http://www.marxists.org/archive/index.htm
At the top left of the page it gives you topics, select Feminists. There is a plethora of articles about Suffragettes and Feminists. It is worth your time to read these articles...it's a wealth of invaluable information. Remember, we learn from our history, if we don't know our history we don't know our direction.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
I Want To Know, When Was the Last Time You...
...sat with a girlfriend and talked about politics, religion, rebellion, action, activism, maybe even your vagina, and nothing about men? Think about that young women, my generation women(Gen X- looking at coming closer to 40), any women... I mean really think about that. I know that I adore my neighbor and her two daughters 6 and 8, they are potential "Bitch Queens".
Oh, you ask yourselves... who does this bitch think she is? Hmmm, why do WE use that word that men slap our faces with to degrade us by calling us dogs? You see, I believe in what "Bitch Magazine", one of the best grassroots feminist zines in the country...but I digress , I will get back to that later. A "Bitch Queen" is a woman that knows what she is, what she wants, where her value lies... and it's not on her back. It's a woman that has taken that word back and used it to empower herself. I am striving to be a "Bitch Queen" myself... I just have to get over that; men always end up in my conversations with other women. No, I don't want to be a man hater... they have their place in my life, I even love one...because he's as flawed as me but is striving to evolve. He would never call me names, he doesn't belittle my sex as a female he celebrates it. You see what I mean now ladies... they end up in the conversation at all times. Why? We are intelligent, evolved women, we take action, we participate in activism, and do what we need to do, to get the truth out to other sleeping women. So, why do they end up in the conversation every time? There is so much to talk about, so much that needs to be discussed, a plan made to open a dialog between us and the next younger generation that need our knowledge and our love of self... to help them become "Bitch Queens". Not second rate, unsure, clingy, follow the heard young women, but 1st rate royalty. They need to know that are Queens, perfect in their creation no matter what body size, facial dynamics, type of hair, teeth... not what the mass media, run by men want us to be. Junkie skinny, long shiny(airbrushed hair), full lips, perfect teeth, large breasts... and balance it all on really high heels. Yet, WE the 3rd wave are still finding that at coffee men are always a topic and sadly the longest topic discussed.
"Bitch Queen" isn't my only goal, far from it... we are really in trouble with our movement. I want to change the status quo... I want to go back to our roots, I want to relearn all that was taught and passed on to me by my mother, the 1st and the 2nd wave, the feminists that CHANGED the world and shook up the masses. I want to go back and relearn all about the beginnings. Because if we don't know our history, how can we hope to do anything but blog and complain, then when we gather our topic tapers down to the flickering candle of our love lives, lack of, or whatever the case may be... that also applies to our lesbian sisters who invariably do the same thing...
Yes, we do need to talk to our closest friends about problems in the relationship, or our poor choices, or our desire to have a partner. I don't deny that, that is an important aspect of our lives. But, why when we have the chance to go back to our roots and discuss what our predecessors did to get out the word and shake up the masses and MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN, do we use that time to talk about our relationship problems? There is a time and a place for everything. I want to be a "Bitch Queen", a liberator of other women here and abroad, and I want us to review the ERA, make the needed revisions to help another targeted minority(which is bringing us quickly into a communist, police state - finishing off what the Patriot Act started), and all they want is the same treatment extended to every one of our relatives or maybe even ourselves, in becoming American citizens. I want to be enough(know that I have done everything I can, and continue on new territory whenever any injustice pops up), and I want to educate the upcoming 4th wave or there won't be one. Let's start reading, let's go back to our roots...read! I read "To be Young was Very Heaven"...about the suffragette movement, pre-WWI, it tells us what to do, and also what not to do so that we don't divide, to learn from their mistakes and build a strong 3rd wave movement so that we can pass on a legacy as my mother did and I'm sure some of your mothers did as well. Let's build a community, a solidarity stronger than the women who came before us. We have all the tools we need in books written by women in the time of the suffragette, in the time of the 2nd wave, let's read them and learn and create a solidarity that the world has never seen. Let us use the technology we have to band together and talk about how we can MAKE OUR MARK and pass it on to the next generation so that there will be a 4th wave that has been born of the effort of our work to bond the tears in the structure of feminism as it stands today.
Lets learn to put our phones away and not text at the table when we talk, lets make groups that go over the literature of our predecessors and brain storm over how to mend the weak spots that divided both the 1st and 2nd wave without ending up talking about our love lives, let us commune using the technology at our disposal to create plans to push through the issues that were never succeeded before, let us come up with a way to condense our information and agendas and take it out to the streets, to the Internet, to and support, the grassroots publications that tell the truth without having to dumb down the information because of the publishers and the advertisers.
See how much there is to talk about other than men/our love lives, when we are lucky enough to have a group of women together! We can save our love lives for phone conversations with our best friends.
1.) "To Be Young Was Very Heaven - Women in New York Before the First World War"
Sandra L. Adickes
2.)http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/woman_suffrage/woman_suffrage.html
3.) http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/topics/women/highlights.html
4.) "Women Who Dare: Women of the Suffrage Movement"
By Evelyn Sinclair and Janice E. Ruth
5.) "With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman's Right to Vote"
by Ann Bausum
6.) "Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists"
By Jean H. Baker
7.) "Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States"
By Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick
8.) "Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869"
By Ellen Carol Dubois
9.) http://bitchmagazine.org/
There's a start... women let's utilize the time we have and make a statement, our love lives are a part of what happens when we become true women by doing the work we were commissioned to do. And then we can make the turn into "Bitch Queens". We will really have the lives we want, and everyone everyone deserves, if we don't rest on our laurels. The rest will fall into place naturally, because we will have built a structure that we and the 4th wave can smoothly lay out an action plan when something new comes down the pipe, as it will surely always do, and we can watch them find the weaknesses in our solution... smile and be proud.
Oh, you ask yourselves... who does this bitch think she is? Hmmm, why do WE use that word that men slap our faces with to degrade us by calling us dogs? You see, I believe in what "Bitch Magazine", one of the best grassroots feminist zines in the country...but I digress , I will get back to that later. A "Bitch Queen" is a woman that knows what she is, what she wants, where her value lies... and it's not on her back. It's a woman that has taken that word back and used it to empower herself. I am striving to be a "Bitch Queen" myself... I just have to get over that; men always end up in my conversations with other women. No, I don't want to be a man hater... they have their place in my life, I even love one...because he's as flawed as me but is striving to evolve. He would never call me names, he doesn't belittle my sex as a female he celebrates it. You see what I mean now ladies... they end up in the conversation at all times. Why? We are intelligent, evolved women, we take action, we participate in activism, and do what we need to do, to get the truth out to other sleeping women. So, why do they end up in the conversation every time? There is so much to talk about, so much that needs to be discussed, a plan made to open a dialog between us and the next younger generation that need our knowledge and our love of self... to help them become "Bitch Queens". Not second rate, unsure, clingy, follow the heard young women, but 1st rate royalty. They need to know that are Queens, perfect in their creation no matter what body size, facial dynamics, type of hair, teeth... not what the mass media, run by men want us to be. Junkie skinny, long shiny(airbrushed hair), full lips, perfect teeth, large breasts... and balance it all on really high heels. Yet, WE the 3rd wave are still finding that at coffee men are always a topic and sadly the longest topic discussed.
"Bitch Queen" isn't my only goal, far from it... we are really in trouble with our movement. I want to change the status quo... I want to go back to our roots, I want to relearn all that was taught and passed on to me by my mother, the 1st and the 2nd wave, the feminists that CHANGED the world and shook up the masses. I want to go back and relearn all about the beginnings. Because if we don't know our history, how can we hope to do anything but blog and complain, then when we gather our topic tapers down to the flickering candle of our love lives, lack of, or whatever the case may be... that also applies to our lesbian sisters who invariably do the same thing...
Yes, we do need to talk to our closest friends about problems in the relationship, or our poor choices, or our desire to have a partner. I don't deny that, that is an important aspect of our lives. But, why when we have the chance to go back to our roots and discuss what our predecessors did to get out the word and shake up the masses and MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN, do we use that time to talk about our relationship problems? There is a time and a place for everything. I want to be a "Bitch Queen", a liberator of other women here and abroad, and I want us to review the ERA, make the needed revisions to help another targeted minority(which is bringing us quickly into a communist, police state - finishing off what the Patriot Act started), and all they want is the same treatment extended to every one of our relatives or maybe even ourselves, in becoming American citizens. I want to be enough(know that I have done everything I can, and continue on new territory whenever any injustice pops up), and I want to educate the upcoming 4th wave or there won't be one. Let's start reading, let's go back to our roots...read! I read "To be Young was Very Heaven"...about the suffragette movement, pre-WWI, it tells us what to do, and also what not to do so that we don't divide, to learn from their mistakes and build a strong 3rd wave movement so that we can pass on a legacy as my mother did and I'm sure some of your mothers did as well. Let's build a community, a solidarity stronger than the women who came before us. We have all the tools we need in books written by women in the time of the suffragette, in the time of the 2nd wave, let's read them and learn and create a solidarity that the world has never seen. Let us use the technology we have to band together and talk about how we can MAKE OUR MARK and pass it on to the next generation so that there will be a 4th wave that has been born of the effort of our work to bond the tears in the structure of feminism as it stands today.
Lets learn to put our phones away and not text at the table when we talk, lets make groups that go over the literature of our predecessors and brain storm over how to mend the weak spots that divided both the 1st and 2nd wave without ending up talking about our love lives, let us commune using the technology at our disposal to create plans to push through the issues that were never succeeded before, let us come up with a way to condense our information and agendas and take it out to the streets, to the Internet, to and support, the grassroots publications that tell the truth without having to dumb down the information because of the publishers and the advertisers.
See how much there is to talk about other than men/our love lives, when we are lucky enough to have a group of women together! We can save our love lives for phone conversations with our best friends.
1.) "To Be Young Was Very Heaven - Women in New York Before the First World War"
Sandra L. Adickes
2.)http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/woman_suffrage/woman_suffrage.html
3.) http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/topics/women/highlights.html
4.) "Women Who Dare: Women of the Suffrage Movement"
By Evelyn Sinclair and Janice E. Ruth
5.) "With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman's Right to Vote"
by Ann Bausum
6.) "Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists"
By Jean H. Baker
7.) "Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States"
By Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick
8.) "Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869"
By Ellen Carol Dubois
9.) http://bitchmagazine.org/
There's a start... women let's utilize the time we have and make a statement, our love lives are a part of what happens when we become true women by doing the work we were commissioned to do. And then we can make the turn into "Bitch Queens". We will really have the lives we want, and everyone everyone deserves, if we don't rest on our laurels. The rest will fall into place naturally, because we will have built a structure that we and the 4th wave can smoothly lay out an action plan when something new comes down the pipe, as it will surely always do, and we can watch them find the weaknesses in our solution... smile and be proud.
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