues regarding gender for others.
If you were born male, your very androgynous, or you lack strongly defining deviations from male or female aspects.  If you were born female the above applies as well, however female androgyns are more prevalent do to societal acceptance than male androgyns.  It's more acceptable for women to be tomboyish than men to be femmeboyish.  You can date any other type, but standard and higher male and female types may and most likely will not understand your gender neutrality.  As long as you understand this and take your balance and use it to your advantage you will manage okay.

Take The Secret Gender Test at OkCupid

Save philosophy at Middlesex

Late on Monday 26 April, staff in Philosophy at Middlesex University in London were informed that the University executive are to close all Philosophy programmes: undergraduate, postgraduate and MPhil/PhD.

Philosophy is the highest research-rated subject at Middlesex University, with 65% of its research activity judged 'world-leading' or 'internationally excellent' in the UK government's recent Research Assessment Exercise. It is now widely recognised as one of the most important centres for the study of modern European philosophy anywhere in the English-speaking world. Its MA programmes in Philosophy have grown in recent years to become the largest in the UK, with 42 new students admitted in September 2009. Middlesex offers one of only a handful of programmes left in the UK that provides both research-driven and inclusive post-graduate teaching aimed at a wide range of students, specialist and non-specialist. It is also one of relatively few such programmes that remains financially viable, currently contributing close to half of its total income to the University's central administration.

This is a shameful decision which essentially means the end of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, a hub for internationally renowned scholarship; staff include Eric Alliez, Peter Hallward, Mark Kelly, Christian Kerslake, Peter Osborne and Stella Sandford). This act of wilful self-harm by the University must be resisted.

Please join the facebook group, sign the petition and spread the word.

Source: Radical Philosophy group on Yahoo

The Island of Lesvos

A short story by Jeanette Winterson, The Poetics of Sex, is available on the Random House website. It is an extended poetic exploration of lesbian sexuality, written as a response to the sort of questions straights ask, but going far beyond those questions into the land of Sapphic delight. Here's an excerpt...

Hang on me my darling like rubies round my neck. Slip onto my finger like a ring. Give me your rose for my buttonhole. Let me leaf through you before I read you out loud.

Picasso warms my freezing heart on the furnace of her belly. Her belly is stoked to blazing with love of me. I have learned to feed her every day, to feed her full of fuel that I gladly find. I have unlocked the storehouses of love. On the Mainland they teach you to save for a rainy day. The truth is that love needs no saving. It is fresh or not at all. We are fresh and plentiful. She is my harvest and I am hers. She seeds me and reaps me, we fall into one another's laps. Her seas are thick with fish for my rod. I have rodded her through and through.

It's a wonderful piece of writing, very lush and sensual; it reads more like a prose-poem than a short story, but it has a narrative element.