F.W. Mason, Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia, member of the Kotahitanga (Māori Parliament) movement, Napier, New Zealand, ca. 1890.
Source: Auckland War Memorial Museum
(via always-tete)
Welcome! The purpose of this blog is to highlight the accomplishments and lives of women throughout history. Women, past and present, are too often overlooked in history books, but their stories are of every importance.
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May 27, 2012
May 27, 2012
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We’ll probably never know how many women inventors there were. That’s because in the early years of the United States, a woman could not get a patent in her own name. A patent is considered a kind of property, and until the late 1800s laws forbade women in most states from owning property or entering into legal agreements in their own names. Instead, a woman’s property would be in the name of her father or husband.
For example, many people believe that Sybilla Masters was the first American woman inventor. In 1712 she developed a new corn mill, but was denied a patent because she was a woman. Three years later the patent was filed successfully in her husband’s name.
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FactMonster.com (via stfuconservatives)
This is why we dismantle systematically.
(via meganwest)
(Source: factmonster.com, via pisumsativa)
May 23, 2012
May 22, 2012
“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best. ” -Frida Kahlo
(Source: pinterest.com, via always-tete)
May 22, 2012
Race, celebrity, gender, and rape culture: What we refuse to see
Last year, this incident occurred, we’ve recently heard of Alec Baldwin being stalked by a woman, and most people are familiar with Rebecca Schaeffer’s murder by a stalker-fan, or Paula Abdul’s stalker committing suicide.
Last week, Wil Smith was physically accosted by a journalist while promoting MiBIII, and he pushed the reporter away and objected vehemently to the fact that the reporter tried to kiss him on the mouth.
Some people are painting this as an incident of violent homophobia. They’re full of it.
The reporter (who allegedly does this as part of his schtick with people he interviews) committed sexual assault.
Yes, you heard me correctly. If you touch someone without their permission, as Wil Wheaton experienced last year, that’s assault. If you touch someone in a sexual manner without their permission, that’s sexual assault. It could be misdemeanor level, but it is still assault.
Celebrity is possibly the closest analogue that blurs the lines of race and gender, and approximates the level of entitlement society feels about women’s choices, bodies, and sexuality, all the time. The invasive glare of the spotlight and the way people demand access to those who are famous, is comparable to the objectification women are subjected to on a daily basis.
A few years back, Adrian Brody won the Oscar for The Pianist. Before he made his speech, he sexually assaulted Halle Berry, who was present the award, by grabbing her and aggressively kissing her. I do not think this was intentional, but I objectively speaking: it’s what happened. Google it and watch the video. Look at HER face, listen to what he said directly after. There is a further entitlement when it comes to race. So that incident was brushed off, (and no, I don’t think Brody is necessarily a horrible person, just displaying behavior symptomatic of our cultural problems) and when the same type of thing happens to Will Smith, he’s made out to be the villain.
If Denzel Washington did that to, say… Julia Roberts, or if Zachary Quinto did it to Bruce Willis… can you imagine the way all hell would break loose?
But because these two particular incidents were against actors of color, they are not being described as what they are: assault.
If someone grabbed someone on the street and kissed them, no preamble, we would clearly understand the events as assault, but when you bring fame into it, there is a sense of entitlement. Bring race and gender into it for extra helpings of cultural entitlement, and when someone reacts in a perfectly normal way, i.e., objecting loudly, calling out the person on their behavior, and physically moving them perpetrator out of their physical space, well: Will Smith is suddenly a violent homophobe.
Nobody has the right to touch another person without their permission, kiss another person without their permission (implicit or explicit) have sex with them without their permission, or to invade their privacy.
We have to stop acting like anyone’s body is public property, regardless of gender, race, orientation, color, or fame.
We are entitled to nothing from another person, except what they choose to give. Just because someone is gracious enough not to press charges, doesn’t mean an assault didn’t happen.
Here endeth the lesson.
May 21, 2012
Emily Carr, a Canadian painter. She’s not exactly my history ‘crush’, but she’s beautiful and rather badass. She was kicked out of ‘Ladies Art Club’ for cursing and smoking and was associated with the Group of Seven, not only that but she also kept multiple pets, including a monkey. She painted the Canadian landscape and First Nations traditions, because she feared they would soon disappear.
She’s from BC, and she’s fabulous. The funny thing is that in school we’re taught she’s a worldwide famous artist, associate of the also renowned Group of Seven. I’m pretty sure no one outside of Canada knows the difference between the Group of Seven and the Famous Five.
May 18, 2012
May 17, 2012
AN EXAMPLE OF AFRICAN MEDICAL SCIENCE. ILLUSTRATION OF AFRICAN DOCTORS IN 19TH CENTURY (1879) KAHARA,UGANDA PERFORMING A CAESARIAN SECTION. THIS OPERATION WAS UNKNOWN IN EUROPE AT THE TIME.
Africans were performing many advanced medical procedures long before they had been conceived in Europe this is just one of many examples.
The British traveler R.W. Felkin who reported this noted that the healer used banana wine to semi-intoxicate the woman and to cleanse his hands and her abdomen prior to surgery. He used a midline incision and applied cautery to minimize hemorrhaging. He massaged the uterus to make it contract but did not suture it; the abdominal wound was pinned with iron needles and dressed with a paste prepared from roots. The patient recovered well, and Felkin concluded that this technique was well-developed and had clearly been employed for a long time. Similar reports come from Rwanda, where botanical preparations were also used to anesthetize the patient and promote wound healing.
Referece: “Notes on Labour in Central Africa” published in the Edinburgh Medical Journal, volume 20, April 1884, pages 922-930.
This is fascinating. Many (white) people think that Europe was the only place making technological and medical advancements, and all the brown people in other places were just wallowing in cave man times (such as: people claming Native Americans are ‘lucky’ that Europeans came here and ‘civilized’ them). Not true, at all.
However, cesarean sections were certainly known in Europe at the time. Cutting live babies out of dead/dying mothers was a practice that dates back to the birth of Julius Caesar (allegedly the reason we call it a cesarean section, although other reports state his mother survived the birth). I’m obviously not an expert on the history of c-sections, but I would imagine that some form of c-sections were taking place in every society around the world. Successful c-sections in Europe date back to the Middle Ages. I saw an exhibit at the Royal College of Surgeons in Chicago last year, and I remember seeing paintings of doctors administering c-sections around the 1500s.
Interestingly, c-sections were more successful (ie the mother lived more often) when they were performed outside of hospitals — like in the drawing above. Before modern antibacterial technology, getting cut open in a hospital usually meant contracting a deadly infection from another patient. And according to this book from the US National Library of Medicine, in rural areas or places without hospitals, c-sections would get started sooner and the mother and fetus were less distressed, which also contributed to their higher success rate.
But, yes, this illustration is proof that advances in medicine are not unique to Western culture.
-Jess
May 16, 2012
On May 15, 1869, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, decades later this delegation of women had a meeting with President Wilson.
This delegation of officers of the National American Woman Suffrage Association received from President Wilson a memorial to the French women in which he advocates the federal woman suffrage amendment. The picture was made on steps leading to executive offices of the White House. Front row, left to right: Mrs. Wood Park, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, Mrs. Helen H. Gardner: second row, Miss Rose Young, Mrs. George Bass, and Miss Ruth White.
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
May 16, 2012
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