tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12141219395293556692024-03-13T21:01:22.033-07:00Finding Our GiantsJBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-69663653689301698472015-03-31T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-30T18:36:09.859-07:00Finding Our GiantsWhen I was in high school, I read the book <i>Hyperspace</i> by Michio Kaku. It was my first introduction to string theory, but also my first introduction to the mathematician Ramanujan. As a young child in India, Ramanujan re-developed modern mathematics from scratch. He wrote to professors in England, sharing his proofs, but most of them did not respond, finding that he was sending proofs that were already widely known. One man did respond, and brought Ramanujan to England.<br />
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Ramanujan died before the age of 35. And, in reading <i>Hyperspace</i>, I remember the sense of grief imbued in that story. If only he had not had to spend so much time doing work that others had already done. If only he had not been ignored for so long. If only he lived longer, just imagine what he could have accomplished!<br />
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When I read of women whose writings have survived to us from antiquity or even more recently than that, there is no such sense. No one seems to mourn all the girls who never had an opportunity to learn to read and write. No one brings up the rare woman who did fight for and gain a voice and shakes their head with sorrow at the possibility lost. If only she had not had to fight so hard just to learn. If only she had been given a platform for her ideas. If only she had not died so young in childbirth!<br />
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In the experience of myself and some of my classmates, "feminism" has become a dirty word. It is as if when a woman says to a man, "I am a feminist," the man might hear any number of things. He could hear those words, but he could also hear, "you are a rapist," or "I hate men," or even simply "you are doing something wrong." When one person is privileged, it is difficult for them to hear about or understand that others are not.<br />
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I know that I grew up with many privileges, but a penis wasn't one of them. I know I can't entirely blame my lack of self-confidence on that, but I have also experienced having my ideas ignored until they are repeated by a man. I have been cat-called and groped. Would I be a different person if I hadn't been?<br />
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At my undergraduate program at St. John's College, there were fairly even numbers of men and women students, though the tutors skewed more male. And men and women both spoke in classes. But I always had trouble speaking up. And I can't help but wonder if I might have been able to speak more if I had been in an all female class. Would that have helped my confidence? I didn't know, when I began, how to argue and put forth my point, and especially how to take someone arguing back aggressively. And yes, the more aggressive speakers tended to be overly self-confident males, speaking as if they were speaking not opinion but truth.<br />
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I learned how to function in that environment by adapting myself to it, and I can't help but wonder whether that program might have benefited from adapting itself to me. If, perhaps, by actively seeking out women writers - even if they were not part of the traditional canon on which the program is based - they might have demonstrated that even I, a woman, had a place in rhetoric.<br />
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In what may be one of the world's first recorded humble-brags, Isaac Newton is credited with saying, "If I have seen further it is from standing on the shoulders of giants."<br />
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I believe that the point of this course, Women Writers, and the anthology, <i>Available Means</i>, is to unearth that trace of female rhetoric that has always existed, whether or not it was acknowledged in the traditional Western Canon. Because if we are to move forward, to find ways to communicate the goals of feminism without ostracizing half our audience, to find a way to see further... then we must first find our giants.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-58797398352978113972015-03-30T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:00:00.309-07:00AspasiaAlthough I read many of Plato's dialogues at St. John's College, I had not read <i>Menexenus</i>, in which Aspasia of Miletus is named as a teacher of Socrates. Much of the dialogue consists of a recitation by Socrates of what he calls a speech he overheard from Aspasia.<br />
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In <i>Available Means</i>, a portion of the preceding dialogue between Socrates and Menexenus is cut, as is a portion of the speech itself. The translation is by a man, and an old translation. I would guess that because the words recorded are technically from Socrates and the rhetoric in some ways standard for the day, that the editors of the anthology did not want to use a more modern translation or even commission one from a woman. The translation used is available for free online through <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1682/1682-h/1682-h.htm">Project Gutenberg</a>.<br />
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In the words of the introduction to the excerpt, the selection "was written by a man, reporting the words of another man, who is reporting yet another man's words but claiming that the words were written by a woman--Aspasia of Miletus" (1). I would add that those words were filtered through yet another man in the act of translation, which is something that had not occurred to the instructor.<br />
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Having translated portions of Homer and Plato from Ancient Greek, I know that translators do not always agree. Translation is an art, not a science. Shades of meaning in both the origin and target languages can be lost in translation. A bias towards poetry can produce translations worthy of ridicule (cough Fagles' <i>Oddyssey</i> cough). I had another translation of <i>Menexenus</i> handy, and found that it was quite different in execution though the sentiment was close to the same.<br />
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During the second class session, we spent much of our time discussing the introduction to the anthology, however at the end of the class period, the instructor brought up a few ideas regarding it, which I looked upon skeptically. To her, the fact that Aspasia refers to the earth as a mother is a significant rhetorical breakthrough, a feminist slant in a time when women were only a small step above slaves. To me, the Ancient Greek word for earth is female, and, in Greek Mythology, the Earth is the Mother of creation. There is nothing at all radical about calling the land a mother, nor even referring to the city of Athens as a mother, especially considering that its patron god was Athena.<br />
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It is not so much the content of the speech, which is called a standard of its type, but the fact that it is attributed to a woman that is important. It is one of the few records that remain from antiquity of a woman rhetor. Instead of seeing her words, we get only a reflection, or a fossil, the impression that she left behind. What kind of information do we usually glean from fossils? Not the life of a person or the body of a creature, but simply the bones - an idea of structure and a proof of existence.<br />
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Perhaps that is why the editors chose not to include the entirety of the speech, or spring for a woman translator. The fact of Aspasia is far more important than the words that Plato reports Socrates reproducing for the ears of Menexenus.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-34472232000739951102015-03-29T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:02:04.561-07:00Julian of NorwichIt seems unfair that rhetoric and writing were so limited in the centuries between Plato and Julian of Norwich that when we search for women rhetors, we can find only a few to fill the gap of over a millennium. How can there even be said to be a tradition of women's rhetoric with gaps like that? It seems like an exercise in futility, trying to trace women through recorded history.<br />
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It is odd to me that the same institution that seems to be a large component of the suppression of women, the church, also gave a very few women the opportunity to take some control of their lives. The very structure of the church allowed them, if they were determined, convinced that god was speaking to them, to claim the rights of a religious. Indeed, the church provided a way for these women to claim the need to speak by divine right.<br />
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Unlike Aspasia's non-feminist calling the earth a mother, Julian's naming of Jesus as mother is revolutionary and uncommon. Against the patriarchal view of God the Father, Julian's visions in <i>Revelations of Divine Love </i>showed her a more whole version of God, encompassing both male and female, as would seem only logical for a perfect God. And if God were triune, then each piece must partake of both the male and the female, the generative and the creative.<br />
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Julian uses logical arguments to back up her divine revelations. "I understood three ways of seeing motherhood in God" (27). By laying out not only reasons, but three reasons, which harmonizes with the Holy Trinity. She provides a place for women within God, instead of excluding them from the divine as the traditional Father, Son and Holy Ghost layout does.<br />
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For the first time in writing, women were included in the church as a voice, an individual and a personal voice. Julian created a vision of God that gave women a place and an honor beyond that of being simply the mother of God - instead they may partake of God the Mother.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-89632295631292512462015-03-28T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:04:34.587-07:00Catherine of SienaCatherine's "Letter 83: To Mona Lapa, her mother, in Siena" includes appeals to logic. "You were glad, I remember, for the sake of material gain when your sons left home to win temporal wealth" (31). As opposed to her mother's reaction to Catherine's absence, which is to call her to come home. And that is only one of the reasons that she gives her mother.<br />
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She also implores her mother to act like Mary and leave Catherine to God's work as Mary left Jesus on the cross. This analogy seems to place Catherine in the role of Jesus, though she does not explicitly state that. She, like many of these women writers, uses subtlety and delicate phrasing. How much should her words be interpreted, especially considering that it is a translation from Italian (albeit by a woman)?<br />
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The end of the letter has an ellipsis indicating a portion of it was cut out. I can't help but be curious as to what exactly the editors of this anthology thought should be cut out of the short letter that they provided. I understand that not everything can be included in a book, which by its very nature is finite, but I do wish there could have been a footnote explaining the cut out portion, my own nature including a healthy portion of curiosity.<br />
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Personally, I don't like that the examples of women rhetors from the middle ages tend to be religious. However, I know that in that time period it wasn't just women that were limited to spiritual writings. Many men also wrote theological works or those couched in theological terms in those times. It was a natural consequence of writing and education tending to be concentrated in the church.<br />
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The voice of Catherine's writing did speak to me as she sounded like an exasperated daughter writing to her clingy mother. Our reasons may be different, but we both wish our mothers to let us live our own lives. The difference is in her time it was a radical idea, and in my time it is not all that far from normal.<br />
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It is difficult to conceive of being not allowed by culture and custom to pursue an education. To be thought of as a part and parcel of my family and not as a person on my own. How difficult it is to discern what part of my personality is me, some sort of inviolate central core of identity and what part of me is the culture in which I was raised. Would I care, if I didn't know any better? Would I have been happier with fewer choices, less education, less freedom?JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-10417081935257587942015-03-27T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:08:47.812-07:00Christine de PizanIn the introductory portion of the section on Christine de Pizan, the editors of<i> Available Means</i> stress how often she used the "I" construction, even "I, Christine," as if to emphasize that the "I" was a female person (32). However, in the subsequent passages quoted from Christine's <i>The Book of the City of Ladies</i>, or at least in the translation thereof, nowhere do those words occur.<br />
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And it may, again, be a case of translation. Although the recommendation for further reading on page 42 is for a translation by Sarah Lawson, the text has a translation from Earl Jeffrey Richards, another male translator. Again, I don't like that this text uses so many (so far) male translators. Is there a bias? Why should it be important to me that the translator of this women's rhetoric, this time truly a woman's words, is a man? There is no strict way to correctly translate from one language to another, or Google Translate would be perfect. There are nuances, especially with writings that are in older dialects. </div>
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Phrases and rhetorical choices can be highly influenced by translation. I know this. I have spent many years of schooling doing translations from Ancient Greek, Latin and French. Nuances of the language are difficult enough to translate - why should this woman's voice be forced through a man's interpretation? </div>
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But I haven't gotten to the actual text. I did enjoy it enough to be curious about the parts of the text that were cut out. What, for example, were the other scepters for? </div>
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Christine was the focus of much discussion in our fourth class session. Her use of rhetorical devices is both apt and admirable. Playing to her audience, she declares that the men who write and say that women are bad must be correct, since they all seem to agree in the essential perfidy of women though it pains her. By agreeing, she places herself in a position where she is not disturbing the status quo. She feigns doubt in order to present her point through a set of divine characters. </div>
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By placing her "I" in the position of agreement with the general consensus, she thereby allows the contrary views expressed by the ladies to come from an authority higher than that of a mere mortal woman. And she even places herself in the position of having to be persuaded that women, virtuous women, can be of worth and are not necessarily as literally written about. She bemoans her sex, "for I detested myself and the entire feminine sex, as though we were monstrosities in nature" (34). </div>
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And once Reason convinces her that she is wrong to curse being born a woman, she explains the reasons that the men who have written about women in such a way, perhaps in order to allow some men to agree that they did not mean what they had written or spoken, but were only going along with the great writers of the past or intending their words to be taken as ironic. She is not attacking men, but rather the ideas that attack women.<br />
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After a Seminar freshmen year at St. John's, I told the tutor that I felt like I had read a different text than the rest of the class - after class had ended. He told me that he wished I had said so during class, because those kinds of discussions tended to be the best kind. In our fourth class session, another student brought up an interpretation that had never occurred to me. She believed that "Nature, which allows the will of the heart to put into effect what the powerful appetite desires, has grown cold in them," (40), meant that women were in a state closer to capital N Nature and men were separated from Nature to their detriment.<br />
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I had a completely different interpretation of that sentence. In my opinion, it meant that the men who grew old and impotent were mad at all women because of their inability to have sex. Losing sexual power, they resort to take whatever power they can over both women, by lambasting and slandering them, and men, by telling them women are no good.<br />
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And this time, yes, I did speak up and made my different opinion known. It was difficult for me to do. My heart was pounding to speak up, but I did it. And, just before the end of class, the first student said that she was glad that I had offered the differing interpretation. Even reading the same words, interpretations can differ, and that's practically the point of a class like this, to discover how others read a text - else why not simply read on one's own?<br />
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Christine uses exclusionary language in her argument. The City of Ladies is only for some women. It is not for "those women who lack virtue" (38). This exclusion led one person in my class to coin the phrase "medieval slut-shaming," which was, frankly, awesome. And that, I think, is a fatal flaw in Christine's rhetoric, and in the rhetoric of many of the women writers so far. Women as a whole cannot fight for their rights if they are fighting among themselves. If I am so busy trying to sift the virtuous women from those who lack virtue, then when will I find the time to point out how all women are being discriminated against?<br />
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This trend continues even today with the so-called "cool girl" trope. She doesn't mind if you look at porn, and she'll watch football with you. She'll laugh at your sexist jokes, because she's not like the other girls. She's cool. Why can't you stodgy feminists just be like the cool girl?<br />
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Perhaps it is not just giants that we need to seek, but also peers. Peers to support us and bring us together rather than continually dividing us and setting us against ourselves.</div>
JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-23423398666355304422015-03-26T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:10:52.659-07:00Margery KempeThe piece of Margery Kempe's story that is presented in <i>Available Means</i> gives an interesting example of how women are expected to act about their work. She herself cannot write, and so she must get someone else to write her story down for her. She frames this in such a way as to imply that the writing only came about through the grace of God, thereby creating a spiritual endorsement of the work. If God had not wanted Margery Kempe's story to be written, then it wouldn't have been, therefore it is the will of God that it be written.<br />
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Kempe's preface to <i>The Book of Margery Kempe</i> does not come right out and state that, but it does imply it by detailing the difficulties that she encountered in trying to get the text written. She cannot outright state it, since her pen is not the one doing the writing. She must work around the male scribe in the telling of the tale in order to present what she believes to be true.<br />
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In order to justify her right to have her story told, she gives proofs of her talking to God, appealing to the male authorities of the church as well as female mystics. It is as if it is not truly her choice to speak out, but rather the will of God, for how else could the words of a woman be worthy of record? Through the hand of a man, and the translation from Old English of yet another man, still, her story survived.<br />
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In class, one woman mentioned that she had, in a previous class, read the whole <i>Book of Margery Kempe</i>, in Old English even. She told us that there were themes of sexual assault and harassment in the book, including Margery's rape by her husband. By retreating into religious life, did Margery gain some safety? Is the choice always between safety and freedom?<br />
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Margery was still persecuted, even after retreating into a religious life. "[The Lord] would speak to me and tell my soul how I would be despised for his love" (45). People didn't believe in her closeness to God, and her former friends became her enemies. The long road to transcribing her story only emphasizes its importance and her <i>right</i> to be heard.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-83474433171041912462015-03-25T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:16:59.131-07:00Queen ElizabethIn her speech, "To the Troops at Tilbury," Queen Elizabeth uses her femininity as a rhetorical tool. She contrasts her "weak" female body with her strong, kingly stomach. By pointing to an internal feature, she is able to take on a masculine aspect to relate to her audience even while they can see her femininity before them. Does that insult the female body, to use it so negatively? Or is it a form of regaining control, such as reclaiming a slur?<br />
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It is interesting that in all the long years of her reign, the editors of this book chose a speech less than a page in length to highlight. The stub biography they provide for her is longer than her speech. But it is a powerful speech, and powerful in its implications.<br />
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Here is a female Queen, a woman who refused marriage because she was married to her country. She makes of her governance a religious vocation. She takes on aspects of men and women in order to totally rule her country. She dares to speak to soldiers and encourage them to war, less as Queen than as Ruler.<br />
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Her mention of a weak female body leads to a powerful moment of playing to her audience. "I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too" (49). I can almost see the pride swelling in the breasts of the English sailors and soldiers. A king of England, indeed.<br />
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Rhetoric is designed to play to an audience, and this short speech demonstrates that Queen Elizabeth knew well how to do that.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-54311223042649013882015-03-24T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:19:11.837-07:00Sor Juana Ines de la CruzIt seems impossible that I had not heard of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz before. A woman so driven by curiosity and scholarship that she entered religious service in order to continue its pursuit. She seems not to have been especially religious, especially at first, but it was her only route to continue study and she took it.<br />
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The text of hers included in <i>Available Means</i>, from "La Respuesta," is an impassioned plea to be allowed to continue studying, and it is a fine example of rhetoric. She points to personal evidence of dedication, such as cutting her hair, though it was not the fashion, to encourage herself to learn Latin more quickly. She logically lays out the reasons that she must study everything in order to study Scripture. In order to place herself in a lineage of women who learn, she lists women of the past.<br />
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A common thread in these rhetorics is the idea of apology or humbling. The woman writing must prevent herself from being seen as a threat to the established order while also doing what she wants to do. She becomes an exception, and exceptional. Sor Juana disclaims her love of learning as meritorious, because it is, to her, a necessity. And yet, she gives a subtle dig, by stating that these habits of hers are seen as meritorious in men (77).<br />
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Thus, these women rhetors distance themselves from their own opinions, or even the idea that women can have opinions. Christine used allegory. Julian, Catherine and Margery used religion. Sor Juana uses nature, specifically, her own natural inclination to learn, to paint herself as one in thrall to learning, with no particular merit beyond her nature.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-39750153373744905622015-03-23T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:21:09.256-07:00Mary AstellThe very title of this selection speaks to what Mary Astell sought: <i>A <u>Serious </u>Proposal to the Ladies. </i>Serious. At a time when women's concerns were thought to be the opposite of serious, Astell focuses on how her argument is different.<br />
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She asks for a place to which women can retreat, a Protestant place, to contrast with existing Catholic religious retreats. Indeed, the first word she uses to describe the retreat is monastery, but she quickly retreats from the Catholic connotations of that word. And, by exercising intellectual faculties and excluding sinful temptations, women will be prepared for the Afterlife with God. To this good place, the ladies are explicitly and inclusively invited.<br />
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Mary Astell writes her own words; there is no translator standing between her words and our eyes. That is refreshing, and becoming more common as the book moves quickly into the modern era. I have to wonder how many woman rhetors are lost to time, either through being truly lost or successfully hiding their identities behind a man's name.<br />
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One of the difficulties of Mary's proposal is that her audience would not necessarily want to be told that they are deficient by lacking education. She must carefully frame the argument as a benefit not only to men but to women. And yet, this careful framing does not mean that she circumlocutes unintelligibly. "If therefore we desire to be intelligible to every body, our Expressions must be more plain and explicit than they needed to be if we writ only for our selves" (82). Knowing that she writes to an audience, she sets for clear arguments meant to persuade without insulting either men or women.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-45218326665326463132015-03-22T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:23:47.105-07:00BelindaI would like to believe that "Petition of an African Slave" was written by Belinda herself in the third person, although it is possible that it was transcribed by another. That Belinda, a former slave, could not only demand a stipend of support from her former master's estate, but also write it herself is a more compelling narrative. But, in the end, what I am more curious about is not whether she wrote it, but whether her petition was successful.<br />
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Since I cannot satisfy that curiosity, I will instead look at her words. In class, we spoke about how she uses emotion and drama to try and garner sympathy from her audience. She actually tells a well-structured story about her life, emphasizing her happy childhood as a contrast to what happened when she was enslaved. Her descriptions are vivid and compelling.<br />
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It seems incredible that someone who was not only enslaved, but also female, would have the gumption to petition for what she saw as her clear right - support from the estate that she toiled for without remuneration. How does slavery change one's ability to speak and present oneself in public? She had to be humble in the petition, and yet not pitiful. She does not come across as asking for a handout, but rather as demanding just compensation.<br />
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I would be persuaded by her argument, but as not only female, but as a former slave, Belinda did not have the benefit of having any peers hear her plea. It would have been men more like her former owner who decided whether to rule for or against her. And it seems likely that they would choose to rule against her, in order to establish precedent that might protect themselves at a later date.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-71407532623440967852015-03-21T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:26:01.169-07:00Mary WollstonecraftTo the disappointment of some of my classmates, Mary Wollstonecraft focuses her arguments for women's rights in the selection we read from <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i> on how such advancements will benefit men. If a woman be educated, then she will make a better wife and a better mother. While her lot may be improved, her status would remain that of a servant simply by virtue of her sex.<br />
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To me, that kind of argument was playing to her audience. She schemed, if you will, to get men to accept women's education by framing her argument directly to men. And, once women begin to be educated, then what is to stop them from clamoring with yet a louder voice for more rights? Perhaps she had faith that when the educated woman was no longer the exception, they could expand their arguments to include those benefits which would be exclusively woman's.<br />
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And yet, she did also argue that it was not only for the benefit of men that women should be educated, but for the betterment of society as a whole. "[Y]et the gangrene [of the uneducated, oppressed women], which the vices engendered by the oppression have produced, is not confined to the morbid part, but pervades society at large" (105). This comparison of the whole of society to a living being allows Wollstonecraft to subtly push for not just educational equality, but more than that. It leaves an opening for further arguments of equality to be made each time women gain any small bit, for how shall society be healthy if its members are unequally restricted?<br />
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Calling a conclusion obvious is a rhetorical device designed to gain agreement from an audience, and Wollstonecraft uses that to her advantage. And yet, she also uses obvious to pull that female apology maneuver by calling her suggestions for education "obviously hints" (101). Although Wollstonecraft is able to argue for the cause in which she believes, she is still constrained to argue as a woman in a culture that favors men.<br />
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And although her demands seem quite modest from the perspective of today's culture, at the time, simply asking for education was a large step. She must strike a delicate balance between claiming rights for women and not seeming to be asking that men give up rights. And that seems to be similar to present day feminist concerns. When women ask for equality, it seems to men that they demand a concession - a change of the natural order which would leave them deficient.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-13286214046234845892015-03-20T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:27:47.252-07:00Cherokee WomenIt seems as if this bit of text is almost included more to give the background of the place of women in the Cherokee culture than for particular merit in rhetoric. I found it difficult to read; the punctuation was oddly spaced. These difficulties caused me to miss at first what I now consider the most important part of "Cherokee Women Address Their Nation."<br />
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Nowhere do the women apologize for speaking. Nowhere do they defend their right to speak. Instead, they consider it their duty to speak out.<br />
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This is in stark contrast to most of the other woman rhetors we have read so far. Each finds some way to demonstrate how humble she is, how beneath the notice of the male reader, calling their suggestions mere hints and their talents poor faults. They line up exceptional women of the past as reasons that they should be allowed, permitted to speak.<br />
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Not so, for the Cherokee women. Though history proved that their children did not listen to their pleas to hold onto the land, they spoke when it was their duty to do so, frankly and without apology.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-84475497354466894302015-03-19T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-21T19:17:17.361-07:00Maria W. StewartIt is interesting that in the biographical portion on Maria W. Steward her race is not mentioned except by implication. And yet, the fact that she was black, female and speaking in public is incredibly powerful. Even more than a white woman, her path would have been barred. And, according to the biography, she gave up because of the barriers presented by her audiences - but she had audiences. She spoke to men and women, black and white, at a time when few women spoke publicly at all.<br />
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In the "Lecture Delivered at the Franklin Hall," Stewart rails against the unfairness of even those with an abolitionist bent, for they will not stand by their convictions by allowing black women to rise above the station of servant, no matter their references or skills. "[I]t was not the custom" (110), was the pitiful excuse given. How could she not grow discouraged at the unwillingness of so-called well-meaning whites to put their money where their mouths were?<br />
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It is not that Stewart finds anything wrong with service as an occupation, but the essential limitation on blacks. Just as the white women ask for equality to white men, so should black men and women have those opportunities to better themselves morally and intellectually. She uses scripture to back up her arguments as well as personal pleas from her own experiences.<br />
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And yet, history obscured her contributions, giving the Grimke sisters the claim to be the first women to orate in public to mixed audiences. Then, as now, it comes down to who is given the space, the credibility and the venue for expression. And given is the right word, for those who must fight for the space, fight to be believed and fight to be heard are often left with little time or energy for the message they wished to express in the first place.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-36563345232382806432015-03-18T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-21T19:17:46.092-07:00Sarah GrimkeThe selection <i>Available Means </i>provides from Sarah Grimke is a letter in reply to a letter from her brother-in-law ("Letter to Theodore Weld"). Although his original letter is not provided, its contents can be inferred from the arguments that she makes. This technique is perhaps more necessary when large amounts of time might separate correspondence, but it also allows her to reframe his arguments to suit her own purposes.<br />
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She writes at times as if she agrees with him, as if the interpretation that he gave was certainly not the one his wife claimed he meant, but something better. Sarah's words seem unagitated even when she claims that "the ministry as now organized is utterly at variance with the ministry Christ established, tends to perpetuate schism and disunion, and therefore must be destroyed" (115). And, of course, the current organization of any ministry of her time was a hierarchy of men.<br />
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Grimke is entirely reasonable in her arguments that the cause of women's rights do not infringe upon the cause of abolition. "I cannot see why minds may not be exercised on more than one point without injury to any" (117). The problem that Grimke refuses to address is that of division within the ranks. The more causes are added to any group, the smaller the group will be. Ideally, human rights should include both gender equality and the abolition of slavery, but when the abolitionists required a larger constituency, they were forced to sacrifice the less popular cause of women's rights.<br />
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And, by doing so, they buried women's rights for a greater good. It seems that this sort of attitude continues even to the current day, when women's rights advocates are shut down because their problems aren't as vital as other causes. 'Why should we bother with these silly women and their pet causes? They should be content with what they have, because there are others who suffer more.'<br />
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Even when women have the franchise and the right to hold office, the legislature of the United States has nothing like gender parity. Is this because of some innate inability of the female to hold office or the fact that the culture has still not shifted to include women's rights and gay's rights and the rights of those called 'other' as fundamental human rights?JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-41894161192507820132015-03-17T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-21T19:18:10.424-07:00Angelina Grimke WeldThe editors of <i>Available Means</i> saw fit to include from Angelina Grimke Weld, sister to Sarah and wife to the writer of the letter to which Sarah Grimke replied, a speech that cries to be read aloud, "Address at Pennsylvania Hall." And it is not just threat of the mob reported to be outside, nor the incredible fact that the very next day the hall in which she spoke burned down. No, it is her rhetoric. She uses of scripture not only to prove her cause of abolition but to encourage her audience to its support. She agilely responds to the noise and threat of the mob, incorporating its actions into her words.<br />
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Grimke Weld decries the actions of the mob as being illogical and unfitting to argument. Even if the hall were leveled "[would that be] any evidence that we are wrong, or that slavery is a good and wholesome institution?" (121). She recognizes that their tactics are meant to frighten good people from their consciences, not to persuade by means of reason. And with threatened people in front of her, she attempts both to soothe their fear and rouse their actions. The attacks only prove that what they are doing is working.<br />
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She also has a clear vision for how women can contribute to the abolitionist cause. "<i>Men</i> may settle this and other questions at the ballot-box, but you have no such right; it is only through petitions that you can reach the Legislature. It is therefore peculiarly <i>your</i> duty to petition" (123). She could be seen even as giving a little dig for the fact that women cannot vote, but rather than dwelling on that as a deficiency, she gives women a special job. And she builds up the impact of such petitions, both to encourage the women to send them and to give the women some sense of empowerment.<br />
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And yet, what power do petitions truly have? Perhaps in Grimke Weld's day they held more power than they seem to now. It seems that current day petitions are less about legislative issues and more about wants and needs. How often does a change.org petition produce a legislative impact? How many years have Idahoans tried to add the words that would include more humans in our human rights amendment? Why is the religious freedom to discriminate enshrined in a law that is supposed to be separate from church?JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-58341702399172167312015-03-16T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-20T18:53:54.477-07:00Margaret FullerIn the excerpt from <i>Woman in the Nineteenth Century</i>, Margaret Fuller is the first rhetor that we have read who begins to advocate less for women's improvement for the sake of men and more for the sake of themselves. She is able to do this, in part, because women have begun to be educated, and so the literate audience is no longer exclusively male. I found it interesting that although she did present the idea that an educated woman would make a better wife and mother, she also stressed the importance of women being self-dependent.<br />
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A woman who can depend upon herself, ultimately, has the option of not being a wife or mother. Fuller praises "the increase of the class contemptuously designated as old maids" (133), because their existence proves that women can exist without being an adjunct to a man through marriage or other relationship.<br />
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Fuller draws parallels between the lives that women currently lead and the lives that they are forbidden to lead. If a woman can be a society hostess, how then is she incapable of being a politician? The position of a hostess is no less active, social and demanding than that of a politician. The woman wholly constrained to the domestic sphere is usually married to a man similarly constrained. These limits of socialization and culture are arbitrary - just as arbitrary as making girl clothes pink.<br />
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Fuller sees all limits based on gender as arbitrary. "But if you ask me what offices they may fill; I reply--any. I do not care what case you put; let them be sea-captains, if you will" (135). And this is not an unequal stance, for she even mentions later that there are certainly men who would be inclined to what are thought of as feminine occupations even as there are women inclined towards those called masculine.<br />
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Reading this piece, I was struck by how, despite the passage of time and the achievements of enfranchisement and office, the sentiments denigrating womanhood remain the same. While in Fuller's time, a woman doing a task particularly well would have been said to surpass her sex, I grew up hearing the praises made bitter by the codicil of "for a girl." There is a focus today on getting more women into STEM, but Liberal Arts are no less dominated by men at the higher levels.<br />
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From Christine to Fuller to the present, the thread of dismissing the entirety of the feminine sex as lesser continues in western culture. Whether it is dressed up as honoring women, or stripped bare as demeaning them, the fact remains that there are differences in the ways that we treat others based on personal beliefs about what we know about them. What would equality really look like?<br />
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Would it mean that we would have to get to know people before we make judgments about them or their abilities? Or is there more to it? What is the goal of feminism?<br />
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If the goal was to keep women from wanting more than they had, then keeping them from education was a good idea. Once a person learns to read and write, they gain the ability to keep learning and to communicate their ideas with others. The act of writing, in and of itself, has a power. Words that are written can be read; sharing her opinions about the world can have an effect on how a woman identifies her own value.<br />
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Fuller wanted women to find and identify their value, to themselves and others. "[M]en do <i>not</i> look at both sides, and women must leave off asking them and being influence by them, but retire within themselves, and explore the groundwork of life til they find their peculiar secret" (134). It is not for men to discover the nature of women, but for women to uncover their own natures, free from ties to others. Not, 'who is Mrs. So-and-so,' but who am 'I'? And then she can move on to 'what do I want?'JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-81994698428387382242015-03-15T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-21T19:18:39.135-07:00Seneca Falls ConventionIt is difficult for me to imagine a time when the simple phrase, "all men and women are created equal," would have been utterly shocking. Not that I believe that there are not still people who disagree with that statement, but it is no longer an uncommon idea. Despite threats and excoriation from the media, many women signed the "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions." And, in doing so, they went on record as demanding the vote as a natural right of woman.<br />
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70 years passed before women gained the right to vote. Is that a horribly long time, or an amazingly short time? In the grand scheme of things, it is an amazingly short period of time, but it is also a lifetime. More than a lifetime for some. It is doubtful that many, if any, of the women who attended the convention lived to see women getting the right to vote.<br />
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Even today, it is difficult to point out the wrongs done to an oppressed class without taking an accusatory tone. This document does not shy away, however, from direct accusations. "This history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman.... To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world" (139). The writers of the document allow no wiggle room. The words to follow apply to all mankind. They proceed to list facts, beginning with the lack of franchise and explicitly spelling out what that means. Just as the founders of America protested taxation without representation, so too do the women protest that they have no say, not only in taxation, but in any law to which they must submit.<br />
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The women do not stop at a list of grievances. Instead, they also offer solutions, in the form of resolutions. Some of them point out hypocritical existing standards, such as those that prevent women from speaking in public while allowing them to perform in a concert. Others speak more broadly on the rights and responsibilities which should be accorded to women and men. In the introduction to the Declaration, the editors note that it was Frederick Douglass who convinced the women to include the resolution demanding enfranchisement. That this impetus came from a man only reinforces the sentiment of the last resolution that calls for work from both men and women to accomplish their goals.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-71083077603387127752015-03-14T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-21T19:19:20.578-07:00Sojourner TruthSojourner Truth didn't need to learn to read or write to be a powerful rhetorician. Nonetheless, I can't help but feel that she would have been even more formidable had she been able to wield the pen or read the words that others recorded her as saying. The power of writing and reading can allow women to control their own stories, rather than being defined to history by the words of others.<br />
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The speech attributed to Truth, "Aren't I a Woman," was transcribed as if it were spoken in a Southern, uneducated dialect. The editors of <i>Available Means</i> included a translation of that transcription that removes the aspects of the dialect that were unlikely to have been spoken by Truth, a native of New York state. It is possible that Truth affected a certain dialect in order to all the more confound people's expectations by conforming to some obvious ones. She might have thought it more powerful to speak unexpected words in an expected way. Or, the transcriber may have just been trying to make her sound like a stereotype, to differentiate her from others even as the speech fights to include her in that broad category of woman.<br />
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Just as Fuller pointed out that no one questions the ability of a woman to work hard if they are a slave, Truth boasts of her ability to work as hard as a man, eat as much as a man and yet remain, indelibly, a woman. By being so different from her audience, she forces them to find a wider definition of womanhood, even if only for that moment that she stood before them.<br />
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Since Truth's argument against the idea that women shouldn't have rights because Christ was not a woman was so powerful, it is a shame that the transcription misses the content of her next argument regarding Eve. "Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him" (145). Truth turns the argument on its head with these words. No one would argue the tradition that Christ was born from the virgin Mary, but it took a woman to bring that fact to its logical exclusion of men from the son of God.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-90262045097965477352015-03-13T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-21T19:19:39.805-07:00Frances Ellen Watkins HarperFrances Ellen Watkins Harper was another woman to point out the inequities between women of color and white women, women of privilege and poor women. While the white women were asking for the vote, Harper was asking for wrongs to be righted in "We Are All Bound Up Together."<br />
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She begins by using a personal story to illustrate a plight of all women under the current legal system. The death of her husband left her and her children completely destitute, because he had been in debt, and she could hold no property. Creditors took everything from her but a hairbrush, presumably because they could find no value in taking it, rather than out of their nonexistent pity. This exclusion of woman from the right to property was not limited in affecting women of color, but rather was a universal that all in her audience could relate to.<br />
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Watkins Harper challenges the idea that enfranchisement is the ultimate goal for women. "I do not believe that giving the woman the ballot is immediately going to cure all the ills of life" (149). She points out that it is not the vote itself, but the character of those voting, that determines how those votes will turn out, recognizing that a democracy is slow to change through franchise alone.<br />
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I particularly like the turn Watkins Harper takes from talking of rights, such as those to vote or hold property, to wrongs that need righting. Wrongs that are being done against women and men of color by the privileged classes above them. Wrongs that harm not only those who are the direct recipients of the wrongs, but also the society that allows such wrongs to exist. I am surprised that there is no reference to the section of scripture that compares Jesus to the naked and the hungry. As we do unto the least of our society, so we do unto Jesus.<br />
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She is also the first rhetor to bring up a concept that I saw coming up again and again in different forms. "The man said if I was black I ought to behave myself. I knew that if he was white he was not behaving himself. Are there not wrongs to be righted?" (150). Here, she points out how the oppressed class is supposed to apologize to their oppressors, whether the oppressors are in the wrong or not. Simply for existing, the oppressed are expected to apologize - no, not simply for existing, but existing where the oppressors can see them, must interact with them. A wrong to be righted indeed.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-66110999681133232132015-03-12T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-21T19:20:02.236-07:00Susan B. AnthonyThe document that the editors of <i>Available Means</i> chose for Susan B. Anthony is from her trial, <i>The United States of America v. Susan B. Anthony</i>. This is the first court document in the book, and, I would think, the first example of a woman being able to record the injustices of a system that denies women the rights given to male citizens, of being tried by a jury of their peers. Although Anthony was not allowed to speak in her own defense at trial, she manages to speak at the sentencing.<br />
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I don't understand how it could have made sense to say that women should be tried by juries consisting solely of men. If women were denied the rights to vote, then how could any man that could vote be at all considered her peer? It would almost seem that the real point of keeping women from the vote was nothing more than preventing her from bettering her own situation.<br />
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In the court proceedings, the judge does, in fact, negate the jury not-of-her-peers by ordering a directed verdict. No one argued that she was not a woman, and no one argued that she did not vote. Therefore, by reason of her very sex, she was pronounced guilty. It seems like madness to me, but there are still places where a woman can be judged guilty for performing a task that she is quite capable of, such as driving in certain countries, simply by virtue of her sex.<br />
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I found it interesting that, after argument with the voter registration officials, she was allowed to register to vote. It would seem that there would be less publicity in simply denying her the register than allowing it and then practically challenging her to exercise the right she took. Would it have been legal for her to be registered as long as she did not vote?<br />
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Anthony took the right to vote, claiming it as her citizen's right. It ended up being more of a publicity stunt than an actual driver of change, but it was still a daring, even noble, gesture. However, Anthony's views on who should get the vote were less than noble. Just as the abolitionists of Grimke's time argued against the inclusion of women's rights in the abolitionist cause, so did Anthony argue against the inclusion of Blacks in her quest for women's enfranchisement. How do we deal with the reprehensible views of those we might otherwise call our heroes? It is easy to say that these views were a product of her time and dismiss those views that do not conform to modern sensibilities. But is that the right thing to do? Should all of Anthony's work be dismissed because of her exclusionary tactics?<br />
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Every movement for rights seems to be cutting out any "extreme" element that would prevent it from gaining wide acceptance. Wide acceptance is required in order for the goals of the movement to be reached. So, the abolitionists cannot concern themselves with the rights of women, the white women cannot concern themselves with the vote for persons of color, and here in Idaho the rights of people who wish to discriminate on the basis of their religious beliefs are placed above the rights of those so discriminated against. All because of a lack of wide acceptance of the idea put forth in the Seneca Falls Convention, that all men and women are created equal.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-77179614917696467222015-03-11T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-21T19:21:49.707-07:00Sarah WinnemuccaFrom the provided selection from <i>Life Among the Paiutes</i>, the situation that Sarah Winnemucca found herself in is clearly illustrated. She is a representative of the government, and must be its voice among her people. However, she is powerless to affect any of the decisions coming from that government, which causes her people to distrust and ignore her.<br />
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In just a few pages, horrors are detailed. The government requires her people to move in the middle of winter, hauled in wagons like cattle and, upon arrival, treated not even as well as cattle would be, for cattle would be cared for to insure that they survived the winter. Sarah's people were treated as if the less of them survived, the better.<br />
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I think the title of the work itself is telling, for Winnemucca does not claim to be of the Paiutes, but merely among them. She takes the place of an observer rather than a participant. As a rhetorical strategy, it helps to make the reader feel more empathy for her, since they, too, would not be Paiute for the most part. And the more the reader identifies with the narrator, the more they might be willing to accept what she writes as truth.<br />
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She challenges her audience to live by the Christian values that they identify with. Repeatedly, she points out that any who seem to be helping her people are not doing it out of charity, but for money. "They did not come because they loved us, or because they were Christians. No; they were just like all civilized people; they came to take us up there because they were to be paid for it" (162). At the same time that she wants to draw attention to the plight of her people, she also does not want to alienate her audience. That does not stop her from pointing out these hypocrisies, but what concessions might she have made in her writing in order to try and get some message through? Must all those who suffer compromise in their communications in order to ensure that some will listen without becoming defensive?JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-82578622312007039822015-03-10T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-21T19:24:33.841-07:00Anna Julia CooperAnna Julia Cooper was an amazingly accomplished woman, at a time when even being mildly accomplished would have been a feat for a woman of color. And while some of her words are tied to her time, with the sense of women's innate domesticity, the text provided, from <i>A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South</i>, still carries feminist themes.<br />
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She begins by tracing the emergence of women learning in the 19th century. In the short span of a century, the conversation has shifted from whether women should be allowed, by law, to learn the alphabet, to the introduction of women into colleges, and even into classes meant for men. And from the many colleges that opened for women have come "women who have given a deeper, richer, nobler and grander meaning to the word 'womanly' than any one-sided masculine definition could ever have suggested or inspired" (165). And this, I think emphasizes one of her feminist tenets. Woman must define woman. She must self-define, because man can have no conception of what it is to be a woman. To let man define woman is to let man confine woman.<br />
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And to let men define the world is to allow the world to fall into barbarity and brutality. Prejudice against races is excused by calling the "other" weak and unworthy. The world praises brute strength and allows the weak to fend for themselves. Cooper demonstrates some of the influences of the time when she writes about "a real and special influence of woman" (167). She claims that the streets of Oberlin are free of crime because there are so many women in sight. This seems to indicate that criminals are afraid to do wrong in the sight of a woman, because of her influence. While I find that hypothesis difficult to accept, there may yet be something to it. Because if women do feel safe to walk around, does that not reinforce the safety of the space in which they walk? Can an attitude of owning the world around them be enough to prevent violence from impinging?<br />
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Cooper insists that the problems of the world need not be solved directly by a woman, but must be paid attention to from the feminine perspective. "All I claim is that there is a feminine as well as a masculine side to truth; that these are related not as inferior and superior, not as better and worse, not as weaker and stronger, but as complements-complements in one necessary and symmetric whole" (169). For so long, the philosophers have sought Truth, as if it could be apprehended by a single man. Cooper proposes that Truth is too large for a single man, or a single sex. She proposes that society needs more than one side of Truth in order to solve its ills.<br />
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More than one side, not the feminine over the masculine. And yet, if the masculine dominance is seen as normal, then any change in that status quo might feel like an attack to men. How do feminists convince the men's rights activists that we don't want men to have any less rights than women?JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-4093072331747595592015-03-09T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-21T19:28:53.043-07:00Elizabeth Cady StantonIn the biographical section on Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the editors cite Linda Kerber's <i>Toward an Intellectual History of Women</i> when they write "Her definition is unique and groundbreaking because all previous formulations of individualism make the implicit assumption that the individual is male (Kerber 201)" (171). This detail makes me remember going to see Peter S. Beagle on The Last Unicorn Tour last November. At the end of the prize drawings, he told an anecdote about starting that book. He wrote about a unicorn in a lilac wood, and <b>she</b> was all alone. His unicorn was the very first female unicorn. There remain many implicit assumptions about the sex of the characters and creatures that inhabit our imaginations and our worlds. When I get bitten by mosquitoes, I find myself calling them male even though I know that it is the female mosquitoes that drink blood.<br />
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In "The Solitude of Self" Stanton begins by listing the ways in which women as individual citizens should have the education to enable her to handle the duties and privileges of citizenship. Woman must be allowed to develop in order to support herself. No two people are alike, but we are all created equal. The idea still seems radical. I struggle to wrap my mind around the idea of equality. What does it mean for all people to be created equal? To be created equal in a literal sense would be impossible unless all people were alike. Equality in this sense must relate to our relations under the law.<br />
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And being equal under the law would play into the women's suffrage ideas - that women have a right, as citizens, to be tried by juries of their peers, rather than juries composed of men to whom all women were legally inferior by dint of not being able to vote. It is incredible that such powerful rhetoric calling for equality could then turn around and call some women less equal than others.<br />
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Whether men protect women or restrict them, Stanton argues that each woman is, in and of herself, alone. At the moment of death, we are all alone. In the extremities of our suffering, in the arms of our fellow human beings, that soul, that self, is still alone. She does not contend that women (or men) would be better off without human connection, but rather that despite any human connection, "each soul lives alone forever" (177). And, being alone, no other person can take responsibility for the soul of another. No man should be taking total responsibility for a woman, nor woman for a man.<br />
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Stanton did not live to see American women gain the legal right to vote. This piece was written 10 years before her death, and I wonder if she knew, then, that she would never see the change that she sought and fought for in her life.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-18861582881129148972015-03-08T12:00:00.000-07:002015-04-21T19:53:29.608-07:00Fannie Barrier WilliamsIn the selection from "The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women of the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation," Fannie Barrier Williams brings to light the struggles that the newly liberated slaves must face in order to get back to a neutral starting place. They are the first generation - they have no one to model their behavior after in order to find a known path to success. "In the mean vocabulary of slavery there was no definition of any of the virtues of life" (181). No book that they could access would be able to convey the kind of information that a tradition of living and success could.<br />
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Barrier Williams emphasizes how black women are not tracked as a discrete group, which makes it difficult to say how and if they have progressed. Her emphasis underscores how these women, as a group, are discounted and not seen as worthy of being noted. Yet, she is able to find some evidence in both churches and schools that demonstrate how eager black women are for education. All this despite the fact that society is still poised to prevent these women from reaching any sort of equality.<br />
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Williams brings out themes of justice and equality, appealing to the her audience's sense of fair play. That women of color cannot find employment in places where their talents lie, despite being qualified and even over qualified for the work. There is no reason to prevent them from those jobs for which they qualify, except prejudice. She bemoans the farce of legal equality written into law that does not allow for social equality. "When the colored people became citizens, and found it written deep in the organic law of the land that they too had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they were at once suspected of wishing to interpret this maxim of equality as meaning social equality" (186). And nowhere in the country did they find social equality. The phrasing of the sentence is telling - the colored people are the object of suspicion, not the ones suspecting. The law must hold different meanings for different people if the idea of social equality is met with suspicion.<br />
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A land that allows the law to treat people differently is not a healthy land. A cause that forwards the cause of some women at the expense of others is not a healthy movement. "We believe that social evils are contagious. The fixed policy of persecution and injustice against a class of women who are weak and defenseless will be necessarily hurtful to the cause of all women" (186). By using the word contagious, Williams suggests disease. She does not want colored women left out, as many white women want to leave them out, when it comes to the advancement of women. She wants them to remember that in fighting for women's rights they are fighting for equality. They should not work against their own cause by leaving black women behind.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214121939529355669.post-8415928328652653762015-03-07T12:00:00.000-08:002015-04-21T19:57:23.881-07:00Ida B. WellsI am struck by how incredible a woman Ida B. Wells was. I may be wrong, but I believe that a woman business owner would have been rare in her time, and a black woman business owner rarer still. She grew a newspaper where others said that it could not be done. She built it into a paying, viable business. All in a place where she felt safe. Despite the reports of lynching throughout the South, a lynching had never happened in Memphis, and it seemed that one never could.<br />
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Until one did.<br />
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And that one incident changed Memphis from a place where lynchings did not happen to a place where they did. It was as if a volcano had erupted that was not only called dormant, but was never even named a volcano. Suddenly, the black citizens had to wonder not if, but when, it might erupt again.<br />
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Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are a vital part of American society. And yet, Wells' newspaper could not be said to enjoy those freedoms as an equal to the presses of whites. One simple paragraph, citing the number of lynchings in the last week and their "reasons" would have pricked at the whites, but she included a reference to the moral reputation of white women.<br />
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This brought the issue into a different realm. As long as women, in general, were not equal, were considered property of men, insults to them were a greater excuse for violence than insults to men. The white men now have a moral mission - they must protect the virtue of their women. And, indeed, that was the root of many lynchings, for the perceived assault of white women by black men, often misconstrued to stir the passions of the mob. Though other excuses for lynching may have been found in some cases, the protection of women was a powerful motive (or excuse) for them.<br />
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In this work, "Lynch Law in All its Phases," Wells lists lynchings over a ten year period. The numbers are horrible, almost a thousand people over less than ten years, and the details are horrifying. She provides the information in a matter-of-fact, journalist manner, but it is, by its very nature, sensational. And awful. Whether the men and women who were lynched were guilty of a crime is beside the point. None of them should have been killed by a mob with no regard to guilt or innocence. Not if all people are created equal.<br />
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Slavery was ended, and the Southern states began immediately to try and get it back, in form if not in law. "All their laws are shaped to this end, school laws, railroad carriage regulations, those governing labor liens on crops, every device is adopted to make slaves of free men and rob them of their wages" (201). The laws that restrict black people only emboldened the whites to disregard other laws and let the lynch mob become justice. If the blacks could be legally bound to a different set of standards, then what was to stop the mob from meting out a different justice to them outside the law?<br />
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Hypocrisy is a constant thread among these women rhetors. They find it everywhere they look, because injustice and hypocrisy are close companions. As long as mob rule is allowed, America can not avoid being the land of some free and the home of the hypocrite.JBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03527683326665330689noreply@blogger.com0