Silenced

Women's Lib

I remember when this is what feminism was called in 1970. On Sunday I was disgusted to remember the gender roles directed us all in lock steps with this vile little children's book from the '50s. It seemed like it was all over the intertoobz. It triggered a whole memory tangent that had me digging through photographs, scanning and composing a letter to my mother. So, I thought I'd let a bit of this dribble into make-a-(green)plan.First let me say that I have no patience any more with trying to educate anyone (especially indignant, indulged men) about feminism. But when I was the age of this picture I was terribly naive and arrogant and thought I could teach the world. I still struggle with my blunt style being too heavy handed or misunderstood. There were women (and of course the men) in my wasband's (new word for my ex) church who spoke badly about me because of the following bio I provided with the newspaper article.
Gah! I cringe now at my glib little blurb. (click to make larger if you must) It is condescending and overly simplistic. Having said that, I am proud of my young self for taking a very radical and brave stand in Iowa in 1970. I had to start somewhere and I am thrilled that I did what I did, when I did and where I did. If someone seriously wants to know what a feminist is, I love this Feminism 101 from Shakesville. You won't regret reading this - even if you think of yourself as an educated feminist there are so many illustrations of current itereations and nuances of misogyny.

One of the deep issues I am more interested in thinking about is how my feminism informs my desire to live in a sustainable way. When the above article was written I sounded dismissive about my being a housewife and mother. Yet, I remember my joy in gardening, my learning to make bread from the Tassajara cookbook - now with my son. I learned this method so well, it freed me from needing to use any recipe with bread thereafter. I loved learning how to fix Middle Eastern food from my mother-in-law and I reveled in learning how to sew better with the help of my sisters-in-law, with one of them sewing my wedding gown and veil. I remember I chastised my mother back then for never teaching me how to clean properly, like it's best to use lemon oil on wood rather than Pledge TM.

It's funny I just now remembered how relentlessly and passionately we had to argue about bra wearing or a man opening a door for us - rather than the real issues of violence against women, low wages, job discrimination, lack of affordable daycare, safe /affordable birth control /family planning and lack of respect. In regard to distractions and deflections, nothing has changed. The corporate powers that control our country can direct the narrative in the press, in all media, movies, ads and books to distract rather than to inform. Regarding the children's book at the beginning, Feministing has this to say:

Binary gender systems are constructed. They rely on the repetition of dominant narratives via psychology, music, popular culture, film and of course children's books. This gem comes from a children's book called, "I'm Glad I'm a Boy! I'm Glad I'm a Girl! It is from the 1950's and I almost appreciate how blatantly obvious it is, since there is no question what it is trying to do. Gender-based messaging is much more subtle and nuanced these days.

Nibbling around the edge of my consciousness is nature of capitalism itself being a hierarchal structure wherein all energy and production and service is ultimately directed towards supporting the pinnacle of material comfort for the top few - as illustrated by this turn of the century cartoon for the Industrial Worker. At the pinnacle is the capital - the wealth in currency - with the next tiers saying:

• We Rule You
• We Fool You
• We Shoot At You
• We Eat For You

Those at the bottom holding up the whole shebang are the people.

• We Work For All
  
• We Feed All

The Patriarchal System is deeply embedded in Capitalism. If we use capital and power over others as the model to strive for, we will not only be unsustainable - but may misinterperate what equality for women really means. I shudder too at reading the bulleted list as a template for the global economy with Western Nations as the first part and the Global South as the latter. I think I have traversed many decades and a host of subjects in one tiny post. Let it merely be the beginning for some contemplative posts to come.

Y355: Yesterday's Women

Carol Chomsky died and I followed links. I read a comment by another who captured my immediate stirrings about Roslyn Zinn. Paraphrased . . . I feel an ache in my heart for Carol and Carolyn Goodman and Roslyn Zinn. These deaths are all deep losses for their partners, children, friends and for our country. It is comforting to imagine a coming together of these stimulating lives after they have gone. I like to magine a celebration of dancing and rejoicing that their work is done.

Mostly, these women were invisible to the patriarchal culture. Carol Chomsky and Roslyn Zinn partnered giant intellects who have kept progressive thought alive in the last decades of conservative dumbing down of the national dialog. (Dialong, schmialog . . . more like a right wing monologue of divisive, intolerant, fear mongering and torture justification.) Goodman is a mother of a slain civil rights worker who kept her activism, her dedication alive for the rest of her life, to seek justice.

How little we learn in school or in current news about what women in 20th century brought us. This is a simple tribute to these unsung women who died in 2008. There is no clear selection model I used beyond working chronilogically from the most recent deaths back to the first of this year. I just picked somewhat randomly the lives that made me want to read more, learn more. They all made a difference, made a mark in the world. Each is a life worthy of study and reflection. How wonderful if 21st century little girls would be taught about these women's lives and strengths. If you have little girls around you, keep a list of your own handy.

• Kathleen Baskin-Ball, 50, American United Methodist pastor, cancer. [167]
• Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, 81, American writer, filmmaker and scholar. [169]
• Margarita Karapanou, 62, Greek author, respiratory problems. [170]
• Odetta, 77, American folk singer and human rights activist, heart disease. [174]
• Miriam Makeba, 76, South African singer, heart attack. [174]
• Mae Mercer, 76, American blues singer. [18]
• Edith Evans Asbury, 98, American journalist (The New York Times), after long illness. [6]
• Bonnie Bluh, 82, American feminist writer, aortic dissection. [257].
• Nancy Hicks Maynard, 66, American journalist, advocate for diversity in journalism, organ failure. [87]
• Anna Langford, 90, American politician, first African American woman to serve on the Chicago City Council, lung cancer. [126]
• Charlotte Kohler, 99, first US editor to publish South African writer Nadine Gordimer, heart failure. [140]
• Alice Van-Springsteen, 90, American stuntwoman, pneumonia. [159]
• Pauline Baynes, 85, British illustrator (Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings). [244]
• Edie Huggins, 72, American journalist and reporter (WCAU-TV), lung cancer. [15]
• Estelle Getty, 84, American actress (The Golden Girls), Lewy body dementia. [76]
• Paula Gunn Allen, 68, Native American poet, novelist, and activist, lung cancer. [18]
• Alma Hogan Snell, 85, American Crow tribal nation historian, herbalist, granddaughter of Pretty Shield. [227]
• Mildred Loving, 68, American civil rights pioneer, challenged Virginia interracial marriage law (Loving v. Virginia). [252]
• Diana Barnato Walker, 90, British aviator, first British woman to break the sound barrier. [20]
• Martha Kostuch, 58, Canadian environmentalist, multiple system atrophy. [55]
• Su-Lin Young, 96, American explorer. [106]
• Maryam Farman Farmaian, 94, Iranian feminist activist. [68]
• Ann Baumgartner, 89, American aviator. [93]
• Mary Meader, 91, American aerial photographer. [130]
• Barbara Seaman, 72, American writer, journalist and activist against hormone replacement, lung cancer. [27]
• Sunny Lowry, 97, first British woman to swim the English Channel. [76]
• Phyllis Barnhart, 85, American animator and cel painter (The Secret of NIMH). [224]
• Rose Hacker, 101, British activist. [241]
• Marie Smith Jones, 89, American last known native speaker of the Eyak language, natural causes. [102]
• Mildred Noble, 86, American writer and Native American activist, complications from liver cancer. [121]
• Patricia Verdugo, 61, Chilean writer, journalist and human rights violations investigator, cancer.
• Isobel_Bennett" title="Isobel Bennett">Isobel Bennett, 98, Australian marine scientist. [191]
• Sara Misquez, 62, American president of the Mescalero Apache of New Mexico (1999–2003), car accident. [235]

And though death is a natural part of our lives, something has be lost forever in their passing.

"Women Dancing" Artwork by Alma Schofield, Wales

Wings, unknown

U338: Uppity Women Unite!

We are at ease at the back end of the alphabet. Uteruses and vaginas are our cachet. Violence against us has also made a cleft in the letter stream. Witches are the double cut – in the W form. I want to present a large portion of the paper, Control of Uppity Women Behind Witchcraft Accusations? In this work Deborah M. DeCloedt Pinçon presents a literature search that investigates the relationship between a woman's communicative behaviors and the likelihood of her being accused as a witch in various regions of Europe from 1350 to 1650 a.d.

This is not my work, my writing, but I think it is a valuable chunk of research to document and keep at my fingertips. As Virginia Woolf said,
Inevitably we look upon society, so kind to you, so harsh to us, as an ill-fitting form that distorts the truth; deforms the mind; fetters the will.

This history is very rarely discussed or given the attention it should have. Since this blog post is not an academic paper, I have left out the citations to give the information better flow. Please look at the source article for these citations and the extensive bibliography.

This literature review investigates the relationship between a woman's communicative behaviors and the likelihood of her being accused as a witch in various regions of Europe from 1350 to 1650 a.d. This paper uncovers how women were expected to communicate during this period and what sort of deviation from this normative communicative behavior was present in those ultimately accused of witchcraft. The environmental and socioeconomic changes in Europe, as well as religious factors and the history of witchcraft that influenced the communicative behaviors of women in this period are reviewed.

Throughout Europe, between 1350 and 1650 a.d., as many as 500,000 people, primarily women, were executed as witches as part of the inquisitional process, and many more were accused of witchcraft and tortured to elicit confessions (Ben-Yehuda, 1980). Undoubtedly there were reasons why women in general and specific women in particular, were more readily accused of being witches during this period in Western history. While it is certain there were multiple factors involved, this paper will investigate the relationship between communicative behaviors and the likelihood of being accused as a witch in the European witch hunts.

[. . . ] Environmental Weather Changes
The importance of weather may be easy to overlook, but climate change has played a critical role in our history. It is speculated that a sharp drop in temperatures, referred to as the "little ice age" in Europe, contributed to the record number of deaths during the plague because people's immune systems were compromised by lack of nutrition . The temperatures in Europe varied significantly between 1520 and 1770 a.d., and particularly cold periods led to serious and widespread crop failure. Using empirical data to support a correlation between extreme cold and the number and frequency of witchcraft trials between 1520 and 1770 a.d., Oster explains that witches were blamed for magically controlling the weather. She suggests that a particularly cold period in 1560 a.d. coincided with increased numbers of trials after nearly 70 years of relative inactivity. Oster's view of the witch as scapegoat remains a recurring theme throughout this literature review.
Socioeconomic Factors

Weather was more intrinsically tied to agriculture and the economic system in this pre-industrial era, where crops were the primary means of economic exchange . Empirical evidence supports the positive correlation between temperatures and economic growth, where economic growth was negative when temperatures were colder than normal and crops failed . A new urbanization and reduction in rural population, due in part to the plague, likely contributed to the reduction of crop production in this period of great change.

In the 1500’s 40-60% of women between 15-44 were unmarried. The trend was also to marry later. In part this was due to post-plague need for workers.

These demographics contributed significantly to why those accused of witchcraft were often widows, spinsters, and midwives, as their lifestyles and practices represented a direct threat to the Church, traditional family structure, and the patriarchal status quo. Patriarchy was solidified or reinforced with the development of complex economies because they impacted women and men differently. [. . . ]

Female spirituality
During this period, men didn't want women to read scripture because women were meant to be perpetually subordinate to their husband. According to Haliczer, a home was a woman's prison, and interestingly, religion itself became a means of freedom for women in Spain. Women were able to express their spirituality through piousness, which not only got them out of the home, but evolved into a strong ascetic movement where women were called on by royalty to act as advisors or intercessors. Ana de Jesus was considered to be prophetic, and became an advisor to archdukes on matters of state under the Hapsburg dynasty.

This passage made me think of our contemporary haters like Phyllis Schlafly. Being a rabid anti-feminist and anti-abortion spokesperson or activist might be the only acceptable female voice in an authoritarian, fundamentalist movement. Just ask yourself, in a patriarchal household with a punishing view of religion, what chance does an articulate woman have of expressing herself? First and foremost, pity the captive children of a woman who needs (but isn’t allowed) interactions with adults.

In Spain, women were judged pious if they engaged often in prayer, were abstinent, austere, and if they practiced physical penance and even scourging and fasting. Gossip was ubiquitous in the early modern world. Gossip was viewed as feminine (although it was performed equally by men as well), and was viewed as a mechanism for female solidarity, and as something to be silenced. Legal writers in Venice claimed testimony from two women was equal to testimony from one man, since women's voices were unreliable. [. . . ]

Means of acculturation
The witchcraft trials may have been part of a campaign to Christianize the populace and expand the church's authority along with propping up patriarchy in general. Bever views witchcraft trials as a method of acculturation, where over generations repression reshapes society. Women were very aggressive at the outset of these witchcraft trials, but generations of persecution served to diminish woman's power and strengthen men's. Women learned to be ashamed of their sexuality and to avoid interpersonal conflict. Some scholars propose that the medical profession used these trials to marginalize or gradually eliminate the practice of herbology and midwifery, but Bever is not convinced of this argument.

Power over women
Whitney attributes the witch hunts to a greater emergence of the modern state and individualism, with conflict between male dominated "official" and female "domestic" spheres being played out with the witchcraft trials. She suggests the catalyst may have been economic change, and focuses on how it was mainly women that accused other women of witchcraft, which merely reinforced patriarchal norms of femininity. She reminds us that patriarchy intentionally divides women by rewarding those who maintain the status quo with more power, as they systematically disenfranchise other women by enforcing patriarchal norms. In New England witch trials, women charged of witchcraft were described as malcontents who refused to accept their place in the social hierarchy, and were guilty of anger, envy, pride, maliciousness, lying and seductiveness"

Violence against women
Whitney sees witchcraft trials as a form of violence against women because of the ways in which torture was used to elicit confessions. She thinks being female was a marker for deviance, and that with the reformation came an intensified need to control nature [nature being traditionally identified with the female]. [. . .]
Barstow is the first scholar to point out the regular practice of sending the executed witch's assets to the Bishop's treasury, implicating a more mercenary cause for accusing women who had no male relative to inherit her estate.

Some conclusions

Women who express "excessive" assertiveness, sexuality, aggressiveness, or autonomy, through verbal and nonverbal communicative behaviors, would be more likely to be accused of witchcraft than those who abide by their society's prescriptive norms for female behavior.

If these specific sorts of communicative behaviors are in fact more likely to result in a witchcraft accusation in these cultures today, this cross-cultural comparison would support the idea that patriarchy and control of women's autonomy and/or sexuality, was behind the witchcraft accusations in Europe.

A proud reclaiming of the label witch was a leading voice in the pagan movement, Starhawk. When she was asked in an interview if she regretted using the word witch she responded,

I think it's important that we use it and I still do. Whenever people take a word [like "Witch"] and use it to say "here are these areas that you are not allowed to think about and not allowed to identify with," then, to me, that says [that] it's important to USE that word, because if you use that word, you take away their power to control you with it. With the word "Witch" what they are saying is "don't identify with this whole constellation: everything from magic and the power of the mind and the power of intention, to the whole idea of women being strong and being empowered in our own right." They are saying, "stay in your place, don't be uppity!" By using the word "Witch" for the last twenty or thirty years, we have helped to take away some of its power to control us."

I believe that a woman blogging, a woman in politics, a woman asserting is herself just as frightening to the status quo as the women who were labeled witches in the middle ages and ever since. She who challenges place is uppity. Hilary Clinton knows this all too well.

M274: make-a-(green)plan honored women

[ . . . ] honored for developing an innovative model of truly independent political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.

Amy Goodman is a woman I rely on for all my news. Every day I watch Democracy Now. I can't say enough good about this woman.

Here is the transcript from today's show where she is recognized for her recent award of the Alternative Nobel.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Amy, before we get going, I want to congratulate you on being the first journalist in the world to receive the Right Livelihood Award. It’s the award given out for individuals who provide exemplary social transformation, and you’re going to be receiving it in the Swedish parliament in December.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Juan, I want to say thank you to you and everyone here at Democracy Now! who has made Democracy Now! what it is over these last thirteen years. It’s very exciting.

And I also want to congratulate the other three recipients. There’s the couple from India, Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan, and their organization LAFTI, the Land for the Tillers’ Freedom, in India. They received the award, according to the Right Livelihood Committee, “for two long lifetimes of work dedicated to realizing in practice the Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development, for which they have been referred to as ‘India’s soul.’”

Also, the award went to Asha Hagi of Somalia. She received the award “for continuing to lead at great personal risk the female participation in the peace and reconciliation process in her war-ravaged country.”

And finally, Monika Hauser of Germany—the Right Livelihood Committee said the award went to her “for her tireless commitment to working with women who have experienced the most horrific sexualized violence in some of the most dangerous countries in the world, and campaigning for them to receive social recognition and compensation.”

So, I look forward to meeting all of them in Sweden at the Swedish parliament in December, and maybe we’ll even do a broadcast of Democracy Now! from there.

JUAN GONZALEZ: It should be a great event. And, of course, you’re honored for developing an innovative model of truly independent political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.

AMY GOODMAN: Yeah, we engage here in trickle-up journalism, and we deeply believe in going to where the silence is.

Painting by Robert Shetterly

I249: Ick Factor

You know the responses to the idea of composting with worms, discontinuing use of shampoo, using cloth wipes instead of toilet paper, using soap nuts instead of Tide, showering less often and other aggressive no impact sustainable living that is the shocked exclamation, “Eeeeuuuw.” That is so gross. Please, that’s too much information. Yuk, you will never get me to consider giving up toilet paper or shampoo.”

But, what gets me is that these same people are willfully unaware of the feces in the agri-business meat factories, the tumors and pustules on cows utters, the routine practice of removing chickens’ beaks in the factory set up. Anyone who can read can be exposed to countless horror stories in how Americans’ food is produced, packaged and distributed.

The brutal mistreatment of animals in factory farms is off the charts. The additives, pesticides, preservatives and unplanned people pathogens that our processed foods are chock full of now that EPA, FDA, OCEA and other government agencies have been co-opted by a totally corrupt federal executive administration. Yes, Bu$h & Co. have pissed in our food and water. This is not on corporate media infotainment programs, but it is well documented in books, progressive magazines like The Nation and across the watchdog websites of the blogosphere. From the book Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis,

Today, however, beyond the supermarket, food derives not only from an obscured nature but also from behind-the-scenes tractors, gasoline, laser-leveled fields, fertilizers, irrigation ditches, pesticides, combines, migrant workers, laboratories, sanitized factories, stinking feedlots, semitrucks, and highways. In spite of this -- and perhaps because of this -- the cultural idea of nature (as opposed to the soil, sunlight, and water that make up the physical environment) has become an important, if confusing, category for how many of us think about our foods, and one worth examining more closely from a historical perspective.

I am going to touch on perception in a historic framework as it specifically relates to disgust and the manipulation of disgust in a moment. For now I simply call out the hypocrisy. See, I am an adult who can safely, hygienically contend with my own body functions including peeing, shitting, showering and taking my food scraps to my wormery outside my kitchen door. I don’t feel I should recoil and become emotionally scarred due to simple hygiene. This is particularly dumb as a subject to be grossed out when you have mothered children or cared for a sick loved one, beyond simply keeping your own shit in order (pun intended). I also know how to wash my hands, take care with dish washing, food handling, general cleanliness and other hygiene issues.

But the majority of Americans are clueless about the farm to fork safety, cleanliness standards and practices. Moreover, in my opinion, people in general want to remain unaware. What is truly disgusting is the idea of eating a burger where the meat was fed other cattle or dead pets. The idea of eating fecal matter that nobody knows where or how it got into the meat or vegetables is vile, but for me these can’t compete with the mental image of a cows utters covered in oozing pustules due to the synthetic hormones given dairy cattle. I will stop there because it is just too sickening.

This is a subject that is not one I should make light of or be too judgmental. A couple of writers
disgust may well be in our genes.

Is hygiene in our genes?
Dog shit, dirty nappies, vomit, bad breath, stained towels, lice, nasal mucus, half-eaten food, saliva, worms, rotten meat, maggots, sores, urine, rats and sweat. What do all these things have in common? The answer is that we find them disgusting. And surprisingly enough people everywhere seem to find them disgusting too. In Africa, India and Europe people say such things turn their stomach and make them recoil. Touching excreta or maggots is hard for most of us and we go to great lengths to remove the evidence of such revolting yucky stuff from our lives. [snip]

A protective device
Our work suggested that there might be another explanation for disgust. Our collections of what people found disgusting in six countries and an international airport showed common themes. These included bodily excretions and body parts, decay and spoilt food, and a number of living creatures, especially insects and worms. Whilst working on another project I flipped through the index of disease carriers in a textbook on infectious disease. To my surprise I noticed the same list: excreta (causing at least 25 diarrhoeal diseases) saliva and breath (carrying measles, colds, scarlet fever, flu and chicken pox), wounds and sores (sepsis, pneumonia, gonorrhoea), spoilt food (carrying food toxins and diarrhoeal diseases). Rats, lice, snails and worms were all there too, involved in causing over 20 known diseases. Could it be that humans have evolved a disgust of all these things as a way to keep us healthy?

It is readily accepted that humans evolved physical defences against infection. Our complex immune system, our gut with apertures at each end, and antibiotics in our tears clearly evolved to protect us from disease, which is caused by the bugs which are trying to break us down and use us for food. It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that we have also evolved behavioural defences to disease. Human ancestors with a heightened repulsion from faeces, saliva and parasites would have been healthier, and thus more likely to pass on their genes. As a result, the tendency to avoid such things would have spread, so that it is now common in humans everywhere. This behavioural drive is what we call the emotion of disgust.

[snip] We humans like to think we are logical, but we are driven more than we care to admit by a set of emotions that were shaped by the challenges faced by our ancestors, mammal and primate. Disgust is one of these drives. Disgust might turn out to be a prime candidate to help investigate the role that emotions and culture play in our lives.

That makes for some stimulating conversation, but pretty weak in the scientific method I would say. Today I feel up to my eyebrows in emotion and culture (seeing as the mighty Wurlitzer of advertising wants me stuck in a perpetual reception state of emotion and pop culture).

I must offer up a counter argument from academicians in the study of medieval waste.

The guru of waste studies seems to be David Inglis, a sociologist at the University of Aberdeen who coined the phrase "fecal habitus" and whose 2001 book, A Sociological History of Excretory Experience, argued that avoiding scatological topics in polite conversation is a repressive Western bourgeois hang-up. Inglis's theories fit right in with other concepts dear to the postmodernist heart of academia--"discourse," the "Other," matters "transgressive," "bodies" (in the world of postmodernism there are hardly any people, just "bodies"), etc.--so professors of literature, religious studies, and other branches of the humanities eagerly expropriated Inglis's ideas and applied them in their own endeavors. As one of the panelists, University of Oregon English professor Martha Bayless, put it with the opacity that is de rigueur in postmodernist theory, "The body is not a neutral site."

The one thing in which waste-studies scholars seem not to be interested is medieval history. The idea isn't so much how people disposed of waste as what they thought about it--or if you're a cultural-studies type, what "society" thought about it.

Without expanding on this point too far, I think that there is a real point here. We love revisionist history it seems, the truth is that agrarian cultures around the world did and do understand that shit was and is a fertilizer and fuel. It is the current culture of Myths America where have focused my annoyance here.

This occasional rant was brought out in the open in order to shout, “Snap out of it.” You clueless about farm to fork safety know who you are. The rest of us are getting impatient for you to get a clue about the realities of systemic, toxic decay and naturally balanced and valuable decay. And, I guess I should apologize for including such crap faux science in the post. But, this kind of manipulation is not new to our culture or time. And we are headed for mountains more as corporations start greenwashing.

Pivotal to my essay premise but really a complete subject unto itself is this ‘ick factor’ being an emotional charged response to deliberate manipulation. I live in a culture that treats my body with disgust. I’ll must quote a small portion of an essay that links this progression of body disgust to social disgust. In my optinion the cultural delivery system of choice for control and oppression is emotional disgust. Because emotional disgust can be planted inside someone like a self-monitoring device via self-loathing. To select just one area closest to me, woman’s self-disgust acts like a glue to hold patriarchy together.

Let me just provide the clunky (but apt) title and several excerpts to Dr. William Spriggs research on disgust.

Menstrual Odors, Dirty Diapers, and the Male Dominated Religious Quest For Purity: Giving Birth to Misogyny, Ethnic, and Racial Discriminations Originating in the Human Biological Emotion of Disgust.

There was a small, but very interesting article in the June 4th 2007 issue of Time magazine on page 51 that has given birth to this essay.

It was in the LIFE section under "Behavior" and its title is "The Ewww Factor," by Michael D. Lemonick. The article highlights two scientists, Andrea Morales and Gavan Fitzsimons who specialize in market psychology behind the emotion of disgust. I consider this as very important article because it allows the common person the opportunity to understand the evolutionary origins behind certain select discriminations - in particular against women and all humans considered to be "inferior."

Two important keywords in the article are: "touch transference". It's a fancy term for cooties," Time quotes one of the scientists. "If something repulsive touches something benign, the latter, even if it is physically unchanged, becomes 'infected.'"

[snip . . .] let's cite a few examples of human discriminations that are familiar to many. The German Nazi propaganda movies of the 1940s, Der Rothschilds, Jude Suss, and in particular, Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), are the ones that quickly jump into my consciousness when they tell us about "the dirty Jews." [ . . .] notice the not-so subtle reference to rats as disease carriers and "as do the Jews." . .

He goes on to cite the framing last year in the knuckle-dragging radio air waves of Mexican 'illegal aliens' bringing leprosy. Lou Dobbs jumped on this “transferring cooties” hysteria.

I want to switch though to the universally practiced disgust for women, through centuries across all boundaries. We women of all ages, races, economic status, sexual orientation, ableness, country of birth, marital status, etc. need to be aware of the religious and cultural taboos that shackle us.

I remember vividly the first Earth Day in April of 1970. As I told a friend recently, I was a new mother with Angela being only two weeks old. That same day I gathered with my husband at the time’s big family for a funeral in a nearby city. As a 22 year old, newly converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church where my husband was planning on going to seminary to become a priest, I was so nervous. I was so afraid the priest at that church would refuse my entrance or make me leave the church. You see, according to church tradition I was “unclean” because of giving birth. My forty days had not passed and I had not undergone the ceremony of returning, of being “churched”. (I admit to ripping the ex from the photo. *sigh*)

Spriggs introduces this woman as “unclean” tradition and includes half a dozen studies as background for these pervasive traditions.

In many hunter-gatherer societies, studies have found that there are sometimes found myths, or stories that shift blame onto menstruating women in the hunting tribe for the failure of the male hunters to return with a prize of the day, week, or month.

He goes on to discuss this shifting of blame to women for when the men fail as hunters. He does a little tap dance here that careful not to give woman feminists any points. See, he puts the responsibility for changing this on the shoulders of women, saying that the female chooses the male. Historically woman chooses the aggressive male, ergo it is her job to pick another kind of man. Gah. This brought an instant gag-reflex from me, but that is not my thesis here. I’ll let Spriggs continue.

. . . I'm sticking my foot out here on a limb and merely basing my menstrual misogyny theory upon the science of disgust in our lead paragraphs by trying to image a temple in the same time period as the Old Testament. Somewhere located in the Middle East, a woman, into her menstrual cycle of the third day could be giving off what would be considered offensive odor. Did this female have available daily baths then? Were there sanitary napkins? Were there perfumes to disguise certain offensive odors and replace them with pleasant ones? If there were, I'm sure that they were the privilege of the wealthy and not for the common females.

And a thought just occurred to me: my wife was changing our grandson's diaper a few moments ago, and in occurred to me that "diaper" is also on the list above for "repugnant" items. And onto whom do most of the "duties" of changing the diapers usually occur? The female. So not only are sanitary napkins on the "ickiness" list because of the association with menstrual blood, so too, are diapers, which, of course, are associated with human feces and urine - both waste products - and a double whammy of "touch transference" attached to the "inferior" female who usually does the nurturing. Once again, my thoughts go to the temple where a poor female in her cycle is holding a defecating infant. Now, if you're a powerful local rabbi, would this set you in motion to exclude these "pollutants" out of "your holy place" by shifting blame to women by declaring some "law" because that you believe that God would not be present under such circumstances?

So, putting the blame for a poor hunt because of a female's menstrual scent is only child's play compared to the blame passed down upon women as growing populations developed organized religions -- with the overwhelming population of these organizations consisting of bachelor males. The rise of bachelor male enclaves has been directly related to the consensual social norm of "primogenitor" that emerged from the Middle Ages.

There is great detail and several centuries of witch hunts and partriarchal power shoring that are fascinating in themselves, but to return to the theme I'm focused on here. He tears apart the book, Handbook of Emotions, 2nd Edition, with Michael Lewis and Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, Guilford Press, New York, 2000. And after citing whole sections of their chapter on disgust he says,

It's all about resources, people. And discriminating against people by naming them "dirty," "smelly," "or they are just like animals" is just a JUSTIFCATION mechanism to keep one's goodies untouched by the cootie people. Following the mental "labeling" or "stereotyping" mechanisms then come the physical exclusions.

Spriggs chooses not follow the authors into the final framing of the authors, moral disgust. I am with him on this one. This is not something I care to touch in this post. It is the religious right’s reason for being and the prime mover in this week’s media orgy over the religious right’s ideal VP. There is a sort of twisted victimhood, shaming, justifying and titilation the base cherishes in the ‘sins’ of Palin’s daughter. I feel my own revulsion, so I dare not go there in this post.

I will leave Spriggs here to simply try and wrap up a post that starts: composting with worms, discontinuing use of shampoo, using cloth wipes instead of toilet paper, using soap nuts instead of Tide, showering less often and other aggressive no impact sustainable living that is the shocked exclamation, “Eeeeuuuw.” That is so gross. Please, that’s too much information. Yuk, you will never get me to consider giving up toilet paper or shampoo.” I then hurl you all into all kinds of shit like DNA, Eastern Orthodoxy, hunters, menstruation, witches and a bunch of misogyny to consider disgust. It comes back to the disgust and revulsion. The shunning, diminishing and shaming of another to control, to oppress.

I know how this can engender self-disgust and loathing. The feminist movement I was so thrilled to be a part of was reduced to not wearing bras or shaving your legs or (gasp) underarms. Sometime it was mild and laughable, but I know how disgust and revulsion can not only destroy a movement, destroy spirit and it can kill.

What I forgot to include were those dirty hippies. See, I was a weekend Hippy at the time of that photograph. I grew food for my husband and I, I nursed my daughter and taught myself to make bread. I joyously embraced life. I believed as a young feminist I could take control of my life, could live in a holistic way and protest and vote for anti-war, progressive leaders to bring peace around the world. But, we know how that story ended.

How systematic and choreographed was the back to the land, tune-in /drop out, make peace not war, mother jones, diet for a small planet and whole earth catalog reduced to two words DIRTY HIPPY? Because once every effort at saving the environment, living healthy, rejecting commercialism, eliminating chemicals and embracing simplicity got labeled DIRTY HIPPY, nobody wanted to be treated like that. Of course the Manson Family murder spree of '69 and trial production didn’t help. Nonetheless, the Ick Factor helped keep my generation right where the corporatists, the owners wanted us. And it continues . . .

witch burning image

F227: F.A.R.M.

"I think we need to take back our language. I want to call my organic carrots ‘carrots’ and let [other farmers] call theirs a chemical carrot. And they can list all of the ingredients that they used instead of me having to be certified. The burden is on us to prove something. Let them prove that they used only 30 chemicals instead of 50 to produce an apple."

MaryJane Butters said the above and I cheer. She is a farmer with real credentials according to today’s article at Epicurious: Chew the Right Thing where her F.A.R.M. Project (First-class American Rural Made) products are recommended. Specifically, Ali writes:

Call it Ethicurean guilt if you will, but I need to talk this one through.

MaryJane Butters, the woman behind this food, is the original farm girl. Okay, maybe she’s not the original farm girl, but she sure looks the part. She’s an organic farmer who grew up canning garden-fresh food and wearing hand-sewn clothes. After stints as a single mother, carpenter, and wilderness ranger, MaryJane purchased a five-acre homestead in Idaho, sight unseen. Since then, she’s been farming this land — and then 100 more adjacent acres, after she married a neighbor farmer — in high style.

The New Yorker speaks to her marketing,

I think of myself as a food scientist and a farmer,” she says. Butters is a farmer the way Martha Stewart is a housewife. Tells about her magazine, MaryJanesFarm, which she started five years ago. “I branded myself,” she says. “It creates a forum for me to talk about farming.

This is key as I see it to the Epicurious perspective. This smart woman is using all of this branding and packaged products as a bridge to a life more sustainable. We are as a culture caught in a grip of consumerism that dictates everything. This farmer sees that she needs to reach people in ways they are able to hear and understand.

We’ve really devalued food in our minds and what ends up on our plate. We’ve devalued it and laced it with chemicals and the cheap food hasn’t worked out long-term. I think that I sell not just good wholesome food, but I also sell hope. People crave that.

Speaking of hope, she also runs a farm school called PayDirt.

Pay Dirt Farm School is our non-profit educational program offering farm apprenticeships. The program provides practical experience for individuals who value common sense and introduces them to the operations of an organic farm. The school's mission is to cultivate organic farmers and eaters. The school was founded with the belief that the elimination of deadly pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers, along with the maintenance of healthy living soil and the rebuilding of local communities, all play a major role in the development of individuals whose thoughts, dreams and actions create positive change.

And something dear to my heart, The Farmgirl Sisterhood is a membership only group that provides a real formum for women in this farming venture. So much of the symbology and structure of this reminds me of my years and years in Camp Fire Girls, Inc. This Farmgirl Sistergood is a wonderful opportunity for young girls and women too. The logo is a hexagon, one of my favorite shapes (which almost haunts me in my dreams). The shape is reminiscent of the chicken wire and speaks to the zen of the honeybee hive. Love. It.

Okay, I am done swooning and not even tempted to start consuming the F.A.R.M. brand. Packaged goods and cute attack tschotchke don't speak to me. I just have a real appreciation for the drive and the vision of this brilliant woman.

F226: Fascist, Facile Fucking with Faces

I don't even know this person, but Melissa McEwan's latest in the series titled, Impossibly Beautiful, features this face today. She makes a significant point that the series is titled this because it seems that no matter how beautiful a woman is, it isn't good enough and will be doctored. Unlike some past examples of ads photoshopping faces to make them younger, whiter and thinner (to hide the unacceptable age, race and body of the real woman), this woman is by all convention measures: young enough, thin enough and white enough.

Here are the photo comparisons that Melissa provided to compare the magazine cover to the far right candid shot and another previous magazine cover. Oh I see that her name is Carrie Underwood.
Now I would love to direct you to my theory 'below the fold' - but I am foldless here at make-a-(green)plan.

Maybe you could close your eyes for a brief moment.


Or not . . .





My theory is that the end goal is to develop the standard for all to seek (and by that I mean acquire via any consumer method you prefer) - the perfect American FACE.



In her slight variations . . .


With this being my closest match to the Carrie Underwood model.

and some versions possible consulted for personality types.

F225: Feminist Design Hero

Thirty years ago I made the observation that whoever designed the homes I’d lived in or the restaurants where I’d been employed had never worked in these settings. It was clear to me that the proportions, the flow – to name only two – were just wrong.

When I made my decision to enroll at Cornell University’s Human Environment Relations College, I knew I wanted to major in Design. I knew I wanted to change my world to one that I could fit into, I could work within and I could design to my own criteria. I discovered Delores Hayden while I was at Cornell.

I am so thrilled that Beany linked to Delores Hayden in her post yesterday. She made the statement, "In the U.S. however, entire living areas are designed so as to make it hell for pedestrians". I felt in a rush the thrill of discovery I’d felt more than a quarter of a century ago when I stumbled upon Hayden’s perspective.

Aside, those many years ago I searched the stacks for women in design, women in architecture. I was a neophyte at research and all too often I would get caught up in browsing, losing my focus, forgetting my train of thought and careless in recording my search methodology. As part of my work-study funding I worked at Cornell’s Olin library one summer and fall. I learned a lot to do the job, but never got over my frustration with getting in and getting out with research materials in any deliberate, productive way. I think my mind vacillates between the vast and the minute, the philosophical and the personal, big – little, etc. Aaargh. Research at the library for me, FAIL. Conversely, I am so grateful for what the internet allows me to experience. The internet allows me to research far more effectively.

To return to Delores Hayden and to illustrate what I just wrote, I want to provide a quick glance at the several publications from Hayden those many years ago.

Now for some unabashed promotion of Delores Hayden’s books. I start with:

Seven American Utopias:The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790-1975.

"Seven American Utopias combines cultural history, design analysis, and political theory. It is, thus, a conceptually ambitious book and a good one....a sophisticated study of the politics of design."
--Thomas Bender, The Journal of American History
The Grand Domestic Revolution:




A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities

"This is a book to startle and inspire feminists today...An architect herself, Hayden has brought history to life by insisting that social problems are also spatial problems, and must be addressed as such."
--Nancy Cott, The New York Review of Books

"Women's work is not done. The design of our place to live (some still call it 'the built environment') still follows men's visions. For most women, the old household drudgeries have merely been replaced by new suburban drudgeries.

"We now have women architects--all of 3 percent of a total of 37,000 members of the American Institute of Architects. But few if any of them are addressing the issues of residential and community design that are still keeping women 'in their place' and that, a century-and-a-half ago, led to what Dolores Hayden calls 'material feminism."
--Wolf Von Eckardt, Washington Post June 1982

These were the two publications I knew about during my studies. Later, Hayden wrote these following books about America’s suburbs, America’s urban environment.

Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life

Americans still build millions of dream houses in neighborhoods that sustain Victorian stereotypes of the home as "woman's place" and the city as "man's world." Urban historian and architect Dolores Hayden tallies the personal and social costs of an American "architecture of gender" for the two-earner family, the single-parent family, and single people. Many societies have struggled with the architectural and urban consequences of women's paid employment: Hayden traces three models of home in historical perspective—the haven strategy in the United States, the industrial strategy in the former USSR, and the neighborhood strategy in European social democracies—to document alternative ways to reconstruct neighborhoods.

Revised and expanded in 2002 and still utterly relevant today as the New Urbanist architects have taken up Hayden's critique of suburban space, this award-winning book is essential reading for architects, planners, public officials, and activists interested in women's social and economic equality.

"...the most cynical anti-planner and the scrappiest tenant organizer will be pleasantly surprised to see that Hayden includes positions of class, race, and the economic underpinnings of women's position."
--City Limits

The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History

"Essential reading for preservationists and anyone interested in urban America."
--Antoinette J. Lee

"Hayden invents a totally original method of 'storytelling with the shapes of time.' The result is an almost poetic invocation of the resilience of the human condition, grounded in both theoretical understanding and practical experiences of place-making and preservation."
--Michael Dear

"The Power of Place is a graceful manifesto that enlists Dolores Hayden's formidable skills as a writer and architectural historian to argue for new ways to understand and represent the social history of urban space."
--Carl Abbott

Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000

A history of the seven contested cultural landscapes where most Americans now live.

Delores Hayden is a professor of architecture, urbanism and American Studies at Yale University. She is credited with being the first to use the expression ‘built environment’ in America. She’d studied in England in the 1970’s where this expression was in use.

Merely explaining the relationship of American studies, the social sciences to the built environment brought back a flood of the passion within me. I loved my field of study and had forgotten how much until reading the interview that follows.

"Building Suburbia," Architecture Boston, April/May 2008, Jeff Stein interview with Dolores Hayden

There is a real key within this book to the loss of our farmland and the disproportionate wealth, the dominance of a growth economy and the loss of the focus, the money, the building and governing for the public good. I have not yet read the book, but I am excited to after reading this interview.

I am so happy to have been given this reminder of Delores Hayden again.

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