Women: Their struggles, their rights, their hopes.

[Brute_Force]

I am still very new to the Literotica Author's Hangout, but in the course of these past few weeks (and particularly the past few days), I have learned an enormous amount about the incredible intellects that are alive and well here. It is such a delight for me to read the ideas of people like Rob Graham, Black Shanglan, Stella Omega, and countless others. Of course, the erotica is top-drawer, but the general topics of politics, women's rights, Marxism, etc., that are addressed here are equally fascinating and often quite passionate.

But, getting down to the point of this thread. Having just finished reading some of the most horrifying words spoken about women I've ever read in my life posted by Amicus in the "Open Challenge to Amicus" thread, I want to express my admiration for women--irrespective of their physical appearance or their sexual proclivities. I just admire them because of the battles they fight each and every day with courage and grace and dignity and intelligence. I have seen so many situations in which womens' fundamental rights and their very selves have been under assault. In particular, I mourn for the women in Islamic societies, such as Afghanistan, whose lives are in constant flux and their safety and beauty under attack.

So, this is my thread, in praise of women. All about women. If you want to contribute your ideas, please do. I want this to be a woman-positive thread. I want it to address womens' issues.

Here's my first contribution:

The vast majority of Afghanistan's population professes to be followers of Islam. Over 1400 years ago, Islam demanded that men and women be equal before God, and gave them various rights such the right to inheritance, the right to vote, the right to work, and even choose their own partners in marriage. For centuries now in Afghanistan, women have been denied these rights either by official government decree or by their own husbands, fathers, and brothers. During the rule of the Taliban (1996 - 2001), women were treated worse than in any other time or by any other society. They were forbidden to work, leave the house without a male escort, not allowed to seek medical help from a male doctor, and forced to cover themselves from head to toe, even covering their eyes. Women who were doctors and teachers before, suddenly were forced to be beggars and even prostitutes in order to feed their families.

Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, many would agree that the political and cultural position of Afghan women has improved substantially. The recently adopted Afghan constitution states that "the citizens of Afghanistan - whether man or woman- have equal rights and duties before the law". So far, women have been allowed to return back to work, the government no longer forces them to wear the all covering burqa, and they even have been appointed to prominent positions in the government. Despite all these changes many challenges still remain. The repression of women is still prevalent in rural areas where many families still restrict their own mothers, daughters, wives and sisters from participation in public life. They are still forced into marriages and denied a basic education. Numerous school for girls have been burned down and little girls have even been poisoned to death for daring to go to school.

- by Abdullah Qazi (Last updated on April 26, 2007)

Fact Box

*Every 30 minutes, an Afghan woman dies during childbirth

*87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate

*30 percent of girls have access to education in Afghanistan

*1 in every 3 Afghan women experience physical, psychological or sexual violence

*44 years is the average life expectancy rate for women in Afghanistan

*70 to 80 percent of women face forced marriages in Afghanistan

 

[Stella_Omega]

Thank you, Brute!

"Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good"

I'll be back with one of my interminable essays later... You know I can't stay away from this thread!

 

[rgraham666]

Thanks for the kind words, Brute. And once again I smile at the dichotomy of that.

As far as I'm concerned anything that diminishes the joy of another person's life diminishes my own in the process.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Brute, you're awfully kind, and I thank you for it. I'm always glad to meet another person who enjoys a good wrangle. I'll cure you of that eventually with my interminable posts.

The statistic that sticks in my mind was one I heard from a team of mental health professionals who were working in Afghanistan shortly after the fall of the Taliban. They were generally guarded about their comments in terms of politics; they didn't want to talk about governments, just about people. However, they shared one rather damning statistic: 80% of the women they surveyed fit the symptomatic criteria for severe depression. That seemed to me to sum up the situation in a nutshell.

 

[Brute_Force]

Stella, I loved your comment and I very much look forward to any and all you might say in future. You seem to me that rare breed of intellectual who combines deep ethos with razor-sharp insight.

Rob, Your cool as hell, and I dig your comments altogether. I've read many of your posts and the intelligence level is so up there. Seems that you've had amazing experiences and overcome a lot.

Black Shanglan, Man, I can't wait to hear you wrangle about any and everything, and I'll get right in there with ya. Your mind is a treasure trove. That statistic you cited is overwhelming and sad.

 

[Brute_Force]

An Oldie, but a Goodie

The Subjection of Women
John S. Mill

The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress reflection and the experience of life. That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes — the legal subordination of one sex to the other — is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.

The very words necessary to express the task I have undertaken, show how arduous it is. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the difficulty of the case must lie in the insufficiency or obscurity of the grounds of reason on which my convictions. The difficulty is that which exists in all cases in which there is a mass of feeling to be contended against. So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old. And there are so many causes tending to make the feelings connected with this subject the most intense and most deeply-rooted of those which gather round and protect old institutions and custom, that we need not wonder to find them as yet less undermined and loosened than any of the rest by the progress the great modern spiritual and social transition; nor suppose that the barbarisms to which men cling longest must be less barbarisms than those which they earlier shake off.

In every respect the burthen is hard on those who attack an almost universal opinion. They must be very fortunate well as unusually capable if they obtain a hearing at all. They have more difficulty in obtaining a trial, than any other litigants have in getting a verdict. If they do extort a hearing, they are subjected to a set of logical requirements totally different from those exacted from other people. In all other cases, burthen of proof is supposed to lie with the affirmative. If a person is charged with a murder, it rests with those who accuse him to give proof of his guilt, not with himself to prove his innocence. If there is a difference of opinion about the reality of an alleged historical event, in which the feelings of men general are not much interested, as the Siege of Troy example, those who maintain that the event took place expected to produce their proofs, before those who take the other side can be required to say anything; and at no time these required to do more than show that the evidence produced by the others is of no value. Again, in practical matters, the burthen of proof is supposed to be with those who are against liberty; who contend for any restriction or prohibition either any limitation of the general freedom of human action or any disqualification or disparity of privilege affecting one person or kind of persons, as compared with others. The a priori presumption is in favour of freedom and impartiality. It is held that there should be no restraint not required by I general good, and that the law should be no respecter of persons but should treat all alike, save where dissimilarity of treatment is required by positive reasons, either of justice or of policy. But of none of these rules of evidence will the benefit be allowed to those who maintain the opinion I profess. It is useless me to say that those who maintain the doctrine that men ha a right to command and women are under an obligation obey, or that men are fit for government and women unfit, on the affirmative side of the question, and that they are bound to show positive evidence for the assertions, or submit to their rejection. It is equally unavailing for me to say that those who deny to women any freedom or privilege rightly allow to men, having the double presumption against them that they are opposing freedom and recommending partiality, must held to the strictest proof of their case, and unless their success be such as to exclude all doubt, the judgment ought to against them. These would be thought good pleas in any common case; but they will not be thought so in this instance. Before I could hope to make any impression, I should be expected not only to answer all that has ever been said bye who take the other side of the question, but to imagine that could be said by them — to find them in reasons, as I as answer all I find: and besides refuting all arguments for the affirmative, I shall be called upon for invincible positive arguments to prove a negative. And even if I could do all and leave the opposite party with a host of unanswered arguments against them, and not a single unrefuted one on side, I should be thought to have done little; for a cause supported on the one hand by universal usage, and on the other by so great a preponderance of popular sentiment, is supposed to have a presumption in its favour, superior to any conviction which an appeal to reason has power to produce in intellects but those of a high class.

I do not mention these difficulties to complain of them; first, use it would be useless; they are inseparable from having to contend through people's understandings against the hostility their feelings and practical tendencies: and truly the understandings of the majority of mankind would need to be much better cultivated than has ever yet been the case, before they be asked to place such reliance in their own power of estimating arguments, as to give up practical principles in which have been born and bred and which are the basis of much existing order of the world, at the first argumentative attack which they are not capable of logically resisting. I do not therefore quarrel with them for having too little faith in argument, but for having too much faith in custom and the general feeling. It is one of the characteristic prejudices of the ion of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, to accord to the unreasoning elements in human nature the infallibility which the eighteenth century is supposed to have ascribed to the reasoning elements. For the apotheosis of Reason we have substituted that of Instinct; and we call thing instinct which we find in ourselves and for which we cannot trace any rational foundation. This idolatry, infinitely more degrading than the other, and the most pernicious of the false worships of the present day, of all of which it is the main support, will probably hold its ground until it way before a sound psychology laying bare the real root of much that is bowed down to as the intention of Nature and ordinance of God. As regards the present question, I am going to accept the unfavourable conditions which the prejudice assigns to me. I consent that established custom, and the general feelings, should be deemed conclusive against me, unless that custom and feeling from age to age can be shown to have owed their existence to other causes than their soundness, and to have derived their power from the worse rather than the better parts of human nature. I am willing that judgment should go against me, unless I can show that my judge has been tampered with. The concession is not so great as it might appear; for to prove this, is by far the easiest portion of my task.

The generality of a practice is in some cases a strong presumption that it is, or at all events once was, conducive to laudable ends. This is the case, when the practice was first adopted, or afterwards kept up, as a means to such ends, and was grounded on experience of the mode in which they could be most effectually attained. If the authority of men over women, when first established, had been the result of a conscientious comparison between different modes of constituting the government of society; if, after trying various other modes of social organisation — the government of women over men, equality between the two, and such mixed and divided modes of government as might be invented — it had been decided, on the testimony of experience, that the mode in which women are wholly under the rule of men, having no share at all in public concerns, and each in private being under the legal obligation of obedience to the man with whom she has associated her destiny, was the arrangement most conducive to the happiness and well-being of both; its general adoption might then be fairly thought to be some evidence that, at the time when it was adopted, it was the best: though even then the considerations which recommended it may, like so many other primeval social facts of the greatest importance, have subsequently, in the course of ages, ceased to exist. But the state of the case is in every respect the reverse of this. In the first place, the opinion in favour of the present system, which entirely subordinates the weaker sex to the stronger, rests upon theory only; for there never has been trial made of any other: so that experience, in the sense in which it is vulgarly opposed to theory, cannot be pretended to have pronounced any verdict. And in the second place, the adoption of this system of inequality never was the result of deliberation, or forethought, or any social ideas, or any notion whatever of what conduced to the benefit of humanity or the good order of society. It arose simply from the fact that from the very earliest twilight of human society, every woman owing to the value attached to her by men, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man. Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognising the relations they find already existing between individuals. They convert what was a mere physical fact into a legal right, give it the sanction of society, and principally aim at the substitution of public and organised means of asserting and protecting these rights, instead of the irregular and lawless conflict of physical strength. Those who had already been compelled to obedience became in this manner legally bound to it. Slavery, from be inn a mere affair of force between the master and the slave, became regularised and a matter of compact among the masters, who, binding themselves to one another for common protection, guaranteed by their collective strength the private possessions of each, including his slaves. In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other. By degrees such thinkers did arise; and (the general progress of society assisting) the slavery of the male sex has, in all the countries of Christian Europe at least (though, in one of them, only within the last few years) been at length abolished, and that of the female sex has been gradually changed into a milder form of dependence. But this dependence, as it exists at present, is not an original institution, taking a fresh start from considerations of justice and social expediency — it is the primitive state of slavery lasting on, through successive mitigations and modifications occasioned by the same causes which have softened the general manners, and brought all human relations more under the control of justice and the influence of humanity. It has not lost the taint of its brutal origin. No presumption in its favour, therefore, can be drawn from the fact of its existence. The only such presumption which it could be supposed to have, must be grounded on its having lasted till now, when so many other things which came down from the same odious source have been done away with. And this, indeed, is what makes it strange to ordinary ears, to hear it asserted that the inequality of rights between men and women has no other source than the law of the strongest.

That this statement should have the effect of a paradox, is in some respects creditable to the progress of civilisation, and the improvement of the moral sentiments of mankind. We now live — that is to say, one or two of the most advanced nations of the world now live — in a state in which the law of the strongest seems to be entirely abandoned as the regulating principle of the world's affairs: nobody professes it, and, as regards most of the relations between human beings, nobody is permitted to practise it. When anyone succeeds in doing so, it is under cover of some pretext which gives him the semblance of having some general social interest on his side. This being the ostensible state of things, people flatter themselves that the rule of mere force is ended; that the law of the strongest cannot be the reason of existence of anything which has remained in full operation down to the present time. However any of our present institutions may have begun, it can only, they think, have been preserved to this period of advanced civilisation by a well-grounded feeling of its adaptation to human nature, and conduciveness to the general good. They do not understand the great vitality and durability of institutions which place right on the side of might; how intensely they are clung to; how the good as well as the bad propensities and sentiments of those who have power in their hands, become identified with retaining it; how slowly these bad institutions give way, one at a time, the weakest first, beginning with those which are least interwoven with the daily habits of life; and how very rarely those who have obtained legal power because they first had physical, have ever lost their hold of it until the physical power had passed over to the other side. Such shifting of the physical force not having taken place in the case of women; this fact, combined with all the peculiar and characteristic features of the particular case, made it certain from the first that this branch of the system of right founded on might, though softened in its most atrocious features at an earlier period than several of the others, would be the very last to disappear. It was inevitable that this one case of a social relation grounded on force, would survive through generations of institutions grounded on equal justice, an almost solitary exception to the general character of their laws and customs; but which, so long as it does not proclaim its own origin, and as discussion has not brought out its true character, is not felt to jar with modern civilisation, any more than domestic slavery among the Greeks jarred with their notion of themselves as a free people.

The truth is, that people of the present and the last two or three generations have lost all practical sense of the primitive condition of humanity; and only the few who have studied history accurately, or have much frequented the parts of the world occupied by the living representatives of ages long past, are able to form any mental picture of what society then was. People are not aware how entirely, informer ages, the law of superior strength was the rule of life; how publicly and openly it was avowed, I do not say cynically or shamelessly — for these words imply a feeling that there was something in it to be ashamed of, and no such notion could find a place in the faculties of any person in those ages, except a philosopher or a saint. History gives a cruel experience of human nature, in showing how exactly the regard due to the life, possessions, and entire earthly happiness of any class of persons, was measured by what they had the power of enforcing; how all who made any resistance to authorities that had arms in their hands, however dreadful might be the provocation, had not only the law of force but all other laws, and all the notions of social obligation against them; and in the eyes of those whom they resisted, were not only guilty of crime, but of the worst of all crimes, deserving the most cruel chastisement which human beings could inflict. The first small vestige of a feeling of obligation in a superior to acknowledge any right in inferiors, began when he had been induced, for convenience, to make some promise to them. Though these promises, even when sanctioned by the most solemn oaths, were for many ages revoked or violated on the most trifling provocation or temptation, it is probably that this, except by persons of still worse than the average morality, was seldom done without some twinges of conscience. The ancient republics, being mostly grounded from the first upon some kind of mutual compact, or at any rate formed by an union of persons not very unequal in strength, afforded, in consequence, the first instance of a portion of human relations fenced round, and placed under the dominion of another law than that of force. And though the original law of force remained in full operation between them and their slaves, and also (except so far as limited by express compact) between a commonwealth and its subjects, or other independent commonwealths; the banishment of that primitive law even from so narrow a field, commenced the regeneration of human nature, by giving birth to sentiments of which experience soon demonstrated the immense value even for material interests, and which thence forward only required to be enlarged, not created. Though slaves were no part of the commonwealth, it was in the free states that slaves were first felt to have rights as human beings. The Stoics were, I believe, the first (except so far as the Jewish law constitutes an exception) who taught as a part of morality that men were bound by moral obligations to their slaves. No one, after Christianity became ascendant, could ever again have been a stranger to this belief, in theory; nor, after the rise of the Catholic Church, was it ever without persons to stand up for it. Yet to enforce it was the most arduous task which Christianity ever had to perform. For more than a thousand years the Church kept up the contest, with hardly any perceptible success. It was not for want of power over men's minds. Its power was prodigious. It could make kings and nobles resign their most valued possessions to enrich the Church. It could make thousands in the prime of life and the height of worldly advantages, shut themselves up in convents to work out their salvation by poverty, fasting, and prayer. It could send hundreds of thousands across land and sea, Europe and Asia, to give their lives for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre. It could make kings relinquish wives who were the object of their passionate attachment, because the Church declared that they were within the seventh (by our calculation the fourteenth) degree of relationship. All this it did; but it could not make men fight less with one another, nor tyrannise less cruelly over the serfs, and when they were able, over burgesses. It could not make them renounce either of the applications of force; force militant, or force triumphant. This they could never be induced to do until they were themselves in their turn compelled by superior force. Only by the growing power of kings was an end put to fighting except between kings, or competitors for kingship; only by the growth of a wealthy and warlike bourgeoisie in the fortified towns, and of a plebeian infantry which proved more powerful in the field than the undisciplined chivalry, was the insolent tyranny of the nobles over the bourgeoisie and peasantry brought within some bounds. It was persisted in not only until, but long after, the oppressed had obtained a power enabling them often to take conspicuous vengeance; and on the Continent much of it continued to the time of the French Revolution, though in England the earlier and better organisation of the democratic classes put an end to it sooner, by establishing equal laws and free national institutions.

If people are mostly so little aware how completely, during the greater part of the duration of our species, the law of force was the avowed rule of general conduct, any other being only a special and exceptional consequence of peculiar ties — and from how very recent a date it is that the affairs of society in general have been even pretended to be regulated according to any moral law; as little do people remember or consider, how institutions and customs which never had any ground but the law of force, last on into ages and states of general opinion which never would have permitted their first establishment. Less than forty years ago, Englishmen might still by law hold human beings in bondage as saleable property: within the present century they might kidnap them and carry them off, and work them literally to death. This absolutely extreme case of the law of force, condemned by those who can tolerate almost every other form of arbitrary power, and which, of all others presents features the most revolting to the feelings of all who look at it from an impartial position, was the law of civilised and Christian England within the memory of persons now living: and in one half of Anglo-Saxon America three or four years ago, not only did slavery exist, but the slave-trade, and the breeding of slaves expressly for it, was a general practice between slave states. Yet not only was there a greater strength of sentiment against it, but, in England at least, a less amount either of feeling or of interest in favour of it, than of any other of the customary abuses of force: for its motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised; and those who profited by it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigated abhorrence. So extreme an instance makes it almost superfluous to refer to any other: but consider the long duration of absolute monarchy. In England at present it is the almost universal conviction that military despotism is a case of the law of force, having no other origin or justification. Yet in all the great nations of Europe except England it either still exists, or has only just ceased to exist, and has even now a strong party favourable to it in all ranks of the people, especially among persons of station and consequence. Such is the power of an established system, even when far from universal; when not only in almost every period of history there have been great and well-known examples of the contrary system, but these have almost invariably been afforded by the most illustrious and most prosperous communities. In this case, too, the possessor of the undue power, the person directly interested in it, is only one person, while those who are subject to it and suffer from it are literally all the rest. The yoke is naturally and necessarily humiliating to all persons, except the one who is on the throne, together with, at most, the one who expects to succeed to it. How different are these cases from that of the power of men over women! *I am not now prejudging the question-of its justifiableness. I am showing how vastly more permanent it could not but be, even if not justifiable, than these other dominations which have nevertheless lasted down to our own time. Whatever gratification of pride there is in the possession of power, and whatever personal interest in its exercise, is in this case not confined to a limited class, but common to the whole male sex. Instead of being, to most of its supporters) a thing desirable chiefly in the abstract, or, like the political ends usually contended for by factions, of little private importance to any but the leaders; it comes home to the person and hearth of every male head of a family, and of everyone who looks forward to being so. The clodhopper exercises, or is to exercise, his share of the power equally with the highest nobleman. And the case is that in which the desire of power is the strongest: for everyone who desires power, desires it most over those who are nearest to him, with whom his life is passed, with whom he has most concerns in common and in whom any independence of his authority is oftenest likely to interfere with his individual preferences. If, in the other cases specified, powers manifestly grounded only on force, and having so much less to support them, are so slowly and with so much difficulty got rid of, much more must it be so with this, even if it rests on no better foundation than those. We must consider, too, that the possessors of the power have facilities in this case, greater than in any other, to prevent any uprising against it. Every one of the subjects lives under the very eye, and almost, it may be said, in the hands, of one of the masters in closer intimacy with him than with any of her fellow-subjects; with no means of combining against him, no power of even locally over mastering him, and, on the other hand, with the strongest motives for seeking his favour and avoiding to give him offence. In struggles for political emancipation, everybody knows how often its champions are bought off by bribes, or daunted by terrors. In the case of women, each individual of the subject-class is in a chronic state of bribery and intimidation combined. In setting up the standard of resistance, a large number of the leaders, and still more of the followers, must make an almost complete sacrifice of the pleasures or the alleviations of their own individual lot. If ever any system of privilege and enforced subjection had its yoke tightly riveted on the those who are kept down by it, this has. I have not yet shown that it is a wrong system: but everyone who is capable of thinking on the subject must see that even if it is, it was certain to outlast all other forms of unjust authority. And when some of the grossest of the other forms still exist in many civilised countries, and have only recently been got rid of in others, it would be strange if that which is so much the deepest rooted had yet been perceptibly shaken anywhere. There is more reason to wonder that the protests and testimonies against it should have been so numerous and so weighty as they are.

 

[BlackShanglan]

John Stuart Mill! Brute, you wonderful creature. He really is the first and last word on the topic, isn't he?

I've always loved the logic and then the passion of the conclusion to that chapter. And so, the logic:

One thing we may be certain of--that what is contrary to women's nature to do, they never will be made to do by simply giving their nature free play. The anxiety of mankind to interfere in behalf of nature, for fear lest nature should not succeed in effecting its purpose, is an altogether unnecessary solicitude. What women by nature cannot do, it is quite superfluous to forbid them from doing. What they can do, but not so well as the men who are their competitors, competition suffices to exclude them from; since nobody asks for protective duties and bounties in favour of women; it is only asked that the present bounties and protective duties in favour of men should be recalled. If women have a greater natural inclination for some things than for others, there is no need of laws or social inculcation to make the majority of them do the former in preference to the latter. Whatever women's services are most wanted for, the free play of competition will hold out the strongest inducements to them to undertake. And, as the words imply, they are most wanted for the things for which they are most fit; by the apportionment of which to them, the collective faculties of the two sexes can be applied on the whole with the greatest sum of valuable result.

The passion:

The general opinion of men is supposed to be, that the natural vocation of a woman is that of a wife and mother. I say, is supposed to be, because, judging from acts--from the whole of the present constitution of society--one might infer that their opinion was the direct contrary. They might be supposed to think that the alleged natural vocation of women was of all things the most repugnant to their nature; insomuch that if they are free to do anything else--if any other means of living or occupation of their time and faculties, is open, which has any chance of appearing desirable to them- there will not be enough of them who will be willing to accept the condition said to be natural to them. If this is the real opinion of men in general, it would be well that it should be spoken out. I should like to hear somebody openly enunciating the doctrine (it is already implied in much that is written on the subJect)- It is necessary to society that women should marry and produce children. They will not do so unless they are compelled. Therefore it is necessary to compel them. " The merits of the case would then be clearly defined. It would be exactly that of the slave-holders of South Carolina and Louisiana. " It is necessary that cotton and sugar should be grown. White men cannot produce them. Negroes will not, for any wages which we choose to give. Ergo they must be compelled."

There is much more, and all wonderful. When Mill is reasoning, really in the full swing of it, it's just beautiful to see.

 

[Brute_Force]

Oh, Shanglan, it thrills me to no end to read Mill. He was and is the master of skillful argument, of profound reasoning. He always reminds me of how brilliant the human mind can be.

 

[Brute_Force]

Love Poems to Women

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish to be close to me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e e cummings





She Walks In Beauty

by George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Composed June, 1814

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

 

[BlackShanglan]

Oh, Shanglan, it thrills me to no end to read Mill. He was and is the master of skillful argument, of profound reasoning. He always reminds me of how brilliant the human mind can be.

I wholly agree! It's a delight to meet a fellow admirer. His range always astounds me as well; how can a man be a hundred years ahead in half a dozen fields at once? Truly a transcendent mind. But as you say, at the heart of it and beyond all else is that stunning reasoning, moving gracefully and perfectly from point to point, anticipating and drawing closed every side-dispute, tracing down to the root of things so beautifully and inexorably. Knowing that he can do it equally well with poetry or educational theory only makes it shine the more.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets geeky about it.

 

[BlackShanglan]

And cummings?

Are you quite sure we're not each other? *grin*

I've always thought the second-to-last stanza of this poem one of the most beautiful things ever written.


anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

 

[Brute_Force]

It's great to find a kindred spirit, Shanglan. If you love Mill and cummings, then you and I were cut from the same cloth, as the saying goes, I think.

And, YES to all you said about Mill's abilities. (I am a total geek when it comes to him. )

cummings is my favorite poet. His use of language is just so rich and deep and original. I could go on all day.

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[The_Fool]

I've passed this thread so many times, though I feel a great pull from it. Often times I say something, and it is that last thing said - no mention, no reply. No, not a complaint, or anything at all like that. What I'm saying is that too often people don't seem to know what to say - at least that's what I tell myself. Here's one more thing to ponder, and I feel quite certain that few know of it, or have quickly forgotten it.

We've all been reminded every so often that "most medical research is done on men, or for men, and women are too often said to be, well, "just like men, so what we find, we can use on them too."

Unfortunately, that has all too often been true, and it wouldn't surprise me that it is still that way, the money maybe flowing towards research more slanted to men than to women.

All of this leads to the heart of this thread, and this post - and what few probably know:

Surgery was topical for the longest time. What made invasive surgery come into being? Oh, they'd done it on corpses, but not on live ones - unless one were in some very distant place, isolated from prying, police type eyes, then it was most often done on women. At least that seems the right thinking.

I say that seems the right thinking because when invasive surgery started, it was on women, primarily. The biggest reason was MONEY! A lot of women had "problems" more so than men, so they felt, so women complained. Which brings us to:

Had it not been for women "pioneers" in the surgical arena (and men doctors anxious to do all sorts of surgery and thereby "help the poor, dear, fragile woman," "surgeons" would never have opened a living abdomen, and thus learned how to do it with increasing ability, capability, and successfully.

Until then, surgeons weren't that well thought of. After that, they invented reasons to "operate," while at others, doing so quite necessarily.

There were good men, but too often it was simply the lure of money, and then, well . . .

There's where my post meets your thread: What women have sacrificed, and how men, primarliy, have benefited once it became legitimate.

(*note to amicus* [deleted after some consideration])

As a thought. My vague knowledge of history tells me that one of the first types of operations to be performed where the body was opened was the Caesarian section. That being said, was the procedure performed to mitigate risk to the child or to the mother?

 

[BlackShanglan]

Hmmm. What about battlefields? Didn't they lead to quite a lot of surgery?

I think I need to go read up on the history of surgery.

 

[Brute_Force]

I've passed this thread so many times, though I feel a great pull from it. Often times I say something, and it is that last thing said - no mention, no reply. No, not a complaint, or anything at all like that. What I'm saying is that too often people don't seem to know what to say - at least that's what I tell myself. Here's one more thing to ponder, and I feel quite certain that few know of it, or have quickly forgotten it.

We've all been reminded every so often that "most medical research is done on men, or for men," and women are too often said to be, well, "just like men, so what we find, we can use (the research) on them too."

Unfortunately, that has all too often been true, and it wouldn't surprise me that it is still that way, the money maybe flowing towards research more slanted to men than to women.

All of this leads to the heart of this thread, and this post - and what few probably know:

Surgery was topical for the longest time. What made invasive surgery come into being? Oh, they'd done it on corpses, but not on live ones - unless one were in some very distant place, isolated from prying, police type eyes, then it was most often done on women. At least that seems the right thinking.

I say that seems the right thinking because when invasive surgery started, it was on women, primarily. The biggest reason was MONEY! A lot of women had "problems" more so than men, so they felt, so women complained. Which brings us to:

Had it not been for women "pioneers" in the surgical arena (and men doctors anxious to do all sorts of surgery and thereby "help the poor, dear, fragile woman," "surgeons" would never have opened a living abdomen, and thus learned how to do it with increasing ability, capability, and successfully.

Until then, surgeons weren't that well thought of. After that, they invented reasons to "operate," while at others, doing so quite necessarily.

There were good men, but too often it was simply the lure of money, and then, well . . .

There's where my post meets your thread: What women have sacrificed, and how men, primarliy, have benefited once it became legitimate.

(*note to amicus* [deleted after some consideration])

Mismused,

I love your post and I'm fascinated by the topic. Though I confess to a merely passing knowledge of surgical history, I must admit that your point regarding women's contribution to the field of medical research and the significance of that fact is, well, fantastic. Makes me want to read more about it so that I can say a bit more, so I'll read a bit and come back to it.

For the present, I did find an interesting point, though slightly peripheral to yours, regarding women's contribution to early medicine:

Medicine in medieval Europe benefited from Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin influences. Because of geographic and other favorable conditions, many of these cultural contributions synergized to form the Medical School at Salerno around 900 AD. Somewhat uncharacteristically, women physicians played a part in the advances that came from this school. Among the contributions associated with the School of Salerno were (1) textbooks of anatomy, obtained mainly from porcine dissections, (2) insistence on certification and training for physicians, (3) application of investigative thinking and deduction that led to important advances such as the use of healing by secondary intention, (4) the first textbook about women's medicine, and (5) the first recorded female medical school faculty member named Trotula de Ruggiero or Trocta Salernitana. The women physicians of Salerno contributed to a textbook that gained wide acceptance and distribution throughout Europe. The textbook, called De Passionibus Mulierium, was first published about 1100 AD and was a prominent text until a significant revision by Ambrose Paré's assistant in the early 1600s. Paré was the preeminent anatomist of his time, and many of his important anatomic and surgical considerations were directly and indirectly derived from the work of the women of Salerno. The advances first recorded, taught, and implemented by the women of Salerno are an interesting and important part of our surgical heritage.

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[lisa123414]

As a thought. My vague knowledge of history tells me that one of the first types of operations to be performed where the body was opened was the Caesarian section. That being said, was the procedure performed to mitigate risk to the child or to the mother?

Dear Fool, if my memory serves correct, the Ceasarian section was named for the child born of it, Caesar. If that is the case, I would certainly presume the procedure was to protect the child.

As far as this thread goes, I am tempted to start a thread in praise of the struggles of many groups who have suffered throughout history, but the truth is, we all have. I have run into many hard heads, people who claim superiority via gender or race. I try to reason with them but I don’t understand them and have come to the conclusion that debate is pretty useless.

Maybe their modern day karma is to rail against everyone else, when they find that simply being who they are does not mean they will reap all the fruit of society which they feel they deserve.

So they are bitter when a minority or woman surpasses them in the workforce, or in their social circle. It’s much easier to whine and complain. Maybe being a white male has been their own welfare system from which they cannot easily wean themselves. Of course there are still many advantages, I certainly see many of those faces in upper level management where I work.

My quiet strategy has been to work hard, take lots of responsibility, dress like a killer executive and then breastfeed in front of them all .

 

[MagicaPractica]

Surgery was topical for the longest time. What made invasive surgery come into being? Oh, they'd done it on corpses, but not on live ones - unless one were in some very distant place, isolated from prying, police type eyes, then it was most often done on women. At least that seems the right thinking.

This made me recall the 19th century surgeries performed on women in insane asylums because they couldn't protest. "The most popular form of surgery performed on nervous and insane women was removal of one or both ovaries." The thinking being that it might be her feminine parts that were driving her insane. *shivers*

It's honestly still a little scary to me to think that women were legally the property of their husband in the U.S. until around 1860. At that point they were made a free entity but if they chose to flee an abusive husband, the children still belonged to their husband.

A very interesting read for anyone interested in women's history is the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman. A woman suffering from post-partum depression is ordered complete bedrest and isolation to help her recuperate. She's locked up in a room and slowly goes insane.

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[amicus]

Amazing and amusing, Brute Force, what you have accomplished here on this meager thread.

"...Having just finished reading some of the most horrifying words spoken about women I've ever read in my life posted by Amicus in the "Open Challenge to Amicus" thread,..."

That of course without identifying the 'most horrifying words', you might be referring to, this, 'Amicus', must be a really bad guy/girl/undetermined? My, he/she/it, should be drawn and quartered!


"...(*note to amicus* [deleted after some consideration])..."

You seem to have found a compatriot, although I only surmise so.

~~~

Amazing and amusing also because you wish to reinstall women on a 'pedestal', upon which they were before in the eyes of poets and artists, but insisted on being equal to men in all respects and fought and are still fighting for that hard earned equality, yet you reference Mill, and Cummings, and Shanglan happily agrees, yes, let us put them above us once again!

Aside from your snide reference to my opinions, you really can't have it both ways, you, know, you really cannot.

Either women are special, unique creatures of evolution, deserving of a special category and treatment, earning by their nature that admiration of all humanity for their compassion and nurturing abilities and deserving of being placed on a pedestal above the common man, or...

they are simply another fully equal human being, to be treated as any other human being endowed with a penis or a vagina, by birth, and the accompanying plumbing and physicality, but in a totally asexual manner, regardless of all else.

Now, which will you have?

You can simply ignore the monthly cycle during which emotions range from tentative to hysterical. You can ignore that the female of the species has attributes that the male does not, attributes which are valuable and meaningful and even essential to all that is human.

You can ignore the fact that a large percentage of fertile, married women carry the sperm of three different males during ovulation, go ahead, see if I care.

You can ignore the butterfly chasing, spontaneous, effervescent nature of the female that inspires all of mankind and chain her to the definitions of the logical, rational, male oriented world. Do so, again, I don't care.

You can identify the female as just a smaller weaker version of the male, for your own purposes, again, what do I care.

But to misrepresent my absolute adoration of femininity, is an injustice, a travesty and an intrusion that I shall not permit to go unnoticed.

You don't have the slightest clue to the nature of the female and I begin to suspect, neither does BlackShanglan...such a pity...

Amicus...

 

[Brute_Force]

Women have, for time out of mind, been polarized by men. They have been portrayed in art, history, and literature as being either "good angels of the household" (sweet, acquiescent objects of desire) or "Magdalenes" (unacceptable, fallen women/harsh, carnal whores unworthy of love or liberty). Fortunately, however, this tradition began to alter during the Victorian period. As Shirely Keedlar, Charlotte Bronte's outspoken heroine in Shirley, points out:

"If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light; they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half-doll, half-angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend. Then to hear them fall into ecstacies with each other's creations, worshipping the heroine of such a poem--novel--drama--thinking it fine--divine! Fine and divine it may be, but often quite artificial--false as the rose in my best bonnet there!"

Women, fortunately, are not so "black-and-white" in their characters. Indeed, they are capable of possessing a range of qualities and gradations of character and human behavior.

The idea that women had to be either held up on "pedastals" or chastized as whores died about 100 years ago, except in the hearts of staunch misogynists.

 

[cloudy]

It's honestly still a little scary to me to think that women were legally the property of their husband in the U.S. until around 1860. At that point they were made a free entity but if they chose to flee an abusive husband, the children still belonged to their husband.

Natives here weren't even recognized as human until 1879, and the Standing Bear trial. We weren't even granted citizenship in our own country until June 2, 1924 - especially sad considering that there were many Native men fighting in World War I for a country that wouldn't even grant them citizenship.

 

[amicus]

You are such a weenie, Brute, and so gullible...

Caveman father one and caveman father two, "lets make an agreement here, my daughter for your son and we make a deal? Okay?

Caveman son fucks caveman daughter and makes a baby, caveman daughter needs support, caveman son is a flake, sometimes brings mastodon meat, sometimes not, caveman daughter feeds her baby boy plants and bugs.

Caveman's daughter is not happy and goes looking, caveman three is horney, caveman two falls off a cliff, ahem, accident...caveman three provides well but slaps shit out of cavegirl daughter, so she slits his throat one early dawn as she has already seduced docile replacement caveman four....cave man four is not aggressive and thus is poor hunter, called vegetarian, cave girl daughter is really pissed, gives pussy to caveman five who fills her needs and eliminates cave man four....and she does not live happily ever after but she lives and is well fed.

Women go where the money is.

Upgrade to sophisticated locale and nothing changes.

Now, that is crude and course, I know, but sometimes with sophisticated idiots, a two by four alongside the head is required to gain attention.

Women are what women are, as determined by the nature of the beast and the necessity of survival. Cut it any way you want, things are what they are.

And yes, this was provocative and exaggerated by intent, but any woman worth her salt will instantly see the meaning, although she would never admit it.

And still, I love a real woman.

Amicus...

 

[Brute_Force]

The way women were treated in institutions in the 18th century in France was simply astonishing. The Salpetriere housed all manner of women in horrid conditions who had been declared "insane" for no more than being deemed "difficult" or "sensual," when, in reality, they were just impoverished and living in the streets. Unreal how they were treated. I've read that they were left naked in pits where water regularly rose above their heads from the Seine.

See article below:

The Salpêtrière Hospital: From Confining the Poor to Freeing the Insane
Ivan Berlin, M.D., Ph.D.

With this intention to nourish and educate, King Louis XIV founded the General Hospital on a site where 20 years earlier Louis XIII had built the "Petit Arsenal" to provide gunpowder (saltpeter) to the great arsenal on the other side of the Seine (1, 2). For this reason, the hospital would come to be known as La Salpêtrière.

The streets of Paris at the time were full of beggars, and the Sun King could not tolerate their presence diminishing his radiance. Some 5,000 of the city’s poor, primarily women, were soon forced to stay in the hospital. In time, the General Hospital became the hospital for women. At the end of the 17th century, according to the uses of the era (3), four categories of women were placed there (4). "Bad" adolescents were kept enclosed in the "Correction" section, with the idea that they could be rehabilitated. Women labeled as prostitutes filled the "Common" section. Women who had been imprisoned with or without sentences were quartered in the "Jail," and inhabitants within the "Quarter of the Insane" were those who usually had been sent there by their families. In 1679, the institution housed 100 women who qualified as "mad" and 148 women with seizure disorders. By 1833, the numbers had increased to 117 insane women under treatment, 105 insane women labeled as sick, 923 women with mental illnesses characterized as incurable, and 266 women with seizure disorders (Charcot Library Archives, Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris).

The destiny of those enforced to the "Correction" or the "Common" sections was the deportation to Louisiana, which had to be peopled and needed women. This was the fate of Manon Lescaut—immortalized in the novel of Abbé Prévost and by the opera of Puccini. The insane remained, enclosed in their solitary confinement boxes into which the water of the nearby Seine river rose. Their only form of therapy was being kept in chains.

Philippe Pinel (1745–1826) is credited with freeing the insane of the Salpêtrière, as depicted above in the 1876 painting by Tony Robert-Fleury now hanging in the Charcot Library of the Salpêtrière Hospital Medical School. The painting is an idealistic view of Pinel and of his heroic act when he orders the chains to be removed from an insane woman. This initiative, the first step to humanizing psychiatry, probably came from Jean-Baptiste Pussin (1745–1811), who had himself been hospitalized in the Bicêtre Hospital and had chosen to be part of the nursing staff there. Pussin observed that the insane individuals improved when he took off their chains. He came with Pinel to the Salpêtrière as his assistant and head of the nursing staff and convinced him to order the freeing of the mentally ill (1, p. 132; 3).