Showing posts with label women's history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women's history. Show all posts

Monday, April 29, 2019

To P.C. or not P.C.?




I'm using the term "political correctness" here, although I'm not a big fan of the concept. "P.C." as commonly used calls up an image of a kind of mincing hyper-sensibility. I find that if that's the meaning you prefer, you are probably a fan of simple solutions -- the kind which tweet great, but which are bring on even more troubles.

Human variety is infinite, as are our human cultures, so what is ideally called the "real world" is a deep and complex ball of what one Dr. Who was pleased to call "wibbly wobbly." And this goes for sexuality, too, as our desires and needs and expressions thereof are as unique as a series of dots placed on the slope of a bell curve.

Everyone knows that things in the public arena have changed since #Metoo, but that doesn't alter the history of men and woman and relationship an iota. Much as we disapprove, we can't remake the past, not if we're interested in making an attempt to write good historical fiction.  Books of mine have, however, fallen afoul of some readers. I'm sorry, of course, because the complainants are often young women who are fighting real life battles with sexism in the office, on the streets, and in their own nests, too, as women struggle to be treated justly.

Some parts of our world are rapidly re-framing toward equal rights; others want to put the "ladies" (as they like to say) back in their "breeder/janitorial" place. Remember, we live in a world infused with Old Testament stories, the place where some modern men continue to find justification for their coercive, dismissive male behavior toward "weaker sex."

Fan Girl 

Of my books, My Mozart has the largest P.C. problem, because the affair between a young singer and the composer is the story. Back in the '80's when I wrote about a young artist who gifts her virginity to an admired older man in a mentor position, it didn't occur to me that I was in for serious flack from my Sisters. All I can say in my defense is that at the time I wrote, I was not living an artist's life in a big city or reading gender studies at uni, but was a wife of twenty years with two mostly grown kids and a full time job. I imagined I was hip about gender/sex, but the world where my basic opinions on such matters were formed was the 1950's, a time when, post-war, women were being pushed out of work places and back into the house. Years later, I'm still working toward a better understanding of "woman."

The older man/younger woman love affair is not an unfamiliar one in the world of the arts, or even in corporations, from law firms to universities to oil companies. The fact that such sexual relationships are unequal in power or that such things do happen is not what the readers are worried about,  however.  It's whether these stories should have been told in ecstatic terms when they are, in fact, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, especially so for the less experienced and therefore more vulnerable person in the equation. Abuse of power is rampant in unequal relationships; it's plain old monkey domination with sex thrown in.

What am I actually talking about in My Mozart? What's the book about? Perhaps it is simply Eros, a Being who can be relied upon not to give a damn about P.C. Erotic love is the most mysterious of all emotions--not the least because it is hedged about with so many cultural taboos. It is certainly the least susceptible to the blandishments of reason. Were the Greeks right about Mighty Aphrodite, that She swept all before Her? That desire is wired into us, and so we not only write poems, plays and books about this "crazy little thing called love;" we enact it in our lives. Sometimes it ruins us, sometimes it redeems us, sometimes it takes turns doing first one and then the other or both at the same time. It probably won't last, that obsession, that fire.

But you'll never know until you serve some time in that primal temple.

~~Juliet Waldron




*I've actually had more readers chastise me for writing Red Magic whose hero and villain both acted like proper 18th Century males toward the teen heroine. Set in 18th Century Germany, RED MAGIC tells the story of a young woman’s transition from rebellious girl to adored--and adoring--wife. A forced marriage brings her to her husband’s mysterious mountain home, where she uncovers a legacy of magic. Prejudices hinder the coming of love between the newlyweds, as well as the weird attraction the young wife feels toward her husband’s magnetic, foreign servant.

Red Magic is available at:









Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Women's Equality Day



http://amzn.to/1YQziX0  A Master Passion
woman behind the man

This little known American commemoration (August 26) was created back in the 70's by Bella Abzug, a colorful, out-spoken member of the House of Representatives (1971-77). She was a labor attorney, a graduate of Columbia (Harvard, which she was qualified for, refused to admit her because she was female). She was always an activist, a force in the peace movement, the antinuclear movement and the civil rights movement too. Later, Bella became a leader of the women's movement. How well I remember her rousing speeches!



The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.

 Women's Equality Day is meant to be a celebration of the 19th Amendment to our Constitution, the one which gave American women the right to vote. Before that, women obeyed the laws and paid their taxes, but, never mind--taxation without representation for people of the "wrong" gender remained the law of the land.


I've always loved research, so digging around in the past comes naturally. I often write novels with female protagonists, and the social/cultural conditions which affect my heroines are always a big part of the background. 




I've just participated in a local celebration of Equality Day, so it's fresh in mind, and I think American women ought to know more about their own history. As I started reading,  I stumbled into a whole world of forgotten, not-in-the-textbooks people and fantastic facts. I thought that this month, I'd share a random few.


All Americans know the Paul Revere story, but who has heard of Sybil Luddington? When the message "The British are coming" arrived at her father's house--he was a colonel in the Colonial Militia--his 400 men were 40 miles away on some other task. The original rider/horse was too exhausted to continue, so Sybil, aged 14, mounted the family steed and rode all night--a distance of 40 miles--to call the men back to battle. We may not have heard much about Sybil, but still, at half Revere's age, she rode twice as far to deliver the same important message. General George Washington knew her, though, and later came to the Luddington house to say his personal thank-you. Now, Sybil was news to me, and I thought I knew a thing or two about the American Revolution.




Or, much later, how about Claudette Colvin? In 1955, on her way home from High School, fifteen year old Claudette refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL bus to a white passenger. This was some daring, as it would be 15 months before Rosa Parks did the same thing. Here's what she told Newsweek:


 “I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, ‘Sit down girl!’ I was glued to my seat.”



Truth is powerful, and it prevails


Claudette was arrested for violating the segregation laws and the entire family was threatened with mayhem and death by white supremacists. Fortunately, the judge gave this brave young woman probation instead of a jail sentence, and, to my knowledge, the family escaped unharmed. 
And here are some fantastic facts concerning voting rights in the US. I've just learned that women actually  possessed the right to vote in several of the original 13 states, but lost it under the brand new "revolutionary" governments. 




In 1777, New York revoked women's right to vote, followed by, in 1780, Massachusetts. In 1784, New Hampshire did the same. When our present Constitution was adopted in 1787, the allocation of voting rights was left to the states. All states, except New Jersey, promptly put an end to a woman's right to vote. In 1807, New Jersey stepped backwards with the rest of the country, effectively leaving American women without the right to vote until, post Civil War, a few western states (Wyoming, Utah and Montana), began to do things differently. 


Women have still got a lot of work to do on the equality front all over the world. Here in the west, we're fortunate not to be considered chattel property, which is the case in many of today's Third world nations. However, things aren't perfect for us, either. Here are a few (not so) fantastic facts about the economic costs of being female in the US:


According to statistics released in 2015 by the U.S. Census Bureau, year-round, full-time working women in 2014 earned a real median income of $39,621 and full-time, year-round working men earned a real median income of $50,383. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 Current Population Survey found progress in closing the wage gap so slim as to be “statistically insignificant."






According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, over a working lifetime, wage 
disparities cost the average American woman and her family $700,000 to $2 million in lost wages, impacting Social Security benefits and pensions.

Four in ten mothers are primary breadwinners in their households and nearly two-thirds are primary or significant earners, making pay equity critical to many families’ economic 
security.

So sisters, let's go! Get to the polls and exercise that hard won right to vote. Get familiar 

with local issues and engage in off year elections too. If you've got ideas--speak at the town hall meeting or better yet, run for office! Inequality will continue to negatively affect you, your daughters, and your grand-girls unless we in this generation fix it, once and for all. 

"...I’ve been female for a long time now. I’d be stupid not to be on my own side."

--Maya Angelou


~~Juliet Waldron


http://www.julietwaldron.com
See all my historical novels @

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