#dale spender

[haggishlyhagging]

‘After the Equal Pay Act, I went through a shoe factory where they were making men's shoes and women's shoes. There were a lot of women pounding shoes - putting heels on actually. And there were a lot of men in another part putting heels on shoes. I said to the manager “I suppose you have equal pay?” And he said “Oh yes, we have equal pay.” So I asked him, "Do you mean to say that the women here running this machine and the men over there running the same machine, get the same pay?" He said "Oh no! Heavens no! Those men are putting heels on male shoes. The women are putting heels on women's shoes. It's not the same work."

‘There were six nails going into each shoe.’ Hazel Hunkins Hallinan declared ‘and they were using the same machines. But the women didn't get the same pay' (1977:1982).

She needed no reminder that men 'called the shots', that they defined the terms and could quickly change them to suit their own convenience - a common practice when women looked like making inroads into territory men had reserved for themselves. But even women could be forgiven for failing to anticipate that the Equal Pay Act could be implemented in this way. It took a peculiar twist in logic (and a commitment to underpaying women) to arrive at this arrangement.

-Dale Spender, There’s Always Been a Women’s Movement This Century

[randomfoggytiger]

"At Least Until the Weather Breaks"

A very Merry Christmas to you, @cecilysass: hope this piece grants you a fraction of the joy your work has endlessly given me~.

*-*-*-*-*

Post Agua Mala reflections.

*-*-*-*-*

“Agent Scully, where are you?” 

Perhaps Skinner would be surprised. He had been, mere days ago, when she and Mulder showed up outside of Kersh’s office, unity shed like snake skin. He'd been doubly surprised, she knew, when Mulder guided her out later, hand once again possessively at her back. She wasn't going to explain to Skinner then-- as she walked away, a hair from her partner’s shoulder-- why she relented. Why she had deflected Kersh in Mulder’s defense-- “Sir, I wouldn’t bet against him”, with snarling control-- and left both outsiders to stew and wonder in her wake. 

And she wouldn’t now. The stretch in her partnership was no longer taut, but the vibration still rang. Spender’s son was dead, but both X-Files inmates still imagined a rivulet of his blood drip, dripping under Mulder’s reclaimed desk. Arguments were shelved, weapons set aside, and peace wordlessly reestablished before they’d left Kersh’s office. Ease was repairing itself in the mindless act of feeling each other’s presence as they packed and toted and unpacked mementos of their past in unison. They trusted, once again, to the process of symbiosis, turning from fiery conspiracy to watery mystery as unto salvation.  

“In Florida, Sir.” 

“In Florida? Wasn’t there a record hurricane down there?” An expected pause. “Is Mulder down there with you?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Another pause. A long sigh: Skinner unable to discern them. “As soon as the skies clear, I need you and Agent Mulder on a plane and back in D.C. We have a meeting scheduled to discuss both your transfers.” 

A mere formality, everyone knew, for the Board’s pride. “I’ll let him know, Sir.” 

Scully ended the call, and was about to walk away from the burning Floridian sun when her cellphone rang. 

Leroy Walter Villarreal Suarez, Jr. 

No kidding.

*-*-*-*-*

It was surprising, she owned: Mulder with flat bangs, Mulder with pater glasses. Mulder smoking. 

“Ah, everyone did it then,” Dales waved, warm and chiding. Never a thought in his soggy, besotted brain that she, too, had a naughty vice once. “What surprised me most was the ring. Everyone smoked, everyone had cheap haircuts-- everyone wore rings even. But I’d never met a guy who wore one for fun. Have you, Agent Scully?”

“Mm,” she replied, lips curling around a plastic cup Dales must have bought in bulk. Her partner with a ring. Her partner, gunshy of a normal life, aping a veneer of normalcy. Because that’s what he’d been doing, she was positive:  one look at his face now-- eyes darting, shoulders scrunching, lips pouting in mock distraction-- let her know that that act, whatever it had been, had been for himself. 

Diana Fowley, Scully winced, had watched him mime this normalcy and still left to climb the ladder. She’d smoothed his flat bangs and wiped away the lipstick on his trusting cheek and left to destroy the sameness of other women’s lives. 

Yet, here it is again, this large and fathomless thing between us: the root of Skinner’s puzzlement, the unconscious understanding and trust-- she shoved reliance quickly away-- that flowed too forgivingly between them. An unfathomable thing that clouded over when their ideals and faults clashed: her partner underestimating her abilities, she underestimating his loyalties. 

How could I forget, Scully had wondered as Mulder droned from her voicemail, “Hey, Scully, just got a call from Arthur Dales-- he says there’s a sea monster that’s just blown into Florida. If we catch the last flight tonight, we might be able to touch down before the state’s under water.” How could she forget that he’d always fought her on her instincts? On her own deathbed, when the cancer was destroying her from the inside out, he’d been right about Skinner; he’d been right about many, many more things than Skinner. But he’d been wrong about Diana; and she’d been wrong about wedging the Gunmen in her confrontation. They’d both been wrong, and right, and simultaneously right and wrong before; but not on the day the world almost ended. And, though there were still eight boxes to be unpacked, important reports to be typed up, churlish review boards to prepare for, Dana Scully had lifted her phone from its jack and called him back. “Mulder, a hurricane?”-- Mulder, I’m in. “Scully, a sea monster”-- Scully, like old times, old roads: we find the sea monster, we find each other. 

“Well… that’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Dales,” Mulder argued, fidgeting on the couch, trying to find a comfortable spot on this mummified-turned-humidified, Floridian-ified cloth bag. 

“Oh? You know another guy?” 

“My mother.” 

“Oh.” That must have made sense. “She raised hoity toity?”

“I was.” 

The crash of realization was so quick and so visceral that it struck her clammy skin like lightning: the son of broken, reclusive Mrs. Mulder, reconstructing his memories and muddying them with her excuses. His mother keenly avoiding the past; Mulder bending over backwards to appease and soothe before snapping upright and demanding the truth. Mulder wearing an older man’s glasses and taking up an older generation's quest and smoking his father’s cigarettes-- leaving off the nasty habit before Scully’s time, substituting with his father’s charm against nightmares. Her partner, clinging to the past while trying to find where he belonged.

These thoughts should depress; but they didn’t-- couldn’t, after she’d clung to Mulder’s hand in the torrent, tracked a sea monster by his side, and brought a new life into this large and complicated, small and simple world. Not after he’d given up quibbling over her victories. 

“’Hoity toity’?” she repeated instead, waiting expectantly for him to turn around and smile over the absurdity of their reality. 

*-*-*-*-*

“So, we drivin’ home?” 

They were situating in their storm-damaged rental, Dales’s head and arm swaying heartily from their rearview mirrors whenever he deemed appropriate. He’d asked if they'd wanted to keep a plastic cup each-- a noblesse oblige memento of the trailer park, Scully assumed. They’d both declined.

Mulder was not in the passenger seat, despite the wounds peppering his neck: dressing pulled up to his jaw, he’d chosen to obstinately pretend nothing was amiss. Not wanting to come down from the high of their experience, it was in his best interest-- the profound clench of his teeth telegraphed-- to ignore present uncomfortable reality.  

“If the wind kicks up, we could borrow an umbrella and fly back to the office.” She suppressed a smile at her partner’s chuckle, a delight still freshly cloaked in relief. 

“We’d have investigated her if she existed. You know that, Scully.” 

She did-- could imagine a chilly trip to England, Mulder reveling in the charm of ancient, storied folktale and superstition. Mutually exploring a turf that was no longer his. Oxford rising from the poetic fog, his college memories beating her childhood glimpses. He was so American she often forgot that he, too, traveled across the ocean. 

“I read the books when I was a child.” 

“Books?”

“Mm hm. A series,” she admitted, eager to share something from her past. Perhaps from heatstroke, perhaps to bolster the burgeoning camaraderie. 

Though why this memory she didn’t know: the tail end of one summer spent cooped up inside, Charlie coughing up a lung in the other room as her temperature stayed stubbornly high. Melissa, sick of calling her a big baby, convincing Bill to leave his friends to grab Dana a book from the library “so she’ll stop whining”. Her oldest brother spending the next two weeks biking back and forth as the book bug slowly infected the convalescents. Their fights, their frustration; their relief on returning to school.  

“I read the series religiously one year. Memorized whole passages by heart and recited them every opportunity I could.” Scully watched his head bob vaguely while he checked the gas and turned to reverse. “I was trying to prove a point, I suppose: my family loved the movie, and. And I wanted to… stand out.” Dana, you’re such a square. Dana, you’re such a pill. Dana, why won't you just admit you like it? 

“Stand out?” His eyes were curious, darting her way whenever the road could spare them. 

“Mm.” Was elaboration necessary, between them? She didn’t think so. Not for another while, anyway. “But when I went off to college, things changed. Everything was so new and so different…. It was isolating, in a way. It drove me back to the past.” 

Silence permeated as clumps of wrecked and ruined trees swept by. She needed to start calling local motels to see if there were rooms open. She needed to call her mom. She needed to turn off her phone and sleep until life no longer fuzzed at the edges. 

“What did you do?” Mulder prodded, wistfully. 

“Well….” Scully sighed, retracing the weave of her thoughts. “I bummed a ride to the local video store and rented it, over and over, when things got too lonely. That’s how I made it the first two years.” 

He said nothing, just slowly nodded as they changed lanes. 

*-*-*-*-*

There was nothing but time, now, to reflect-- something she'd purposefully avoided since that sordid night in the Gunmen's lair. Everything then was too muddled, too raw and dangerously close, to think about, let alone understand. But the lull of conversation, the empty silence between phone calls, the endless stretch of waterlogged, abandoned roads yawned and stretched and plucked an abandoned thought from her unconscious without notice.

She’d led the way to Kersh's door, stayed a half step always in front of her partner, pursed her lips at Skinner’s greeting, hedged determinedly away from Mulder’s closeness. A contrast to their ally ship the previous night: her eyes peering ahead, searching the dark for signs of life; his eyes glued to the crushed car she’d driven across the train tracks-- a striking contrast (she shotgun, he side-saddle) to their rote partnership. Smoke and ashes and the corpses of deceiving families looming over their heads like a conscience. Skinner hadn’t expected the battle to extend to their relationship; and she’d walked expeditiously away from his questioning eyes, guiding them both to Kersh's desk with brittle dignity. 

Neither had spoken to each other while A.D. Kersh spit and A.D. Kersh swore and Jeffrey Spender resigned and left them the X-Files. Perched in a getaway corner of the room, Skinner had missed their wordless exchange, the psychic transference they were capable of since that first fateful day in Mulder’s office: his softened stutter, a sorrowful admission of guilt; her twitching eyebrow and slackened mouth, an acknowledgement of his admission. Fault confessed, the breadth of temptation and cowardice became irrelevant in the weight of charred bodies and grave missteps.

It was easier, and harder, to shove it behind them. Eyes followed their backs out and into the hall, down the elevator, and down, down, down into another layer of chaos and death: the body of Jeffrey Spender, expendable in the face of yet another father's disappointment.

At least Bill Mulder had begged, "Forgive me," when he robbed his son of the ultimate truth.

*-*-*-*-*

“Are you still in Florida, Agent Scully?” 

That, or a broiling, humid Twilight Zone. 

They’d been advised off the road by another no-nonsense uniform; and, escape impossible, had panhandled around for a room at the inn. The ones available were of middling quality (save a truly deplorable toilet that was decorated, Pollock-style, with human fluids), but it was better than Mulder’s suggestion to pull off and catch some shuteye in a parking lot. That was too local for her tastes. 

“Yes, Sir-- for another eight hours or so. Agent Mulder has hope that the planes will be up and running by then.” 

“So soon?”

“It is Florida, Sir.” 

Her partner was seated on his single bed, half-listening while madly typing up notes. He looked up, once, before losing interest, deciding instead to abuse the backspace key with a vengeance. 

There was a parallel, she believed, that could be drawn from a neck-deep metaphor and his tender tentacle wounds. As if in sync with her thoughts, he fingered one absently; and winced. 

“Keep in touch, Agent.” 

“Yes, Sir.” Disconnecting the line, Scully debated whether to grab breakfast from a vending machine or sink, exhausted, onto her bed and never get up. The room’s smell-- a clash of coastal mist and dead algae, death and stymied life-- decided her: another second here and she’d have to think about mold. “I’m going to grab some food.” 

Mulder looked up, fingers stilled, hungry hope brewing in his eyes. “Change’s in my wallet.” How they even had wallets after the last twenty-four hours, Scully couldn’t venture a guess. Then again, their odds had been remarkably high lately. 

About time.

“I’m buying.” She was halfway out the door, shoes scrubbing against old, fuzzy carpet fibers, before his voice stopped her. 

“Scully. Thanks.” 

It was such a small gesture-- one that shouldn’t have moved her as much as it did. But Scully’s eyes stung, and her hands trembled as they tightened on the door knob. Tucking her head, she swallowed back a shaky breath; and, turning, swept her eyes around the room, once, for composure. “We slew the monster, Mulder.” 

He slowly smiled; slowly blinked; slowly seemed to take her in from head to toe. Slowly nodded. 

Giving a tight smile in return, Scully added, “I’ll be back,” before closing the door gently behind her. 

*-*-*-*-*

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

Tagging @today-in-fic, @poangpals.

[majchic]

[bookstribepost]

"Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety in the streets, for child care, for social welfare, for rape crisis centres, women's refuges, reforms in the law. If someone says, 'Oh, I'm not a feminist', I ask, 'Why? What's your problem?' "

- Dale Spender, Man Made Language

[chavisory]

just found your account and so sorry about these anons. for distraction: you have the mic. now tell me everything about the x files.

Oh, anon, this is so sweet of you. Unfortunately I don't remotely have time to tell you everything about the X-Files...this is a show layered and impactful enough to have inspired an entire realm of scholarship, including several very good books.

If for some reason you haven't watched the X-Files, and are at all curious about how television got the way it did over the past 30 years, you just must (as well as Twin Peaks. Modern media simply could not be what it is without these two shows). There's a reason it's 30 years old and people are still completely obsessed with it.

But some specific things about the X-Files that I wish other people were more obsessed about:

What can Kurt Crawford's backstory possibly be?

What was Jeffrey Spender's relationship with Samantha like? What happened between Spender and Mulder between the original series finale and the revival?

What's the thesis being developed with regard to all the Vietnam vets who are characters on this show?

Poorboy! Poorboy! Why don't more people clock that Poorboy is the longest-surviving alien shapeshifter defector from the colonization project?!

Also Arthur Dales. He's so good and I love him so much.

Do we think the revival was signaling really hard that Jackson has a living older half-sister still out there? Because I think it was.

And this show's relationship with its autistic characters is... fascinating.

And possibly my single most controversial opinion about this show? The mythology makes sense.

Anyway, thank you for this soapbox. I hope you have a nice night.

Anyone else--I would deeply welcome any and all yelling about these or other X-Files-related questions.

[radicalpolls]

Nattering on the net : women, power, and cyberspace : Spender, Dale : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[all-eyes-lead-to-the-truth]

All Eyes Lead to the Truth | Season Five Master Post

From fan-favorite monsters to big players behind the conspiracy to the people closest to Mulder and Scully, season five has been one of the most fun yet!

Check out this thread to see all the characters we got to meet this season!

Redux (5x01) | Section Chief Scott Blevins

He had no vested interest in Mulder and his quest, but he was part of the machine, the same as everyone else dressed in suits, skulking around in dark, smoke-filled rooms.

Redux II (5x02) | Dr. Zuckerman

Dr. Zuckerman recalls Dana telling him that this man, her best friend, was the first person to help her absorb cancer's painful blow. It seems fitting that he be the first to feel the relief in its aftermath alongside her.

Unusual Suspects (5x03) | Detective John Munch

“Listening to those three talk makes me feel like I need to go be strapped down to a hospital bed. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great story, but that’s all it is.” The captain was up their asses about this case, but as far as Munch knew, watching one too many science fiction movies wasn’t a crime.

Detour (5x04) | Special Agent Stonecypher

Communicating with those two was more difficult than some interrogations she’d been a part of, but she kept trying. They didn’t call her Tough as Rocks Stonecypher for nothing.

Post-Modern Prometheus (5x05) | Izzy Berkowitz

The simple folk of this rural Indiana town are no different than the man they’d called Monster and chased with pitchforks.

Maybe they’re all monsters.

Izzy kind of likes that.

Christmas Carol (5x06) | Bill Scully Jr.

Maybe that’s what pissed him off so much. Mulder does blame himself. There’s nothing Bill could ever say to that man that he hadn’t said to himself a thousand times over.

Emily (5x07) | Detective John Kresge

He recognizes her toughness, her resilience. The very thing he’d fought against at the start is exactly the thing that makes her a good agent. But in this moment he can see her humanity, something he knows makes her a good person, too. He wishes he’d had the chance to get to know her better.

Kitsunegari (5x08) | Linda Bowman

With clenched fists, Linda Bowman walks away from her dead twin, revenge stoking the hot flame of rage burning in her chest.

It’s time for this fox hunt to end.

Schizogeny (5x09) | Lisa Baiocchi

Karin continued on, seemingly oblivious to the tree limbs knocking against the window, begging to be let in. “It’s natural for kids who have been in your situation to wish that their parent was dead.”

Chinga (5x10) | Chief Jack Bonsaint

All the talk of witches around these parts has always been just that to Jack: talk. Chatter. He doesn’t pay it much mind. He lives in the real world, not the realm of fantasy and hokum.

But if someone like Agent Scully can believe…

Kill Switch (5x11) | Esther Nairn (Invisigoth)

They’d thought they would change the face of technology, the world, even. She’d been young and in love. Not for a second did she think that would be the very thing that ruined all of it.

Bad Blood (5x12) | Sheriff Lucius Hartwell

His salvatory glands were working in overdrive between all this blood-talk and the assault of Agent Scully's intoxicating scent. It was taking his full concentration to keep his fangs from dropping into place.

Patient X (5x13) | Cassandra Spender

Some of the others fear the Light, dread it, but Cassandra welcomes it. To her it is no harbinger of doom; it’s a sign that she’ll be gone again soon, swept away from this place that has brought her nothing but pain.

The Red and the Black (5x14) | Special Agent Jeffrey Spender

Jeffrey hadn’t known anything about aliens until his mother had explained to him that they lived on planets far from their own. Jeffrey believed everything she told him, because why wouldn’t he? She was his mother, the center of his universe, and he’d never had any reason to doubt her before.

Travelers (5x15) | Special Agent Arthur Dales

Arthur plucks the bottle of Jim Beam from behind a container of his blood pressure pills. The fine layer of dust coating the bourbon’s glass reminds him how long it’s been since he’s drowned himself in sorrow. About as long as it’s been since he’s thought about the X-Files.

Mind's Eye (5x16) | Marty Glenn

People seem to think her lack of vision inhibits her; that without it, she’s unable to see.

But Marty sees plenty.

All Souls (5x17) | Emily Sim

Emily is lucky. She doesn’t have just one mommy, she has two. There’s the mommy who she’d known her whole life, the one who had taken care of her when she was sick and who is here with her now, and then there’s her other mommy who isn’t here yet.

Pine Bluff Variant (5x18) | August Bremer

Silence stretches for a long time. Nothing but the crinkle of med-grade wrappers and the burbling of water from what sounds like a fish tank drifts through the headphones. August may be on the outside listening in, but he can practically feel the tension from here.

Folie à Deux (5x19) | Nancy Aaronson

Gary always looked like he had an elephant sitting on his chest, and every time he heard the VinylRight rigmarole, the elephant shifted. For some reason, it felt like he thought she could help him relieve the weight.

The End (5x20) | Gibson Praise

They had no idea what it was like to realize that the manager at a grocery store was stealing money from the safe in the back room when you were all the way up at the cash registers. Or what it was like to pick out the kid in a stadium full of people who was mad at his mother for making him wear his least comfortable pants. No one needed to know those things, but he knew them.

Gibson heard all of it, whether he wanted to or not.

Stay tuned for more perspectives coming in Season Six!

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

[spiderfreedom]

There is nothing new about “the woman question”. Ours is not the first enlightened century. Neither were the 20th century feminists. Neither were the 19th century Anglo feminists. To quote Dale Spender, “there has always been a women’s movement this century.” We see a “woman controversy” happening in the late Middle Ages of Europe.

There women defending themselves there, even though literacy was rare. There were also even men defending women - I’d like to get a hold of the male “women defenders” works, like Juan Rodriguez de la Cámara.

On the one hand, we’ve been facing the same damn question for centuries. On the other, we’ve made significant moves forward. Is there anything we can learn from these Medieval writers that can provide wisdom to our times today?

[haggishlyhagging]

Why were women of the present cut off from women of the past and how was this achieved? While we had been ready to believe the lessons of our own education and to accept that there was but a handful of women in the past who had protested against male power, that they were ‘eccentric’ at best, and more usually ‘neurotic’, ‘embittered’ and quite unrepresentative, then the absence of women's voices from history seemed understandable. But when it began to appear that there had been many women who had been saying in centuries past what we were saying in the 1970s, that they had been representative of their sex, and that they had disappeared, the problem assumed very different proportions.

For years I had not thought to challenge the received wisdom of my own history tutors who had — in the only fragment of knowledge about angry women I was ever endowed with — informed me that early in the twentieth century, a few unbalanced and foolish women had chained themselves to railings in the attempt to obtain the vote. When I learnt, however, that in 1911 there had been twenty-one regular feminist periodicals in Britain, that there was a feminist book shop, a woman's press, and a women's bank run by and for women, I could no longer accept that the reason I knew almost nothing about women of the past was because there were so few of them, and they had done so little. I began to acknowledge not only that the women's movement of the early twentieth century was bigger, stronger and more influential than I had ever suspected, but that it might not have been the only such movement. It was in this context that I began to wonder whether the disappearance of the women of the past was an accident.

Dale Spender, Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them

[maslows-pyramid-scheme]

The backlash against female-only gatherings and consciousness-raising forums ... is frequently absorbed into male-default narratives focused on cancel culture ... This is the wrong story, erasing the enormous history of male opposition to female speech ... there is a line that can be drawn from sixteenth-century images of the ‘virtuous woman’ who has no head with which to speak, though anti-suffragette propaganda showing a woman with a padlock on her lips, to memes describing superglue as ‘lipstick for TERFs.’ Free speech does not mean for women what it means for men ... Anxiety over ‘gossiping’ women and the need to control them is ever-present, even when it masquerades as progressive politics ...

...

“Men talk politics in the pub, but women boycotting a supermarket are on a “housewives’ jaunt;” the differences in power among men are serious and of a political nature, but the differences in power between women and men as concetualised by women are silly, and of a neurotic nature ... Because it is fundamental to the frame of reference in a patriarchal society that men are the political creatures, the political activists and theorists, women’s activities in relation to power are denatured, classified as something else” [quoting Dale Spender].

...

“Because [women] feel as though they do not have free speech in the presence of men, many women have set up women-only forums … But where such safe space has been set up, the response from some quarters is predictable. There are men who vehemently object and who claim that women-only space impinges on their right to free speech. They try to over-run, disrupt or destroy the exclusively female forum” [quoting Dale Spender].

Victoria Smith, Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women

Lmao literally women should be allowed to have female only spaces just because, and not just because of safeguarding from males. Women want to go to a women only gym? A women only club? A women only knitting circle? A women only concert, yoga class, workshop, etc? They should be allowed to without MALES pitching a fucking fit about it and demanding “inclusion.” Women should be allowed to seek out and use female only spaces because that’s our fucking right in this male centered, male dominated, male obsessed society. Just fucking BECAUSE.

[there-are-4-lights]

World-acclaimed feminist, beloved educator and widely published author who was nothing short of brilliant, Dr Dale Spender AM has passed away aged 80.

[angelanatel]

A alocação de espaço para os homens também foi seriamente questionada em relação às artes. "Por que não houve grandes artistas mulheres?", perguntou Linda Nochlin (1972).

Sua resposta estava longe da resposta oficial, que sustenta que as mulheres não são capazes de atingir o padrão de grande artista.

O artigo de Linda Nochlin foi direcionado aos criadores de padrões e levantou a questão incômoda e política de por que os homens persistiam em definir a arte feminina como inferior. Para que as mulheres pudessem julgar por si mesmas se eram as mulheres que não conseguiam ser excelentes artistas ou se eram os homens que se recusavam a admitir a excelência das mulheres, Rozsika Parker e Griselda Pollock, em seu livro Old Mistresses (1985), incluíram uma série de excelentes obras de arte femininas que os homens consideraram indignas de serem incluídas na história da arte e omitiram do registro de grandes artistas. (Como em muitas obras literárias, quando era extremamente difícil negar a excelência, o trabalho artístico de uma mulher era frequentemente atribuído a um homem. Essa prática - que foi comentada por Aphra Behn no século XVII - ainda persiste em muitos lugares). Até mesmo a questão do que constitui arte é relevante no contexto em que os homens determinam as definições: não é coincidência que eles percebam as atividades tradicionais dos homens como "arte" e as das mulheres como "artesanato".

Entretanto, uma série de definições femininas de arte está começando a surgir e livros como The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage (1977), de Judy Chicago, ajudam a criar e definir os significados femininos, inclusive o significado da exclusão das mulheres da cultura masculina.

Mais uma vez, há evidências de que aqueles que estão no comando dos significados e padrões usam sua posição para garantir que continuem no comando dos significados e padrões. Para o feminismo contemporâneo, portanto, a pragmática dita que a questão não é tanto o motivo pelo qual os homens originalmente obtiveram o controle, mas sim como o domínio masculino pode ser encerrado.

Porque, apesar de todas as conquistas - as campanhas bem-sucedidas, as mudanças na lei, a proliferação de livros femininos -, enquanto os homens controlam os significados e os padrões, enquanto os homens continuam a definir tudo, desde a saúde até a arte, eles são capazes de decretar que o que os homens são e fazem, conta; e o que as mulheres são e fazem, não. Portanto, mesmo que as mulheres pudessem ter o escopo de conquistas iguais, no final, elas seriam menos valorizadas do que as conquistas masculinas.

For the Record, Dale Spender

#ficadica – pesquise sobre como a autora de Frankenstein, Mary Shelley,  precisou publicar a primeira edição de seu livro com um pseudônimo masculino para que a obra tivesse o devido reconhecimento.

[haggishlyhagging]

In her book My Fight for Birth Control (1931) [Margaret Sanger] is quite clear about the fact that while birth control may have served economic ends, and while it was a practice consistent with her analysis of society, it was none the less a response to women's needs - and not to men's needs of a revolution - that induced her to take on the double task of finding out how pregnancies (and births) could be prevented, and then of distributing the knowledge to women. While today we may think that the greater problem is finding safe and satisfactory means of birth control, in Sanger's time the greater problem was providing women with the information of the means.

The law stated - in Sanger's own words - ‘that no one could give information to prevent conception to anyone for any reason’ (1931, p. 152). It was illegal to publish such information or to send such 'obscene' material through the post. Because of this 'conspiracy of silence', it is understandable that many women thought there was a ‘secret,’ known only to the privileged few. This was the case with Sadie Sacks, whose experience Margaret Sanger cites in her own account of her commitment to the struggle for birth control.

Mrs Sacks already had three young children when she became pregnant again, and because she could not afford another child, physically or financially, she procured an abortion and Margaret Sanger arrived as the nurse who afterwards battled for her life. The woman survived but was very despondent, informing Sanger that another baby would kill her (either through abortion or birth) and that she was desperate to find a way of preventing it. She asked the doctor what she should do and he treated the whole issue facetiously; he scoffed at the idea that she should want to have her cake and eat it too, and suggested that she ‘ban’ her husband to the rooftop. After the doctor's departure, Mrs Sacks implored Sanger to tell her the secret, and Sanger states with rage and frustration that she simply did not know how you prevented pregnancy.

Sanger too left Mrs Sacks's home and over the next few months felt uneasy - even guilty - about the fate of Mrs Sacks. Then she was called once more; this time Mrs Sacks died from the abortion. Sanger returned to her own home, stunned, but gradually convinced throughout the course of the night that ‘uncontrolled breeding’ was the central social problem and determined to do something about it. She writes that at that moment she renounced all palliative work for ever. ‘I would never go back again to nurse women's ailing bodies while their miseries were as vast as the stars. I was now finished with superficial cures, with doctors and nurses and social workers who were brought face to face with this overwhelming truth of women's needs and yet turned to pass on the other side. They must be made to see these facts. I resolved that women should have knowledge of contraception. They have every right to know about their own bodies … I would tell the world what was going on in the lives of these poor women. I would be heard. No matter what it should cost. I would be heard’ (ibid., p. 56).

In 1916, Sanger opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn - the main emphasis being on contraception, not abortion - and while it was designed to provide women with information it was also a deliberate attempt to test the law. News of the clinic quickly spread, women flocked to its doors, and poured out their feelings of terror and pain on this issue which haunted their lives but which was a socially and legally taboo topic. The premises were raided, the women arrested and Sanger says, ‘We were not surprised at being arrested, but the shock and horror of it was that a woman, with a squad of five plain clothes men, conducted the raid and made the arrest. A woman - the irony of it!’ (ibid., p. 158). There can be no doubt that Sanger saw women as a group, with shared interests and a common cause. There was panic among the women in the waiting room - who were being bullied by the police in the attempt to obtain their names so that they could later be subpoenad to testify - and there was chaos outside (women, baby carriages, children - all waiting to get into the clinic). When Sanger and Tania Mindell were taken away, one woman ran after them, screaming wildly for them to come back and help her. The clinic was closed; the court declared it a ‘public nuisance’. Sanger was imprisoned but went on to fight again - and again.

-Dale Spender, Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them

[itellmyselfsecrets]

“Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starve no enemies, practice no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions for women and children; for property rights for women, for divorce, for custody rights, for the right to safety on the streets. Feminist have fought for childcare, for social welfare, for grade of disability for people with disabilities.” -Dale Spender

[hertothesun]

“The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women.” 

Dale Spender