Femagination - The Feminist Imagination Blog

Friday Videos: Uncommon Women and Others: A Play By Wendy Wasserstein

Ellen Keim — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:04:03 +0000

Wendy Wasserstein

Playwright Wendy Wasserstein (1950-2006) was, above all, a social historian. Balancing drama and comedy to write about social class in Manhattan and about Jewish-American identity, she drew inspiration from Chekhov and the comedies of S. Behrman, Moss Hart, and Noel Coward. The ideas of Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, and Susan Faludi also informed Wasserstein’s work, which chronicles the rise and the eventual collapse of both feminism and liberalism between the late 1960s and the earliest years of the 21st century. (From product review for Reading the Plays of Wendy Wasserstein.)

Wasserstein’s first production of note was Uncommon Women and Others (her graduate thesis at Yale), a play which reflected her experiences as a student at, and an alumna of, Mount Holyoke College. A full version of the play was produced in 1977 off-Broadway with Glenn Close, Jill Eikenberry, and Swoosie Kurtz playing the lead roles. The play was subsequently produced for PBS with Meryl Streep replacing Close.

The following videos are of the PBS production. It’s dated and overacted, but valuable nonetheless for its commentary on a society feeling the effects of the feminist movement, both before, during and after it.

Title: Uncommon Women & Others 1/10
Runtime: 8:35

Title: Uncommon Women & Others 2/10
Runtime: 8:21

Title: Uncommon Women & Others 3/10
Runtime: 9:12

Title: Uncommon Women & Others 4/10
Runtime: 8:45

Title: Uncommon Women & Others 5/10
Runtime: 8:09

Title: Uncommon Women & Others 6/10
Runtime: 8:28

Title: Uncommon Women & Others 7/10
Runtime: 8:34

Title: Uncommon Women & Others 8/10
Runtime: 10:07

Title: Uncommon Women & Others 9/10
Runtime: 8:17

Title: Uncommon Women & Others 10/10
Runtime: 8:29

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Thursday Thoughts: Women In the Mosque

Ellen Keim — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:45:18 +0000

Last Thursday I wrote a post called “Muslim Feminism: Women at Prayer.” It was about a group of Muslim women who dared to pray in the men’s section (which is really the main hall of the mosque and should be open to every Muslim) as a sort of protest. Today I found an insightful article on altmuslimah which gives more background on the “pray-in.” I’ve recently had the privilege of getting to know Fatima Thompson, one of the women who participated in and who is interviewed about the protest. She is quoted as saying:

“The Greensboro Four broke established, non-constitutional, yet explicit rules to break down the barrier of the implicit idea that blacks weren’t as privileged as whites…. and this is what we are doing with women’s rights in the mosque,” Thompson explained. “It’s implicit in the space available to women that they aren’t deserving of the same privileges as men in the mosque. It’s in the mindset.”

She added: ”Women need to be communicated with when designing mosques. Women are clearly cut off from being part of that community when they are corralled into areas that cut them off from congregational prayer.”

In the first woman-designed mosque in the world (in Istanbul), women are still separated from the men on a balustrade above the main hall (which is still reserved for the men), but the leading architect, Zeynep Fadillioglu, vows to make their area every bit as beautiful as the men’s. Too often, the women’s section is a dingy, neglected room behind a partition from which the women can’t even see and often can’t hear what is going on in the main hall. So, although there is still a separate space for women, it is integrated more fully into the mosque’s design. (For pictures of and more information about this mosque, go here.)

I was talking to a Muslim man last night to whom I confessed that I’ve only been to a mosque twice. He teased me, “Once women find out that they are not obligated to go to the mosque for jumaa (Friday) prayer, they stop going at all.” I couldn’t help but think that it might be because they dislike the experience they have when they do go. If Muslim men truly cared about the spiritual lives of Muslim women, you would think that they would want to do anything possible to make their mosque experience as uplifting as it is for the men.

Insha’allah. (God willing.)

Read this article by the religion reporter for the Statesman, Joshunda Sanders, about her visit to a mosque.

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Antoinette Brown: Feminist Foremother

Ellen Keim — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:25:55 +0000

It is hard for us today to imagine a time when women were denied leadership positions, in religion and in society. One woman who did as much as any to break down the barriers was Antoinette Brown (1825-1921), who was the first woman to be ordained as a minister in the United States, and who led a long and active life as a reformer, public speaker and writer. Despite her achievements, she is not as well known as her peers, such as Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Antoinette Brown

Brown joined the Congregational Church when she was nine and often preached in the church in her youth. Starting at the age of sixteen she taught school in order to earn her tuition t0 the relatively new Oberlin College* in Ohio where she completed her Bachelor’s degree in 1847. She then approached the school with a request to join its theological course with the goal of becoming a minister. The administration, which was initially opposed to any woman receiving any kind of formal education in theology, finally agreed to allow her to enroll, with one stipulation: she would never receive any formal recognition of her ministry.

Without a preacher’s license she was forced to employ public speaking and writing as ways to spread her views on the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, temperance and women’s suffrage. She spoke in 1850 at the first National Women’s Rights Convention, as well as at many of the annual Conventions thereafter. She wrote for Frederick Douglass‘ The North Star (an abolitionist newspaper) and exhibited the beginnings of a feminist theology in her essay on St. Paul which was published in the Oberlin Quarterly Review.

She was finally given a license to preach by the Congregationalist Church in 1851 and a position as a church rector the following year. In 1856, despite her original conviction that it would be better to stay single, she married Samuel C. Blackwell (whose brother, Henry, married Lucy Stone, another women’s rights activist and friend of Brown’s). In 1857, she left the ministry to resume her career as an orator and reformer.

While many women’s rights activists opposed religion on the basis that it oppressed women, Brown believed that women’s active participation in religion could serve to further their status in society. While she believed that the inherent differences between men and women limited men’s effectiveness in representing women in politics she also felt that suffrage would have little positive impact for women unless it was coupled with tangible leadership opportunities. Brown also split from other reformers with her opposition to divorce. [Wikipedia]

Eventually her domestic responsibilities caused her to curtail her speaking engagements and she began to concentrate on her writing. Despite having seven children (two of whom died in infancy), she wrote extensively on theology, science and philosophy. She dared to criticize the theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer even though she considered them to be the most influential men of her day. One of her books, The Sexes Throughout Nature was based on her argument that evolution resulted in two sexes that were different but equal.

In 1869, Brown and Stone separated from other preeminent women’s rights activists to form the American Woman Suffrage Association over their support of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. (The mainstream position was to oppose it because it gave black men but not women–of any race–the right to vote.) In 1873, she founded the Association for the Advancement of Women in an attempt to address women’s issues that similar organizations ignored.

In 1878 she joined the Unitarian church and applied to the American Unitarian Association to be a minister. That same year Oberlin College awarded her an honorary Master’s Degree. (Thirty years later the college also awarded her an honorary Doctoral degree.) By this time she had resumed her career giving public lectures.

In her later years

Brown lived long enough to see the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to vote, the only participant of the 1850 Women’s Rights Convention to do so. She died the following year at the age of 96.

Her books include:

Studies in General Science. New York: G.P. Putnam and Son, 1869.
The Sexes Throughout Nature. New York: G.P. Putnam and Son, 1875.
The Physical Basis of Immortality. New York: G.P. Putnam and Son, 1876.
The Philosophy of Individuality. New York: G.P. Putnam and Son.
The Making of the Universe. Boston, Massachusetts: The Gorham press, 1914.
The Social Side of Mind and Action. New York: The Neale Publishing COmpany, 1915.
The Island Neighbors. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1871. (Novel)
Sea Drift. New York: J.T. White & Co., 1902. (Poetry)

It’s About Time!

Ellen Keim — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:32:27 +0000

WWII Women Aviators Receive Congressional Medals

(Adapted from Feminist Majority Foundation’s Feminist News)

Amy Johnson was the first woman to fly from Britain to Australia (1930)

The women who flew US military aircraft during World War II were awarded with Congressional Gold Medals on March 10, 2010. The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest honor Congress can give civilians, according to the Associated Press.

The Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, was formed in 1942 despite the initial hesitation of Army Air Corps Chief Lieutenant General Henry “Hap” Arnold to let women fly, according to the Air Force Times. There were a total of 1,102 women aviators during WWII, and 38 of them lost their lives during the war. About 130 of the 300 women WASPs alive today will attend the medal ceremony.

WASP pilots were given permission to fly domestic aircraft in order to free male aviators to fly overseas. These women test-flew every aircraft of the time, reported the Air Force Times, including the B-26 bomber, nicknamed the “Widowmaker.”

Despite their efforts, WWII women aviators did not receive any military benefits or honors. The WASP was disbanded in December 1944 and the records were kept classified. However, with the help of former Lieutenant General Arnold’s son, Colonel Bruce Arnold, and former Senator Barry Goldwater (AZ-D), Congress eventually recognized WASP pilots as veterans in the 1970s. According to the Air Force Times, Deanie Bishop Parrish, one of the original women aviators, and her daughter Nancy, interviewed 110 former WASP pilots during the 1990s, resulting in “Fly Girls of World War II,” an exhibit currently on display at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Media Resources: Air Force Times 2/23/10; Associated Press 3/10/10

Also read “The Women Who Dared the Skies” about women aviators before WWII. (See picture of one of them at right.)

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Women in the Military

Christine de Pizan: Early Feminist Writer and Historian

Ellen Keim — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 11:12:52 +0000

For Women’s History Month I’m going to include some brief histories of famous women you may not have heard of. The first of these is Christine de Pizan.

Christine de Pizan lecturing to a group of men.

Christine de Pizan has been called Europe’s first professional woman writer. Born in 1365, married at 15 and widowed at 24, she turned to writing to support her mother, niece and three young children. Uncommonly well-educated for a woman of her day, she wrote extensively about love and chivalry, mythology and legends, peace, history and the misogyny of male authors who she felt denigrated women in their writings.

She began her writing career composing love ballads for wealthy patrons in the court of Charles V of France, writing over 300 in a span of 20 years. She also wrote and became well-known for her poetry. But she gained prominence at the turn of the century when she dared to criticize the author of the thirteenth-century poem, “The Romance of the Rose,” Jean de Meun, for what she considered to be the slander of women. She specifically objected to his depiction of women as nothing more than seductresses.

From there she moved on to her most successful literary works, The Book of the City of Ladies and The Book of the Three Virtues (or The Treasure of the City of Ladies). In them she attempted to show the importance of women’s past contributions to society and to teach women how to develop qualities that could help to counteract the problem of misogyny. Her final work, Tale of Joan of Arc, is valued by historians because it is the only record of Joan of Arc besides the documents of her trial.

Why Women’s History Is Often Ignored

Ellen Keim — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:06:51 +0000

At the end of my March 1st post, “Why Do We Need a Women’s History Month?“, I wrote:

“Keep your eyes and your ears open during March and you just might learn something you didn’t even know you didn’t know about the most influential group of people on earth.”

What did I mean by that? I meant that most people think they know all there is to know about women’s history and so they tend to ignore anyone who tries to teach them anything new about it. But there is always something new to learn about what women have done in the world. So why isn’t more attention paid to it?

There are two schools of thought which lead to the ignoring of women’s history:

1) People don’t believe that women are capable of great things, or at least of great things in the outside world (which is also considered to be the man’s world); and

2) People (especially men) feel threatened by accomplished women and so seek to downplay their contributions.

The first school is the more laughable, but it’s a mistake to not take it seriously. There really are people out there who don’t think women have what it takes to be a doctor, president, CEO, engineer, etc. They believe that their minds are too illogical, their emotions too unstable and their priorities skewed toward inconsequential things (children, marriage, the home). And, sadly, it is not only men who think this way. Plenty of women limit their choices in life because they, too, believe that they don’t have what it takes to compete in a “man’s” world.

This kind of self-sabotage can be subtle. A woman may go after a career, but only one she feels is appropriate for a woman (nurse instead of doctor, flight attendant instead of pilot, secretary instead of salesperson, and so on). But what is even worse, and not that uncommon, is when a girl grows up thinking that she can’t have a career at all. When she sees her options as limited to the home merely because she is female.

The second school of thought is where the worst excesses of patriarchy come from. The bottom line of this school is that women must be kept in their places. It is all about power and control. Whoever has power wants to keep it, and the best way to do that is to control those who might usurp it. (See my post, “Under His Thumb: Men’s Attempts to Control Women.”)

Some people pooh-pooh the whole idea of the patriarchy because they refuse to believe that men systematically choose to keep women down. While it is true that some men deliberately and consciously seek to do so, subconscious motivations need to be examined as well. I think a lot of the worst examples of patriarchal behavior (refusing to acknowledge that a woman might be as good as or , God forbid, better than you are, controlling the money, making all the decisions, committing violence against women) come from deep-seated insecurities. If you lack self-confidence, the fastest way to gain some is to put someone down who you perceive as lesser than you are. Which also means that you have to perpetrate the notion that that person is indeed lesser.

That’s why it’s so critical for feminists to look after not only the self-esteem of women, but also the self-esteem of men. We need to raise our girls and boys to feel good about themselves for the right reasons: because they are kind and compassionate, generous and loving, tolerant and fair.

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Friday Videos: Is This Freedom?

Ellen Keim — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:11:22 +0000

Here is a Spanish short film by Xavi Sala about the discrimination young Muslim women face in a so-called “free” Europe where everything but religion is tolerated in the name of freedom.

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Muslim Feminism: Women At Prayer

Ellen Keim — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:15:00 +0000

Photo by Reuters

The main question I’ve been asked since I became a Muslim has been, “How do you reconcile being a Muslim with being a feminist?” The answer is complex and I won’t go into all of it today. But one part of the answer is that any woman can be a feminist, if being one means that you want to see women find self-fulfillment on whatever path they choose to travel. That doesn’t mean that every journey is easy. Certainly if you come from a culture where women have been traditionally marginalized and you want to continue to be a part of that culture, you’re going to find the going tough. Does that mean that you shouldn’t try? No, but it might mean that you have to weigh your options carefully and be sure of your convictions before you proceed.

The main question I've been asked since I became a Muslim has been, "How do you reconcile being a Muslim with being a feminist?"

I decided to write about this today because of an article by Tracy Clark-Flory I ran across on Salon.com in its Broadsheet department: “Muslims protest sexism with prayer.” In it Clark-Flory recounts the story of Muslim women who dared to pray on the main floor of a mosque in Washington, D.C. Why is that a big deal? For one thing, they were praying with the men and not behind a partition in an area reserved for women. For another thing, they risked arrest to do so. I would say that this is Muslim feminism in action, whether or not these women would identify themselves as feminists.

Segregation during prayer

What is my take on their actions? While I haven’t prayed often in a mosque (yet), when I have, I’ve been relegated to the women’s room along with the other women. The main negative feeling I had was irritation, because it was sometimes hard to hear what was being said on the main floor (which of course is the men’s area) and as a result, it was also hard to feel that I was a part of what was going on, which after all, is supposed to be a communal act of prayer. At the same time, it didn’t bother me all that much because of the feeling of sisterhood I had from being there with the other women. Not to mention that I was more intent on getting my own prayers right than on where I was praying.

Women are too noisy

One Muslim man once told me that women make too much noise during prayer and that’s one reason why men don’t want them praying in the same room. But maybe women tend to be noisy because they don’t take what they’re doing as seriously as the men do, exactly because the men don’t take what the women do as seriously. What does it really matter if the women make a little noise if they’re not even supposed to be there? (There are a few mosques that don’t allow women to even enter the building.) Then there is the problem of children who are of course with the women (at least until the boys are considered old enough to pray with the men). Children tend to be noisy, too, but the men don’t have to and don’t want to deal with that. They don’t want anything to distract them from their prayers.

Women are distractions

Women are also considered to be distractions because they might cause the men to think impure thoughts when they’re supposed to be praying. I get that. Women can be distracted by men as well. If the goal is total concentration, then there is something to be said for the separation of the sexes during prayer. Having said that, I don’t see why adults can’t be trusted to try harder to keep their minds on Allah instead of on each other. Then again, one of the things that attracted me to Islam is that it is so pragmatic about human nature. We do tend to get distracted, pretty easily as a matter of fact. So why make it harder for us to concentrate?

I’m still a feminist, so now I’m a Muslim feminist. That doesn’t mean that I advocate crashing the men’s prayers. I don’t think at all badly of women who sincerely feel that their spiritual lives are made fuller by being able to pray in the main hall of the mosque. I may be one of them someday. But for now I’m content to follow my path to spiritual fulfillment. And to concentrate on my prayers, without distractions.

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