Monthly Archives: June 2006

Feminism

Michelle Wie’s predecessor

June 26, 2006 – 6:52 pm

I have just been reading about the American athlete Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias, who deserves to be celebrated as a predecessor of Michelle Wie.

After winning two golds and a silver at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, Zaharias turned pro…

… touring with basketball and baseball teams, playing billiards and golf; she even pitched a shut-out inning for a major league baseball game (in spring training). She won a diving championship, swam at record-setting pace, and mastered or at least tried lacrosse, soccer, handball, fencing, cycling, volleyball, bowling, boxing and ice skating. Eventually, she focused her efforts on golf and tennis, and made a good living in tournaments and exhibitions. In 1938, she was the first woman to play in a men’s PGA tournament. She co-founded the Ladies’ Professional Golf Association (LPGA) in 1948.

(From the Yahoo Born On This Day list, which features a new woman each day. Thanks Penny!)

Now I’ll whisper this quietly (Hi Tony), but I have been watching some men’s sport – the World Cup Australia v Italy. Sadly, however, I’m unlikely to be watching any more Cup games, after this result. (My Blogcritics report.)

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Miscellaneous

Don’t send your daughter to medical school

June 26, 2006 – 10:25 am

… unless she really wants to go.

A recent visit to the GP (“family” doctor as I believe you’d say in the US) left me musing on how many people ill-suited to the role end up in it. There’d been an odd note in the receptionist’s voice when she said “I’ve an appointment with Doctor X?” and when I met this doctor I knew why. He reminded me of another doctor I knew in Bangkok who was a brilliant diagnostician but had no bedside manner whatsoever, capable of saying things that reduced patients to tears. (Along the lines of “well you obviously shouldn’t be with that boyfriend then, should you?”)

The fact is, the role of a general practitioner involves mostly dealing with people – speaking kindly to them , trying to disabuse them of odd notions, reassuring them. It requires empathy, people skills, not blinding intelligence. In fact this is likely to be a disadvantage, because you’ll quickly get fed up with all of the stupid things people say to you.

Which is why it is sad that so many bright people are pushed into studying medicine. (I think of a schoolfriend who wanted to study physics and astronomy, but was pushed by her parents to “be a doctor”, because that was the highest status, and best-paying, thing they knew.)

Even I – patently unsuited to being a doctor – felt some of this pressure, which thank the heavens I had the sense to reject. (I played with the idea of doing vet science instead, but a stint working in a vet’s fixed that, when I realised that what it mostly required was dealing with owners rather than animals.)

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Feminism

Change and no change on women’s rights

June 26, 2006 – 9:35 am

Interesting that two of the European states that were most under the patriarchal thumb of the Catholic Church — Ireland and Spain — have not just broken out, but broken out with a vengeance, seeking to address centuries of unusually repressive treatment of women, gays and other “deviants” with progressive human rights legislation. The latest in Spain is preferential treatment for companies with women on their boards:

It is the latest in a string of measures, including a housework-sharing clause in civil marriage contracts, targeting machismo. Companies have eight years to reach a 40% quota of women on their boards, a leap from today’s 3.8% average in public companies.
Those who fail to reach the quota will lose competitive status in bids for state contracts.

Wimbledon, however, remains in its English public school past, with prizemoney for women still below that of men’s. But good on Venus Williams, who today in The Times takes on the issue:

Equality is too important a principle to give up on for the sake of less than 2 per cent of the profit that the All England Club will make at this year’s tournament. Profit that men and women will contribute to equally through sold-out sessions, TV ratings or attraction to sponsors.

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Feminism Women's history

Kusuma Barnett, MBE

June 25, 2006 – 2:12 pm

Congratulations to Kusuma Barnett, volunteers’ co-ordinator at the British Museum, who was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. I haven’t found a MSM story about her, but she deserves one. She is THE programme, and a volunteer herself.

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Books History

Summer reading suggestions

June 25, 2006 – 10:57 am

Since the beach season is approaching, from my inbox, a site listing Medieval Mysteries by Historians.

If you’re stuck in the office on a quiet afternoon, you could play with National Archive’s new currency converter – converting through time and commodity. So, it says, with 1 pound, 2 shillings and 4 old pennies, in 1400 you could buy a cow.

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Feminism Media

A typical Mail character assassination

June 25, 2006 – 10:53 am

The “Aids avenger”, a woman jailed for knowing infecting a man with HIV, has allowed the Mail on Sunday to go positively over the top. She – once a respectable middle-class girl has, on its account, shock horror – slept with black men and had a child with one of them, she went out dancing, she didn’t take the respectable secretary’s job her parents want her to take but instead went to work for an advertising agency. And then she turned against men – gosh, one of the male senior staff on the Mail could have accidentally ended sleeping with the woman, or one like her. And – serve her right – she ended up living in a council flat.

Oddly enough, the Independent has a story on the same court case, although were it not for the same name you wouldn’t know it. On its account:

Ms Porter’s friends say that far from luring dozens of men into a fatal honeytrap, she had just two relationships after discovering she was HIV-positive. Her only crime was an inability to admit to herself she had the virus. “She felt it was shameful and dirty,” a friend said.

Another friend added: “She dotes on her little boy and he dotes on her. The idea that she’s out clubbing every weekend picking up men is just wrong. She has a small son to look after. She isn’t the type to have one-night stands … She just pushed the HIV to the back of her mind – so far back that it was hardly there for her. She couldn’t even say ‘HIV’.

Some of that is a bit disingenuous – I wouldn’t entirely take it on trust either, but I know which I think is closer to the truth.

Now there does have to be personal responsibility, and while it sounds like counselling and support services did fail her, and quite possibly mental health services as well, she still has to take some responsibility for her actions, and behave appropriately in future. (So, of course, should have the men – had they practiced safe sex there wouldn’t be a problem.)

But will jailing her for what will probably end up being about a year, and separating her from her child (a totally innocent victim) produce that result?

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