… you might even call it collateral damage.
US military veterans are twice as likely to be jailed for sexual assault as similar non-veterans.
The department of justice says it can’t understand why…
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Feminism Women's historyFighting to meet in the 19th century
May 25, 2007 – 3:24 pm
I’ve finally managed to get around the London clock with George Augustus Sala, on whom more here and here, and was interested to note (this is 1859) remember, the hostility to any form of women’s organisation that he notes:
I must say that it is a subject for sincere congratulations that there are not ladies’ clubs. We have been threatened with them sometimes, but they have always been nipped in the bud. It is curious to see how fiercely this tolerant, liveral, large-headed creature, Man, has waged war against the slightest attempt to establish a club on the part of the gentler sex. … The Tyrant Man is even, I am informed, disposed to look with jealousy on the “committees of ladies” which exist in connestion with some deserving charities, and on the “Dorcas societies” and “sewing circles” of provincial towns; and all meetings to advocate the rights of woman, he utterly abhors.
(p. 213)
But of course that hostility means there must have been women trying to get together.
Shakespeare’s problem
May 24, 2007 – 9:05 pm
Heard tonight at a seminar at the Institute for Historical Research: “The problem with Shakespeare is that he didn’t get into enough difficulties.”
To expand: the speaker was referring to the way that we only know about many early theatre men through the messy court cases they got themselves tangled in – Shakespeare didn’t do that, which helps explain why he’s considered so “mysterious”.
(For the record: I definitely belong to the “Shakespeare was Shakespeare” school, although as soon as I find the time – soon I hope – I will be reviewing a book that has an intriguing alternative hypothesis.)
Triumph for the jury system: Oxford Two ‘not guilty’
May 24, 2007 – 9:02 pm
A jury has found two men who attempted to stop a US B52 flying to Iraq from Britain on a bombing mission NOT GUILTY of conspiracy to cause criminal damage and various other offences.
Their defence was that they were trying to save people and property in Iraq.
The jury was out for only three hours in this, their second trial; the first last October resulted in a hung jury.
There’ll be another similar trial next month in Sudbury.
(That I’m linking there to Stars and Stripes only makes it the sweeter.)
From the inbox
May 24, 2007 – 12:34 am
A depressing but all too predictable report on sexual violence against women accompanying unrest in the Ivory Coast. (From Amnesty International)
A new blog, subtitled “News feminist philosophers can use”, and simply called Feminist Philosophers. (But in case the second word puts you off – it has its feet very firmly on the ground.)
Lest that should all prove a bit too depressing, the sort of thing that I’d love to see a great deal more of on the web: a scholar has transcribed, and presented for all to read, My Booke of Rememenberanceâ€(sic): The Autobiography of Elizabeth Isham (PDF), who lived from 1609 to 1654, a lively period in English history of course, but her life was very inwardly focused, this fitting very much within the framework of spiritual biography.
One of the other interesting things about her is that she seems to have consciously chosen to stay single.
And she and her family suffer those tragedies so terribly typical of the time:
my sister broke her thigh againe which was a great grife to my frindes, who presently sent for Mr. Hales a man very skilfull in the art of bonseting but my Sister soune as she hard or saw his coming her teeth would chatter in her head for very feare hauing so much experiance of broken bones he stayed not long from her (because as he confessed he was troubled in his sleepe of her) but came againe to see her, where he found the bone amiss & was fa[i]nt to break it to make it right…”
(Hat-tip to Sharon of Early Modern Notes.)
London history conference
May 22, 2007 – 9:31 pm
Rats, I’d love to go to London in Text and History, 1400-1700, in September, but unfortunately its dates exactly correspond with the Green Party autumn conference.
Although I can’t help wondering why a conference about London is being held in Oxford…
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