We want to take today to speak to the MESSAGE-----as our MYSTIC says---control the PEN control the story......and global 1% MEN control the media.
Talking about those global 1% STARS ---baby boomers KNEW the women pushed by media in civil rights/women's rights era of 1960-70s were 5% PLAYERS and not 99% of women advocates. Top on list JANE FONDA----as with JOHN LENNON she promoted the idea of COMMUNISM BEING LEFT. Global media had her supporting North Vietnam as the Vietnam War raged. Here is her husband also sold as FAR-LEFT RADICAL---TED TURNER. He and Jane spent these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA creating a global news network that today is FAKE NEW CNN. It was a capture of our strongest in world history LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE MEDIA----handing it to far-right wing global banking 1%.
'Traitor: "Hanoi Jane" Fonda
She was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda, but earned her reputation as "Hanoi Jane" Fonda after "aiding and abetting" the enemy -- North Vietnam -- as documented in these photos taken in Hanoi (July 1972)':
All of that was PROPAGANDA. Here we have TED TURNER'S son that right wing media mogul----as if TED WAS NOT THAT RIGHT WING MEDIA MOGUL.
CNN IS SO FAR LEFT SAYS TED'S SON.
TED TURNER as the other FAKE RADICAL LEFT Governor of California BROWN both graduated from very, very, very far-right wing global 1% BUSH NEO-CON hedge fund IVY LEAGUE STANFORD........NO LEFT HAPPENING with HANOI JANE FONDA AND TED.
Ted Turner's Son: CNN Is So Far Left I Mostly Watch Fox
By Noel Sheppard | March 20, 2013 5:36 PM EDT
Republican Teddy Turner, the son of media mogul Ted Turner, made news last month when he blamed his father's liberalism on actress Jane Fonda.
He made more news Wednesday on NewsMax TV's Steve Malzberg Show saying that CNN is "pretty much to the left" and that he has such a "hard time watching them" he mostly watches Fox (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary, relevant section begins at 7:40):
STEVE MALZBERG, NEWSMAX TV HOST: What do you think when you watch CNN? Do you think they’re down the middle? Do you think they’re to the left? What do you think?
TEDDY TURNER: I think they’re pretty much to the left. I don’t think there’s any question about that. It’s not MSNBC, but they’re not Fox. So I think they’re, I have a hard time watching them a lot of times.
MALZBERG: And what do you think of the revamping. They got a new guy at the helm now, and they’re adding Chris Cuomo, and they’re keeping apparently Piers Morgan, and it doesn’t seem like this guy is going to do anything to make them let’s say a fairer more balanced presentation.
TURNER: Well, they may think that they’re fair and balanced already, or that they said, “Well, let’s give up the fair and balanced and we’ll stay to the left and on that niche." I have no idea what their marketing plan is, and I had discussions years ago with the folks and said, “Listen, you know, the left is not the way to go in talk radio or in talk TV because that’s not who’s listening."
MALZBERG: Who’d you talk to years ago at CNN?
TURNER: Anybody that would listen.
MALZBERG: In any capacity other than Ted Jr.? Did you have any capacity there?
TURNER: No, no, I worked on and off for CNN and Turner, you know, kind of all my life.
MALZBERG: Right. Did you ever talk to your dad about that while he was still involved? Did you talk to him about it?
TURNER: Oh sure.
MALZBERG: And what did he, what was his response when you said it was too far to the left?
TURNER: Well, you know, they say that they’re fair and balanced.
MALZBERG: Really? So he thought they were fair and balanced?
TURNER: Well, he thought they were doing the best they could do.
MALZBERG: Alright, and you find it hard to watch. What do you watch on cable news?
TURNER: I mostly watch Fox. But I switch around. I think you have to watch a little bit of everybody just to see what’s going on and try to get the real idea of what’s going on…People can have their opinions. If you don’t like it, turn it off and go somewhere else. And I think that’s what’s happening. CNN’s ratings are not great, and I don’t think they’re ever going to get back to where they were
______________________________________________
Looking locally at the same----all media outlets are controlled by far-right wing global 1% neo-con/neo-liberal and Baltimore has not had REAL JOURNALISM in a very long time.
Here are two TOP GUN GLOBAL 1% ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1% POLS----you can bet they want to keep MEDIA out of community development that has a goal of more and more and more Baltimore families black, white, and brown 99% of citizens unemployed, impoverished, and pushed out as global corporate campuses and global factories replace our surrounding Baltimore communities....
MOVING FORWARD SAYS JACK YOUNG CATHERINE PUGH NOT PRETTY FOR WOMEN, CHILDREN, FAMILIES.
The Baltimore Spectator
22 hrs ·
“The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city,” City Council President Jack Young said, at a community meeting in West Baltimore last night
So, Baltimore's shot at having an executive as woman-----is a raging global 1% HILLARY NASTY LADY....as was RAWLINGS-BLAKE as was DIXON-----all with only TALKING POINTS for global 1% of men.
The Dripby Fern Shen10:00 amDec 13, 2017
Council President Young denounces the press at community meeting
“The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city,” Jack Young tells West Baltimore audience
Above: Jack Young with Mayor Catherine Pugh at Carver Vocational-Technical High School last night.
Standing besides Mayor Catherine Pugh at a community meeting in West Baltimore last night, City Council President praised the mayor for her leadership (“I’m glad that she’s my partner”) before taking a swipe at the press.
“I’m working along with my Council colleagues – I see Councilman Bullock in the back. We’re just like any other family, you know? We’re a family at City Hall. We have our little disagreements,” Young said, speaking at Carver Vocational-Technical High School to an audience of about 30 residents and many more agency heads and staffers.
“But we don’t want the news media – you can, um, tweet this – to determine how we respond to one another in city government,” he continued. “The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city.”
“So, Madam Mayor, I’m willing to work with you. Yeah, I said it,” he concluded, handing the podium back to Pugh. “I’m willing to work with you to move this city forward.”
Asked this morning for some context for Young’s remarks and what might have sparked his criticism, his spokesman, Lester Davis, has not responded.
_______________________________________
'Perhaps her most ambitious project to date has been an effort in South Africa to provide educational and leadership opportunities for academically gifted girls from poor families. The idea began six years ago, on a trip to Africa'.
US 99% of citizens men and women love their STARS-----we have liked seeing OPRAH these few decades even as REAL LEFT social progressive women shouted how bad far-right wing global 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA was for all US 99% -----OPRAH was having our women tuning in to mental health counseling, relationship counseling, getting weight under control -----all of this was fine----but absolutely no talk of STOPPING MOVING FORWARD. There was no time period in modern history worse for global 99% of women then when OPRAH owned 50% of a national media corporation. There is no worse intent in building GLOBAL 1% FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES in Africa then the last time OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% colonized the African continent.
What we see from our US women starting as that 5% to the 1% allowed to move to global 2%------is just what we see from global 1% men-----no leadership from OPRAH-----she does anything global 1% of men tells her to do.
HANOI JANE---MEET OPRAH.
OPRAH is the same FLAT EARTH global human capital distribution system and enslavement as NIKE/MICHAEL JORDAN. We see that DISCOVERY----which is WASHINGTON BELTWAY MARYLAND-----which is also from where RADIO ONE-----our other woman-owned---well pretending so-----media outlet originated......
'Discovery Communications - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Communications
Discovery Communications is an American mass media company based in Silver Spring, Maryland, first established in 1985. The company primarily operates factual television networks, such as its namesake Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, Science, TLC, and other spin-off brands. It also owns or '
'Radio One | Downtown Silver Spring, MD
www.silverspringdowntown.com/go/world-space
Radio One, Inc. is an urban-oriented, multi-media company that primarily targets African-American and urban consumers. Our core business is our radio broadcasting franchise that is the largest radio broadcasting operation that primarily targets African-American and urban listeners. We currently own and operate 55' ...
WOMEN MUST HAVE THE POWER OF THE PEN/MEDIA TO HAVE THE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS TO ECONOMIC POWER.
Discovery takes majority stake in Oprah Winfrey's network
Michelle Castillo | @mishcastillo
Published 2:05 PM ET Mon, 4 Dec 2017 Updated 3:02 PM ET Mon, 4 Dec 2017
Getty Images
Oprah Winfrey
Discovery Communications will become the majority owner of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.
The company said on Monday it will increase its ownership stake in Oprah Winfrey's network to 70 percent. OWN, which launched in 2011, was previously a joint venture between Discovery and Winfrey's Harpo, Inc.
"Ten years ago, Oprah and I began to imagine what a network, inspired by her vision and values, could mean to viewers across the U.S.," Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav said in a statement. "In an increasingly crowded landscape, OWN has emerged as the leading destination for African-American women and one of the strongest superfan brands across all screens and services," he said.
Discovery paid $70 million to acquire an additional 24.5 percent stake in OWN, after factoring in net debt. Harpo, Inc. will remain a minority investor, and Winfrey will remain CEO of OWN with an exclusivity commitment through 2025.
OWN's majority stake fits with Discovery's plans to increase its leverage with pay TV operators and potentially launch its own direct-to-consumer streaming service by acquiring more content. It recently acquired Scripps Networks in July in a cash-and-stock deal worth $14.6 billion. Together, Discovery and Scripps content reach 20 percent of U.S. 25 to 54-year-olds. Adding OWN to the mix could boost African-American viewership numbers.
___________________________________________
There was never any national media team more global 1% far-right wing than ARIANNA HUFFINGTON and her partner BREITBART. Yet, HUFFINGTON was allowed ----by allowed we mean NO REAL LEFT VOICE outed her as FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT-----to create what was called a LEFT BLOGGER media outlet as early online media. So, for these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA our FAKE LEFT MEDIA was controlled by global 2% right wing players.
'Created byArianna Huffington
Kenneth Lerer
Jonah Peretti
Andrew Breitbart'
ARIANNA could have been that REAL 99% of women leader---but she was and is a global 1% player working for global 1% men pushing their TALKING POINTS. Of course after that 2016 election rigging and fraud----HUFF POST was sold and is openly owned by right wing. CAPTURING THE VOICE OF ALL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE ESPECIALLY THE VOICES OF 99% OF WOMEN.
HuffPost
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HuffPost
Type of siteNews and opinion
Available inArabic, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish
FoundedMay 9, 2005
Created byArianna Huffington
Kenneth Lerer
Jonah Peretti
Andrew Breitbart
EditorLydia Polgreen
ParentVerizon Communications via Oath Inc.
Slogan(s)Inform, Inspire, Entertain, Empower
Websitehuffingtonpost.com
Alexa rank 254 (October 7, 2017)[1]
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedMay 9, 2005; 12 years ago
Current statusActive
HuffPost (formerly The Huffington Post and sometimes abbreviated HuffPo)[2] is a liberal[3][4] American news and opinion website and blog that now has both localized and international editions. It was founded in 2005 by Andrew Breitbart, Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti.[5][6] The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content and covers politics, business, entertainment, environment, technology, popular media, lifestyle, culture, comedy, healthy living, women's interests, and local news.
**********************************************************
Huffington Post (HuffPost)*Voting Polls do not affect MBFC bias ratings
LEFT BIAS
These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage liberal causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Left Bias sources.
Factual Reporting: HIGH
Notes: The HuffPost formerly known as the Huffington Post is an American online news aggregator and blog that has both localized and international editions founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, Andrew Breitbart, and Jonah Peretti. The HuffPost displays left wing bias through story selection and word choices. They typically source to credible media and information. They sometimes publishes satire that is mistaken for fake news, however, they tag these items as satire. Overall, we rate the HuffPost Left Biased and High for factual news reporting. (5/13/2016) (Updated 12/06/2017)
______________________________________
We have shouted that having a DIVINITY SCHOOL on the OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% BANKING campus of global hedge fund IVY LEAGUE HARVARD is an OXYMORON. We know all those FAKE 5% RELIGIOUS leaders are tied to these IVY LEAGUE DIVINITY SCHOOLS. Harvard is tops in ties to global 1% of men.
Yet, they want to be the source of this discussion on WOMEN AND THE PEN and the deliberate policy of making sure 99% of global women---and US women have no real publishing control of media----whether book or journal publishing----whether radio, TV, stage or screen----those major STARS of journalism are always tied to a global 1% corporate campus.
"Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; and not yourself."14 Write like your life depends on it. Write like everything is at stake'.
We know today's religions are all CORRUPTED by a 5% FAKE religious leader OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE FREEMASON/GREEK. We want women to have that power of pen----that control of story-----but we KNOW 99% of women are not represented by 5% women tied to global 1% wealth and power men.
'Even though I have two graduate degrees from Harvard—including a doctorate in theology—many reviewers failed to treat me as a scholar of religion'.
PLEASE MAKE MEDIA AND 99% WOMEN'S VOICE THE PRIORITY IN STOPPING MOVING FORWARD.
REAL left social progressives are all for BUYING BOOKS written by women---we simply do not need to hear from more global 1% and their 2% pretending to have a voice for 99% of women.
We have a 5% to the 1% FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT religious leaders tied to OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE FREEMASONRY as are these institutions ----corrupting our PROTESTANT, CATHOLIC, JEWISH, MUSLIM, AND HINDI religions.......these are NOT the women to watch.
THIS ARTICLE IS VERY LONG--PLEASE GLANCE THROUGH
HOME / SUMMER/AUTUMN 2012 (VOL. 40, NOS. 3 & 4) /
The Pen Is Mightier
Sexist responses to women writing about religion.Sarah Sentilles
In response to my recent memoir, Breaking Up with God: A Love Story, several reviewers came close to calling me stupid. Many suggested I didn't know what I was talking about. As the title of the book suggests, I used the analogy of a romantic relationship gone wrong to describe my faith and its dissolution. These reviewers seemed to believe I understood my metaphorical romantic relationship with God to be a literal one. They wrote about me as if I actually thought God was my real boyfriend, as if I sat around waiting for God to take me to the prom and just couldn't understand why my date never showed up. Silly girl.
Even though I have two graduate degrees from Harvard—including a doctorate in theology—many reviewers failed to treat me as a scholar of religion. The reviews were infantilizing and patronizing. For example, the reviewer for Kirkus Reviews wrote, "What becomes clear early is that the author's understanding of God never developed beyond the childish concept of deity as a completely anthropomorphic figure." Not only did the reviewer miss that the point of Breaking Up with God was to tell the story of letting go of an anthropomorphic version of God, but she or he also assumed I was not aware of any other theological alternatives. I am the author of three books, two of which are about religion; I was almost ordained as an Episcopal priest; and I have studied theology for more than a decade. Breaking Up with God is filled with references to a variety of theological conceptions of God—from feminist to liberationist to queer to womanist to black theologians—among them, Ludwig Feuerbach, James Cone, Alfred Whitehead, Mary Daly, Sally McFague, Gordon Kaufman, Paul Tillich, and Friedrich Schleiermacher. But, as my grandmother used to say, I can't win for losing—for while one critic argued I didn't say enough about theological alternatives, another critic, from the Los Angeles Times, maintained there was "too much talk here, too much chatter about competing viewpoints." He prefers "the monastic approach to faith," he wrote, "because humility is a crucial ingredient." And then he asked, "Who really knows anything in their 20s?"
Never mind that I am thirty-eight.
I hesitated to use my experience with reviewers in this essay for fear that it would be read as a rant, an attack, or an attempt at retribution. But revenge is not my motivation. I also hesitated because I know there will be consequences. Authors depend on good reviews for their books' success, and I imagine critiquing reviewers is not my best career move. Women who do speak out—whether against sexism in the literary world or in the church or in the academy or in politics—are often accused of "whining," and then, like children, they are punished. But I am convinced the risk is worth it. Reviewers' words about my book demonstrate how sexism shapes responses to women's writing, in particular women's writing about God. The reviews are expressions of a systemic, institutional attempt to dismiss women's writing. The reviewers are speaking in code. They are charging me with writing like a woman. And they are telling me to shut up.
I am the first to admit my books are not beyond critique. There are countless ways I could make them better. I want to be critiqued, but I want to be critiqued for the strength of my ideas and for the quality of my writing—not for too much "chatter" or for a failure to be humble enough. Hold me accountable for the effects of my theological ideas; don't tell me not to write them.
Unfortunately, this distrust of women's words and the assumption that women do not know what they are talking about, no matter what their credentials or expertise or experience, are widespread in the literary establishment (though they are often coded as "reasoned critiques"). Most writers are aware of author Norman Mailer's infamous dismissal of "women's ink" as "dykily psychotic," "crippled," "creepish," "frigid," and "stillborn" in his 1959 Advertisements for Myself, but they may not realize that opinions like these are alive and well, even thriving, today. Author V. S. Naipaul recently claimed in an interview with the Royal Geographic Society that there was not a single female writer he considered his equal—not even Jane Austen, whose work he dismissed as "sentimental." Naipaul said, "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me." The narrowness of female authors' worldviews is the gender giveaway for Naipaul: "[I]nevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too." Naipaul even attacked his own publisher on these grounds: "My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh."
It might be possible to dismiss Naipaul's blatant sexism as the ravings of an arrogant misogynist if there were structural equality in the publishing industry, but there isn't. For the second year in a row, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts released a series of pie charts (the VIDA count) showcasing annual data comparing the rate of publication between women and men in the writing world's most respected literary outlets—and things don't look good for women who write.2 VIDA reports that in 2011, The Atlantic published 184 articles and pieces of fiction by men and 64 by women; 18 of their book reviewers were men and 8 were women; and 24 of the authors reviewed were men, compared to 12 women. Harper's Magazine published 65 articles by men and 13 articles by women; 23 of their book reviewers were men and 10 were women; 53 of the authors reviewed were men, 19 were women. The New York Review of Books published 133 articles by men and 19 by women; 201 of their book reviewers were male and 53 were female; and they reviewed 75 male authors and only 17 female authors. I could go on. The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The London Review of Books—all pay more attention to books and essays and articles and poems and short stories written by men than they do to those written by women.
Genres are gendered, a practice feuled by the perception that women's writing is essentially different than men's. . . . "Chick lit" is a term used to dismiss novels by women.
Gendered responses to women's writing have led several women to create alter egos in an effort to determine whether it is their ideas that generate hostile responses or whether simply being a woman with an opinion is enough on its own, no matter what they write. In "Disagree with Me—But Not Because I'm a Black Woman," Hannah Pool describes creating an online white male alter ego, Harry Pond. "I went on to a couple of threads. The opinions were my own, but the name a fake," she writes. "Unsurprisingly, Harry Pond received no racism and no sexism, in fact very little of anything by way of comment. People engaged with 'Harry' in a grownup manner, without the need for insults. Is this what it's like to be a white man? Having people accept your right to a difference of opinion?"3 In 2009, researcher Emily Glassberg sent out identical scripts to theaters in the United States, half with a male name and half with a female name. She found that those believed to have been written by women were rated significantly worse by artistic directors and literary managers than those written by men. "This was even the case when many of those artistic directors and literary managers were women."
I am beginning to understand why Mary Ann Evans changed her name to George Eliot.
Women's words are often ignored, it seems, and when they are not ignored, they are regularly dismissed. When Naipaul suggests that he doesn't trust women writers to say anything that matters, his belief reflects the larger cultural notion that women can't be trusted with anything, not with words, not even with their own bodies. In "Men Explain Things to Me," Rebecca Solnit argues that this presumption "keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare." "Credibility is a basic survival tool," Solnit writes, yet women are consistently told "they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives, that the truth is not their property." Treating women like they don't know anything is comparable to harassing women on the street, she argues; both crush women into silence by telling them "that this is not their world."
"At the heart of the struggle of feminism," Solnit says, is getting people to believe what women are saying—which is what the fight "to give rape, date rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and workplace sexual harassment legal standing as crimes" is fundamentally about. Lives are at stake, and not just women's lives. It was a woman, Solnit points out—an FBI agent named Coleen Rowley—who issued early warnings about al-Qaeda, and another woman, Elizabeth Warren, was one of the most publicly vocal advocates whose predictions about the impending debt crisis and financial disaster went unheeded.
And yet telling women not to speak up seems to be an increasing trend, especially on the Internet. The insidious sexism that appears in printed reviews is much more blatant online, and it is often violent. Anonymity allows people to post anything they want in comment sections, with no accountability, and often what is posted in response to articles written by women is offensive, threatening, and sexually explicit. Known as "trolling," these online attacks make the ways I have been described by reviewers—"naïve," "hysterical," "wimpy," "immature," "depressed," "off-kilter"—seem tame.
Some bloggers have started to speak out about the abuse they experience. In "A Woman's Opinion Is the Mini-Skirt of the Internet," the columnist Laurie Penny writes, "[A]s a woman writer, particularly if you're political [y]ou come to expect the vitriol, the insults, the death threats. After a while, the emails and tweets and comments containing graphic fantasies of how and where and with what kitchen implements certain pseudonymous people would like to rape you cease to be shocking." Penny understands the threats as "campaigns of intimidation designed to drive [women] off the internet."6 Caroline Farrow, a blogger for Catholic Voices, gets at least five sexually threatening emails a day.7 Many of the offensive comments have to do with the authors' appearance. Penny writes, "The implication that a woman must be sexually appealing to be taken seriously as a thinker did not start with the internet: it's a charge that has been used to shame and dismiss women's ideas since long before Mary Wollstonecraft was called 'a hyena in petticoats.' The net, however, makes it easier for boys in lonely bedrooms to become bullies."
I was invited recently to write for CNN's Belief Blog, and one of the first responders to my piece, "Five Women in Religion to Watch," was a troll who used the Bible to threaten me and the women about whom I wrote:
A good Christian woman should be silent, submissive, subservient and filled with shame for the curse her gender forced on humanity. As 1 Timothy 2:11–14 reminds us, 'Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.' If these women continue to ignore the Lord's command, he will treat them like he did the daughters of Zion in Isaiah 3:18 and take away all their jewelery [sic], fine clothes, makeup, and mirrors. He'll make them bald and rotten smelling before killing all of the men they care about.
Another troll posted a comment soon after, attacking our physical appearances. "Anyone else notice how physically unappealing these women are?" he wrote. "Not only is this fact, it is also fact that religious belief is also the ultimate turn-off. These hookers don't even get a third strike. They're all out." Feminist women daring to write about God makes the violence of misogyny visible.
Genres are gendered, a practice fueled by the perception that women's writing is essentially different than men's. It seems, for example, to be common practice to call memoirs about religion by women "spiritual memoirs," and memoirs about religion by men "books about religion," or "searches for meaning," or—yes, I'm going to say it—the Bible, labels that suggest gravitas and sweep and import and holiness. Somehow, no matter in what genre a woman understands herself to be writing, her words will often be packaged "for women" because the assumption is that "[b]ooks about women are supposedly for women, but books about men are for everyone."9 The category "chick lit" is a perfect example of this phenomenon. "Chick lit"—now called "commercial fiction"—is a term used to dismiss novels by women, especially when those novels are popular. Author Jennifer Weiner writes, "I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book—in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention."10 Even veteran New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor's book The Obamas was called "chick nonfiction" by Douglas Brinkley in his February 17, 2012, review in The New York Times Book Review. Still, maybe Kantor should count herself lucky, since most books dubbed "chick" anything are not reviewed by major publications.
Women are written into certain genres and out of others. When I interviewed author Dani Shapiro, she described an article in The New York Times about the "domestic novel" in which almost no female authors were mentioned. "It came out right around the time as my novel Family History, which could be called a domestic novel in the sense that it is very much about a family and is centered on the interior workings of this family." She read the article wondering if her novel would be mentioned, but she soon realized that 95 percent of the writers mentioned were men. She stopped wondering about her novel and started wondering whether any book by any woman would be mentioned. Shapiro had a similar experience reading a recent post by Tim Parks on the The New York Review of Books blog in which Parks explores how "the writer's job" is currently understood and illustrates how this conception has changed over time. Parks mentions many writers—Sophocles, Virgil, Pope, Petrarch, Chaucer, Byron, Shelley, T. S. Eliot, Rushdie, Pamuk, Coetzee. "It was on second read that it occurred to me that there were no women. Not one," Shapiro said. "This was written by someone who simply doesn't have female writers as any kind of reference."
What does it mean that a supposedly historical account of the writer's job can ignore all female writers? Most contemporary statistics suggest that women are writing more books than men are writing, and women are reading more books than men are reading, and women are buying more books than men are buying, and yet our work, our very existence, is regularly made to disappear. What effect does this erasure have? On women? On writers? On readers? Theater critic and novelist Alison Croggon writes, "If millions of reinforcing signals say a woman's work is less significant, something will eventually begin to stick."11
Roxann MtJoy notes that Weiner also points to the discrepancy in the way memoirs by men and memoirs by women are treated by The New York Times Book Review: "If you are a man confessing to a shady past, then you are 'brave,' 'smart,' and/or 'heartfelt.' If you are a woman doing the same thing, you have probably 'lost it entirely.'"12 Reviews of women's memoirs often make the writer herself the object of critique rather than the content of her ideas. Many reviews of Breaking Up with God, for example, do not engage the theological ideas in the text; instead, they criticize me—that I start too many sentences with the word "I" (a feminist practice I learned at Harvard Divinity School, and the book is, after all, a memoir); or that I reveal "unwanted tidbits" about my personal life; or that my voice in the book is "grating." One blogger dedicated an entire post about my second book, A Church of Her Own, to analyzing my author photo. My neckline was too plunging, she wrote, my necklace too trendy. When Shapiro's memoir Devotion was reviewed in The New York Times Book Review, the reviewer paid more attention to her appearance, her romantic history, and her mental health than to the substance of her ideas or experience. "In the first paragraph [the reviewer] talked about what I look like and what my house looks like," Shapiro said.
How many resources are wasted in the attempt to rise above the sense that women don't have the right to speak? And what role do religious traditions play in this silencing?
Emily Rapp (MTS '00)—author of Poster Child and the forthcoming The Still Point of the Turning World, about her son Ronan, who was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs Disease in 2010—explodes cultural myths about motherhood, God, and what it means to be human in every blog post, article, and essay she writes. She also makes clear the fact that dominates her life: Ronan will die and there is nothing anyone can do to save him. "I am living most mothers' worst fear," Rapp said when I interviewed her. "I have a lot of people who write me and say, 'I wish we could save Ronan. Isn't there anything that we can do?'"
Rapp hears in their question a longing to heal her son, but she also hears blame and an assumption that she must not be doing everything she can, that she hasn't considered all her options, that there must be something she's missing—in other words, that she doesn't know what she's talking about, not even about her own son. She's written several times about the fact that she had the prenatal genetic test for Tay-Sachs—twice—and that both times the test failed to detect the disease. But when Rapp published an essay titled "Rick Santorum, Meet My Son" in Slate in February 2012, arguing that if she had known before Ronan was born that he had Tay-Sachs, she would have saved him from suffering by having an abortion, readers attacked her. "When the Slate piece came out, people wrote to me things like, 'Oh, you stupid bitch, why didn't you get the test? Don't you know there's prenatal testing?'" Rapp said. "They were basically saying to me, 'You stupid woman! You had sex and you didn't think about it. You were totally thoughtless, and you deserve what happened to Ronan.'"
I asked Rapp if she thought there would have been the same response if the article had been written by a man. "I think if I were a man writing that thing, people would have been clapping their hands and saying things like, what a brave man," she said. Rapp said the fact that she is doing anything other than "gnashing [her] teeth and weeping and flinging [her]self on the funeral pyre"—meaning the fact that she is writing—is read as a failure of motherhood. Some even question Rapp's choice to write about Ronan and accuse her of using his illness for her own gain. "Someone sent me this horrible email that said, how long are you going to use your son for your writing," Rapp said, as if there should be a limit to the number of words or the amount of time she can spend writing about Ronan. Rapp is convinced this question about content is a sexist question. "What is Philip Roth writing about? The same stuff he's always been writing about," Rapp said. "No one says, wow, there are a lot of old guys who sleep with young women in your novels. No one says that to Philip Roth."
Reviews and responses like these reveal a misunderstanding of what memoirs are, especially memoirs written by women. These readers approach memoirs as if they are diaries, as if the only reason the author is writing is to expose personal, private, intimate information about herself. "People assume that memoirs, especially by women, are like stripping," Rapp said. "People say to me, 'Your stuff is really brave,' and I say, actually it's really smart. It's not just me shaking my tits in your face. It is an intellectual exercise." I am convinced that the misperception of women's memoirs as an act of "exposure" (or "overexposure") has led to a misreading of women's stories and to a failure to recognize memoir-writing as a powerful, intellectual, creative form of agency—a way to tell our own stories instead of accepting the story society might like to tell for and about us.
Those who have written from the margins—feminist and womanist and liberation theologians, black critical theorists, postcolonial theorists—have always recognized the need to write as if their lives depend on it, because their lives often do. Words are world-creating and world-destroying; they can be used to liberate and to enslave. In Beyond God the Father, Mary Daly writes: "women have had the power of naming stolen from us. We have not been free to use our own power to name ourselves, the world, or God. . . . To exist humanly is to name the self, the world, and God. . . . The liberation of language is rooted in the liberation of ourselves."13 Writing can be a way to reclaim the right to name.
Part of the challenge of writing is the struggle to believe you have something worth saying. More than half the battle is making your way to the page, cutting through self-doubt and shame and questions about whether or not your project matters. I imagine this is a universal struggle, part of what it means to be an artist. But how might this struggle be exacerbated by a culture that devalues women's words? How much creative energy has been lost in the effort required to overcome sexist and racist and classist and heterosexist views of women's writing? How many resources are wasted in the attempt to rise above the sense that women don't have the right to speak? And what role do religious traditions play in this silencing?
"I had no idea how much permission would be this tremendous stumbling block for me, and it had everything to do with being a woman," Shapiro said about writing Devotion: A Memoir. She was raised as an Orthodox Jew, and though she recognizes that many Orthodox women find the tradition empowering, for Shapiro the hiddenness of women, the fact that women can't read from the Torah or perform the mitzvoth, that they are perceived as unclean when they menstruate, that the intellectual role has been traditionally male, led her to question her own authority to write about God. "Who am I? Who do I think I am?" Shapiro said. "I am not a religious scholar. I'm female. What right do I have [to write], and who will care?" Describing her writing process, Shapiro said, "There is a greater distance that I have to travel to the place where I am free. . . . It is harder to get there. It is harder to stay there. And I do think that is quite universal for women, whatever they do, whatever we do."
Feminists from Virginia Woolf to Hélène Cixous to bell hooks have long claimed writing as a feminist act in a patriarchal world. "When I sit down to write, I recognize the writer as the one in power," Katie Ford (MDiv '01) said when I interviewed her. Ford is a poet, and she finds the genre permission giving. "The poem traditionally has been the place people go to say absolutely anything, and it is often subversive or outside of the doctrinal or political or social norm," Ford said. She spent much of her adolescence and early twenties traveling in religious circles, and it was about those experiences that she wanted to write. "I didn't feel like I could do that in the sermon, or in the classroom as a professor of theology," she said. "The poem was the place I could do that. . . . It is an antidote to the sermon." The poets who came before her are part of what gives Ford her sense of authority. "My poetic models are men and women who have been writing against Stalin, for example, or those who, like Emily Dickinson, address the entire world," Ford said. "If you widen your scope, if you are addressing human suffering or God or the world—whatever visible or invisible realities there are—then you are trying to address beyond the current culture, so the restraints of the current culture have nothing to do with you."
Ford describes the writing space as a place in which her mind can be free from cultural restraints. But what happens when your words are published? What happens when they are released into a sexist world, into a patriarchal culture in which reviewers and anonymous trolls have the power to frame how your writing is received? Writing this essay has been a powerfully liberating experience for me, but it is also terrifying. I was supported as a feminist when I was a student at Harvard Divinity School, but I was also disciplined for being a feminist, and I worry that I will be disciplined for writing this essay. I expect to be called whiny and strident and annoying and grating and hysterical and uninformed. I expect to be told I don't know what I'm talking about.
But I'm also hopeful that this essay will encourage people to engage in a conversation about what to do next, about how to respond concretely to sexism in the literary world—and to the sexism in our syllabi and on our reading lists for general exams, in the language of our liturgies and in the leadership structures of our communities and churches and synagogues and mosques. Because, really, when it comes right down to it, there isn't much to argue with here. I am simply sharing data, stating facts. Facts that aren't new. Facts that have been stated and restated for decades, for centuries.
In "Men Explain Things to Me," Solnit argues that women who are writers fight wars on "two fronts." The first front has to do with content, a battle every writer wages. It is the work of craft, the struggle to form ideas and opinions, to amass information and make arguments, and to structure beautiful sentences. But the second front is about voice. This is the fight "simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being."
As a feminist writing about religion I am engaged in a battle on yet another front. I have to fight to assert my right to speak not only in the literary world, but also in a religious one. When the Los Angeles Times reviewer wrote that he preferred the "monastic approach" and urged me to assume a posture of humility, his words echoed the fourteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (verses 34–36): "As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. . . . For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. Or did the word of God originate with you?" I battle religious language and structures and liturgies and holy books that don't include me, because not only are critics telling me to shut up—they make God tell me that, too.
What can be done?
First, buy books written by women. Novels, memoirs, theology, political nonfiction, scientific explorations, poetry, history, mysteries. Put yourself on a diet of books by women and see what happens. Read them with your book groups. Review them online. Disagree with their ideas. Critique their arguments. Revel in the power of their words.
Second, engage in your own VIDA count. When you buy a magazine or receive a publication to which you subscribe--Harper's or The New Yorker or The Sun or The New York Review of Books or GQ or Ebony or The Paris Review—count how many articles they publish are written by men and how many by women, and then write a letter to the editor telling her or him that you'd like to see more gender balance in the table of contents. And keep doing it. Every time.
Third, when you read book reviews, pay attention to the language a reviewer uses when writing about books by women. Is the review sexist? Is the tone patronizing or belittling? Does the reviewer critique the argument, or attack the author herself? Does the reviewer write about the author's appearance or personal life or house? And if you discern a difference between how a reviewer treats books by men and books by women, write a letter to the editor and to the reviewer telling them you noticed the sexism. Educate them.
And finally, I have three suggestions for writers who are women: First, stop caring what other people think about what you write. Shut the negative voices out, the voices that try to silence you and shame you and tell you that what you have to say is "feminine tosh." (If this is hard for you, remember that the reviewer for Kirkus Reviews called Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love "unsuccessful." Ha!) Emily Rapp is my role model for this practice. She writes from a fearless place—and her words are electric. They set fire to the page. "I definitely feel like my task now is to be a truth teller, and I just don't really care what people think about me anymore," Rapp said. "That element of being a woman has kind of disappeared. The only way I am going to survive this is by being an authentic person, so I better get out of my own way and say what I have to say, and if people don't like it, I don't care. This is a gift Ronan has given me, and it is the biggest revelation of my adult life." Second, join with other authors to work for structural, feminist, liberating change—in the literary world, in religious communities, in academia, in the world. And third, keep writing. In the words of Hélène Cixous: "Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; and not yourself."14 Write like your life depends on it. Write like everything is at stake.
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As MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1% hits our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones with a goal of global 1% of installing far-right wing, authoritarian, militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty LIBERTARIAN MARXISM----we will hear nothing from these LEADERS IN WOMEN'S VOICE FOR RELIGION. This is the FARM TEAM 5% Clinton/Bush/Obama women being the only one's with a voice in PEN----IN MEDIA-----all from far-right wing global 1% global hedge fund IVY LEAGUE corporations.
They want to engage us in what 21st century SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT should look like.
We have a 5% to the 1% FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT religious leaders tied to OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE FREEMASONRY as are these institutions ----corrupting our PROTESTANT, CATHOLIC, JEWISH, MUSLIM, AND HINDI religions.......these are NOT the women to watch.
March 5th, 2012
04:00 AM ET
My Take: Five women in religion to watch
Editor's Note: Sarah Sentilles is a scholar of religion and the author of three books, most recently a memoir, "Breaking Up with God: A Love Story." She tweets as @sarahsentilles.
By Sarah Sentilles, Special to CNN
(CNN) - The year 2012 has only just begun and already women are revolutionizing what it looks like to be religious, to study religion and to engage in social change. Here are five women to watch in 2012:
Kecia Ali
Kecia Ali, a feminist scholar who focuses on Islamic jurisprudence and women in early and modern Islam, is one of the organizers of “Muslim Women and the Challenge of Authority,” a conference that will be held at Boston University in March. Participants will be asking crucial questions about who has the right to speak for or about Muslim women, important work at a time when the image of the “veiled Muslim woman” is still being used to prove the supposed inferiority of Muslim cultures and to justify Islamophobia. Ali is the author of "Sexual Ethics and Islam" and, most recently, "Imam Shafi’i: Scholar and Saint" (2011). Her current research focuses on biographies of Mohammed. She is an sssociate professor of religion at Boston University.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Nadia Bolz-Weber is changing what church looks like — and she’s changing what ministers look like while she’s at it. The tattooed founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints is a leading voice in the emerging church movement, what people like Diana Butler Bass are calling a new Reformation. Bolz-Weber is committed to the belief that the Bible still matters, that you shouldn’t have to leave parts of yourself behind when you show up at church and that the Lutheran tradition can be revolutionary. The House for All Sinners and Saints is social justice oriented, queer inclusive, incarnational, contemplative, irreverent and progressive. You can even buy a church T-shirt with the slogan “Radical Protestants: Nailing sh*t to the church door since 1517” emblazoned on the back. Bolz-Weber is the author of "Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television." More of her writing can be found in The Christian Century and her own blog, the Sarcastic Lutheran.
Anthea Butler
Anthea Butler models what engaged scholarship looks like in the 21st century. Butler, an associate professor of religious studies and graduate chair in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, brings a scholar’s eye to contemporary politics and decodes the work religion is doing in the public square. She’s a regular contributor to Religion Dispatches and a prolific tweeter. Whether she’s discussing politics, popular culture, Pentecostalism or the history of African-American women’s religious lives, Butler demonstrates an unceasing commitment to telling the truth and holding people accountable. Her newest book, "The Gospel According to Sarah: How Sarah Palin's Tea Party Angels are Galvanizing the Religious Right," will be published this summer by the New Press. It explores Palin’s Pentecostal roots and the fervent Christianity of her followers, revealing what Jeff Sharlet calls “a new kind of piety—a ‘supersized’ folk religion that’s part Pentecostalism, part evangelicalism, part Catholicism, and part high heels.” In the meantime, Butler will be tweeting about the presidential election and the pedophilia scandal in the Philadelphia Archdiocese (she tweets as @AntheaButler).
Esther Fleece
The assistant to the president for millennial relations at Focus on the Family, Esther Fleece was hired to bring the so-called “millennials” back to the conservative Christian movement. She has her work cut out for her. Fleece says she has friends who voted for Obama and she also has friends who are gay. Fleece tweets (you can find her @EstherFleece) and blogs about a variety of topics ranging from Tim Tebow’s Christianity (in a recent post at On Faith she compared Tebow to John the Baptist) to why women shouldn’t live with their boyfriends but should rather make them “put a ring on it.” She’s working to redefine what it means to be young and evangelical at a time when conservative Republicans are looking for that particular demographic’s vote. It will be interesting to see just who ends up influencing whom.
Karen King
Karen King is the first woman appointed as the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, the oldest endowed chair in the United States, and she is at work on a book about “martyrdom and its discontents” that rethinks the role of violence in the formation of Christianity. She writes against polarized opinions about religion and violence often heard today — either religion is essentially intolerant and thus naturally given to violence, or religion is essentially peaceful. As a way out of this impasse, King focuses on controversies among early Christians themselves over how to understand and respond to the violence aimed against them. (Full disclosure: King was my professor at Harvard Divinity School and in 2010 we co-convened a Radcliffe seminar, “Christianity and Torture.”) In her books and her lectures, King makes Christianity’s ancient history relevant and revolutionary as she investigates what is at stake and for whom. She is the author of "The Secret Revelation of John; and Revelation of the Unknowable God."
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We could not escape last century some of the women writers made famous-----and we can love what these global 1% OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE FREEMASON/GREEKS write-----here is Virginia Woolf-----these are what were called our early women feminists----but they were NEVER 99% women leaders----they were always global 1% men extreme wealth extreme poverty.
THE BLOOMBURY GROUP----great big MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE capturing the voice of REAL left social progressive 99% women.
KEYNSIAN ECONOMICS-----BETTER THAN NEO-LIBERALISM---BUT A REAL GLOBAL 1% MEN'S ECONOMICS.
The Bloomsbury Group: Its Influence on the 20th Century and Beyond
By Katie Behrens. Dec 30, 2014. 9:00 AM.
What did a handful of writers, artists, critics, and an economist have in common at the beginning of the 20th century? Living in a similar area of London, certainly. But it was a shared vision of life in all its creative, aesthetic, and intellectual glory that drew the Bloomsbury Group together.
The collective influence of the Bloomsbury Group in the artistic and literary communities of the era should not be downplayed. Despite an oft-changing membership list and much political upheaval in the world around them, the group existed over several decades and still casts its shadow on us today.
Although historians disagree on who was part of the “in crowd” and who was not (there was never an official list), sources agree that among the founding individuals were Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes (the lone economist), and Lytton Strachey. Several of the men were educated together at Cambridge where they met Thoby Stephen and his siblings: Adrian, Vanessa (later Bell), and Virginia (later Woolf). The Stephens began to host regular but informal gatherings at their residence in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London. These “Friday Club” and “Thursday Evening” meetings were the soil out of which the Bloomsbury Group grew. Thoby’s early death in 1906 brought the group of friends closer together and spurred them onward.
More than anything, the members of the Bloomsbury Group were united in a shared philosophy which was heavily influenced by British philosopher G.E. Moore. In practice, this philosophy was the basis for a rejection of the bourgeois ideals of their parents’ generation, including a challenge to the society standard of monogamous and heterosexual relationships. Members found in one another a mutual desire to lead lives of beauty and creativity.
It’s worth noting that when they began meeting, virtually none of the Bloomsberries had seen the career success that would mark their later lives. The group and its members flourished in the 1910s and ‘20s, though World War I caused a shift in how the group operated. Before the war, artist Roger Fry curated two extremely influential exhibitions that awakened England to the post-Impressionist movement in Europe. Virginia Woolf began gaining attention in literary circles and in the suffragette movement. John Maynard Keynes’s criticism of the Versailles Peace Treaty garnered global respect. And throughout everything, the love affairs came and went amongst the Bloomsbury Group, causing no little scandal.
During the 1930s, whatever cohesion that was left between the original Bloomsberries was damaged by repeated tragedy. Lytton Strachey died, followed by Roger Fry in 1934. Vanessa and Clive Bell’s son was killed during the Spanish Civil War in 1937, and Virginia Woolf committed suicide in 1941 after suffering from depression for many years. The Bloomsbury Group had seen great influence in the early 20th century, but it became time for others to take up the banner.
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Umberto Eco was always a favorite author-----CALVINO gave us INVISIBLE CITIES to describe MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES AND SMART CITIES-------he is that global 1% OLD WORLD MERCHANT OF VENICE freemason creating novels opening the window of the goal of MOVING FORWARD.
THE LIQUID SOCIETY speaks to what we have been shouting since the 1980-90s------the goal of a complete dismantlement of all that is WESTERN CIVILIZATION for 4,000 years-------creating that SMART CITY FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1%. Liquid Society speaks to the breakdown of family---community-------the attempt to kill our religions to leave 99% of WE THE PEOPLE without even GOD'S PRESENCE as a friend and guide. That is the goal of MOVING FORWARD ----that is what CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have been installing these few decades of ROBBER BARON FLEECING OF AMERICA.
THE END OF CIVILITY-----is just that. If we want to protect women---family-----children------keep our 99% of men working with women able to do the same----we must STOP MOVING FORWARD----we must STOP US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----to do that we need to GET RID OF ALL GLOBAL BANKING 5% POLS AND PLAYERS---especially those pretending to be representing WOMEN.
Final Umberto Eco book publication pushed forward after author's death
Pape Satàn Aleppe: Chronicles of a Liquid Society is a collection of essays that was originally set to be published in May 2016
The release date of the final book by the Italian novelist Umberto Eco, who died on 19 February, has been pushed forward from May 2016 to come out this weekend in Italian.
Pape Satàn Aleppe: Chronicles of a Liquid Society is a collection of Eco’s essays that have previously been published in Italian weekly magazine L’Espresso since 2000, Eco’s publishers La Nave di Teseo said.
“Papé Satàn, papé Satàn aleppe” is the opening line of Canto VII of Inferno, the first part in Dante’s 14th-century poem The Divine Comedy. The line is famous for puzzling translators, with modern academics believing it is a demonic invocation. The title is “sufficiently liquid to characterise the confusion of our times”, according to the blurb on Amazon.
Eco’s publisher La Nave di Teseo is a new publishing house that formed because notable writers, including Eco, feared the creation of a monopoly in Italian publishing after publishing company Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, owned by the family of former Italian prime minister and billionaire Silvio Berlusconi, bought book publisher RCS Libri in 2015. Eco personally donated €2m to help fund La Nave di Teseo, while Arnoldo Mondadori Editore now has a market share of around 38% of book publishing in Italy.
In an interview with la Repubblica on Monday, head of La Nave di Teseo Elisabetta Sgarbi called the new book “an ironic book, as withering as he was” and said Eco was “a tireless worker”.
“I really cannot think of Umberto in the past ... In Via Jacini, in our home, we hoped to see him work again,” she said. “Just today I found a drawing dedicated to ‘Alamo’, a name that we thought to give to the publisher, then discarded.”
The publication or release date for an English translation of Pape Satàn Aleppe: Chronicles of a Liquid Society has yet to be announced by Eco’s English publisher, Harvill Secker. Eco, who was most well-known for his 1980 mystery The Name of the Rose, wrote seven novels, three children’s books and an extensive catalogue of essays and non-fiction.
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This is how crazy propagandist our US media and national FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT 'labor and justice' organizations have become since controlled by CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA -----we heard back in the 1990s global 1% was tired of the waste of constructing separate bathrooms for men and women in public spaces. It since then has been the goal of ending ladies and gentlemen to go with UNISEX. All this had nothing to do with GBLT-----it had nothing to do with rights of TRANSEXUALS-----global 1% are simply PRETENDING to support a voting population group.
Our 99% of women may indeed have differing views on losing our women's designation as we all know how messy our 99% of men can be despite efforts in toilet training.
We can bet the public spaces tied to gatherings for global 1% and their 2% will still have those plush ladies rooms------but for 99% of women----those rights and benefits do not meet GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SUSTAINABILITY. Rather than call it a loss for women---they call it a gain for transexual citizens. Was all that media about citizens so uptight about trans using the women's bathrooms REALLY that loud?
THIS IS A SMALL ISSUE AMONG GORILLA IN ROOM PUBLIC POLICY BUT IT SPEAKS TO OUR 99% OF WOMEN NOT HAVING THAT VOICE.
Sometimes Gender Neutral Bathrooms Have Nothing to Do With Gender Identity
There are several reasons that gender neutral bathrooms will soon replace separated men's and women's bathrooms, and they have nothing to do with gender identity, explains Jimmy Parker, event producer and former BID director.
August 9, 2016, 9am PDT | wadams92101
TheChoperPilot
Gender neutral bathrooms are just better. It has nothing to do with gender identity or current affairs. There are several reasons that gender neutral bathrooms will soon replace separate men's and women's bathrooms, explains event producer and the long time president of San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter Association—a Businsess Improvement District.
A few of the reasons include:
Benefits
Once you begin to design standardized approaches to public restroom facilities, certain benefits will be realized. Here are a few:
Safety
This area seems to be where the greatest passion exists on both sides of the political debate, but I would ask the reader to consider the following:
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In fact the passing of laws surrounding the creation of LADIES ROOMS in general public space came with the advancement of WOMEN'S RIGHTS WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE------during those ROARING 20s-----as this article states-----the VICTORIAN era need for women and modesty drove the need for separate spaces as women left their homes and frequented public spaces.
What do we think drives GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SUSTAINABILITY TIED TO UNISEX bathrooms? We know it is NOT GBLT---we know it is tied to MOVING FORWARD 99% of women leaving the workplace -----returning to being tied to the HOME.
'Rather, these laws were rooted in the so-called “separate spheres ideology” of the early-19th century – the idea that, in order to protect the virtue of women, they needed to stay in the home to take care of the children and household chores'.
We want all the best for our GBLT-----but we are shouting when the far-right wing, extreme wealth extreme poverty global corporate FASCISM MOVES FORWARD-----it effects all population groups as EUGENICS is always defined by those global 1% thinking themselves the perfect example of humanity-----but we must have CONVERSATIONS-----VOICES FROM 99% OF WOMEN in how these small policies add up to REAL intentions for women in 21st century losses of employment opportunities and job categories due to SMART CITIES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE/ROBOTICS----and an economy just for those global 1% and their 2%.
Remember, far-right wing authoritarianism is NOT SOCIALLY PROGRESSIVE. This same corporate sustainability is tied to workers no longer having their own bathrooms---being pushed to use general public restrooms----
new hire can’t work the schedule she agreed to, men’s bathrooms vs. women’s bathrooms, and more
by Alison Green on April 18, 2016
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Should my company have more men’s bathrooms than women’s bathrooms?
I am a woman working at a software company of about 10,000 people. Like many software companies, we have about twice as many male employees as female employees.
As our hiring increases, there started to be an occasional wait for the men’s restrooms. One solution that has been thrown out to fix this is to convert some of the women’s restrooms to men’s restrooms. This would mean every other floor has a women’s restroom and some floors have two men’s restrooms. I don’t have any sway in the decision, but I want your take on whether this is ridiculous. I go back and forth on understanding that building more bathrooms is unrealistic and expensive but also feeling like, in an industry where women already feel marginalized, this just adds to the feeling that software is a male industry. Not to mention, it sends a poor message to our women candidates who come to our building for interviews.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s a great idea to make half your women employees walk to another floor to find a bathroom, and you’re right that it’s especially bad messaging in an industry that’s already dealing with a gender problem.
I don’t suppose unisex bathrooms with individual stalls would be an option? That would solve the whole issue, although I understand some people are squeamish about them.
How did public bathrooms get to be separated by sex in the first place?
May 26, 2016 10.03pm EDT
A 19th-century photograph of a women’s restroom in a Pittsburgh factory.
Terry S. Kogan is on the advisory board of Equality Utah, an LGBT advocacy group.
For years, transgender rights activists have argued for their right to use the public restroom that aligns with their gender identity. In recent weeks, this campaign has come to a head.
In March, North Carolina enacted a law requiring that people be allowed to use only the public restroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificates. Meanwhile, the White House has taken an opposing position, directing that transgender students be allowed to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. In response, on May 25, 11 states sued the Obama administration to block the federal government from enforcing the directive.
Some argue that one solution to this impasse is to convert all public restrooms to unisex use, thereby eliminating the need to even consider a patron’s sex. This might strike some as bizarre or drastic. Many assume that separating restrooms based on a person’s biological sex is the “natural” way to determine who should and should not be permitted to use these public spaces.
In fact, laws in the U.S. did not even address the issue of separating public restrooms by sex until the end of the 19th century, when Massachusetts became the first state to enact such a statute. By 1920, over 40 states had adopted similar legislation requiring that public restrooms be separated by sex.
So why did states in the U.S. begin passing such laws? Were legislators merely recognizing natural anatomical differences between men and women?
I’ve studied the history of the legal and cultural norms that require the separation of public bathrooms by sex, and it’s clear that there was nothing so benign about the enactment of these laws. Rather, these laws were rooted in the so-called “separate spheres ideology” of the early-19th century – the idea that, in order to protect the virtue of women, they needed to stay in the home to take care of the children and household chores.
In modern times, such a view of women’s proper place would be readily dismissed as sexist. By highlighting the sexist origin of laws mandating sex-separation of public restrooms, I hope to provide grounds for at least reconsidering their continued existence.
The rise of a new American ideology
During America’s early history, the household was the center of economic production, the place where goods were made and sold. That role of the home in the American economy changed at the end of the 18th century during the Industrial Revolution. As manufacturing became centralized in factories, men left for these new workplaces, while women remained in the home.
Soon, an ideological divide between public and private space arose. The workplace and the public realm came to be considered the proper domain of men; the private realm of the home belonged to women. This divide lies at the heart of the separate spheres ideology.
The sentimental vision of the virtuous woman remaining in her homestead was a cultural myth that bore little resemblance to the evolving realities of the 19th century. From its outset, the century witnessed the emergence of women from the privacy of the home into the workplace and American civic life. For example, as early as 1822 when textile mills were founded in Lowell, Massachuetts, young women began flocking to mill towns. Soon, single women constituted the overwhelming majority of the textile workforce. Women would also become involved in social reform and suffrage movements that required them to work outside the home.
Nonetheless, American culture didn’t abandon the separate spheres ideology, and most moves by women outside the domestic sphere were viewed with suspicion and concern. By the middle of the century, scientists set their sights on reaffirming the ideology by undertaking research to prove that the female body was inherently weaker than the male body.
Armed with such “scientific” facts (now understood as merely bolstering political views against the emergent women’s rights movement), legislators and other policymakers began enacting laws aimed at protecting “weaker” women in the workplace. Examples included laws that limited women’s work hours, laws that required a rest period for women during the work day or seats at their work stations, and laws that prohibited women from taking certain jobs and assignments considered dangerous.
Midcentury regulators also adopted architectural solutions to “protect” women who ventured outside the home.
Architects and other planners began to cordon off various public spaces for the exclusive use of women. For example, a separate ladies’ reading room – with furnishings that resembled those of a private home – became an accepted part of American public library design. And in the 1840s, American railroads began designating a “ladies’ car” for the exclusive use of women and their male escorts. By the end of the 19th century, women-only parlor spaces had been created in other establishments, including photography studios, hotels, banks and department stores.
Sex-separated restrooms: putting women in their place?It was in this spirit that legislators enacted the first laws requiring that factory restrooms be separated by sex.
Well into the 1870s, toilet facilities in factories and other workplaces were overwhelmingly designed for one occupant, and were often located outside of buildings. These emptied into unsanitary cesspools and privy vaults generally located beneath or adjacent to the factory. The possibility of indoor, multi-occupant restrooms didn’t even arise until sanitation technology had developed to a stage where waste could be flushed into public sewer systems.
A 19th-century ‘water closet.’ Wikimedia Commons
But by the late-19th century, the factory “water closet” – as restrooms were then called – became a flashpoint for a range of cultural anxieties.
First, deadly cholera epidemics throughout the century had heightened concerns over public health. Soon, reformers known as “sanitarians” focused their attention on replacing the haphazard and unsanitary plumbing arrangements in homes and workplaces with technologically advanced public sewer systems.
Second, the rapid development of increasingly dangerous machinery in factories was viewed as a special threat to “weaker” female workers.
Finally, Victorian values that stressed the importance of privacy and modesty were subjected to special challenge in factories, where women worked side by side with men, often sharing the same single-user restrooms.
It was the confluence of these anxieties that led legislators in Massachusetts and other states to enact the first laws requiring that factory restrooms be sex-separated. Despite the ubiquitious presence of women in the public realm, the spirit of the early century separate spheres ideology was clearly reflected in this legislation.
Understanding that “inherently weaker” women could not be forced back into the home, legislators opted instead to create a protective, home-like haven in the workplace for women by requiring separate restrooms, along with separate dressing rooms and resting rooms for women.
Thus the historical justifications for the first laws in the United States requiring that public restrooms be sex-separated were not based on some notion that men’s and women’s restrooms were “separate but equal” – a gender-neutral policy that simply reflected anatomical differences.
Rather, these laws were adopted as a way to further early 19th century moral ideology that dictated the appropriate role and place for women in society.
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We absolutely AGREE with this article's contention that the soaring media coverage about widespread public outrage over trans citizens using public facilities is tied to just this-----global 1% are simply deconstructing all civil rights and civil liberties tied to EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION LAWS.
'Conservative-leaning groups have been trying for decades to reduce the number of civil lawsuits in the states. In HB2, lawmakers accomplished this by adding a single sentence to the state’s employment discrimination law that says:
“[No] person may bring any civil action based upon the public policy expressed herein.” '
When we think of how facilities from locker rooms to showers have allowed equal access to women ------think how losing the rights of civil actions based on ANY PUBLIC POLICY will look for 99% of women not to mention our 99% of GBLT.
When national media all of a sudden bring nothing but issues of sexual freedoms to the forefront as MOVING FORWARD kills all US civil rights and liberties-----
THINK BROADLY AND FIGHT TO STOP THE DISMANTLING OF ALL CIVIL RIGHTS IN THIS CASE FOR OUR 99% OF WOMEN.
Here we see our captured ACLU------now global 1% civil rights as LIBERTARIANS -----they went to court for one justice issue but did not mention the GORILLA-IN-THE -ROOM -----the right to sue under law
'But the complaint doesn’t address the provisions affecting the right to sue under state law'.
Remember, global 1% has dismantled all pathway to public justice---the only pathway left if not able to pay for private lawyers----is that class action lawsuit----forcing it into Federal system that is ignoring all Federal US Constitutional rights and Federal law enforcement.
Sex and Gender
Why North Carolina’s New Anti-LGBT Law is a Trojan HorseIt’s not just bathrooms.
Lawmakers also took away the right to sue under state law for all kinds of employment discrimination.
by Nina Martin
April 5, 2016, 6 a.m. EDT
Sex and Gender
ProPublica's Nina Martin reporting on American systems and institutions — from schools to hospitals to prisons — that fail or mistreat people on the basis of their gender or sexuality.
When North Carolina lawmakers passed what is widely viewed as the most sweeping anti-LGBT law in the country, supporters said it was needed to fend off a potential wave of local laws like the transgender-friendly bathroom ordinance adopted by the city of Charlotte. Opponents have called the new law a “hostile takeover of human rights.”
But all the attention on who can use toilets and locker rooms has overshadowed what employment rights advocates say is an even more expansive change made by the law — one that could affect all workers in North Carolina, not just those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
As has been widely reported, the North Carolina legislature rushed last month to pass HB2, the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, which requires transgender people (and everyone else) to use public restrooms according to the biological sex on their birth certificate. It also bars local governments from passing ordinances like Charlotte’s.
The legislation doesn’t stop there, however. Tucked inside is language that strips North Carolina workers of the ability to sue under a state anti-discrimination law, a right that has been upheld in court since 1985. “If you were fired because of your race, fired because of your gender, fired because of your religion,” said Allan Freyer, head of the Workers’ Rights Project at the N.C. Justice Center in Raleigh, “… you no longer have a basic remedy.”
“The LGBT issues were a Trojan horse,” added Erika Wilson, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who co-directs a legal clinic for low-income plaintiffs with job and housing discrimination claims. The broader change hasn’t received much attention, she said, because “people were so caught up in [the LGBT] part of the law that this snuck under the radar.”
Conservative-leaning groups have been trying for decades to reduce the number of civil lawsuits in the states. In HB2, lawmakers accomplished this by adding a single sentence to the state’s employment discrimination law that says: “[No] person may bring any civil action based upon the public policy expressed herein.”
The language does not repeal North Carolina’s job-bias law, which continues to ban discrimination on the basis of race, sex, age, religion, or disability. But it forces workers seeking redress for discrimination into the federal system, where access is more difficult, the rules are much more complicated, and businesses often have significant advantages. Time, in particular, is on employers’ side: Under federal law, fired workers have just 180 days to file a claim, versus three years in state court. In the past, workers who missed the federal deadline — not uncommon for someone in emotional and economic crisis — could sue under state law instead, said Raleigh attorney Eric Doggett. Now, he predicted, many will discover they’re “hosed.”
The law’s impact could be “extraordinarily far-reaching,” said Julie Wilensky, California director of the national Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center. North Carolina doesn’t keep track of how many discrimination cases are filed under state law. But from 2009 to 2014, workers filed more than 28,100 federal charges of workplace discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or 4.5 percent of the U.S. total (the state accounts for 3 percent of the U.S. population). Forty percent of the complaints involved race; 29 percent involved gender; and 22 percent involved age.
Business groups are playing down the impact of HB2. Bruce Clarke, CEO of Raleigh-based Capital Associated Industries, an employers’ association with more than 1,200 members, contended that eliminating the right to sue was “a technical correction” that brings “clarity to a confusing area of workplace law” and takes North Carolina’s anti-discrimination statute “back to its original intent.” He said most employment discrimination cases don’t have merit and don’t belong in the “mosh pit” of state court. “They’re people that are mad, they’ve had their feelings hurt, they believe they were treated unfairly in some way … I view them like divorces,” he said.
Republican Rep. Dan Bishop, one of the legislation’s sponsors, said in an email to ProPublica that the lawsuit provision was “incidental” to the larger effort to revamp North Carolina’s law on public accommodations and rein in local governments. “The overall function of the law is to restore the status quo before the City of Charlotte exceeded its legal authority,” he wrote. The change is not as sweeping as critics claim, he said, because federal law “provides its own robust remedies and plaintiffs usually allege both federal and state law claims in the same complaint.” He told WBTV in Charlotte that the “exceedingly minor procedural difference” would have a minimal effect.
But in a post for lawyers on the Employment & Labor Insider blog, Winston-Salem attorney Robin Shea, had a different take: “We expect to see a flurry of summary judgment motions and motions to dismiss wrongful discharge claims based on this amendment.” Shea, partner in a firm that represents employers, called the change a “bomb.”
From the moment that the Charlotte City Council voted on Feb. 22 to expand protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity, opponents vowed to strike back. A month later, Republicans who control the legislature called a special one-day session to take place the next morning, March 23, and waited until just before the first committee hearings to make the text of the legislation public.
LGBT supporters had feared the bill would be broad, but they were stunned by just how far it went. In addition to requiring that people use bathrooms according to their biological sex, the measure preempted local governments from passing any laws aimed at protecting gay and transgender people, a provision that immediately nullified more than 20 existing local ordinances. Another provision banned local minimum wage laws like the $15-an-hour “living wage” ordinances gaining traction around the country. The state minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)The passage affecting discrimination lawsuits amends the North Carolina Equal Employment Practices Act (1977), which declares that it is against the state’s “public policy” to discriminate in employment “on account of race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex or handicap.” The act — which applied to businesses with 15 or more employees — did not contain explicit language allowing alleged victims of job bias to sue. But since the mid–1980s, North Carolina courts have held that the “public policy” doctrine does give people who are wrongfully fired because of discrimination the right to recover damages under common (non-statutory) law. In the space of the 12-hour special session, HB2 “wiped out this entire body of law that’s been in place for the last 30 years,” said Chapel Hill lawyer Laura Noble.
Dan Blue, an African American lawyer from Raleigh who leads the Senate Democrats, views HB2 as part of a pattern of Republican-sponsored measures that have eroded voting and other rights for low-income people of color in recent years. “It’s a continuation of … a wide assortment of things that appear to be rolling back the clock of North Carolina so that it matches the sordid history of 40 to 50 years ago,” he said.
Others pointed to a burgeoning trend in which conservatives are exploiting a backlash against gay marriage and transgender rights to push legislation with broad ramifications. In Georgia, the governor vetoed a bill allowing faith-based organizations the ability to refuse to rent property, provide education or charitable services, or do any hiring that violates their religious beliefs. In Mississippi, a bill that passed the legislature last week would permit discrimination against anyone who has nonmarital sex. [Update, April 5, 2016: Mississippi's Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed the bill into law.]
HB2 “is more evidence that the forces behind this backlash have a larger agenda than simply attacking marriage rights for same-sex couples,” said Katherine Franke, director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. “They also seek to unravel protections against race discrimination in public accommodations and other contexts.”
Last week, the ACLU and others went to court to contest the parts of HB2 that target bathrooms and to overturn local LGBT ordinances, arguing that they violate the U.S. Civil Rights Act and U.S. Supreme Court precedent. But the complaint doesn’t address the provisions affecting the right to sue under state law.
Clarke said that if workers-rights advocates and Democrats don’t like what HB2 did, they should go back to the legislature. “Go create an agency,” he said. “Go put order to this chaos.”
Talking about those global 1% STARS ---baby boomers KNEW the women pushed by media in civil rights/women's rights era of 1960-70s were 5% PLAYERS and not 99% of women advocates. Top on list JANE FONDA----as with JOHN LENNON she promoted the idea of COMMUNISM BEING LEFT. Global media had her supporting North Vietnam as the Vietnam War raged. Here is her husband also sold as FAR-LEFT RADICAL---TED TURNER. He and Jane spent these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA creating a global news network that today is FAKE NEW CNN. It was a capture of our strongest in world history LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE MEDIA----handing it to far-right wing global banking 1%.
'Traitor: "Hanoi Jane" Fonda
She was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda, but earned her reputation as "Hanoi Jane" Fonda after "aiding and abetting" the enemy -- North Vietnam -- as documented in these photos taken in Hanoi (July 1972)':
All of that was PROPAGANDA. Here we have TED TURNER'S son that right wing media mogul----as if TED WAS NOT THAT RIGHT WING MEDIA MOGUL.
CNN IS SO FAR LEFT SAYS TED'S SON.
TED TURNER as the other FAKE RADICAL LEFT Governor of California BROWN both graduated from very, very, very far-right wing global 1% BUSH NEO-CON hedge fund IVY LEAGUE STANFORD........NO LEFT HAPPENING with HANOI JANE FONDA AND TED.
Ted Turner's Son: CNN Is So Far Left I Mostly Watch Fox
By Noel Sheppard | March 20, 2013 5:36 PM EDT
Republican Teddy Turner, the son of media mogul Ted Turner, made news last month when he blamed his father's liberalism on actress Jane Fonda.
He made more news Wednesday on NewsMax TV's Steve Malzberg Show saying that CNN is "pretty much to the left" and that he has such a "hard time watching them" he mostly watches Fox (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary, relevant section begins at 7:40):
STEVE MALZBERG, NEWSMAX TV HOST: What do you think when you watch CNN? Do you think they’re down the middle? Do you think they’re to the left? What do you think?
TEDDY TURNER: I think they’re pretty much to the left. I don’t think there’s any question about that. It’s not MSNBC, but they’re not Fox. So I think they’re, I have a hard time watching them a lot of times.
MALZBERG: And what do you think of the revamping. They got a new guy at the helm now, and they’re adding Chris Cuomo, and they’re keeping apparently Piers Morgan, and it doesn’t seem like this guy is going to do anything to make them let’s say a fairer more balanced presentation.
TURNER: Well, they may think that they’re fair and balanced already, or that they said, “Well, let’s give up the fair and balanced and we’ll stay to the left and on that niche." I have no idea what their marketing plan is, and I had discussions years ago with the folks and said, “Listen, you know, the left is not the way to go in talk radio or in talk TV because that’s not who’s listening."
MALZBERG: Who’d you talk to years ago at CNN?
TURNER: Anybody that would listen.
MALZBERG: In any capacity other than Ted Jr.? Did you have any capacity there?
TURNER: No, no, I worked on and off for CNN and Turner, you know, kind of all my life.
MALZBERG: Right. Did you ever talk to your dad about that while he was still involved? Did you talk to him about it?
TURNER: Oh sure.
MALZBERG: And what did he, what was his response when you said it was too far to the left?
TURNER: Well, you know, they say that they’re fair and balanced.
MALZBERG: Really? So he thought they were fair and balanced?
TURNER: Well, he thought they were doing the best they could do.
MALZBERG: Alright, and you find it hard to watch. What do you watch on cable news?
TURNER: I mostly watch Fox. But I switch around. I think you have to watch a little bit of everybody just to see what’s going on and try to get the real idea of what’s going on…People can have their opinions. If you don’t like it, turn it off and go somewhere else. And I think that’s what’s happening. CNN’s ratings are not great, and I don’t think they’re ever going to get back to where they were
______________________________________________
Looking locally at the same----all media outlets are controlled by far-right wing global 1% neo-con/neo-liberal and Baltimore has not had REAL JOURNALISM in a very long time.
Here are two TOP GUN GLOBAL 1% ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1% POLS----you can bet they want to keep MEDIA out of community development that has a goal of more and more and more Baltimore families black, white, and brown 99% of citizens unemployed, impoverished, and pushed out as global corporate campuses and global factories replace our surrounding Baltimore communities....
MOVING FORWARD SAYS JACK YOUNG CATHERINE PUGH NOT PRETTY FOR WOMEN, CHILDREN, FAMILIES.
The Baltimore Spectator
22 hrs ·
“The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city,” City Council President Jack Young said, at a community meeting in West Baltimore last night
So, Baltimore's shot at having an executive as woman-----is a raging global 1% HILLARY NASTY LADY....as was RAWLINGS-BLAKE as was DIXON-----all with only TALKING POINTS for global 1% of men.
The Dripby Fern Shen10:00 amDec 13, 2017
Council President Young denounces the press at community meeting
“The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city,” Jack Young tells West Baltimore audience
Above: Jack Young with Mayor Catherine Pugh at Carver Vocational-Technical High School last night.
Standing besides Mayor Catherine Pugh at a community meeting in West Baltimore last night, City Council President praised the mayor for her leadership (“I’m glad that she’s my partner”) before taking a swipe at the press.
“I’m working along with my Council colleagues – I see Councilman Bullock in the back. We’re just like any other family, you know? We’re a family at City Hall. We have our little disagreements,” Young said, speaking at Carver Vocational-Technical High School to an audience of about 30 residents and many more agency heads and staffers.
“But we don’t want the news media – you can, um, tweet this – to determine how we respond to one another in city government,” he continued. “The more we can keep the news media out of our business, the better we can run this city.”
“So, Madam Mayor, I’m willing to work with you. Yeah, I said it,” he concluded, handing the podium back to Pugh. “I’m willing to work with you to move this city forward.”
Asked this morning for some context for Young’s remarks and what might have sparked his criticism, his spokesman, Lester Davis, has not responded.
_______________________________________
'Perhaps her most ambitious project to date has been an effort in South Africa to provide educational and leadership opportunities for academically gifted girls from poor families. The idea began six years ago, on a trip to Africa'.
US 99% of citizens men and women love their STARS-----we have liked seeing OPRAH these few decades even as REAL LEFT social progressive women shouted how bad far-right wing global 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA was for all US 99% -----OPRAH was having our women tuning in to mental health counseling, relationship counseling, getting weight under control -----all of this was fine----but absolutely no talk of STOPPING MOVING FORWARD. There was no time period in modern history worse for global 99% of women then when OPRAH owned 50% of a national media corporation. There is no worse intent in building GLOBAL 1% FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES in Africa then the last time OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% colonized the African continent.
What we see from our US women starting as that 5% to the 1% allowed to move to global 2%------is just what we see from global 1% men-----no leadership from OPRAH-----she does anything global 1% of men tells her to do.
HANOI JANE---MEET OPRAH.
OPRAH is the same FLAT EARTH global human capital distribution system and enslavement as NIKE/MICHAEL JORDAN. We see that DISCOVERY----which is WASHINGTON BELTWAY MARYLAND-----which is also from where RADIO ONE-----our other woman-owned---well pretending so-----media outlet originated......
'Discovery Communications - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Communications
Discovery Communications is an American mass media company based in Silver Spring, Maryland, first established in 1985. The company primarily operates factual television networks, such as its namesake Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, Science, TLC, and other spin-off brands. It also owns or '
'Radio One | Downtown Silver Spring, MD
www.silverspringdowntown.com/go/world-space
Radio One, Inc. is an urban-oriented, multi-media company that primarily targets African-American and urban consumers. Our core business is our radio broadcasting franchise that is the largest radio broadcasting operation that primarily targets African-American and urban listeners. We currently own and operate 55' ...
WOMEN MUST HAVE THE POWER OF THE PEN/MEDIA TO HAVE THE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS TO ECONOMIC POWER.
Discovery takes majority stake in Oprah Winfrey's network
- Discovery Communications will become the majority owner of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.
- Discovery will buy another 24.5 percent of OWN for $70 million after factoring in net debt, giving it more than 70 percent of the company.
Michelle Castillo | @mishcastillo
Published 2:05 PM ET Mon, 4 Dec 2017 Updated 3:02 PM ET Mon, 4 Dec 2017
Getty Images
Oprah Winfrey
Discovery Communications will become the majority owner of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.
The company said on Monday it will increase its ownership stake in Oprah Winfrey's network to 70 percent. OWN, which launched in 2011, was previously a joint venture between Discovery and Winfrey's Harpo, Inc.
"Ten years ago, Oprah and I began to imagine what a network, inspired by her vision and values, could mean to viewers across the U.S.," Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav said in a statement. "In an increasingly crowded landscape, OWN has emerged as the leading destination for African-American women and one of the strongest superfan brands across all screens and services," he said.
Discovery paid $70 million to acquire an additional 24.5 percent stake in OWN, after factoring in net debt. Harpo, Inc. will remain a minority investor, and Winfrey will remain CEO of OWN with an exclusivity commitment through 2025.
OWN's majority stake fits with Discovery's plans to increase its leverage with pay TV operators and potentially launch its own direct-to-consumer streaming service by acquiring more content. It recently acquired Scripps Networks in July in a cash-and-stock deal worth $14.6 billion. Together, Discovery and Scripps content reach 20 percent of U.S. 25 to 54-year-olds. Adding OWN to the mix could boost African-American viewership numbers.
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There was never any national media team more global 1% far-right wing than ARIANNA HUFFINGTON and her partner BREITBART. Yet, HUFFINGTON was allowed ----by allowed we mean NO REAL LEFT VOICE outed her as FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT-----to create what was called a LEFT BLOGGER media outlet as early online media. So, for these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA our FAKE LEFT MEDIA was controlled by global 2% right wing players.
'Created byArianna Huffington
Kenneth Lerer
Jonah Peretti
Andrew Breitbart'
ARIANNA could have been that REAL 99% of women leader---but she was and is a global 1% player working for global 1% men pushing their TALKING POINTS. Of course after that 2016 election rigging and fraud----HUFF POST was sold and is openly owned by right wing. CAPTURING THE VOICE OF ALL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE ESPECIALLY THE VOICES OF 99% OF WOMEN.
HuffPost
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HuffPost
Type of siteNews and opinion
Available inArabic, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish
FoundedMay 9, 2005
Created byArianna Huffington
Kenneth Lerer
Jonah Peretti
Andrew Breitbart
EditorLydia Polgreen
ParentVerizon Communications via Oath Inc.
Slogan(s)Inform, Inspire, Entertain, Empower
Websitehuffingtonpost.com
Alexa rank 254 (October 7, 2017)[1]
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedMay 9, 2005; 12 years ago
Current statusActive
HuffPost (formerly The Huffington Post and sometimes abbreviated HuffPo)[2] is a liberal[3][4] American news and opinion website and blog that now has both localized and international editions. It was founded in 2005 by Andrew Breitbart, Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti.[5][6] The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content and covers politics, business, entertainment, environment, technology, popular media, lifestyle, culture, comedy, healthy living, women's interests, and local news.
**********************************************************
Huffington Post (HuffPost)*Voting Polls do not affect MBFC bias ratings
LEFT BIAS
These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage liberal causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Left Bias sources.
Factual Reporting: HIGH
Notes: The HuffPost formerly known as the Huffington Post is an American online news aggregator and blog that has both localized and international editions founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, Andrew Breitbart, and Jonah Peretti. The HuffPost displays left wing bias through story selection and word choices. They typically source to credible media and information. They sometimes publishes satire that is mistaken for fake news, however, they tag these items as satire. Overall, we rate the HuffPost Left Biased and High for factual news reporting. (5/13/2016) (Updated 12/06/2017)
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We have shouted that having a DIVINITY SCHOOL on the OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% BANKING campus of global hedge fund IVY LEAGUE HARVARD is an OXYMORON. We know all those FAKE 5% RELIGIOUS leaders are tied to these IVY LEAGUE DIVINITY SCHOOLS. Harvard is tops in ties to global 1% of men.
Yet, they want to be the source of this discussion on WOMEN AND THE PEN and the deliberate policy of making sure 99% of global women---and US women have no real publishing control of media----whether book or journal publishing----whether radio, TV, stage or screen----those major STARS of journalism are always tied to a global 1% corporate campus.
"Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; and not yourself."14 Write like your life depends on it. Write like everything is at stake'.
We know today's religions are all CORRUPTED by a 5% FAKE religious leader OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE FREEMASON/GREEK. We want women to have that power of pen----that control of story-----but we KNOW 99% of women are not represented by 5% women tied to global 1% wealth and power men.
'Even though I have two graduate degrees from Harvard—including a doctorate in theology—many reviewers failed to treat me as a scholar of religion'.
PLEASE MAKE MEDIA AND 99% WOMEN'S VOICE THE PRIORITY IN STOPPING MOVING FORWARD.
REAL left social progressives are all for BUYING BOOKS written by women---we simply do not need to hear from more global 1% and their 2% pretending to have a voice for 99% of women.
We have a 5% to the 1% FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT religious leaders tied to OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE FREEMASONRY as are these institutions ----corrupting our PROTESTANT, CATHOLIC, JEWISH, MUSLIM, AND HINDI religions.......these are NOT the women to watch.
THIS ARTICLE IS VERY LONG--PLEASE GLANCE THROUGH
HOME / SUMMER/AUTUMN 2012 (VOL. 40, NOS. 3 & 4) /
The Pen Is Mightier
Sexist responses to women writing about religion.Sarah Sentilles
In response to my recent memoir, Breaking Up with God: A Love Story, several reviewers came close to calling me stupid. Many suggested I didn't know what I was talking about. As the title of the book suggests, I used the analogy of a romantic relationship gone wrong to describe my faith and its dissolution. These reviewers seemed to believe I understood my metaphorical romantic relationship with God to be a literal one. They wrote about me as if I actually thought God was my real boyfriend, as if I sat around waiting for God to take me to the prom and just couldn't understand why my date never showed up. Silly girl.
Even though I have two graduate degrees from Harvard—including a doctorate in theology—many reviewers failed to treat me as a scholar of religion. The reviews were infantilizing and patronizing. For example, the reviewer for Kirkus Reviews wrote, "What becomes clear early is that the author's understanding of God never developed beyond the childish concept of deity as a completely anthropomorphic figure." Not only did the reviewer miss that the point of Breaking Up with God was to tell the story of letting go of an anthropomorphic version of God, but she or he also assumed I was not aware of any other theological alternatives. I am the author of three books, two of which are about religion; I was almost ordained as an Episcopal priest; and I have studied theology for more than a decade. Breaking Up with God is filled with references to a variety of theological conceptions of God—from feminist to liberationist to queer to womanist to black theologians—among them, Ludwig Feuerbach, James Cone, Alfred Whitehead, Mary Daly, Sally McFague, Gordon Kaufman, Paul Tillich, and Friedrich Schleiermacher. But, as my grandmother used to say, I can't win for losing—for while one critic argued I didn't say enough about theological alternatives, another critic, from the Los Angeles Times, maintained there was "too much talk here, too much chatter about competing viewpoints." He prefers "the monastic approach to faith," he wrote, "because humility is a crucial ingredient." And then he asked, "Who really knows anything in their 20s?"
Never mind that I am thirty-eight.
I hesitated to use my experience with reviewers in this essay for fear that it would be read as a rant, an attack, or an attempt at retribution. But revenge is not my motivation. I also hesitated because I know there will be consequences. Authors depend on good reviews for their books' success, and I imagine critiquing reviewers is not my best career move. Women who do speak out—whether against sexism in the literary world or in the church or in the academy or in politics—are often accused of "whining," and then, like children, they are punished. But I am convinced the risk is worth it. Reviewers' words about my book demonstrate how sexism shapes responses to women's writing, in particular women's writing about God. The reviews are expressions of a systemic, institutional attempt to dismiss women's writing. The reviewers are speaking in code. They are charging me with writing like a woman. And they are telling me to shut up.
I am the first to admit my books are not beyond critique. There are countless ways I could make them better. I want to be critiqued, but I want to be critiqued for the strength of my ideas and for the quality of my writing—not for too much "chatter" or for a failure to be humble enough. Hold me accountable for the effects of my theological ideas; don't tell me not to write them.
Unfortunately, this distrust of women's words and the assumption that women do not know what they are talking about, no matter what their credentials or expertise or experience, are widespread in the literary establishment (though they are often coded as "reasoned critiques"). Most writers are aware of author Norman Mailer's infamous dismissal of "women's ink" as "dykily psychotic," "crippled," "creepish," "frigid," and "stillborn" in his 1959 Advertisements for Myself, but they may not realize that opinions like these are alive and well, even thriving, today. Author V. S. Naipaul recently claimed in an interview with the Royal Geographic Society that there was not a single female writer he considered his equal—not even Jane Austen, whose work he dismissed as "sentimental." Naipaul said, "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me." The narrowness of female authors' worldviews is the gender giveaway for Naipaul: "[I]nevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too." Naipaul even attacked his own publisher on these grounds: "My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh."
It might be possible to dismiss Naipaul's blatant sexism as the ravings of an arrogant misogynist if there were structural equality in the publishing industry, but there isn't. For the second year in a row, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts released a series of pie charts (the VIDA count) showcasing annual data comparing the rate of publication between women and men in the writing world's most respected literary outlets—and things don't look good for women who write.2 VIDA reports that in 2011, The Atlantic published 184 articles and pieces of fiction by men and 64 by women; 18 of their book reviewers were men and 8 were women; and 24 of the authors reviewed were men, compared to 12 women. Harper's Magazine published 65 articles by men and 13 articles by women; 23 of their book reviewers were men and 10 were women; 53 of the authors reviewed were men, 19 were women. The New York Review of Books published 133 articles by men and 19 by women; 201 of their book reviewers were male and 53 were female; and they reviewed 75 male authors and only 17 female authors. I could go on. The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The London Review of Books—all pay more attention to books and essays and articles and poems and short stories written by men than they do to those written by women.
Genres are gendered, a practice feuled by the perception that women's writing is essentially different than men's. . . . "Chick lit" is a term used to dismiss novels by women.
Gendered responses to women's writing have led several women to create alter egos in an effort to determine whether it is their ideas that generate hostile responses or whether simply being a woman with an opinion is enough on its own, no matter what they write. In "Disagree with Me—But Not Because I'm a Black Woman," Hannah Pool describes creating an online white male alter ego, Harry Pond. "I went on to a couple of threads. The opinions were my own, but the name a fake," she writes. "Unsurprisingly, Harry Pond received no racism and no sexism, in fact very little of anything by way of comment. People engaged with 'Harry' in a grownup manner, without the need for insults. Is this what it's like to be a white man? Having people accept your right to a difference of opinion?"3 In 2009, researcher Emily Glassberg sent out identical scripts to theaters in the United States, half with a male name and half with a female name. She found that those believed to have been written by women were rated significantly worse by artistic directors and literary managers than those written by men. "This was even the case when many of those artistic directors and literary managers were women."
I am beginning to understand why Mary Ann Evans changed her name to George Eliot.
Women's words are often ignored, it seems, and when they are not ignored, they are regularly dismissed. When Naipaul suggests that he doesn't trust women writers to say anything that matters, his belief reflects the larger cultural notion that women can't be trusted with anything, not with words, not even with their own bodies. In "Men Explain Things to Me," Rebecca Solnit argues that this presumption "keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare." "Credibility is a basic survival tool," Solnit writes, yet women are consistently told "they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives, that the truth is not their property." Treating women like they don't know anything is comparable to harassing women on the street, she argues; both crush women into silence by telling them "that this is not their world."
"At the heart of the struggle of feminism," Solnit says, is getting people to believe what women are saying—which is what the fight "to give rape, date rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and workplace sexual harassment legal standing as crimes" is fundamentally about. Lives are at stake, and not just women's lives. It was a woman, Solnit points out—an FBI agent named Coleen Rowley—who issued early warnings about al-Qaeda, and another woman, Elizabeth Warren, was one of the most publicly vocal advocates whose predictions about the impending debt crisis and financial disaster went unheeded.
And yet telling women not to speak up seems to be an increasing trend, especially on the Internet. The insidious sexism that appears in printed reviews is much more blatant online, and it is often violent. Anonymity allows people to post anything they want in comment sections, with no accountability, and often what is posted in response to articles written by women is offensive, threatening, and sexually explicit. Known as "trolling," these online attacks make the ways I have been described by reviewers—"naïve," "hysterical," "wimpy," "immature," "depressed," "off-kilter"—seem tame.
Some bloggers have started to speak out about the abuse they experience. In "A Woman's Opinion Is the Mini-Skirt of the Internet," the columnist Laurie Penny writes, "[A]s a woman writer, particularly if you're political [y]ou come to expect the vitriol, the insults, the death threats. After a while, the emails and tweets and comments containing graphic fantasies of how and where and with what kitchen implements certain pseudonymous people would like to rape you cease to be shocking." Penny understands the threats as "campaigns of intimidation designed to drive [women] off the internet."6 Caroline Farrow, a blogger for Catholic Voices, gets at least five sexually threatening emails a day.7 Many of the offensive comments have to do with the authors' appearance. Penny writes, "The implication that a woman must be sexually appealing to be taken seriously as a thinker did not start with the internet: it's a charge that has been used to shame and dismiss women's ideas since long before Mary Wollstonecraft was called 'a hyena in petticoats.' The net, however, makes it easier for boys in lonely bedrooms to become bullies."
I was invited recently to write for CNN's Belief Blog, and one of the first responders to my piece, "Five Women in Religion to Watch," was a troll who used the Bible to threaten me and the women about whom I wrote:
A good Christian woman should be silent, submissive, subservient and filled with shame for the curse her gender forced on humanity. As 1 Timothy 2:11–14 reminds us, 'Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.' If these women continue to ignore the Lord's command, he will treat them like he did the daughters of Zion in Isaiah 3:18 and take away all their jewelery [sic], fine clothes, makeup, and mirrors. He'll make them bald and rotten smelling before killing all of the men they care about.
Another troll posted a comment soon after, attacking our physical appearances. "Anyone else notice how physically unappealing these women are?" he wrote. "Not only is this fact, it is also fact that religious belief is also the ultimate turn-off. These hookers don't even get a third strike. They're all out." Feminist women daring to write about God makes the violence of misogyny visible.
Genres are gendered, a practice fueled by the perception that women's writing is essentially different than men's. It seems, for example, to be common practice to call memoirs about religion by women "spiritual memoirs," and memoirs about religion by men "books about religion," or "searches for meaning," or—yes, I'm going to say it—the Bible, labels that suggest gravitas and sweep and import and holiness. Somehow, no matter in what genre a woman understands herself to be writing, her words will often be packaged "for women" because the assumption is that "[b]ooks about women are supposedly for women, but books about men are for everyone."9 The category "chick lit" is a perfect example of this phenomenon. "Chick lit"—now called "commercial fiction"—is a term used to dismiss novels by women, especially when those novels are popular. Author Jennifer Weiner writes, "I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book—in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention."10 Even veteran New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor's book The Obamas was called "chick nonfiction" by Douglas Brinkley in his February 17, 2012, review in The New York Times Book Review. Still, maybe Kantor should count herself lucky, since most books dubbed "chick" anything are not reviewed by major publications.
Women are written into certain genres and out of others. When I interviewed author Dani Shapiro, she described an article in The New York Times about the "domestic novel" in which almost no female authors were mentioned. "It came out right around the time as my novel Family History, which could be called a domestic novel in the sense that it is very much about a family and is centered on the interior workings of this family." She read the article wondering if her novel would be mentioned, but she soon realized that 95 percent of the writers mentioned were men. She stopped wondering about her novel and started wondering whether any book by any woman would be mentioned. Shapiro had a similar experience reading a recent post by Tim Parks on the The New York Review of Books blog in which Parks explores how "the writer's job" is currently understood and illustrates how this conception has changed over time. Parks mentions many writers—Sophocles, Virgil, Pope, Petrarch, Chaucer, Byron, Shelley, T. S. Eliot, Rushdie, Pamuk, Coetzee. "It was on second read that it occurred to me that there were no women. Not one," Shapiro said. "This was written by someone who simply doesn't have female writers as any kind of reference."
What does it mean that a supposedly historical account of the writer's job can ignore all female writers? Most contemporary statistics suggest that women are writing more books than men are writing, and women are reading more books than men are reading, and women are buying more books than men are buying, and yet our work, our very existence, is regularly made to disappear. What effect does this erasure have? On women? On writers? On readers? Theater critic and novelist Alison Croggon writes, "If millions of reinforcing signals say a woman's work is less significant, something will eventually begin to stick."11
Roxann MtJoy notes that Weiner also points to the discrepancy in the way memoirs by men and memoirs by women are treated by The New York Times Book Review: "If you are a man confessing to a shady past, then you are 'brave,' 'smart,' and/or 'heartfelt.' If you are a woman doing the same thing, you have probably 'lost it entirely.'"12 Reviews of women's memoirs often make the writer herself the object of critique rather than the content of her ideas. Many reviews of Breaking Up with God, for example, do not engage the theological ideas in the text; instead, they criticize me—that I start too many sentences with the word "I" (a feminist practice I learned at Harvard Divinity School, and the book is, after all, a memoir); or that I reveal "unwanted tidbits" about my personal life; or that my voice in the book is "grating." One blogger dedicated an entire post about my second book, A Church of Her Own, to analyzing my author photo. My neckline was too plunging, she wrote, my necklace too trendy. When Shapiro's memoir Devotion was reviewed in The New York Times Book Review, the reviewer paid more attention to her appearance, her romantic history, and her mental health than to the substance of her ideas or experience. "In the first paragraph [the reviewer] talked about what I look like and what my house looks like," Shapiro said.
How many resources are wasted in the attempt to rise above the sense that women don't have the right to speak? And what role do religious traditions play in this silencing?
Emily Rapp (MTS '00)—author of Poster Child and the forthcoming The Still Point of the Turning World, about her son Ronan, who was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs Disease in 2010—explodes cultural myths about motherhood, God, and what it means to be human in every blog post, article, and essay she writes. She also makes clear the fact that dominates her life: Ronan will die and there is nothing anyone can do to save him. "I am living most mothers' worst fear," Rapp said when I interviewed her. "I have a lot of people who write me and say, 'I wish we could save Ronan. Isn't there anything that we can do?'"
Rapp hears in their question a longing to heal her son, but she also hears blame and an assumption that she must not be doing everything she can, that she hasn't considered all her options, that there must be something she's missing—in other words, that she doesn't know what she's talking about, not even about her own son. She's written several times about the fact that she had the prenatal genetic test for Tay-Sachs—twice—and that both times the test failed to detect the disease. But when Rapp published an essay titled "Rick Santorum, Meet My Son" in Slate in February 2012, arguing that if she had known before Ronan was born that he had Tay-Sachs, she would have saved him from suffering by having an abortion, readers attacked her. "When the Slate piece came out, people wrote to me things like, 'Oh, you stupid bitch, why didn't you get the test? Don't you know there's prenatal testing?'" Rapp said. "They were basically saying to me, 'You stupid woman! You had sex and you didn't think about it. You were totally thoughtless, and you deserve what happened to Ronan.'"
I asked Rapp if she thought there would have been the same response if the article had been written by a man. "I think if I were a man writing that thing, people would have been clapping their hands and saying things like, what a brave man," she said. Rapp said the fact that she is doing anything other than "gnashing [her] teeth and weeping and flinging [her]self on the funeral pyre"—meaning the fact that she is writing—is read as a failure of motherhood. Some even question Rapp's choice to write about Ronan and accuse her of using his illness for her own gain. "Someone sent me this horrible email that said, how long are you going to use your son for your writing," Rapp said, as if there should be a limit to the number of words or the amount of time she can spend writing about Ronan. Rapp is convinced this question about content is a sexist question. "What is Philip Roth writing about? The same stuff he's always been writing about," Rapp said. "No one says, wow, there are a lot of old guys who sleep with young women in your novels. No one says that to Philip Roth."
Reviews and responses like these reveal a misunderstanding of what memoirs are, especially memoirs written by women. These readers approach memoirs as if they are diaries, as if the only reason the author is writing is to expose personal, private, intimate information about herself. "People assume that memoirs, especially by women, are like stripping," Rapp said. "People say to me, 'Your stuff is really brave,' and I say, actually it's really smart. It's not just me shaking my tits in your face. It is an intellectual exercise." I am convinced that the misperception of women's memoirs as an act of "exposure" (or "overexposure") has led to a misreading of women's stories and to a failure to recognize memoir-writing as a powerful, intellectual, creative form of agency—a way to tell our own stories instead of accepting the story society might like to tell for and about us.
Those who have written from the margins—feminist and womanist and liberation theologians, black critical theorists, postcolonial theorists—have always recognized the need to write as if their lives depend on it, because their lives often do. Words are world-creating and world-destroying; they can be used to liberate and to enslave. In Beyond God the Father, Mary Daly writes: "women have had the power of naming stolen from us. We have not been free to use our own power to name ourselves, the world, or God. . . . To exist humanly is to name the self, the world, and God. . . . The liberation of language is rooted in the liberation of ourselves."13 Writing can be a way to reclaim the right to name.
Part of the challenge of writing is the struggle to believe you have something worth saying. More than half the battle is making your way to the page, cutting through self-doubt and shame and questions about whether or not your project matters. I imagine this is a universal struggle, part of what it means to be an artist. But how might this struggle be exacerbated by a culture that devalues women's words? How much creative energy has been lost in the effort required to overcome sexist and racist and classist and heterosexist views of women's writing? How many resources are wasted in the attempt to rise above the sense that women don't have the right to speak? And what role do religious traditions play in this silencing?
"I had no idea how much permission would be this tremendous stumbling block for me, and it had everything to do with being a woman," Shapiro said about writing Devotion: A Memoir. She was raised as an Orthodox Jew, and though she recognizes that many Orthodox women find the tradition empowering, for Shapiro the hiddenness of women, the fact that women can't read from the Torah or perform the mitzvoth, that they are perceived as unclean when they menstruate, that the intellectual role has been traditionally male, led her to question her own authority to write about God. "Who am I? Who do I think I am?" Shapiro said. "I am not a religious scholar. I'm female. What right do I have [to write], and who will care?" Describing her writing process, Shapiro said, "There is a greater distance that I have to travel to the place where I am free. . . . It is harder to get there. It is harder to stay there. And I do think that is quite universal for women, whatever they do, whatever we do."
Feminists from Virginia Woolf to Hélène Cixous to bell hooks have long claimed writing as a feminist act in a patriarchal world. "When I sit down to write, I recognize the writer as the one in power," Katie Ford (MDiv '01) said when I interviewed her. Ford is a poet, and she finds the genre permission giving. "The poem traditionally has been the place people go to say absolutely anything, and it is often subversive or outside of the doctrinal or political or social norm," Ford said. She spent much of her adolescence and early twenties traveling in religious circles, and it was about those experiences that she wanted to write. "I didn't feel like I could do that in the sermon, or in the classroom as a professor of theology," she said. "The poem was the place I could do that. . . . It is an antidote to the sermon." The poets who came before her are part of what gives Ford her sense of authority. "My poetic models are men and women who have been writing against Stalin, for example, or those who, like Emily Dickinson, address the entire world," Ford said. "If you widen your scope, if you are addressing human suffering or God or the world—whatever visible or invisible realities there are—then you are trying to address beyond the current culture, so the restraints of the current culture have nothing to do with you."
Ford describes the writing space as a place in which her mind can be free from cultural restraints. But what happens when your words are published? What happens when they are released into a sexist world, into a patriarchal culture in which reviewers and anonymous trolls have the power to frame how your writing is received? Writing this essay has been a powerfully liberating experience for me, but it is also terrifying. I was supported as a feminist when I was a student at Harvard Divinity School, but I was also disciplined for being a feminist, and I worry that I will be disciplined for writing this essay. I expect to be called whiny and strident and annoying and grating and hysterical and uninformed. I expect to be told I don't know what I'm talking about.
But I'm also hopeful that this essay will encourage people to engage in a conversation about what to do next, about how to respond concretely to sexism in the literary world—and to the sexism in our syllabi and on our reading lists for general exams, in the language of our liturgies and in the leadership structures of our communities and churches and synagogues and mosques. Because, really, when it comes right down to it, there isn't much to argue with here. I am simply sharing data, stating facts. Facts that aren't new. Facts that have been stated and restated for decades, for centuries.
In "Men Explain Things to Me," Solnit argues that women who are writers fight wars on "two fronts." The first front has to do with content, a battle every writer wages. It is the work of craft, the struggle to form ideas and opinions, to amass information and make arguments, and to structure beautiful sentences. But the second front is about voice. This is the fight "simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being."
As a feminist writing about religion I am engaged in a battle on yet another front. I have to fight to assert my right to speak not only in the literary world, but also in a religious one. When the Los Angeles Times reviewer wrote that he preferred the "monastic approach" and urged me to assume a posture of humility, his words echoed the fourteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (verses 34–36): "As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. . . . For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. Or did the word of God originate with you?" I battle religious language and structures and liturgies and holy books that don't include me, because not only are critics telling me to shut up—they make God tell me that, too.
What can be done?
First, buy books written by women. Novels, memoirs, theology, political nonfiction, scientific explorations, poetry, history, mysteries. Put yourself on a diet of books by women and see what happens. Read them with your book groups. Review them online. Disagree with their ideas. Critique their arguments. Revel in the power of their words.
Second, engage in your own VIDA count. When you buy a magazine or receive a publication to which you subscribe--Harper's or The New Yorker or The Sun or The New York Review of Books or GQ or Ebony or The Paris Review—count how many articles they publish are written by men and how many by women, and then write a letter to the editor telling her or him that you'd like to see more gender balance in the table of contents. And keep doing it. Every time.
Third, when you read book reviews, pay attention to the language a reviewer uses when writing about books by women. Is the review sexist? Is the tone patronizing or belittling? Does the reviewer critique the argument, or attack the author herself? Does the reviewer write about the author's appearance or personal life or house? And if you discern a difference between how a reviewer treats books by men and books by women, write a letter to the editor and to the reviewer telling them you noticed the sexism. Educate them.
And finally, I have three suggestions for writers who are women: First, stop caring what other people think about what you write. Shut the negative voices out, the voices that try to silence you and shame you and tell you that what you have to say is "feminine tosh." (If this is hard for you, remember that the reviewer for Kirkus Reviews called Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love "unsuccessful." Ha!) Emily Rapp is my role model for this practice. She writes from a fearless place—and her words are electric. They set fire to the page. "I definitely feel like my task now is to be a truth teller, and I just don't really care what people think about me anymore," Rapp said. "That element of being a woman has kind of disappeared. The only way I am going to survive this is by being an authentic person, so I better get out of my own way and say what I have to say, and if people don't like it, I don't care. This is a gift Ronan has given me, and it is the biggest revelation of my adult life." Second, join with other authors to work for structural, feminist, liberating change—in the literary world, in religious communities, in academia, in the world. And third, keep writing. In the words of Hélène Cixous: "Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; and not yourself."14 Write like your life depends on it. Write like everything is at stake.
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As MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1% hits our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones with a goal of global 1% of installing far-right wing, authoritarian, militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty LIBERTARIAN MARXISM----we will hear nothing from these LEADERS IN WOMEN'S VOICE FOR RELIGION. This is the FARM TEAM 5% Clinton/Bush/Obama women being the only one's with a voice in PEN----IN MEDIA-----all from far-right wing global 1% global hedge fund IVY LEAGUE corporations.
They want to engage us in what 21st century SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT should look like.
We have a 5% to the 1% FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT religious leaders tied to OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE FREEMASONRY as are these institutions ----corrupting our PROTESTANT, CATHOLIC, JEWISH, MUSLIM, AND HINDI religions.......these are NOT the women to watch.
March 5th, 2012
04:00 AM ET
My Take: Five women in religion to watch
Editor's Note: Sarah Sentilles is a scholar of religion and the author of three books, most recently a memoir, "Breaking Up with God: A Love Story." She tweets as @sarahsentilles.
By Sarah Sentilles, Special to CNN
(CNN) - The year 2012 has only just begun and already women are revolutionizing what it looks like to be religious, to study religion and to engage in social change. Here are five women to watch in 2012:
Kecia Ali
Kecia Ali, a feminist scholar who focuses on Islamic jurisprudence and women in early and modern Islam, is one of the organizers of “Muslim Women and the Challenge of Authority,” a conference that will be held at Boston University in March. Participants will be asking crucial questions about who has the right to speak for or about Muslim women, important work at a time when the image of the “veiled Muslim woman” is still being used to prove the supposed inferiority of Muslim cultures and to justify Islamophobia. Ali is the author of "Sexual Ethics and Islam" and, most recently, "Imam Shafi’i: Scholar and Saint" (2011). Her current research focuses on biographies of Mohammed. She is an sssociate professor of religion at Boston University.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Nadia Bolz-Weber is changing what church looks like — and she’s changing what ministers look like while she’s at it. The tattooed founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints is a leading voice in the emerging church movement, what people like Diana Butler Bass are calling a new Reformation. Bolz-Weber is committed to the belief that the Bible still matters, that you shouldn’t have to leave parts of yourself behind when you show up at church and that the Lutheran tradition can be revolutionary. The House for All Sinners and Saints is social justice oriented, queer inclusive, incarnational, contemplative, irreverent and progressive. You can even buy a church T-shirt with the slogan “Radical Protestants: Nailing sh*t to the church door since 1517” emblazoned on the back. Bolz-Weber is the author of "Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television." More of her writing can be found in The Christian Century and her own blog, the Sarcastic Lutheran.
Anthea Butler
Anthea Butler models what engaged scholarship looks like in the 21st century. Butler, an associate professor of religious studies and graduate chair in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, brings a scholar’s eye to contemporary politics and decodes the work religion is doing in the public square. She’s a regular contributor to Religion Dispatches and a prolific tweeter. Whether she’s discussing politics, popular culture, Pentecostalism or the history of African-American women’s religious lives, Butler demonstrates an unceasing commitment to telling the truth and holding people accountable. Her newest book, "The Gospel According to Sarah: How Sarah Palin's Tea Party Angels are Galvanizing the Religious Right," will be published this summer by the New Press. It explores Palin’s Pentecostal roots and the fervent Christianity of her followers, revealing what Jeff Sharlet calls “a new kind of piety—a ‘supersized’ folk religion that’s part Pentecostalism, part evangelicalism, part Catholicism, and part high heels.” In the meantime, Butler will be tweeting about the presidential election and the pedophilia scandal in the Philadelphia Archdiocese (she tweets as @AntheaButler).
Esther Fleece
The assistant to the president for millennial relations at Focus on the Family, Esther Fleece was hired to bring the so-called “millennials” back to the conservative Christian movement. She has her work cut out for her. Fleece says she has friends who voted for Obama and she also has friends who are gay. Fleece tweets (you can find her @EstherFleece) and blogs about a variety of topics ranging from Tim Tebow’s Christianity (in a recent post at On Faith she compared Tebow to John the Baptist) to why women shouldn’t live with their boyfriends but should rather make them “put a ring on it.” She’s working to redefine what it means to be young and evangelical at a time when conservative Republicans are looking for that particular demographic’s vote. It will be interesting to see just who ends up influencing whom.
Karen King
Karen King is the first woman appointed as the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, the oldest endowed chair in the United States, and she is at work on a book about “martyrdom and its discontents” that rethinks the role of violence in the formation of Christianity. She writes against polarized opinions about religion and violence often heard today — either religion is essentially intolerant and thus naturally given to violence, or religion is essentially peaceful. As a way out of this impasse, King focuses on controversies among early Christians themselves over how to understand and respond to the violence aimed against them. (Full disclosure: King was my professor at Harvard Divinity School and in 2010 we co-convened a Radcliffe seminar, “Christianity and Torture.”) In her books and her lectures, King makes Christianity’s ancient history relevant and revolutionary as she investigates what is at stake and for whom. She is the author of "The Secret Revelation of John; and Revelation of the Unknowable God."
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We could not escape last century some of the women writers made famous-----and we can love what these global 1% OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE FREEMASON/GREEKS write-----here is Virginia Woolf-----these are what were called our early women feminists----but they were NEVER 99% women leaders----they were always global 1% men extreme wealth extreme poverty.
THE BLOOMBURY GROUP----great big MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE capturing the voice of REAL left social progressive 99% women.
KEYNSIAN ECONOMICS-----BETTER THAN NEO-LIBERALISM---BUT A REAL GLOBAL 1% MEN'S ECONOMICS.
The Bloomsbury Group: Its Influence on the 20th Century and Beyond
By Katie Behrens. Dec 30, 2014. 9:00 AM.
What did a handful of writers, artists, critics, and an economist have in common at the beginning of the 20th century? Living in a similar area of London, certainly. But it was a shared vision of life in all its creative, aesthetic, and intellectual glory that drew the Bloomsbury Group together.
The collective influence of the Bloomsbury Group in the artistic and literary communities of the era should not be downplayed. Despite an oft-changing membership list and much political upheaval in the world around them, the group existed over several decades and still casts its shadow on us today.
Although historians disagree on who was part of the “in crowd” and who was not (there was never an official list), sources agree that among the founding individuals were Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes (the lone economist), and Lytton Strachey. Several of the men were educated together at Cambridge where they met Thoby Stephen and his siblings: Adrian, Vanessa (later Bell), and Virginia (later Woolf). The Stephens began to host regular but informal gatherings at their residence in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London. These “Friday Club” and “Thursday Evening” meetings were the soil out of which the Bloomsbury Group grew. Thoby’s early death in 1906 brought the group of friends closer together and spurred them onward.
More than anything, the members of the Bloomsbury Group were united in a shared philosophy which was heavily influenced by British philosopher G.E. Moore. In practice, this philosophy was the basis for a rejection of the bourgeois ideals of their parents’ generation, including a challenge to the society standard of monogamous and heterosexual relationships. Members found in one another a mutual desire to lead lives of beauty and creativity.
It’s worth noting that when they began meeting, virtually none of the Bloomsberries had seen the career success that would mark their later lives. The group and its members flourished in the 1910s and ‘20s, though World War I caused a shift in how the group operated. Before the war, artist Roger Fry curated two extremely influential exhibitions that awakened England to the post-Impressionist movement in Europe. Virginia Woolf began gaining attention in literary circles and in the suffragette movement. John Maynard Keynes’s criticism of the Versailles Peace Treaty garnered global respect. And throughout everything, the love affairs came and went amongst the Bloomsbury Group, causing no little scandal.
During the 1930s, whatever cohesion that was left between the original Bloomsberries was damaged by repeated tragedy. Lytton Strachey died, followed by Roger Fry in 1934. Vanessa and Clive Bell’s son was killed during the Spanish Civil War in 1937, and Virginia Woolf committed suicide in 1941 after suffering from depression for many years. The Bloomsbury Group had seen great influence in the early 20th century, but it became time for others to take up the banner.
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Umberto Eco was always a favorite author-----CALVINO gave us INVISIBLE CITIES to describe MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES AND SMART CITIES-------he is that global 1% OLD WORLD MERCHANT OF VENICE freemason creating novels opening the window of the goal of MOVING FORWARD.
THE LIQUID SOCIETY speaks to what we have been shouting since the 1980-90s------the goal of a complete dismantlement of all that is WESTERN CIVILIZATION for 4,000 years-------creating that SMART CITY FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1%. Liquid Society speaks to the breakdown of family---community-------the attempt to kill our religions to leave 99% of WE THE PEOPLE without even GOD'S PRESENCE as a friend and guide. That is the goal of MOVING FORWARD ----that is what CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have been installing these few decades of ROBBER BARON FLEECING OF AMERICA.
THE END OF CIVILITY-----is just that. If we want to protect women---family-----children------keep our 99% of men working with women able to do the same----we must STOP MOVING FORWARD----we must STOP US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----to do that we need to GET RID OF ALL GLOBAL BANKING 5% POLS AND PLAYERS---especially those pretending to be representing WOMEN.
Final Umberto Eco book publication pushed forward after author's death
Pape Satàn Aleppe: Chronicles of a Liquid Society is a collection of essays that was originally set to be published in May 2016
The release date of the final book by the Italian novelist Umberto Eco, who died on 19 February, has been pushed forward from May 2016 to come out this weekend in Italian.
Pape Satàn Aleppe: Chronicles of a Liquid Society is a collection of Eco’s essays that have previously been published in Italian weekly magazine L’Espresso since 2000, Eco’s publishers La Nave di Teseo said.
“Papé Satàn, papé Satàn aleppe” is the opening line of Canto VII of Inferno, the first part in Dante’s 14th-century poem The Divine Comedy. The line is famous for puzzling translators, with modern academics believing it is a demonic invocation. The title is “sufficiently liquid to characterise the confusion of our times”, according to the blurb on Amazon.
Eco’s publisher La Nave di Teseo is a new publishing house that formed because notable writers, including Eco, feared the creation of a monopoly in Italian publishing after publishing company Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, owned by the family of former Italian prime minister and billionaire Silvio Berlusconi, bought book publisher RCS Libri in 2015. Eco personally donated €2m to help fund La Nave di Teseo, while Arnoldo Mondadori Editore now has a market share of around 38% of book publishing in Italy.
In an interview with la Repubblica on Monday, head of La Nave di Teseo Elisabetta Sgarbi called the new book “an ironic book, as withering as he was” and said Eco was “a tireless worker”.
“I really cannot think of Umberto in the past ... In Via Jacini, in our home, we hoped to see him work again,” she said. “Just today I found a drawing dedicated to ‘Alamo’, a name that we thought to give to the publisher, then discarded.”
The publication or release date for an English translation of Pape Satàn Aleppe: Chronicles of a Liquid Society has yet to be announced by Eco’s English publisher, Harvill Secker. Eco, who was most well-known for his 1980 mystery The Name of the Rose, wrote seven novels, three children’s books and an extensive catalogue of essays and non-fiction.
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This is how crazy propagandist our US media and national FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT 'labor and justice' organizations have become since controlled by CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA -----we heard back in the 1990s global 1% was tired of the waste of constructing separate bathrooms for men and women in public spaces. It since then has been the goal of ending ladies and gentlemen to go with UNISEX. All this had nothing to do with GBLT-----it had nothing to do with rights of TRANSEXUALS-----global 1% are simply PRETENDING to support a voting population group.
Our 99% of women may indeed have differing views on losing our women's designation as we all know how messy our 99% of men can be despite efforts in toilet training.
We can bet the public spaces tied to gatherings for global 1% and their 2% will still have those plush ladies rooms------but for 99% of women----those rights and benefits do not meet GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SUSTAINABILITY. Rather than call it a loss for women---they call it a gain for transexual citizens. Was all that media about citizens so uptight about trans using the women's bathrooms REALLY that loud?
THIS IS A SMALL ISSUE AMONG GORILLA IN ROOM PUBLIC POLICY BUT IT SPEAKS TO OUR 99% OF WOMEN NOT HAVING THAT VOICE.
Sometimes Gender Neutral Bathrooms Have Nothing to Do With Gender Identity
There are several reasons that gender neutral bathrooms will soon replace separated men's and women's bathrooms, and they have nothing to do with gender identity, explains Jimmy Parker, event producer and former BID director.
August 9, 2016, 9am PDT | wadams92101
TheChoperPilot
Gender neutral bathrooms are just better. It has nothing to do with gender identity or current affairs. There are several reasons that gender neutral bathrooms will soon replace separate men's and women's bathrooms, explains event producer and the long time president of San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter Association—a Businsess Improvement District.
A few of the reasons include:
Benefits
Once you begin to design standardized approaches to public restroom facilities, certain benefits will be realized. Here are a few:
- No need to calculate use based on demographics.
- No duplication of hand wash stations, signage, lighting, and general access corridors
- Easier family use (Fathers with daughters, Mother with sons)
- Easier calculation/conformance with ADA standards
Safety
This area seems to be where the greatest passion exists on both sides of the political debate, but I would ask the reader to consider the following:
- Unisex restrooms (shared areas) are easier to patrol with security personnel. With separate facilities, sex-specific guards need to be available to respond to emergencies/concerns.
- Greater traffic increases safety. The potential of swifter response to inappropriate behavior is a great deterrent.
- Children can be accompanied by both parents/grandparents. Especially important with multiple children.
- Stalls, unlike urinal dividers, can be re-enforced to provide better (not complete) protection when people need to shelter in place during violent incidents.
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In fact the passing of laws surrounding the creation of LADIES ROOMS in general public space came with the advancement of WOMEN'S RIGHTS WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE------during those ROARING 20s-----as this article states-----the VICTORIAN era need for women and modesty drove the need for separate spaces as women left their homes and frequented public spaces.
What do we think drives GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SUSTAINABILITY TIED TO UNISEX bathrooms? We know it is NOT GBLT---we know it is tied to MOVING FORWARD 99% of women leaving the workplace -----returning to being tied to the HOME.
'Rather, these laws were rooted in the so-called “separate spheres ideology” of the early-19th century – the idea that, in order to protect the virtue of women, they needed to stay in the home to take care of the children and household chores'.
We want all the best for our GBLT-----but we are shouting when the far-right wing, extreme wealth extreme poverty global corporate FASCISM MOVES FORWARD-----it effects all population groups as EUGENICS is always defined by those global 1% thinking themselves the perfect example of humanity-----but we must have CONVERSATIONS-----VOICES FROM 99% OF WOMEN in how these small policies add up to REAL intentions for women in 21st century losses of employment opportunities and job categories due to SMART CITIES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE/ROBOTICS----and an economy just for those global 1% and their 2%.
Remember, far-right wing authoritarianism is NOT SOCIALLY PROGRESSIVE. This same corporate sustainability is tied to workers no longer having their own bathrooms---being pushed to use general public restrooms----
new hire can’t work the schedule she agreed to, men’s bathrooms vs. women’s bathrooms, and more
by Alison Green on April 18, 2016
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Should my company have more men’s bathrooms than women’s bathrooms?
I am a woman working at a software company of about 10,000 people. Like many software companies, we have about twice as many male employees as female employees.
As our hiring increases, there started to be an occasional wait for the men’s restrooms. One solution that has been thrown out to fix this is to convert some of the women’s restrooms to men’s restrooms. This would mean every other floor has a women’s restroom and some floors have two men’s restrooms. I don’t have any sway in the decision, but I want your take on whether this is ridiculous. I go back and forth on understanding that building more bathrooms is unrealistic and expensive but also feeling like, in an industry where women already feel marginalized, this just adds to the feeling that software is a male industry. Not to mention, it sends a poor message to our women candidates who come to our building for interviews.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s a great idea to make half your women employees walk to another floor to find a bathroom, and you’re right that it’s especially bad messaging in an industry that’s already dealing with a gender problem.
I don’t suppose unisex bathrooms with individual stalls would be an option? That would solve the whole issue, although I understand some people are squeamish about them.
How did public bathrooms get to be separated by sex in the first place?
May 26, 2016 10.03pm EDT
A 19th-century photograph of a women’s restroom in a Pittsburgh factory.
- Terry S. Kogan Professor of Law, University of Utah
Terry S. Kogan is on the advisory board of Equality Utah, an LGBT advocacy group.
For years, transgender rights activists have argued for their right to use the public restroom that aligns with their gender identity. In recent weeks, this campaign has come to a head.
In March, North Carolina enacted a law requiring that people be allowed to use only the public restroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificates. Meanwhile, the White House has taken an opposing position, directing that transgender students be allowed to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. In response, on May 25, 11 states sued the Obama administration to block the federal government from enforcing the directive.
Some argue that one solution to this impasse is to convert all public restrooms to unisex use, thereby eliminating the need to even consider a patron’s sex. This might strike some as bizarre or drastic. Many assume that separating restrooms based on a person’s biological sex is the “natural” way to determine who should and should not be permitted to use these public spaces.
In fact, laws in the U.S. did not even address the issue of separating public restrooms by sex until the end of the 19th century, when Massachusetts became the first state to enact such a statute. By 1920, over 40 states had adopted similar legislation requiring that public restrooms be separated by sex.
So why did states in the U.S. begin passing such laws? Were legislators merely recognizing natural anatomical differences between men and women?
I’ve studied the history of the legal and cultural norms that require the separation of public bathrooms by sex, and it’s clear that there was nothing so benign about the enactment of these laws. Rather, these laws were rooted in the so-called “separate spheres ideology” of the early-19th century – the idea that, in order to protect the virtue of women, they needed to stay in the home to take care of the children and household chores.
In modern times, such a view of women’s proper place would be readily dismissed as sexist. By highlighting the sexist origin of laws mandating sex-separation of public restrooms, I hope to provide grounds for at least reconsidering their continued existence.
The rise of a new American ideology
During America’s early history, the household was the center of economic production, the place where goods were made and sold. That role of the home in the American economy changed at the end of the 18th century during the Industrial Revolution. As manufacturing became centralized in factories, men left for these new workplaces, while women remained in the home.
Soon, an ideological divide between public and private space arose. The workplace and the public realm came to be considered the proper domain of men; the private realm of the home belonged to women. This divide lies at the heart of the separate spheres ideology.
The sentimental vision of the virtuous woman remaining in her homestead was a cultural myth that bore little resemblance to the evolving realities of the 19th century. From its outset, the century witnessed the emergence of women from the privacy of the home into the workplace and American civic life. For example, as early as 1822 when textile mills were founded in Lowell, Massachuetts, young women began flocking to mill towns. Soon, single women constituted the overwhelming majority of the textile workforce. Women would also become involved in social reform and suffrage movements that required them to work outside the home.
Nonetheless, American culture didn’t abandon the separate spheres ideology, and most moves by women outside the domestic sphere were viewed with suspicion and concern. By the middle of the century, scientists set their sights on reaffirming the ideology by undertaking research to prove that the female body was inherently weaker than the male body.
Armed with such “scientific” facts (now understood as merely bolstering political views against the emergent women’s rights movement), legislators and other policymakers began enacting laws aimed at protecting “weaker” women in the workplace. Examples included laws that limited women’s work hours, laws that required a rest period for women during the work day or seats at their work stations, and laws that prohibited women from taking certain jobs and assignments considered dangerous.
Midcentury regulators also adopted architectural solutions to “protect” women who ventured outside the home.
Architects and other planners began to cordon off various public spaces for the exclusive use of women. For example, a separate ladies’ reading room – with furnishings that resembled those of a private home – became an accepted part of American public library design. And in the 1840s, American railroads began designating a “ladies’ car” for the exclusive use of women and their male escorts. By the end of the 19th century, women-only parlor spaces had been created in other establishments, including photography studios, hotels, banks and department stores.
Sex-separated restrooms: putting women in their place?It was in this spirit that legislators enacted the first laws requiring that factory restrooms be separated by sex.
Well into the 1870s, toilet facilities in factories and other workplaces were overwhelmingly designed for one occupant, and were often located outside of buildings. These emptied into unsanitary cesspools and privy vaults generally located beneath or adjacent to the factory. The possibility of indoor, multi-occupant restrooms didn’t even arise until sanitation technology had developed to a stage where waste could be flushed into public sewer systems.
A 19th-century ‘water closet.’ Wikimedia Commons
But by the late-19th century, the factory “water closet” – as restrooms were then called – became a flashpoint for a range of cultural anxieties.
First, deadly cholera epidemics throughout the century had heightened concerns over public health. Soon, reformers known as “sanitarians” focused their attention on replacing the haphazard and unsanitary plumbing arrangements in homes and workplaces with technologically advanced public sewer systems.
Second, the rapid development of increasingly dangerous machinery in factories was viewed as a special threat to “weaker” female workers.
Finally, Victorian values that stressed the importance of privacy and modesty were subjected to special challenge in factories, where women worked side by side with men, often sharing the same single-user restrooms.
It was the confluence of these anxieties that led legislators in Massachusetts and other states to enact the first laws requiring that factory restrooms be sex-separated. Despite the ubiquitious presence of women in the public realm, the spirit of the early century separate spheres ideology was clearly reflected in this legislation.
Understanding that “inherently weaker” women could not be forced back into the home, legislators opted instead to create a protective, home-like haven in the workplace for women by requiring separate restrooms, along with separate dressing rooms and resting rooms for women.
Thus the historical justifications for the first laws in the United States requiring that public restrooms be sex-separated were not based on some notion that men’s and women’s restrooms were “separate but equal” – a gender-neutral policy that simply reflected anatomical differences.
Rather, these laws were adopted as a way to further early 19th century moral ideology that dictated the appropriate role and place for women in society.
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We absolutely AGREE with this article's contention that the soaring media coverage about widespread public outrage over trans citizens using public facilities is tied to just this-----global 1% are simply deconstructing all civil rights and civil liberties tied to EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION LAWS.
'Conservative-leaning groups have been trying for decades to reduce the number of civil lawsuits in the states. In HB2, lawmakers accomplished this by adding a single sentence to the state’s employment discrimination law that says:
“[No] person may bring any civil action based upon the public policy expressed herein.” '
When we think of how facilities from locker rooms to showers have allowed equal access to women ------think how losing the rights of civil actions based on ANY PUBLIC POLICY will look for 99% of women not to mention our 99% of GBLT.
When national media all of a sudden bring nothing but issues of sexual freedoms to the forefront as MOVING FORWARD kills all US civil rights and liberties-----
THINK BROADLY AND FIGHT TO STOP THE DISMANTLING OF ALL CIVIL RIGHTS IN THIS CASE FOR OUR 99% OF WOMEN.
Here we see our captured ACLU------now global 1% civil rights as LIBERTARIANS -----they went to court for one justice issue but did not mention the GORILLA-IN-THE -ROOM -----the right to sue under law
'But the complaint doesn’t address the provisions affecting the right to sue under state law'.
Remember, global 1% has dismantled all pathway to public justice---the only pathway left if not able to pay for private lawyers----is that class action lawsuit----forcing it into Federal system that is ignoring all Federal US Constitutional rights and Federal law enforcement.
Sex and Gender
Why North Carolina’s New Anti-LGBT Law is a Trojan HorseIt’s not just bathrooms.
Lawmakers also took away the right to sue under state law for all kinds of employment discrimination.
by Nina Martin
April 5, 2016, 6 a.m. EDT
Sex and Gender
ProPublica's Nina Martin reporting on American systems and institutions — from schools to hospitals to prisons — that fail or mistreat people on the basis of their gender or sexuality.
When North Carolina lawmakers passed what is widely viewed as the most sweeping anti-LGBT law in the country, supporters said it was needed to fend off a potential wave of local laws like the transgender-friendly bathroom ordinance adopted by the city of Charlotte. Opponents have called the new law a “hostile takeover of human rights.”
But all the attention on who can use toilets and locker rooms has overshadowed what employment rights advocates say is an even more expansive change made by the law — one that could affect all workers in North Carolina, not just those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
As has been widely reported, the North Carolina legislature rushed last month to pass HB2, the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, which requires transgender people (and everyone else) to use public restrooms according to the biological sex on their birth certificate. It also bars local governments from passing ordinances like Charlotte’s.
The legislation doesn’t stop there, however. Tucked inside is language that strips North Carolina workers of the ability to sue under a state anti-discrimination law, a right that has been upheld in court since 1985. “If you were fired because of your race, fired because of your gender, fired because of your religion,” said Allan Freyer, head of the Workers’ Rights Project at the N.C. Justice Center in Raleigh, “… you no longer have a basic remedy.”
“The LGBT issues were a Trojan horse,” added Erika Wilson, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who co-directs a legal clinic for low-income plaintiffs with job and housing discrimination claims. The broader change hasn’t received much attention, she said, because “people were so caught up in [the LGBT] part of the law that this snuck under the radar.”
Conservative-leaning groups have been trying for decades to reduce the number of civil lawsuits in the states. In HB2, lawmakers accomplished this by adding a single sentence to the state’s employment discrimination law that says: “[No] person may bring any civil action based upon the public policy expressed herein.”
The language does not repeal North Carolina’s job-bias law, which continues to ban discrimination on the basis of race, sex, age, religion, or disability. But it forces workers seeking redress for discrimination into the federal system, where access is more difficult, the rules are much more complicated, and businesses often have significant advantages. Time, in particular, is on employers’ side: Under federal law, fired workers have just 180 days to file a claim, versus three years in state court. In the past, workers who missed the federal deadline — not uncommon for someone in emotional and economic crisis — could sue under state law instead, said Raleigh attorney Eric Doggett. Now, he predicted, many will discover they’re “hosed.”
The law’s impact could be “extraordinarily far-reaching,” said Julie Wilensky, California director of the national Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center. North Carolina doesn’t keep track of how many discrimination cases are filed under state law. But from 2009 to 2014, workers filed more than 28,100 federal charges of workplace discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or 4.5 percent of the U.S. total (the state accounts for 3 percent of the U.S. population). Forty percent of the complaints involved race; 29 percent involved gender; and 22 percent involved age.
Business groups are playing down the impact of HB2. Bruce Clarke, CEO of Raleigh-based Capital Associated Industries, an employers’ association with more than 1,200 members, contended that eliminating the right to sue was “a technical correction” that brings “clarity to a confusing area of workplace law” and takes North Carolina’s anti-discrimination statute “back to its original intent.” He said most employment discrimination cases don’t have merit and don’t belong in the “mosh pit” of state court. “They’re people that are mad, they’ve had their feelings hurt, they believe they were treated unfairly in some way … I view them like divorces,” he said.
Republican Rep. Dan Bishop, one of the legislation’s sponsors, said in an email to ProPublica that the lawsuit provision was “incidental” to the larger effort to revamp North Carolina’s law on public accommodations and rein in local governments. “The overall function of the law is to restore the status quo before the City of Charlotte exceeded its legal authority,” he wrote. The change is not as sweeping as critics claim, he said, because federal law “provides its own robust remedies and plaintiffs usually allege both federal and state law claims in the same complaint.” He told WBTV in Charlotte that the “exceedingly minor procedural difference” would have a minimal effect.
But in a post for lawyers on the Employment & Labor Insider blog, Winston-Salem attorney Robin Shea, had a different take: “We expect to see a flurry of summary judgment motions and motions to dismiss wrongful discharge claims based on this amendment.” Shea, partner in a firm that represents employers, called the change a “bomb.”
From the moment that the Charlotte City Council voted on Feb. 22 to expand protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity, opponents vowed to strike back. A month later, Republicans who control the legislature called a special one-day session to take place the next morning, March 23, and waited until just before the first committee hearings to make the text of the legislation public.
LGBT supporters had feared the bill would be broad, but they were stunned by just how far it went. In addition to requiring that people use bathrooms according to their biological sex, the measure preempted local governments from passing any laws aimed at protecting gay and transgender people, a provision that immediately nullified more than 20 existing local ordinances. Another provision banned local minimum wage laws like the $15-an-hour “living wage” ordinances gaining traction around the country. The state minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)The passage affecting discrimination lawsuits amends the North Carolina Equal Employment Practices Act (1977), which declares that it is against the state’s “public policy” to discriminate in employment “on account of race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex or handicap.” The act — which applied to businesses with 15 or more employees — did not contain explicit language allowing alleged victims of job bias to sue. But since the mid–1980s, North Carolina courts have held that the “public policy” doctrine does give people who are wrongfully fired because of discrimination the right to recover damages under common (non-statutory) law. In the space of the 12-hour special session, HB2 “wiped out this entire body of law that’s been in place for the last 30 years,” said Chapel Hill lawyer Laura Noble.
Dan Blue, an African American lawyer from Raleigh who leads the Senate Democrats, views HB2 as part of a pattern of Republican-sponsored measures that have eroded voting and other rights for low-income people of color in recent years. “It’s a continuation of … a wide assortment of things that appear to be rolling back the clock of North Carolina so that it matches the sordid history of 40 to 50 years ago,” he said.
Others pointed to a burgeoning trend in which conservatives are exploiting a backlash against gay marriage and transgender rights to push legislation with broad ramifications. In Georgia, the governor vetoed a bill allowing faith-based organizations the ability to refuse to rent property, provide education or charitable services, or do any hiring that violates their religious beliefs. In Mississippi, a bill that passed the legislature last week would permit discrimination against anyone who has nonmarital sex. [Update, April 5, 2016: Mississippi's Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed the bill into law.]
HB2 “is more evidence that the forces behind this backlash have a larger agenda than simply attacking marriage rights for same-sex couples,” said Katherine Franke, director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. “They also seek to unravel protections against race discrimination in public accommodations and other contexts.”
Last week, the ACLU and others went to court to contest the parts of HB2 that target bathrooms and to overturn local LGBT ordinances, arguing that they violate the U.S. Civil Rights Act and U.S. Supreme Court precedent. But the complaint doesn’t address the provisions affecting the right to sue under state law.
Clarke said that if workers-rights advocates and Democrats don’t like what HB2 did, they should go back to the legislature. “Go create an agency,” he said. “Go put order to this chaos.”
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