Thursday, March 08, 2007
... on how it is and how it could be
Happy International Women's Day! Give your mom a kiss from me. ( Except you, George Bush)
Some words on women:
"Draw near, woman, and hear what I have to say. Turn your curiousity for once towards useful objects, and consider the advantages which nature gave you and which society ravished away. Come and learn how you were born the companion of man and became his slave; how you grew to like the condition and think it natural; and finally how the long habituation of slavery so degraded you that you preferred its sapping but convenient vices to the more difficults virtues of freedom and repute." (Choderlos de Laclos, 'On the Education of Women')
by that mad-hat (but once sharply armed with pen and wit) Germaine Greer:
"It is an essential part of our conceptual apparatus that the sexes are a polarity, and a dichotomy in nature. Actually that is quite false."
"Love-making has become another male skill, of which women are the judges ... The orgies feared by the Puritans have not materialized on every street corner, although more girls permit more (joyless) liberties than they might have done before."
"The men of our civilisation have stripped themselves of the fineries of earth so that they might work more freely to plunder the universe for treasures to deck my lady in. New raw materials, new machines, are all brought into her service. My lady must therefore be the chief spender as well as the chief symbol of spending ability and monetary success."
"The stereotype is the Eternal Feminine. She is the Sexual Object sought by all men, and by all women. She is of neither sex, so she herself has no sex at all. Her value is solely attested by the demand she excites in others."
And finally, Ani Difranco:
Some words on women:
"Draw near, woman, and hear what I have to say. Turn your curiousity for once towards useful objects, and consider the advantages which nature gave you and which society ravished away. Come and learn how you were born the companion of man and became his slave; how you grew to like the condition and think it natural; and finally how the long habituation of slavery so degraded you that you preferred its sapping but convenient vices to the more difficults virtues of freedom and repute." (Choderlos de Laclos, 'On the Education of Women')
by that mad-hat (but once sharply armed with pen and wit) Germaine Greer:
"It is an essential part of our conceptual apparatus that the sexes are a polarity, and a dichotomy in nature. Actually that is quite false."
"Love-making has become another male skill, of which women are the judges ... The orgies feared by the Puritans have not materialized on every street corner, although more girls permit more (joyless) liberties than they might have done before."
"The men of our civilisation have stripped themselves of the fineries of earth so that they might work more freely to plunder the universe for treasures to deck my lady in. New raw materials, new machines, are all brought into her service. My lady must therefore be the chief spender as well as the chief symbol of spending ability and monetary success."
"The stereotype is the Eternal Feminine. She is the Sexual Object sought by all men, and by all women. She is of neither sex, so she herself has no sex at all. Her value is solely attested by the demand she excites in others."
And finally, Ani Difranco:
"I was blessed with a birth and a death - I guess I'd just like some say in between."
