Here’s a collection of facts concerning some of the history of the battle for women’s rights. Some good ones, some bad ones, but all are certainly interesting.
Epicurus (341-241 BC), to whom good and pleasure were synonymous, was the first important philosopher to accept women as students.
In 17th and 18th century America, women were employed in all of the same occupations that men worked, and men and women earned equal pay. A female blacksmith charged the same as a man to shoe a horse. Women sextons and printers were paid at the same rate as men. Women were also silversmiths, gunsmiths, shipwrights, and undertakers.
The first woman governor in U.S. history was Mrs. Nelly Taylor Ross. She was elected governor of Wyoming in 1925.
$10,000 was offered by Marion Hovey, of Boston, to the Harvard Medical School, to be used to educate women on equal terms with men. A committee approved the proposal, but the Hovey offer was rejected by the board of overseers. The year was 1878.
Though she was a Nobel Prize winner (and soon would become the first person to win two), Marie Curie (1867-1934) was denied membership in the august French Academy simply because she was a woman.
A woman agreed in 1952 to play in organized baseball, with the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Senators of the Interstate League. However, minor league commissioner George Trautman, with the support of major league baseball commissioner Ford Frick, unilaterally voided Mrs. Eleanor Angles contract.
During the American Revolution, many brides did not wear white wedding gowns; instead, they wore red as a symbol of the rebellion.
She was 87 years old when she became the first woman U.S. Senator, and she served for only one day, November 21, 1922. Rebecca Lattimer Felton, a Democrat and the widow of a Georgia representative who had opposed reactionary machine politics, had long worked for women’s suffrage, which became national law in 1920. She was appointed for a day to the Senate in a token gesture by the governor of Georgia, who had opposed the suffrage movement. “The word ‘sex’ has been obliterated from the Constitution,” Mrs. Felton said on excepting her appointment. There are now no limitations upon the ambitions of women.
There are 15 nations that had given women the right to vote before the U.S. did in 1920. The earliest were New Zealand, in 1893, Australia, in 1902, and Finland, in 1906.
Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John, in 1776: “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
I thought it was time to recognize the fairer sex. As you well know I love posting quotations, but I’ve come to realize that most quotations are attributed to men. I know for a fact that women have important thoughts on every subject, but I almost never see them published anywhere. Today I’ll be sending you quotes made by women about men. It should be interesting . . .
“The more I see of men, the better I like dogs.” Marie-Jeanne Roland 1754-1793
“Men have had the advantage of us and telling their own story. Education has been theirs insomuch higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.” Jane Austen 1775-1817
“A gentleman opposed to their enfranchisement once said to me, “Women have never produced anything of any value in the world.” I told him the chief product of the women had been the men and left it to him to decide whether the product was of any value.” Anna Howard Shaw 1847-1919
“Intense love is often akin to intense suffering.” Francis Ellen Watkins Harper 1825-1911
“Passion always goes, and boredom stays. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel 1883-1971
“I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters.” Susan B Anthony 1820-1906
“Ido not want a husband who honours me as a queen, if he does not love me as a woman.” Elizabeth I 1533-1603
This will be the first installment of quotes by women. I have many more available and will pass them on periodically because some of them are truly profound. For my friend in Romania many thanks for prodding me to do the required research. I appreciate it.
As we’re all aware this last year-and-a-half with the pandemic has changed many things, some for the better and some for the worse. Since the onset of the pandemic I’ve noticed a disturbing trend with female drivers in the area and I’m assuming that it’s pretty much the same all across the country. I’ve mentioned in past posts that common courtesy is one of the victims of the pandemic and I need to take that one step further. It seems that many female drivers have taken to “flipping the bird” with a vengeance. I’ve seen teenage girls, old ladies, soccer moms, and just about everyone else getting with the program. Needless to say it sparked my curiosity which then required a little research into my archives about the practices of “throwing the finger” and here’s what I found.
SOME HISTORY OF THE BIRD
Tossing the bird has been a tradition with us men that has been passed down through the ages from grandfathers to fathers and then to their sons. Guys have been throwing the finger for a variety of reasons for as long as I can remember. We owned this gesture until the feminists arrived. Now the ladies have every right to be as obnoxious as we’ve been and believe me their certainly doing it with panache and gusto.
Thrusting up a middle finger or “flipping the bird” is one of the more familiar hand gestures across this country. Its popularity is also worldwide and has been around for a very long time in a number of European countries. No one is sure how it originated but we all know that the Romans used it at the time of Christ.
Just as there are many gestures in the world to convey one’s negative feelings about another, there are also regional differences to show approval. Men around the world have several gestures to imply that a woman is pretty. In the United States, men lift their eyebrows, in the Arab world a man grabs his beard, while in Greece he would stroke his cheek. In Italy, a man sticks his finger into his cheek and rotates it, Frenchmen kiss their fingertips, and Brazilians will pretend to hold up a telescope to their eye.
Obviously, almost any gesture can have meaning, either positive or negative, somewhere in the world. So the next time you travel abroad, be careful how you gesture with your hands. You might unwittingly attract unwanted attention from the natives, especially in the Middle East. They seem to look for any spoken word or gesture by a non-Arab as a reason to throw you into prison for a chat or to just execute you.
In my attempt to be fair I’ve also seen a few men with some unfortunate habits. While I myself would never today do something so crude. In my youth I may have lost control a few thousand times. I deeply regret those times when I “birded” nice old ladies or a few hundred clergymen. It really is nice to see that the female of the species now has the capability and the mindset to throw the bird to damn near anybody for damn near any reason. “I Am Woman” hear me roar.
And thanks to whoever placed that Ryan Gosling GIF on the net. It made my day.
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