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14 Feb

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
I'm grateful to the writer J.C. Hallman for the details below, from his excellent article in The Forum, a publication of the African American Policy Forum, founded by Kimberlé Crenshaw.

13 Dec

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
Interesting, the things we've learned--and haven't learned--in the past 100 years. I can't help wondering whether we'll have learned some lessons, or most, or all, in the next 100. Or perhaps none? OMG.

06 Dec

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

We seem to be in the middle of vigilantism--so we had better understand it. Robin Hood, sure--but the Ku Klux Klan? Batman, yeah! But the Irish paramilitary army? The resemblance isn't limited to pointy hats and face masks. That 13th Century folklore outlaw supposedly stole from the rich and gave to the poor. But he's folklore, and likely was an ordinary thief escaped to the greensward, his merry men a bunch of drunken louts, and Maid Marian an enabler. But there they are, Hollywood's anti-heroes: Superman, Batman (and Robin too), almost every role Clint Eastwood ever played, Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver," right up to today's hit TV series, "Dexter," about a lovable, boyish vigilante--who's a serial killer. The vigilante ethos existed long before the word was introduced into English from Latin via Spanish. The concept can be found throughout the Bible, for example in Genesis 34, in the account of...

22 Nov

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

I will be forever grateful to Miriam Schneir, the great American historian and chronicler of women's rights, for her books, especially her staggering trilogy, Feminism, The Essential Historical Writings; and then Feminism in Our Time, which contains foundational documents in the struggle for women's rights; and particularly her just published prequel, Before Feminism: The History of An Idea Without a Name. This newest book is one hell of a positive, revealing, and hopeful work: it's an instant classic. I rarely go this far to praise a book but this one is so accessible, lively (for which read written in "non-academes"), yet brilliantly sourced -- and most of all contains things in it that the most saturated feminist reader (like me) still doesn't know or doesn't know enough. It's the ultimate answer to the snide question, "Where were all your great ...

15 Nov

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

In 1923, on the 75th anniversary of the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, Alice Paul introduced the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” The National Women's Party and professional women like Amelia Earhart, the great pilot, supported it. But other reformers, particularly in the labor movement, who had worked hard for protective labor laws for women, were afraid the ERA would wipe out their progress. (This could have been solved by mobilizing for the extension of protective labor laws to men – like not lifting items over a certain weight or doing especially hazardous labor — but it became a huge sticking point for those protectionists who exploited class divisions within the women's movement.) By the early 1940s, both the Democratic and Republican parties had added support of...