For more than two years she traveled on a French naval vessel with linen bandages wrapped tightly around her upper body to flatten her chest. It was a small ship with 300 men who knew her as Jean. But she wasn’t Jean. She was Jeanne. Then one day, they found her out.
Source: The First Woman To Go ‘Round The World Did It As A Man : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR
Rather than accepting my order as normal, the postering company phoned to interrogate me about what sort of dangerous figure I was, why my posters had been torn and if I could explain my politics to them in light of the complaints they received alleging that I was transphobic. They told me they were nervous about taking my order and in the end, refused to handle it.
When trans activist organisations InsideOut and RainbowYouth—who also ensured that I was banned from the Wellington Zinefest in 2016—were asked for comment, they claimed that my posters communicated “a subtle transphobia.” This ‘transphobia’ was found in the slogan “The suffragists fought for the female sex.” To be absolutely clear here the words they found objectionable, and which led a company to blacklist me, were “the female sex.”
The response to my posters shows that the phrase ‘female sex’ is on its way to being classified as ‘hate speech.’
This chronology provides a guide to the issue of women’s suffrage in South Australia, concentrating on the late nineteenth century. The titles of the Parliamentary Bills are those used predominantly in the Hansard reports.
Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg has become the youngest person ever to be named TIME Person of the Year, since the tradition started in 1927.
HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland’s new prime minister – about to become the world’s youngest serving premier – will have a finance minister two years her junior in a new women-led coalition cabinet, party officials said on Monday.
The new government, consisting of 12 female and 7 male ministers according to media reports, will be nominated on Tuesday.
Source: Finland picks world’s youngest PM to head women-led cabinet – Reuters
Gimbutas argued that the “Kurgan” people introduced Indo-European languages into the lands they conquered, as well as new cultural systems based on domination of warriors and kings over the general populace and the domination of men over women. She stated that the Kurgan invasions of Europe began about 4400 BCE and lasted for several millennia.
[I]n declaring Marija Gimbutas’s Kurgan hypothesis “magnificently vindicated,” Lord Colin Renfrew, considered by many to be “the grand old man” of his field, opened the floodgates. He implicitly gave permission to other scholars to reconsider all of Gimbutas’s theories and perhaps eventually to restore her to her rightful place as one of the most–if not the most–creative, scientific, ground-breaking archaeologists of the twentieth century, “the grand old lady” of her field.
Source: Marija Gimbutas Triumphant: Colin Renfrew Concedes by Carol P. Christ
A map that tracks more than 3,000 Scots women who were accused of being witches in the 16th and 17th Century has been published for the first time.
“The tragedy is that Scotland had five times the number of executions of women. The idea of being able to plot these on a map really brings it home. These places are near everyone.
“There does seem to be a growing movement that we need to be remembering these women, remembering what happened and understanding what happened.”
Source: Map of Scots women accused of witchcraft published for first time | Edinburgh News
Next year, for the entire duration of the year, one significant arts museum in the U.S will only buy from female-identifying artists.
Source: This US museum is dedicating the next year to only buying women’s art
As the Medusa myth is retold in a patriarchal and male-dominated society, the fact that she was a victim of rape is overshadowed by her terrifying appearance and ability to turn men into stone. This retelling sweeps the original violence against Medusa under the rug to center the violence she commits against men.
Medusa’s name derives from an ancient Greek verb that means “to protect and guard,” which may be a nod to Athena’s attempt to guard and protect Medusa from further abuse at the hands of Poseidon and other men. Athena’s curse was not a punishment for Medusa, but a punishment for the gods and men who intended to harm her. After all, Athena gave Medusa the ultimate power against men: the power to both punish and avoid the male gaze regardless of the rank or status of the man daring to look at her.
Like the other women in these myths, the Sirens have been demonized over time. The Sirens are often described as temptresses who used their song to lure sailors to their drowning deaths, but they were actually a group of girls who lost their companion, Persephone, after she was abducted and raped by Hades. . . . Retold in patriarchy, the story of the Sirens changes to fit its values—instead of illustrating loss and grief in female friendships, the story becomes a cautionary tale of the dangerous, tempting trickery of female seduction.
Source: Medusa Teaches Women How to Turn the Patriarchy into Stone | Bitch Media
The queen, who was deposed by a coup led by American sugar planters, died 100 years ago, but is by no means forgotten.
In January 1893, a coup led by Sanford Dole took over the Hawaiian government and pressed the U.S. government to annex the islands. Two years later, after a failed insurrection by Liliuokalani’s supporters to return power to Hawaiian royal rule, she was charged with treason and put under house arrest. In a statement, in exchange for a pardon for her and her supporters, she “yield[ed] to the superior force of the United States of America” under protest, pointing out that John L. Stevens, U.S. Minister to Hawaii, who supported the provisional government, had already “caused United States troops to be landed at Honolulu.” She continued:
“Now, to avoid any collision of armed forces and perhaps loss of life, I do, under this protest, and impelled by said forces, yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon the facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representative and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.”
In exile, Liliuokalani advocated for a free Hawaii until her death in 1917 at the age of 79.
Source: Five Things To Know About Liliuokalani, the Last Queen of Hawaii | Smart News | Smithsonian
