Today we look at women who fought tyranny with their voices and their love.
I was convinced I’d included this article before, although vigorous searching of my sent items indicates that I have not. Enjoy this article on the life, works and family of children’s author Judith Kerr. As the pullquote indicates, this is a bleaker read that you might imagine, so maybe have a tea or hug someone first.
Humour is central to Kerr's world, though it comes shadowed by an awareness that reality is often not funny at all. No sooner had Alfred Kerr left the country than he was sacked from his job and his books were publicly burned. He found himself without a home, an income or a language he could comfortably write in. Switzerland was unwilling to provoke Hitler's displeasure by harbouring refugees, so the family moved on to Paris where they survived on money raised by selling their books.
Perhaps you already know the story of the Rosenstraße protests in Berlin, in which women protested – and successfully freed – their husbands in detention centres in Nazi Germany. It’s not only reminder that our actions and our love can bring change, it’s also a reminder that we can do more by extending our love beyond the point we had previously thought possible; not only to include more people but also to include more action. Just like that poster used to say.
The women who had gathered by the hundreds at the gate of the improvised detention center began to call out together in a chorus, "Give us our husbands back." They held their protest day and night for a week, as the crowd grew larger day by day. On different occasions the armed guards between the women and the building imprisoning their loved ones barked a command: "Clear the street or we'll shoot!" This sent the women scrambling pell-mell into the alleys and courtyards in the area. But within minutes they began streaming out again, inexorably drawn to their loved ones. Again and again they were scattered, and again and again they advanced, massed together, and called for their husbands, who heard them and took hope.
This recent Economist obituary of Trinh Thi Ngo, a broadcaster during the Vietnam war, caught my attention a couple of weeks ago, and in the last few days has been on my mind more vividly; this image of the tinny, crackly voice telling the truth to and never knowing who was going to accept or act on it:
“Are you confused? Nothing is more confused than to be ordered into a war to die or be maimed for life without the faintest idea of what’s going on. You know your government has abandoned you. They have ordered you to die. Don’t trust them. They lied to you.”
Halloween might be well behind us, but as I am going to watch scary movies tonight, I think we are still within range. The subject line is a real “does what is says on the tin” one today.
Are you aware of Maria Goeppert Mayer? She was the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics! She loved her subject and she looked great in a bat costume.
Shortly before she had met Joseph Edward Mayer, an American Rockefeller fellow working with James Franck. In 1930 she went with him to the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. This was the time of the depression, and no university would think of employing the wife of a professor. But she kept working, just for the fun of doing physics.
I know that you are aware of Susan Sontag, and long time subscribers will be aware of Susan Sontag in a bear suit. Are you okay if from now on every fem Friday Halloween is celebrated with this image? As it is credited to Annie Leibowitz it is an undisputed classic. Enjoy, also, this article on Susan Sontag and literature:
Returning to the writer’s crucial task of selecting what story to tell from among all the stories that could be told, Sontag points to literature’s essential allure — the comfort of appeasing our anxiety about life’s infinite possibility, about all the roads not taken and all the immensities not imagined that could have led to a better destination than our present one.
Welcome to a Fem Friday about women and communications! Mainly a history related one but I hope you find it interesting as you think about how we communicate today.
We start with Hedy Lamar, star of the ‘golden age’ of movies and telco pioneer. I love how being secretive is baked into her invention, and it makes me think about the power of quiet communication and of quiet connection, to win small wars as well as big ones.
She and her friend, the composer George Antheil, received a patent for an idea of a radio signaling device, or "Secret Communications System," which was a means of changing radio frequencies to keep enemies from decoding messages. Originally designed to defeat the Nazis, the system became an important step in the development of technology to maintain the security of both military communications and cellular phones.
Speaking of quiet communication, please enjoy this Atlantic article about the power – and the familiarity – of postcards to spread thoughts and ideas around women’s suffrage.
[I]t was common for people to display albums filled with postcards in their homes in the early 20th century. So it made sense that postcards both supporting and opposing the women’s vote were ubiquitous, especially between 1890 and 1915 in the United States. About 4,500 different suffrage-themed postcards were designed during that time, she wrote.
And here’s more on the postcards! A longer essay and another interesting one:
The postcard industry was technologically and artistically prepared to play a part in the 1908 presidential election, with postcards reaching the height of their popularity during that campaign. Although it would be impossible to quantify their direct effect on the election, postcards “offer a vivid chronicle of American political values and tastes.”
Enjoy some stories about women being on other women’s teams.
As you know, I love stories about female friendship, and MariNaomi has written a memoir in comics form about her complicated on-off relationship with a childhood friend. Really hitting a lot of my KPIs here. She also – this is quite frightening – asked that friend for permission and collaborated with her, to an extent, on the project:
I asked Mirabai’s permission. She knew I wasn’t going to write a book that was just about how great she is. I try to see and consider all sides when I tell a story, though ultimately I am telling my own side of things. Of course, my request made her a bit nervous (was I going to expose all her secrets? Make her out to be a terrible person?), but I tried to calm her fears by showing her the comics as I made them. […] To Mirabai’s credit, although she noted that not all the events in my book played out as she remembered, she didn’t insist I change anything.
On to more formal teams, Petra Herrera was a hero of the Mexican revolution who made her own all-women fighting brigade when she did not get a deserved promotion. Obviously a proportionate response, so I hope you enjoy reading her story – the way it is written is a bit grating but she doesn’t get a lot of coverage on the internet so I’m taking what I can get here. The art notes are a good read, though:
Her crowning achievement was to sack the city of Torreon, which […] gave Pancho Villa access to heavy artillery, a half million rounds of ammunition, armored rail cars, the works. And yet, Herrera […] received no promotion to general afterwards. In response, Herrera said “I’m out.” She left Villa’s forces and made her own — an independent all-female brigade. By the end of the war, it was estimated to comprise around 300-400 women, down from (possibly wild) estimates of 1,000 at its peak. She looked after her women like a mama bear armed to the teeth. She wouldn’t let men sleep in her camp, and enforced that rule by staying up late and using any wayward male soldier that tried to get in as target practice.
Another late one! Thank you for the stellar work on fem Friday for the last two weeks Saxey. I am off holiday and not fully in the swing of things, I hope you enjoy these articles though.
Here’s a long article about a Velva Darling, newspaper columnist of the 1920s, who built a career on (a) pretending to be young all the time and (b) writing a column that sounds really quite fun:
She could take a stupid problem (men’s concerns about women’s skirts), frame it in the stupidest way possible (“Are Girls’ Knees Immoral?”), and spin gold, beginning by pointing out how odd it is that people can be scandalized by women’s knees on the street but not much more flesh on a beach, and then concluding, “It is always the half-hidden, half-exposed things which cause catastrophe. In long skirts, a girl’s knees are not dangerous. Entirely without skirts they are equally as unimportant and as easily taken for granted. But with half a skirt—half-hidden and half-revealed—they are dynamite. And this applies not only to skirts but to every situation and truth and activity in human life. It is always uncertainty which does by far the greatest damage.”
DID YOU KNOW that the patron saint of the nervous, emotionally disturbed, mentally ill is St Dymphna? She had a short life but a dramatic one:
One tradition states that once settled in Geel, St. Dymphna built a hospice for the poor and sick of the region. However, it was through the use of her wealth that her father would eventually ascertain her whereabouts, as some of the coins used enabled her father to trace them to Belgium. Damon sent his agents to pursue his daughter and her companions. When their hiding place was discovered, Damon travelled to Geel to recover his daughter. Damon ordered his soldiers to kill Father Gerebernus and tried to force Dymphna to return with him to Ireland, but she resisted. Furious, Damon drew his sword and struck off his daughter's head.
Saxey again, offering very little coherence, but many wonders, this Friday!
First, a library founded by a woman is rebuilt by a woman. I'm made very weepy by destroyed libraries, so this is a treat.
Growing up in Fez, Chaouni would often visit her great-uncle’s workshop at the coppersmiths’ quarter just a stone’s throw away from the library, and would be confronted by its immense closed door at the entrance, and wonder what lay beyond. Once she was in charge of restoring it, she wanted to do more than just fix the broken tiles. “It has to continue to live,” she says.
Secondly, Dapper Q (a website dubbed "GQ for the unconventionally masculine”) releases an annual list of dapper types which is a feast for the eyes and a strong temptation for the dapper shopper. I like this collection in part because I doubt Susan Calman (the diminutive Scots comic) often appears in fashion lists right next to Kristen Stewart (35 and 36).
Individuals on the 2013, 2014, and 2015 lists were not eligible for the 2016 list. Yes, Ellen DeGeneres is stylish… year after year…after year. But, we wanted to reserve room for other people in our community.
Finally, a little historical science fiction from Margaret Cavendish, who sent her protagonist into an alternate universe:
The people of the Blazing World, as her universe was called, came in colors ranging from green to scarlet, and had what we might now call alien technology. Cavendish writes that “though they had no knowledge of the Load-stone, or Needle or pendulous Watches,” Blazing World inhabitants were able to measure the depth of the sea from afar, technology that wouldn’t be invented until nearly 250 years after the book came out.
Hello! Saxey here, with three relationships and three different kinds of work.
There's a new biography of writer Shirley Jackson (by Ruth Franklin), and this article pulls from it a fascinating thread about money and relationships. The relationship I'm really rooting for is the one between Shirley Jackson and her literary agent:
Jackson’s ambition was to be paid adequately for her work — referring to publisher Robert Giroux, she asked Baumgarten [her agent], “What is the biggest advance that yacht-owning pirate ever gave to any writer in his life? Because I want to top it by fifty cents.”
If that account of Jackson's marriage made you melancholy, you may prefer the productive partnership of Beatrice and Sydney Webb, who supported each other's social research and campaigning (and founded the institution I now work in).
Beatrice’s initial diary comments were not complimentary, writing on 26 April 1890: “…his tiny tadpole body, unhealthy skin, cockney pronunciation, poverty, are all against him”.
But Sidney was smitten and sought out Beatrice’s company and advice on his work with the Fabian Society. In May Beatrice travelled to Glasgow for a Co-operative Conference: “I in one of the two comfortable seats of the carriage with Sidney Webb squatted on a portmanteau by my side, and relays of working men friends lying at full length at my feet, discussing earnestly Trade Unions, Co-operation and Socialism.”
Finally, I've been eavesdropping on the world of Christian relationship advice books. A teen idol of pre-marital purity (Joshua Harris) has been recently rethinking his philosophy, and there's a Slate piece on that here, but reading around that news led me to another article which won my heart. Our author is briefly tempted by a fusion of Disney princess-hood and popular theology, but opts for a bracing combination of hope and hard work:
It was, I think, God's firm but kind reminder of the reality I was living in. In that mirror I saw who I really was -- a fallen image-bearer of God in a room full of other fallen image-bearers, no better or worse or more worthy of love than any of them. The world did not need my beauty -- in that moment, it needed me to throw away my coffee cup so someone else could relax with a book and hot chocolate at my table for a while.
As you know, I try to steer away from topical matter, and today steers dangerously close so please bear with me. You know what though – let’s start with a medieval queen! They’re always good. How about Theophanu, who ruled the Roman empire in one way or another for nearly three decades and seemed to have a good lifestyle:
The Benedictine chronicler Alpert of Metz describes Theophanu as being an unpleasant and talkative woman. Theophanu was also criticized for her decadence, which manifested in her bathing once a day and introducing luxurious garments and jewelry into Germany. She is credited with introducing the fork to Western Europe - chronographers mention the astonishment she caused when she "used a golden double prong to bring food to her mouth" instead of using her hands as was the norm."
Lots of interesting articles about how tabloid news gets made this week. Here are two of them.
Loved this article on how Angelina Jolie controls media narratives:
Jolie had savvy and understood the power of the image. Instead of addressing the scandal head-on, she simply changed the conversation to human rights, the suffering of refugees, the need for education for young girls. And she did so in a distinctly old-fashioned way: in press photos, in speeches that had nothing to do with her own love life, in trips to areas of the world stricken by tragedy. She stymied the publicity by dressing her children in the same clothes for multiple days, thus driving down the price of photos. She ran a perfect publicity game by seeming like she wasn’t playing one at all.
This article on the paparazzi has lots of things I sort-of knew, that it’s still interesting to see written down:
There is an unspoken deal between Swift and paparazzi, and her bodyguards make it clear. If we act professionally and listen to their instructions, then she will give it up and everyone gets what they want. We get nice pictures, and she looks great in the magazines. She takes an entirely different approach to paparazzi than most celebrities do. It's all about business for her. Every time she steps outside is a new opportunity for her to look good in the magazines. Certain celebrities, like Taylor, not only accept that paparazzi are a part of the business, but they actually go out of their way to use us as a tool for publicity.
I’ve started running again! In practical terms this means that I spend 20 minutes per day wondering if my knees are “going”, if I will ever breathe again, etc, and my other 940 waking minutes thinking “I’m going to be doing ultra marathons soon. Definitely.” That’s one of the reasons why I was so encouraged to read this article on how great women are at extreme endurance sports, particularly swimming:
The elite men are still faster than the elite women. But at the amateur level? The middle-of-the-pack women are faster than the middle-of-the-pack men. That’s true even for the English Channel, Munatones said. “That was the first one I did, the English Channel,” he told me. “It was the easiest to compile, with 135 years of history.” (He consulted with a statistician for his pet project.) “The average female time was 33 minutes faster than the average male time,” he continued. “The average male time — that’s every successful English Channel swimmer — was a little over 13 hours. That means that the average woman finished over one mile faster than the average man.”
This article also led me to the very very hardcore ultra swimmer Lynne Cox, the subject of the following quotation:
"We were able to confirm that she can maintain stable body temperature with her head out of the water and in water temperatures as low as 44 Fahrenheit [i.e. 6]," he said. "We've got one other person that we know can do that. He was an Icelander who swam ashore from an overturned boat."
Kind of a mixed bag today, although these are two stories about work and what work does for women and society. I really enjoyed reading both of these and I hope you do too.
Dating! Work disintermediated the process of meeting a nice boy or girl to step out with:
The first time you have this cultural form that I call dating — young people going out and meeting one another in public spaces — that only starts when women start taking paid work outside the home. Dating is very much a working class women’s invention because they were the first ones to do it. Once I figured that out, I thought that dating as a theater to examine gender roles seemed more fruitful than just giving my theory of, “What’s the deal with men my age?”
Science! I will never miss an opportunity to send a link about the women of science:
Black and female, dozens had worked at the space agency as mathematicians, often under Jim Crow laws, calculating crucial trajectories for rockets while being segregated from their white counterparts. For decades, as the space race made heroes out of lantern-jawed astronauts, the stories of those women went largely untold. […] Ms. Shetterly reminded Mrs. Johnson of her persistence in the late 1950s, when she successfully pressed her supervisor into admitting her into traditionally all-male meetings. “You took matters in your own hands,” Ms. Shetterly said. “For other women, it was a revelation.”
PS it's been ages since I featured a saint in this newsletter. Do you have a favourite woman saint? Is there a notable woman saint you would like me to write about? Reply to this email if yes! I would love to hear from you.
Shortly before she had met Joseph Edward Mayer, an American Rockefeller fellow working with James Franck. In 1930 she went with him to the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. This was the time of the depression, and no university would think of employing the wife of a professor. But she kept working, just for the fun of doing physics.
Returning to the writer’s crucial task of selecting what story to tell from among all the stories that could be told, Sontag points to literature’s essential allure — the comfort of appeasing our anxiety about life’s infinite possibility, about all the roads not taken and all the immensities not imagined that could have led to a better destination than our present one.
[I]t was common for people to display albums filled with postcards in their homes in the early 20th century. So it made sense that postcards both supporting and opposing the women’s vote were ubiquitous, especially between 1890 and 1915 in the United States. About 4,500 different suffrage-themed postcards were designed during that time, she wrote.