Monthly Archives: April 2006

Carnival of Feminists

Bellow it from the rooftops…

April 19, 2006 – 9:43 am

The Carnival of Feminists No 13 IS UP, and Terry has done a spectacularly good job. It ranges widely in space and time, from that increasingly backward state where it is apparently becoming increasingly difficult to buy even condoms, let alone any other form of contraception, to the discrimination against older women in the Jewish world, to the progress made by women in Pakistan and that not made in the Caribbean, where Christian leaders refuse to take on the issue of domestic violence.

A whole world of feminism is there: please check it out, and help to spread the word!

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Environmental politics

A new medical condition

April 18, 2006 – 9:23 pm

A discovery for medical science: I’ve identified a new syndrome – leafletter’s knuckle. After delivering about 2,700 Green Party leaflets over a couple of days, most of the skin has gone off the knuckles on my right hand (the result of paper cuts and encounters with letter-boxes that seem to have been adapted from a design for mousetraps).

I’ve also had lots of encounters with deadly basement flat stairs, and some horribly bodgy lifts. At the fourth rattle and the fifth squeak, I think: “I’m glad mobile phones were invented; at least it will be easy to call the fire brigade.” That is often followed by the thought: “What was this building called again?”

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History

Reading and listening

April 18, 2006 – 11:35 am

Carnivalesque No 14 is now up on Earmarks in Early Modern Culture and it is a fascinating “Cabinet of Curiosities”, with a particular focus on women’s history, from the diary of an aristocratic figure (Lady Shelburne) to Takeri Tekakwitha, the first Native American to be beatified by the Catholic Church. Do check it out! (And thanks to Kristine for giving my posts such a great run.)

On the listening side, I’ve just heard the second programme in Radio Four’s Fascinating Deaths series, and it was again excellent, this time about the 2 million-year-old Taung child – the first identified Australopithecine found.

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Feminism

Women explode from traditional society

April 18, 2006 – 10:56 am

It looks like India is producing a new “Bandit Queen”.

The report:

Three years ago, 16-year-old Jagari Baske vanished from a remote village in the Indian state of West Bengal. But unlike most girls her age who suddenly flee their homes in the country’s conservative countryside, she was not eloping with a boyfriend opposed by her family. Instead, Baske ran away to join Maoist rebels who claim to be fighting for the rights of the rural dispossessed but who have been responsible for a wave of killings this year as they step up their battle with the state.
Now 19, Baske is described by security forces as a dangerous foe. “Jagari is fearless and a crackshot,” said a senior intelligence official in West Bengal’s capital, Kolkata. “She is ruthless and has taken part in dozens of Maoist attacks in the last two years.”

Food for thought there for those opposed to women in Western militaries. You’ve got one of the most patriarchal, restrictive-to-women states on earth, and women are emerging from it as fighters, warriors even you might say.

Lest anyone should think I’m celebrating this, I stress that such extremes usually only emerge from societies under extreme pressure, and societies where many other women are suffering horribly without rebelling. As this report says:

Poverty among the region’s traditionally marginalised tribal people-who make up many of the movement’s guerrillas and sympathisers-is a major factor in driving women into the hands of the Maoists in a matrilineal society where mothers and wives play the dominant role in managing families. “Most of them cannot afford one square meal,” says Ajay Nand, police superintendent in Maoist-infested West Midnapore district of West Bengal. “With money and food assured, some women do not think twice about joining the rebels.

And as the Cambodia Killing Fields demonstrated all too clearly, when you allow such pressure to build up, nasty events tend to explode.

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Environmental politics Feminism

An alternative, feminist, pin-up

April 17, 2006 – 1:40 pm

That great Sydney tradition, the Royal East Show, has one seemingly inexplicable, but highly popular, element – the woodchopping. In a small arena, a line of people armed only with an axe line up for the starting gun. Then the chips fly and they’ll each slice through a hefty lump of wood in no time at all. Why is it so popular? I suspect it has a lot to do with the Australian mythology of “The Bush”, the theory that Australians are bushies at heart, despite living in one of the most urbanised societies on earth.

I learn from the Sydney Morning Herald that the Americans are now competing in force, and their lumberjills (wince) are presenting an alternative image of womanhood. Not at all bad… every woman should know how to chop her own wood. (Before you ask, yes I am a dab hand with an axe. Never chopped down a whole tree, but have split up a lot of firewood in my time.)

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To something closer to most people’s – and particularly women’s – working reality, being a waitperson. This article sets out the realities of this job in America – where the workers are almost entirely dependent on tips for their livelihood. Theoretically, this is supposed to be the ultimate in “performance-related pay”, but the article explains that the actual level of service has almost no effect on the level of a tip: “How sunny it is outside has the same impact on a tip as good service does.”
***
And finally, good environmental news. Hate to say it, but this will probably have more effect than a thousand sensible messages: the US glossy magazines have decided that “Green is the new black”.

“Vanity Fair, the self-confessed bible for America’s high rollers, has emphatically embraced the green cause. Inside a leaf-coloured cover, an alpha list of names from Julia Roberts to Robert Kennedy Jnr, and George Clooney to Bette Midler are sending a message to their President and all those still in eco-denial. “Time to get real, ” the magazine tells its 1 million buyers. “Global warming is the problem ­ the biggest problem. It’s not a matter of when any longer. It’s here. Green is the future ­ the only future.”
Hot in pursuit, Elle magazine (“go green with our round-up of the best organic treatments for your body”) will unveil its own environmentally friendly issue this week for May with a competing clutch of celebrities, including Cameron Diaz, television star Evangeline Lilly, supermodel Carolyn Murphy, and ­ yes ­ Robert Kennedy Jnr.”

The reality still has some way to go to catch up with the rhetoric, however:

The “green edition” [Vanity Fair], critics calculate, has used up 2,247 tons of trees. And that’s not to mention the production of 4,331,757 pounds of greenhouse gases, 13,413,922 gallons of waste water and 1,744,060 pounds of solid waste.

Elle at least managed to print on recycled paper.

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Miscellaneous

A coup attempt, and a great scandal

April 17, 2006 – 1:08 pm

My 19th-century retroblogger, Frances Williams Wynn, is today writing on one of the great 19th-century European scandals, that of Caroline Ferdinande Louise, duchesse de Berry.
From Wikipedia:

She was the daughter of Francis I of the Two Sicilies and married Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry in 1816, thus becoming duchess of Berry. She became an important figure during the Restoration after the assassination of her husband in 1820. Her son, Henri V, was named the “miracle child” because he was born after his father’s death and continued the Bourbon line.
She unsuccessfully attempted to restore the Bourbon dynasty in the reign of Louis Philippe (1798-1890), known as the July Monarchy. Her failed rebellion in the Vendee in 1832 was followed by her arrest and imprisonment in November 1832. She was released in June 1833 only after giving birth to a child and revealing her secret marriage to an Italian prince.

Dumas wrote up her story at the time, and Baroness Orczy wrote a biography in 1935, but there doesn’t seem to have been much done on her since. (Unless anyone can tell me of other material?)

The Deutz mentioned is the man who betrayed her to the French authorities. Miss Williams Wynn thinks he was the baby’s father, but that doesn’t seem to be the view of the modern sources.

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