This month’s Le Monde Diplomatique has a roundup of the current state of sex discrimination against foetuses and young children. The story itself is behind a paywall, but the raw data is here, and frightening.
The worst figure is in Jiangxi and Guangdong provinces in China, where there are 138 baby boys born for every 100 girls.
Really, aren’t they breaching the “Truth in Advertising Act”? A former senior Labour minister calling for an end to inheritance tax. (And I heard a cogent argument this morning saying that Stephen Byers is being used by Tony Blair in his “battle” against his own Treasurer.)
Tory PM, “Labour” government.
Matthew Parris sets out his plans. For him obviously money is no object, but it is interesting to see the possibilities explored, and no doubt he’ll report back on how it does.
One for the booklist: My Darling Heriott: Henrietta Luxborough, Poetic Gardener and Irrepressible Exile, reviewed this morning in the Guardian.
By the time Henrietta was in her 30s her gilded life had lost its shine. In 1727 she married Robert Knight, the son of the chief cashier of the infamous South Sea Company. Robert was pompous and vulgar, and Henrietta suddenly found herself in the company of men who talked only of money instead of poetry, gardens or art. She found companionship with a young poet, though she insisted that “the passion was platonick”. When the scandal broke in 1736, her furious husband sent her to his Warwickshire estate, Barrells, to “moulder and die”. Virtually imprisoned, she was not to see London, her two children or most of her friends for many years. Gardening helped her to keep her sanity, and My Darling Heriott reminds us of the unrivalled therapeutic value of nature, muddied fingers and the sprouting of seedlings.
John Friend, a gentleman commoner at St Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, died of a fever in March 1673. His father, Nathaniel, after arranging his funeral, returned home “on his cousin’s advice” to tell his wife:
“I came neare home mine owne care and sorrow redoubled in relation to my poore wide and how I should acquaint her with soe heavy a Providence, I therefore called upon the Widdow Margaret Holliser acquainting her with my poore sonnes death and entreated her to goe to our house before and by discourse a little prepare my wife for it which shee honestly did, supposing to her the worst, I in the meantime lingered and about a quarter of an houre after (which was neare 9 at night). I came in bringing both to my wife and to my father the heaviest tidings that ever brought them in my life.”
His wife understandably took it “exceeding heavily”, “the presence and company of my loving Neighbour stood us in good stead.”
I can’t but wonder how recent a widow Margaret Holliser was. Did she not suffer too from her close involvement in the tragic scene, so like one she had herself endured?
(Quoted in A. Brady, English Funerary Elegy in the Seventeenth Century: Laws in Mourning, Palgrave, Macmillan, 2006, p. 33.)
Ten great posts from 10 new (to me) women bloggers.
And I’m aiming to be celebratory this week: first up a brilliant idea and a brilliant blog. I’ve often thought of how unhealthy the changing rooms of my all-girl school were – everyone used to engage in astonishing contortions to avoid showing one inch of skin while removing and replacing clothing, which meant no one every really got a sense of the variety of shapes and sizes of their compatriots’ bodies – relying instead on those airbrushed magazine ideals.
And how much worse it is for women after giving birth – but on The Shape of A Mother women are invited to send in their stories and pictures of their post-natal bodies. I’ve pointed to the whole blog; it seemed unfair to single out any particular post.
Then, on Skanky Jane’s Ruses of Pleasure, the artist reports on her first solo exhibition. To explain:
“…In the Big Rock Candy Mountains all the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs…”
Well OK, perhaps that doesn’t explain very much – you’ll just have to go to see for yourself.
Staying with the artistic theme, Lauren on She Sees Red raves about a new multi-artist show in Melbourne. I loved the escalator.
Turning the celebration to the culinary, J in Singapore on Kuidaore explains how to cook the perfect gyoza (Japanese dumpling). I love, love gyoza, although I’d prefer someone to do all those fiddly steps for me…
Then for dessert, Kathy on My Little Kitchen takes us step by step through a ginger peach cake. Hey, it contains fruit; got to be healthy, right?
OK, to leaven the mix a little politics – Jessa on Zombie was at a university tutorial discussing George Bush’s public speaking “skills”. Then the fireworks started.
And a bit of anthropology – on Baraita, Naomi muses on the Jewish communities in the South of the United States.
Jenny on The Shifted Librarian offers a roundup of blog posts on culture change in libraries. Is it possible?
Finally, a celebration of nature. On Just Shelley there are pictures of butterflies, herons, lizards, and more.
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If you missed the last edition, it is here. (If you’d like to see all of them as a list, click on the category “Friday Femmes Fatales†in the righthand sidebar. That will take you to a collection of 650, and counting, women bloggers.)
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Please: In the next week if you read, or write, a post by a woman blogger and think “that deserves a wider audience†(particularly someone who doesn’t yet get many hits), drop a comment. It really does make my life easier. Or don’t be shy – nominate yourself!
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