Good morning everyone,

This morning’s Fem Fri is built around a single quotation that I found particularly resonant; “There is nothing radical about moral clarity in 2018”. I did the research on the phrase “moral clarity” and found that it is also a sort of Manichean approach to foreign policy, so to clarify, that’s not what I mean and given the context it does not appear to be what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez means either.

Anyway, having got thoroughly wrapped around the axle ahead of a newsletter about clarity, let me now introduce Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is running for Congress in New York. We come quite close to sharing a name and she knows her way around a zing:

Ocasio-Cortez says that her Catholic faith brought her to seek an end to mass incarceration […] When a reporter asked her on election night to respond to critics who called her too radical, she fired back: ‘There is nothing radical about moral clarity in 2018.’

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/07/23/moira-donegan/in-union-square/

Here’s another woman of certainty around what is right; it’s the also splendidly named Argula von Grumbach, a major player in the Reformation. She was the first person to publicly stand up for Seehofer and she did so by literally asking for a fight:

With a letter, a single woman challenges the whole faculty of the university of Ingolstadt: Argula von Grumbach requested that the professors ought to enter a public dispute with her about the exegesis of the Holy Scripture. While they rubbed their eyes when faced with this audacity, the sender knows exactly what she wants: to contribute theological arguments to the case of the young follower of Luther, Arsacius Seehofer, and ultimately to the cause of the Reformation itself. She confidently ends her letter with the words: "I  have not written women's gossip to you, but the word of God, as a member of the church […] I find nowhere in the Bible that Jesus or his disciples or prophets had incarcerated, burned or exiled someone.”

https://www.luther2017.de/en/wiki/women-move-the-church-since-luthers-time/argula-von-grumbach-i-have-not-written-womens-gossip-to-you/

There are, to my mind, very few writers who address morality more successfully than Iris Murdoch, and even fewer who are as funny about it. Here we see her defending democratic socialism and Watership Down:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/22/living-on-paper-letters-from-iris-murdoch-1934-1995-edited-avril-horner-anne-rowe-review

Have a great weekend everyone,

A xx.