Sarah Jessica Parker is replacing Demi Moore as Gloria Steinem in some movie or other.
I can’t.
No. I mean, NO. I don’t even care but NOW I REALLY NOT OK.
January 2012
Mr. Vigilius
historicity-was-already-taken:
“We can only reason from what we know, and if an opportunity of acquiring knowledge hath been denied us, the inferiority of our sex cannot fairly be deduced from thence.”
Not only is Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820) one in a long line of women throughout history who have spoken out against the gender-based double standards in their respective societies, but she used these women in her writings to support the argument that women had the same intellectual capabilities as men.
Murray grew up in Gloucester Massachusetts to a family wealthy enough to be able to provide an education to their children. She was taught to read and write and had a passable understanding of French, but she was denied the opportunity to study beyond those subjects. When her brother Winthrop, who was two years her junior, was given the opportunity to study the Classics, she became aware of how society cut off the potential of women through denying them access to a full education.
In response, Murray became self-taught. She specialized in history, and devoted herself to writing on the idea that women have the same intellectual capacity as men, and that education was the key to female empowerment and success. She put forth these ideas in her 1790 essay, On the Equality of the Sexes.
Her first essays regarding gender equality were published under a male pseudonym (typically “Mr. Vigilius”) so that her words would be taken seriously by male readers. However, her landmark 1798 three volume work, The Gleaner, was published under her own name; this work dealt with such issues as philanthropy, pacifism, and gender equality, and was purchased by such people as George Washington and John Adams.
She also made vast inroads for freedom of religion in the new American republic, and for the role of women within Universalist Christianity. Her name was included in documents used to expel the Gloucester Universalists for refusing to pay taxes to the Congregational church, and that expulsion led to the first freedom of religion ruling (by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, in this instance) in the United States of America.
After her first husband died in the West Indies, Judith married John Murray, a celebrated Universalist theologian and preacher, and the first Universalist preacher in the United States. She helped him edit and publish his books, and she is considered by historians of Universalist Christianity to be the reason why women of that denomination have always had access to leadership roles.
Most fascinating about Murray, however, is her awareness of her place within history. At the age of 23, she began to create copies of all of her letters, essays, and books in order to create a historical record of herself for future researchers and historians. These copies—comprising 20 volumes in all—were discovered in 1984. They are currently held in the collections of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and are available for researchers in microfilm form. This collection of her works is one of the few surviving collections of female writings from the Early Republic period of American history.
Because of the relative newness of the discovery of her work, scholars have only recently begun to study her impact, legacy, and contributions.
Portrait (ca. 1770-1772 by John Singleton Copley) courtesy of the Terra Foundation for American Art.
“I think there’s a whole other revolution of l’écriture feminine happening on the Internet—I know that seems hyperbolic, but I really do believe it. The blog is such a fascinating, confessional, diaristic, form, that has something in common with the notebook form, Camus’ notebooks or Elizabeth Hardwick’s fictional notebook Sleepless Nights, or Montaigne’s longform essays. I’m thinking less of Marie Calloway and more the notebooking you do, or the subsubculture of writers who keep personal literary blogs that comment often on my own blog, Bhanu Kapil or Jennifer Lowe or Suzanne Scanlon. I think there is something particularly feminine about this form—also that we can publish ourselves, and that it’s uncensored except what we choose to censor, that we can be pseudonymous or develop different literary personas. This sort of blogging is part process, part performance art. And I would connect it in a lineage to girls writing in their Tumblrs, and before that Livejournals.”
—Kate Zambreno, talking to The Rejectionist (via hysteriarama)
“She did the Secretary of State job, she was a G, she held it down, she didn’t cry.”
—
Ice-T, on why Hillary Clinton will be the first female president
(via newsweek)
Last night I think I accidentally went on a date and the girl serving pronounced it nee-gra modelo and we laughed and laughed and then I found out my “date” is 12 years older than me of fucking course
My point.
I don’t know why it still surprises me when I meet and get to know a guy who seems geeky and cute and odd and then I look on his facebook page and there are 20 flirty posts from other women who have discovered the same thing. I mean it makes sense, but it reminds me of the time the hypnotherapist explained to me that she couldn’t actually prevent me from hoping for things.
From our show in Philly tonight:
- Bro: Why don'tcha talk about FOOTBALL?!
- Me: Well let's talk about my foot in your balls and we have a deal.
- Me: Fucker.
