Brilliant Women: The Blue Stocking Circle was a group of intellectuals with a strong desire to discuss, analyze, and examine the social, political, and educational problems of the day Mostly female intellectuals, but they included many prominent men as well.
They assembled in the London homes of literary hostesses such as Elizabeth Montagu, Frances Boscawen and Elizabeth Vesey in the 1750s form the nucleus of the exhibition. .... At first, all the party-goers were nicknamed blues, but from the 1770s, the "bluestocking" tag was applied to the women members in particular. By the time of Montagu's death in 1800, any female intellectual might be labelled a bluestocking, whether or not she could claim a link to the original circle.
posted by caddis
on Mar 21, 2008 -
10 comments
A recent poll (PDF) asked for reactions to the same model dressed in two different ways: in a plain shirt with her hair down, and in a blue head scarf of the style of some Islamic women. Perhaps understandably, the survey respondents felt the scarfed image was more traditional and more religious. But some of the other perceptions are less obviously predictable. (via
crooked timber)
posted by Rumple
on Jan 29, 2008 -
45 comments
"Hello, and welcome to
Mainly For Men (
part 1,
part 2). And, as the title implies, this is a programme, fellas, just for you." Yes, everything the BBC thought the red-blooded male back in the late 1960s would be interested in (ie women, cars and shark fishing). The result was so hideous it was never broadcast until a TV Hell themed night many years later. Possibly NSFW... some brief nudity ('artistic', naturally) and mild swearing. And rampant mind-blowing sexism.
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Nov 29, 2007 -
85 comments
In 1897, Elizabeth Smith Miller and her daughter Anne Fitzhugh Miller founded the Geneva Political Equality Club, an organization dedicated to fighting for women's suffrage in the United States. Between them, the two women kept
several scrapbooks documenting their efforts through 1911.
Via.
posted by Rykey
on Nov 11, 2007 -
7 comments
"This will be
a woman’s world, and men will have to learn to fit in." The Wilson Quarterly examines the historical, cultural, and sexual implications of matriarchy.
Via.
posted by amyms
on Oct 24, 2007 -
34 comments
"Tammy Wynette was quite wrong when she sang 'Sometimes it's hard to be a woman'. It's not. It's always hard to be a woman. Especially if you're a man." Hard-hitting journalism from
The Daily Mail. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster
on Sep 20, 2007 -
55 comments
Recently an opinion writer for
The Age, Catherine Deveny unleashed a firestorm of sorts when she wrote an article entitled '
Why Do Some Wives Still Change Their Names?'. The reaction to her article (from both men and women) was strong; so much so that in a recent follow up article entitled
'I Don't Give A Stuff What You Do. I'm Paid To Write What I Think' , she jokingly wrote that it had had the effect of reducing her readership to three. But when an article penned by a professional comedian employs such pointed rhetoric along the lines of "
Insecure or conservative or stupid women are bowing to the wishes of their husbands", can she truly claim surprise at the level of vitriol her article generated or is this simply a case of an opinion writer trying to get opinions?
posted by Second Account For Making Jokey Comments
on Sep 19, 2007 -
98 comments
Other Women's Voices: "Below are links that will take you to passages from over 125 women writers. The entries are on women who produced a substantial amount of work before 1700, some or all of which has been translated into modern English. Each entry will tell you about the print sources from which the translated passages are taken; it will also tell you of useful secondary sources and Internet sites, when those are available." An amazing resource. (Via
wood s lot.)
posted by languagehat
on Jul 26, 2007 -
20 comments
It puts the lotion in the basket. [nsfw] You know how in that movie,
The Silence of the Lambs, the serial killer they're trying to catch is skinning women because he wants to make a suit out of
real girls? If this product was around, perhaps we could have saved the lives of a lot of fictional victims.
posted by Sully
on Jul 25, 2007 -
81 comments
“With the number of human beings having increased more than six-fold in the past 200 years, the modern mind simply assumes that men and women . . . will always breed enough children to grow the population . . . Yet, for more than a generation now, well-fed, healthy, peaceful populations around the world have been producing too few children to avoid population decline. . . .
Throughout the broad sweep of human history, there are many examples of people, or classes of people, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.”
posted by jason's_planet
on Apr 26, 2007 -
79 comments
Porn for Women is a new photo book by the Cambridge Women's Pornography Collective that asserts that what really turns women on is a man who cleans the house and asks for directions.
Others disagree. (All links SFW.)
posted by desjardins
on Apr 9, 2007 -
58 comments
The "Revolution" that isn't. The idea that well-educated women are leaving their careers behind and choosing to stay at home is a recurring story- notably in "
The Opt Out Revolution", Lisa Belkin's 2003 essay in the New York Times. A
closer examination [.pdf, long] challenges the idea that women are returning home as a matter of biological "pull" rather than a workplace "push", and argues that how the media portrays the personal decisions of a few obfuscates the real social needs of most American working families. In 2007, the United States is one of the
few countries in the world without paid maternity leave.
posted by ambrosia
on Mar 16, 2007 -
55 comments
