29 Comments

1. Charles Brown:

   Come on. Somebody comment.

   :>)

   CB

   21 December 2005, 4:28 pm

2. elaina:

   Ok.

   This is a wonderful piece and should be on every good Leftist’s reading list.

   Thanks, Charles, for writing it and thanks, Stan, for putting it here.

   Took me a minute to get around to reading it. But hell, this blog has A LOT of important things to read on it. I’ve been spending all my vacation time reading this stuff and then reading the stuff that the stuff talks about.

   Sheesh. And I thought I was gonna get to RELAX this week.

   22 December 2005, 5:12 am

3. Charles Brown:

   Glad you read it elaina. Got anything you want me to read ?

   Charles

   23 December 2005, 2:31 pm

4. elaina:

   Hmmm. I’ll have to think on that. I can’t really think of something I’ve read that you’ve not already read, after looking at the post on the “drop Engels pt.2″ thread.

   Last night I read Dworkin’s “Heartbreak.” If you ain’t already read it, read it. Takes just a few hours.

   ANY anthropological stuff you can suggest to me to read that relates to this here stuff we’re talking about is appreciated. I’m particularly interested in linguistic anthropology– also, I’m wondering when somebody’s gonna bring up meme theory up in here.

   23 December 2005, 5:29 pm

5. Charles Brown:

   I was just reading Evelyn Reed’s _Problems of Women’s Liberation_, “Women and the family: a historical view”, in order to address some of the issues Stan has raised in his responses to my responses.

   However, it is not particularly linguistic. I’ll have to think about linguistic , feminist essays.

   Levi-Straussian structural anthropology is based on structural linguistics , and a great analogy between language and culture. Levi-Straussian structural anthropology is a corner stone of all post-modernism, post-structuralism ,etc. That’s not yet specifically feminist, but post-modern feminists with their anti-essentialist critique of materialism rely on major chains of Levi-Straussian reasoning.

   Funny thing on “meme” is that I remember cultural anthropolgist Marvin Harris with an “emic-etic” theory of empirical ethnology ( In _The Nature of Cultural Things_) a while before the biologists’ meme theory.
   Harris based it on the “emic-etic” distinction in phonology and linguistics. Harris’ is a bit positivistic. I’d be surprised if the biologist’s meme theory is not positivistic. Culture is a sublation of biology.

   I’ll get “Heartbreak”.

   26 December 2005, 2:05 pm

6. Stan:

   Wow, this conversation is happening all over the place.

   Here is the Wikipedia link to mem theory, which is associated closely with the old nemisis of Stephen Jay Gould, selfish-gene theorists Richard Dawkins.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

   The notion of meme is itself now a unit of cultural transmission — irony? The question becomes — as with a word like libido, for example — how can we use it as useful shorthand without it becoming part of the whole mystification/reification process?

   Cuidado, no!

   26 December 2005, 3:42 pm

7. elaina:

   I’ve read some of Dawkins’ “selfish gene” shit. But from lectures I’ve listened to on meme theory, yes, the meme is a unit of cultural transmission, and the idea is that it “replicates itself” and kind of has it’s own “will,” though it isn’t really a “will.” Because with memes you’re talking about “ideational cultural units,” supposedly kinda like cultural genes.

   I totally see where folks could run into completely wack directions with the idea of a meme. SO, si, cuidado.

   To me it all falls under the gigantic umbrella of human adaptation.

   I for some reason thought that “emic” and “etic” referred to sources of cultural insight/information: “emic” having to do with knowledge as it is “seen through the eyes” of a “culture,” and “etic” as looking at a culture from the outside. Or maybe I have them backwards. I’m trying to trace a connection to memes in my head but I’m tired right now.

   And this is for another thread, completely off topic.

   My best thoughts and wishes are with your son, Stan.
   Fuck this war.

   27 December 2005, 1:05 am

8. Charles Brown:

   I can speak on the emic-etic best , so first, my guess is your hearing it used for socalled cultural units is the result of the success of Harris’s paradigm. I think you have it correct. It is on analogy to phonetics where there is phonemics and phonetics. Phonemics is seen through the eyes of a native speaking of the language the meaningful differences for example that can change the meaning of a word. A specific example would be “p” and “b”, unvoiced and voiced.

   The voicedness or unvoicedness is the phonetic characteristic that the phoneme is built on. The voicedness and unvoicedness are objective characteristics and that is phonETICS. Something a non-native speaker ( someone from another culture) could detect. But attributing a differentiation of meaning to these particular objective characterisics is phonEMICal, particular to the particular grammar , culture.

   Actually , I am about to study the meme’s from Dawkins, because in a letter that R.C. Lewontin sent to me in response to some comments I sent him on the LaMarckian adaptive characteristics of culture, Lewontin referred me to some mathematical (! cuidado) memeticians (?)

   27 December 2005, 10:03 am

9. Charles Brown:

   Here’s an oldie, but goodie from Comrade Zetkin.

   CB

   ^^^^

   Archive > Zetkin

   http://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1896/10/women.htm

   Clara Zetkin
   Only in Conjunction With the Proletarian Woman Will Socialism Be Victorious
   (1896)

   ——————————————————————————–

   Source: Speech at the Party Congress of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Gotha, October 16th, 1896. Berlin.
   Published: Clara Zetkin: Selected Writings, ed. by Philip Foner, trans. by Kai Schoenhals, International Publishers, 1984.
   Transcribed: for marxists.org in August, 2002.

   ——————————————————————————–

   The investigations of Bachofen, Morgan and others seem to prove that the social suppression of women coincided with the creation of private property. The contrast within the family between the husband as proprietor and the wife as non-proprietor became the basis for the economic dependence and the social illegality of the female sex. This social illegality represents, according to Engels, one of the first and oldest forms of class rule. He states: “Within the family, the husband constitutes the bourgeoisie and the wife the proletariat.” Nonetheless, a women’s question in the modern sense of the word did not exist. It was only the capitalist mode of production which created the societal transformation that brought forth the modern women’s question by destroying the old family economic system which provided both livelihood and life’s meaning for the great mass of women during the pre-capitalistic period. We must, however, not transfer to the ancient economic activities of women those concepts (the concepts of futility and pettiness), that we connect with the activities of women in our times. As long as the old type of family still existed, a woman found a meaningful life by productive activity. Thus she was not conscious of her social illegality even though the development of her potentials as an individual was strictly limited.

   The period of the Renaissance is the storm and stress period of the awakening of modern individuality that was able to develop fully and completely in the most diverse directions. We encounter individuals who are giants in both good and evil, who spurn the commandments of both religion and morals and despise equally both heaven and hell. We discover women at the center of the social, artistic and political life. And yet there is not a trace of a women’s movement. This is all the more characteristic because at that time the old family economic system began to crumble under the impact of the division of labor. Thousands upon thousands of women no longer found their livelihood and their lives’ meaning within the family. But this women’s question, as far as one can designate it as such, was solved at that time by convents, charitable institutions and religious orders.

   The machines, the modern mode of production, slowly undermined domestic production and not just for thousands but for millions of women the question arose: Where do we now find our livelihood? Where do we find a meaningful life as well as a, job that gives us mental satisfaction? Millions were now forced to find their livelihood and their meaningful lives outside of their families and within society as a whole. At that moment they became aware of the fact that their social illegality stood in opposition to their most basic interests. It was from this moment on that there existed the modern women’s question. Here are a few statistics to demonstrate how the modern mode of production works to make the women’s question even more acute. During 1882, 5½ million out of 23 million women and girls in Germany were fully employed; i.e., a quarter of the female population could no longer find its livelihood within the family. According to the Census of 1895, the number of employed women in agriculture, in the broadest meaning of this term, has increased since 1882 by more than 8%, in the narrow sense by 6%, while at the same time the number of men employed in agriculture has decreased by 3%, i.e., to 11%. In the area of industry and mining, the number of employed women workers has increased by 35%, that of men by only 28%. In the retail trade, the number of women employed has increased by more than 94%, that of men by only 38%. These dry numbers stress much more the urgency of solving the women’s question than any highfalutin declamations.

   The women’s question, however, is only present within those classes of society who are themselves the products of the capitalist mode of production. Thus it is that we find no women’s question in peasant circles that possess a natural (although severely curtailed and punctured) economy. But we certainly find a women’s question within those classes of society who are the very children of the modern mode of production. There is a women’s question for the women of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia and the Upper Ten Thousand. It assumes a different form according to the class situation of each one of these strata.

   How does the women’s question shape up as far as the Upper Ten Thousand are concerned? The woman of the Upper Ten Thousand, thanks to her property, may freely develop her individuality and live as she pleases. In her role as wife, however, she is still dependent upon her husband. The guardianship of the weaker sex has survived in the family law which still states: And he shall be your master. And how is the family of the Upper Ten Thousand constituted in which the wife is legally subjugated by the husband? At its very founding, such a family lacks the moral prerequisites. Not individuality but money decides the matrimony. Its motto is: What capital joins, sentimental morality must not part. (Bravo!) Thus in this marriage, two prostitutions are taken for one virtue. The eventual family life develops accordingly. Wherever a woman is no longer forced to fulfill her duties, she devolves her duties as spouse, mother and housewife upon paid servants. If the women of these circles have the desire to give their lives a serious purpose, they must, first of all, raise the demand to dispose of their property in an independent and free manner. This demand, therefore, represents the core of the demands raised by the women’s movement of the Upper Ten Thousand. These women, in their fight for the realization of their demand vis-a-vis the masculine world of their class, fight exactly the same battle that the bourgeoisie fought against all of the privileged estates; i.e., a battle to remove all social differences based upon the possession of property. The fact that this demand does not deal with the rights of the individual is proven by Herr von Stumm’s advocacy of it in the Reichstag. Just when would Herr von Stumm ever advocate the rights of a person? This man in Germany signifies more than a personality, he is capital itself turned into flesh and blood (How accurate!) and if this man has put in an appearance in a cheap masquerade for women’s rights, then it only happened because he was forced to dance before capitalism’s Ark of the Covenant. This is the Herr von Stumm who is always ready to put his workers on short rations if they do not dance to his tune and he would certainly welcome it with a satisfied smile if the state as employer would also put those professors end scholars who meddle in social politics on short rations. Herr von Stumm endeavors nothing more than instituting the entail for movable female property in case of female inheritance because there are fathers who have acquired property but were not careful in the choice of their children, leaving only daughters as heirs. Capitalism honors even lowly womanhood and permits it to dispose of its fortunes. That is the final phase of the emancipation of private property.

   How does the women’s question appear in the circles of the petit-bourgeoisie, the middle class and the bourgeois intelligentsia? Here it is not property which dissolves the family, but mainly the concomitant symptoms of capitalist production. To the degree this production completes its triumphal march, the middle class and the petit-bourgeoisie are hurtling further and further towards their destruction. Within the bourgeois intelligentsia, another circumstance leads to the worsening of the living conditions: capitalism needs the intelligent and scientifically trained work force. It therefore favored an overproduction of mental-work proletarians and contributed to the phenomenon that the formerly respected and profitable societal positions of members of the professional class are more and more eroding. To the same degree, however, the number of marriages is decreasing; although on the one hand the material basis is worsening, on the other hand the individual’s expectations of life are increasing, so that a man of that background will think twice or even thrice before he enters into a marriage. The age limit for the founding of a family is raised higher and higher and a man is under no pressure to marry since there exist in our time enough societal institutions which offer to an old bachelor a comfortable life without a legitimate wife. The capitalist exploitation of the proletarian work force through its starvation wages, sees to it that there is a large supply of prostitutes which corresponds to the demand by the men. Thus within the bourgeois circles, the number of unmarried women increases all the time. The wives and daughters of these circles are pushed out into society so that they may establish for themselves their own livelihood which is not only supposed to provide them with bread but also with mental satisfaction. In these circles women are not equal to men in the form of possessors of private property as they are in the upper circles. The women of these circles have yet to achieve their economic equality with men and they can only do so by making two demands: The demand for equal professional training and the demand for equal job opportunities for both sexes. In economic terms, this means nothing less than the realization of free access to all jobs and the untrammeled competition between men and women. The realization of this demand unleashes a conflict of interest between the men and women of the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia. The competition of the women in the professional world is the driving force for the resistance of men against the demands of bourgeois women’s rights advocates. It is, pure and simple, the fear of competition. All other reasons which are listed against the mental work of women, such as the smaller brain of women or their allegedly natural avocation to be a mother are only pretexts. This battle of competition pushes the women of these social strata towards demanding their political rights so that they may, by fighting politically, tear down all barriers which have been created against their economic activity.

   So far I have addressed myself only to the basic and purely economic substructure. We would, however, perform an injustice to the bourgeois women’s rights movement if we would regard it as solely motivated by economics. No, this movement also contains a more profound spiritual and moral aspect. The bourgeois woman not only demands her own bread but she also requests spiritual nourishment and wants to develop her individuality. It is exactly among these strata that we find these tragic, yet psychologically interesting Nora figures, women who are tired of living like dolls in doll houses and who want to share in the development of modern culture. The economic as well as the intellectual and moral endeavors of bourgeois women’s rights advocates are completely justified.

   As far as the proletarian woman is concerned, it is capitalism’s need to exploit and to search incessantly for a cheap labor force that has created the women’s question. It is for this reason, too, that the proletarian woman has become enmeshed in the mechanism of the economic life of our period and has been driven into the workshop and to the machines. She went out into the economic life in order to aid her husband in making a living, but the capitalist mode of production transformed her into on unfair competitor. She wanted to bring prosperity to her family, but instead misery descended upon it. The proletarian woman obtained her own employment because she wanted to create a more sunny and pleasant life for her children, but instead she became almost entirely separated from them. She became an equal of the man as a worker; the machine rendered muscular force superfluous and everywhere women’s work showed the same results in production as men’s work. And since women constitute a cheap labor force and above all a submissive one that only in the rarest of cases dares to kick against the thorns of capitalist exploitation, the capitalists multiply the possibilities of women’s work in industry. As a result of all this, the proletarian woman has achieved her independence. But verily, the price was very high and for the moment they have gained very little. If during the Age of the Family, a man had the right (just think of the law of Electoral Bavaria!) to tame his wife occasionally with a whip, capitalism is now taming her with scorpions. In former times, the rule of a man over his wife was ameliorated by their personal relationship. Between an employer and his worker, however, exists only a cash nexus. The proletarian woman has gained her economic independence, but neither as a human being nor as a woman or wife has she had the possibility to develop her individuality. For her task as a wife and a mother, there remain only the breadcrumbs which the capitalist production drops from the table.

   Therefore the liberation struggle of the proletarian woman cannot be similar to the struggle that the bourgeois woman wages against the male of her class. On the contrary, it must be a joint struggle with the male of her class against the entire class of capitalists. She does not need to fight against the men of her class in order to tear down the barriers which have been raised against her participation in the free competition of the market place. Capitalism’s need to exploit and the development of the modern mode of production totally relieves her of having to fight such a struggle. On the contrary, new barriers need to be erected against the exploitation of the proletarian woman. Her rights as wife and mother need to be restored and permanently secured. Her final aim is not the free competition with the man, but the achievement of the political rule of the proletariat. The proletarian woman fights hand in hand with the man of her class against capitalist society. To be sure, she also agrees with the demands of the bourgeois women’s movement, but she regards the fulfillment of these demands simply as a means to enable that movement to enter the battle, equipped with the same weapons, alongside the proletariat.

   Bourgeois society is not fundamentally opposed to the bourgeois women’s movement, which is proven by the fact that in various states reforms of private and public laws concerning women have been initiated. There are two reasons why the accomplishment of these reforms seems to take an exceptionally long time in Germany: First of all, men fear the battle of competition in the liberal professions and secondly, one has to take into account the very slow and weak development of bourgeois democracy in Germany which does not live up to its historical task because of its class fear of the proletariat. It fears that the realization of such reforms will only bring advantages to Social-Democracy. The less a bourgeois democracy allows itself to be hypnotized by such a fear, the more it is prepared to undertake reforms. England is a good example. England is the only country that still possesses a truly powerful bourgeoisie, whereas the German bourgeoisie, shaking in fear of the proletariat, shies away from carrying out political and social reforms. As far as Germany is concerned, there is the additional factor of widespread Philistine views. The Philistine braid of prejudice reaches far down the back of the German bourgeoisie. To be sure, this fear of the bourgeois democracy is very shortsighted. The granting of political equality to women does not change the actual balance of power. The proletarian woman ends up in the proletarian, the bourgeois woman in the bourgeois camp. We must not let ourselves be fooled by Socialist trends in the bourgeois women’s movement which last only as long as bourgeois women feel oppressed.

   The less bourgeois democracy comprehends its task, the more important it is for Social-Democracy to advocate the political equality of women. We do not want to make us out to be better than we are. We are not making this demand for the sake of a principle, but in the interests of the proletarian class. The more women’s work exercises its detrimental influence upon the standard of living of men, the more urgent becomes the necessity to include them in the economic battle. The more the political struggle affects the existence of each individual, the more urgent becomes the necessity of women’s participation in this political struggle. It was the Anti-Socialist Law which for the first time made clear to women what is meant by the terms class justice, class state and class rule. It was this law which taught women the need to learn about the force which so brutally intervened in their family lives. The Anti-Socialist Law has done successful work which could never have been done by hundreds of women agitators and, indeed, we are deeply grateful to the father of the Anti-Socialist Law as well as to all organs of the state (from the minister to the local cop) who have participated in its enforcement and rendered such marvelous involuntary propaganda services. How then can one accuse us Social-Democrats of ingratitude? (Amusement.)

   Yet another event must be taken into consideration. I am referring to the publication of August Bebel’s book Woman and Socialism. This book must not be judged according to its positive aspects or its shortcomings. Rather, it must be judged within the context of the times in which it was written. It was more than a book, it was an event – a great deed. (Very accurate!) The book pointed out for the first time the connection between the women’s question and historical development. For the first time, there sounded from this book the appeal: We will only conquer the future if we persuade the women to become our co-fighters. In recognizing this, I am not speaking as a woman but as a party comrade.

   What practical conclusions may we now draw for our propaganda work among women? The task of this Party Congress must not be to issue detailed practical suggestions, but to draw up general directions for the proletarian women’s movement.

   Our guiding thought must be: We must not conduct special women’s propaganda, but Socialist agitation among women. The petty, momentary interests of the female world must not be allowed to take up the stage. Our task must be to incorporate the modern proletarian woman in our class battle! (Very true!) We have no special tasks for the agitation among women. Those reforms for women which must be accomplished within the framework of today’s society are already demanded within the minimal program of our party.

   Women’s propaganda must touch upon all those questions which are of great importance to the general proletarian movement. The main task is, indeed, to awaken the women’s class consciousness and to incorporate them into the class struggle. The unionization of female workers is made extremely difficult. During the years 1892 until 1895, the number of female laborers organized in central trade unions grew to around 7,000. If we add to this number the female workers organized in local unions and realize that there are at least 700,000 female workers actively involved in large industrial enterprises, then we begin to realize the magnitude of the organizing work that still lies ahead of us. Our work is made more burdensome by the fact that many women are active in the cottage industry and can, therefore, be organized only with great difficulty. Then we also have to deal with the widely held belief among young girls that their industrial labor is only transitory and will be terminated by their marriage. For many women there is the double obligation to be active in both the factory and the home. All the more necessary is it for female workers to obtain a legally fixed workday. Whereas in England everybody agrees that the elimination of the cottage industry, the establishment of a legal workday and the achievement of higher wages are important prerequisites for the unionization of female workers – in Germany, in addition to these obstacles there is also the enforcement of our unionization and assemblage laws. The complete freedom to form coalitions, which has been legally guaranteed to the female workers by the Empire’s legislation, has been rendered illusory by the laws of individual federal states. I do not even want to discuss the manner in which the right to form unions is handled in Saxony (as far as one can even speak of a right there). But in the two largest federal states, in Bavaria and Prussia, the union laws are handled in such a way that women’s participation in trade union organizations is becoming more and more of an impossibility. Most recently in Prussia, the district of the “liberal,” eternal candidate for minister, Herr von Bennigsen has achieved everything humanly possible in the interpretation of the Law of Unionization and Assemblage. In Bavaria all women are excluded from public meetings. In the Chamber there, Herr von Freilitzsch declared very openly that in the handling of the law of unionization not only the text but also the intention of the legislators should be taken into account. Herr von Freilitzsch is in the most fortunate position to know exactly what were the intentions of the legislators, all of whom have since died, before Bavaria became more lucky than anybody could have imagined in their wildest dreams, by appointing Herr von Freilitzsch as her minister of police. That does not surprise me at all, because whoever receives an office from God also receives concomitantly intelligence, and in our Age of Spiritualism, Herr von Freilitzsch has thus obtained his official intelligence and by way of the fourth dimension has discovered the intentions of the long deceased legislators. (Amusement.)

   This situation, however, does not make it possible for the proletarian women to organize themselves together with men. Until now they had to wage a fight against police power and juridical stratagems and on the surface they seemed to have been defeated, In reality, however, they emerged as victors because all those measures which were employed to smash the organization of the proletarian woman only served to arouse her class consciousness. If we want to obtain a powerful women’s organization in both the economic and political realms, then we must, first of all, take care of the possibility of women’s freedom of movement by fighting against the cottage industry, for shorter working hours and, above all, against what the ruling classes like to call the right to organize.

   We cannot determine at this party congress what form our propaganda among women should take. We must, first of all, learn how we ought to do our work among women. In the resolution which has been submitted to you, it is proposed to elect shop stewards among the women whose task it will be to stimulate the union and economic organization of women and to consolidate it in a uniform and planned manner. This proposal is not new; it was adopted in principle at the Party Congress of Frankfurt, and in a few regions it has been enacted most successfully. Time will tell whether this proposal, when introduced on a larger scale, is suited to draw proletarian women to a greater extent into the proletarian movement.

   Our propaganda must not be carried out solely in an oral fashion. A large number of passive people do not even come to our meetings and countless wives and mothers cannot come to our meetings. Indeed, it must certainly not be the task of Socialist propaganda among Socialist women to alienate the proletarian woman from her duties as mother and wife. On the contrary, she must be encouraged to carry out these tasks better than ever in the interests of the liberation of the proletariat. The better the conditions within her family, the better her effectiveness at home, the more she will be capable of fighting. The more she can serve as the educator and molder of her children, the better she will be able to enlighten them so that they may continue to fight on like we did, with the same enthusiasm and willingness to sacrifice for the liberation of the proletariat. When a proletarian then exclaims: “My wife!” he will add mentally, “Comrade of my ideals, companion of my battles, mother of my children for future battles.” Many a mother and many a wife who fills her husband and children with class consciousness accomplishes just as much as the female comrades that we see at our meetings. (Vivid agreement).

   Thus if the mountain does not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain: We must take Socialism to the women by a planned written propaganda campaign. For such a campaign, I suggest the distribution of pamphlets and I do not mean the traditional pamphlet on which the entire Socialist program and the entire scientific knowledge of our century are condensed on one quarto page. No, we must use small pamphlets which discuss a single practical question from one angle of vision, especially from the point of view of the class struggle, which is the main task. And we must not assume a nonchalant attitude toward the technical production of pamphlets. We must not use, as is our tradition, the worst paper and the worst type of printing. Such a miserable pamphlet will be crumpled up and thrown away by the proletarian woman who does not have the same respect for the printed word that the male proletarian possesses. We must imitate the American and English teetotallers who put out pretty little booklets of four to six pages. Because even a female proletarian is enough of a woman to say to herself: “This little thing is just charming. I will have to pick it up and keep it!” (Much amusement and many cheers.) The sentences which really count must be printed in great big letters. Then the proletarian woman will not be frightened away from reading and her mental attention will be stimulated.

   Because of my personal experiences, I cannot advocate the plan of founding a special newspaper for women. My personal experiences are not based upon my position as the editor of Gleichheit (which is not designed for the mass of women, but rather their progressive avant-guard), but as a distributor of literature among female workers. Stimulated by the actions of Frau Gnauck-Kuhne, I distributed newspapers for weeks at a certain factory. I became convinced that the women there did not acquire from these papers what is enlightening, but solely what is entertaining and amusing. Therefore, the big sacrifices which are necessary in order to publish a cheap newspaper would not be worth it.

   But we also have to create a series of brochures which bring Socialism closer to the woman in her capacity as female proletarian, wife and mother. Except for the powerful brochure of Frau Popp, we do not have a single one that comes up to the requirements we need. Our daily press, too, must do more than it has done heretofore. Some daily newspapers have made the attempt to enlighten women by the addition of special supplements for women. The Magdeburger Volksstimme set an example in this endeavor and Comrade Goldstein at Zwickau has skillfully and successfully emulated it. But until now the daily press has regarded the proletarian woman as a subscriber, flattering her ignorance, her bad and unformed taste, rather than trying to enlighten her.

   I repeat that I am only throwing out suggestions for your consideration. Propaganda among women is difficult and burdensome and requires great devotion and great sacrifice, but these sacrifices will be rewarded and must be brought forth. The proletariat will be able to attain its liberation only if it fights together without the difference of nationality and profession. In the same way it can attain its liberation only if it stands together without the distinction of sex. The incorporation of the great masses of proletarian women in the liberation struggle of the proletariat is one of the prerequisites for the victory of the Socialist idea and for the construction of a Socialist society.

   Only a Socialist society will solve the conflict that is nowadays produced by the professional activity of women. Once the family as an economic unit will vanish and its place will be taken by the family as a moral unit, the woman will become an equally entitled, equally creative, equally goal-oriented, forward-stepping companion of her husband; her individuality will flourish while at the same time, she will fulfill her task as wife and mother to the highest degree possible.

   27 December 2005, 11:12 am

10. Charles Brown:

    Cuidado !
    CB

    ^^^^

    http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/2000/vol4/kendal_jr&laland_kn.html

    Abstract

    The science of memetics aims to understand the evolution of socially
    transmitted cultural traits. Recently attention has focused on the
    interaction between memetic and genetic evolution, a phenomenon described as
    meme-gene co-evolution. Whether cultural evolution occurs purely at the
    level of the meme, or through meme-gene interaction, a body of formal
    theoretical work already exists that can be readily employed to model
    empirical data and test theoretical hypotheses. This is cultural evolution
    and gene-culture co-evolutionary theory, a branch of theoretical population
    genetics (Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman [6
    ]; Boyd &
    Richerson [3
    ];
    Feldman & Laland [12
    ]). We
    reject the argument that meaningful differences exist between memetics and
    these population genetics methods. The goal of this article is to point out
    the similarities between memetics and cultural evolution and gene-culture
    co-evolutionary theory, and to illustrate the potential utility of the
    models to memetics. We illustrate how the theory can be applied by
    developing a simple illustrative model to test a hypothesis from the
    memetics literature.

    Keywords: brain size, cultural evolution, gene-culture co-evolution,
    meme, memetics

    27 December 2005, 11:49 am

11. elaina:

    Is it not mildly illustrative of a few of these points of discussion that right now I’m lamenting the sale of both my Biology 101/102 text and that of my Human Osteology text? I think I got about $40 bucks for the two of them.

    I remember it distinctly, how I stood there and looked at my feet as I handed them over. I bought gas and tampons with the money, and I think something to eat.

    28 December 2005, 12:49 am

12. Charles Brown:

    However, you can get so many basics of biology from the net. Wikipedia alone has many, many basics. Just google any term that comes into your head. Presto !

    31 December 2005, 2:50 pm

13. Julian Real:

    I recommend the following texts, Charles (not in any particular order):

    1. Black Sexual Politics, by Patricia Hill Collins
    2. Black Feminist Thought, also by Collins
    3. Intercourse, by Andrea Dworkin
    4. Toward A Feminist Theory of the State, by Catharine A. MacKinnon
    5. Gender and Anthropology, by Frances E. Mascia-Lees and Nancy Johnson Black

    23 January 2006, 3:48 pm

14. Charles Brown:

    I read _Black Feminist Thought_ about ten years ago.

    I recommend _Women, Race and Class_ and _Women, ____,and Culture_ by Angela. How about _Ain’t I a Woman ?_ by bel hooks. _Sexism and Science_ by Evelyn Reed. _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ by Engels. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” in Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_. Do a google search on Eleanor Burke Leacock, feminist anthropogist. Articles by Clara Zetkin.

    26 January 2006, 6:27 pm

15. Charles Brown:

    LOL!

    Deb

    ——————————————————————————–

    >Women are like apples on trees. The best ones are at
    >the top of the tree. Most men don’t want to reach for
    >the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt.
    >Instead, they sometimes take the apples from the ground that aren’t
    >as good, but easy. The apples at the top think something is wrong
    >with them, when in reality, they’re amazing. They just have to
    >wait for the right man to come along, the one who’s
    >brave enough to climb all the way t o the top of the
    >tree. Share this with other women who are good
    >apples, even those who have already been picked!
    >
    >
    >Now Men….
    >
    >Men are like a fine wine. They begin as grapes, and
    >it’s up to women to stomp the sh** out of them until
    >they turn into something acceptable to have dinner
    >with.
    >

    14 February 2006, 10:07 am

16. Charles Brown:

    International Women’s Day was originated by Comrade Clara Zetkin - CB

    ——————————————————————————–

    It’s international Women’s Day which is receiving a lot of news
    coverage in Cuba. I’ve taken translations of two of the best of
    these and made special web-pages out of them which I hope you
    will take the time to read and enjoy. Below these you will find
    a few additional items on this day from Prensa Latina.

    Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
    http://www.walterlippmann.com
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews
    ========================================

    Cuban Woman on March 8, 2006
    http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs434.html

    Pakistan: A Few Words About Dirkot
    http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs435.html

    Violence, Discrimination in Spotlight on Women’s Day
    http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2006-03/08/article01.shtml

    And for something quite unexpected, this literary interview from
    Tiempo 21 in Las Tunas, Cuba:
    María Liliana CelorrioMe, The Worst of All Women
    http://www.tiempo21.islagrande.cu/English/People/maria_liliana.htm

    UN Celebrates International Women´s Day

    United Nations, Mar 8 (Prensa Latina) The United Nations is
    celebrating this Wednesday International Women´s Day with a panel
    attended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and prominent women
    throughout the world.

    The meeting includes issues like women´s decision making, challenges,
    work and ambitions, and their participation in policy and in
    indigenous communities.

    The issue of women will also be discussed at the headquarter of the
    UN Science, Culture and Education Fund in Paris, with the attendance
    of the first African women President of Liberia Ellen Jonson-Sirleaf.

    mh/iff/ir/mf

    Annan: Make a Woman UN Secretary General

    United Nations, Mar 8 (Prensa Latina) UN Secretary General Kofi
    Annan, in his address for International Women´s Day, noted the
    relevant role of women in economics, health, education and political
    processes, as well as in conflict prevention and reconciliation, and
    said it was high time a female be appointed UN secretary general

    He said the world is beginning to understand that women and girls
    empower the most effective progress.

    Studies have proven they have a very influential role in increasing
    economic productivity, reducing infant and maternal mortality,
    improving nutrition, promoting health, and preventing HIV/AIDS, he
    pointed out.

    At the 50th Status of Women Commission, Noeleen Heyzer, executive
    director of the UN Development Fund for Women, said March 8 is a day
    of celebration and reflection and also highlighted world progress in
    growing female decision-making at local, national and global levels.

    hr/ccs/emw/ir

    Half Mexican Women Sexually Harassed

    Mexico, Mar 8 (Prensa Latina) At least half of the 15 million female
    workers in Mexico have suffered sexual harassment, a report from the
    National Women´s Institute (INMUJERES) revealed.

    However, despite the high incidence, women do not complain formally
    to authorities, fearing reprisals or shame at being victims of such
    abuse, INMUJERES regretted.

    According to INMUJERES President Patricia Espinosa, last year the
    Institute received 20,000 phone calls, only 10 percent of which were
    to report sexual harassment.

    Espinosa made the report while presenting a campaign to combat sexual
    harassment.

    Teresa Rodriguez, representative of the UN Development Fund for Women
    in Mexico, said gender equality in Mexico lags far behind the
    country’s economic development.

    She indicated there are too few women in decision-making, and
    progress to increase their numbers has been slow.

    In a report to mark International Women’s Day, the National Institute
    of Statistics, Geography and Information Technology stressed that the
    presence of Mexican women at the top levels of government is
    completely unbalanced compared to men.

    hr/ccs/rma/mpm

    Guatemala Women Fight for Life

    Guatemala city, Mar 8 (Prensa Latina) Demanding the right to life,
    gender equality and eradication of feminicide among others concerns,
    Guatemalan women are staging rallies on the occasion of the
    International Women´s Day in this capital.

    >From Italy Square to the Central Park, in Guatemala city, civil
    groups of this nation, where over 100 females were killed in 2006,
    will demand that the Executive take measures to stop the escalating
    violence.

    In addition, they will insist on stopping discrimination and social
    exclusion policies, better living conditions in the countryside,
    boosting of a culture of equality and the battle for a family
    planning law.

    mh/ymr/car/mf

    Protection of Water Resources Advocated at Women’s Conference in Cuba

    Havana, March 7 (AIN) The protection of water resources around the
    planet is the focus of discussion at the 6th International EcoMujer
    Workshop taking place in the western Cuban province of Pinar del Rio
    from March 6-8.

    On Monday, experts from Germany, Mexico, Bolivia, Finland and Cuba
    gave presentations on highly topical issues such as the privatization
    of water in various countries. That practice has brought about
    increased disease due to the poor hygiene of low-income families
    unable to acquire sufficient water.

    Cuban participants in the conference took the opportunity to present
    their nation’s experience in the preservation of water reservoirs and
    their sustainable exploitation. The specialists also explained the
    environmental education program being implemented in Cuban schools.

    Sponsored by the Higher Institute of Education of Pinar del Rio, the
    conference is the result of the work carried out by the EcoMujer
    women’s group, created in 1996 as a materialization of solidarity
    between Cuban and German women interested in protecting the
    environment.

    South Africans Celebrate Women´s Day

    Johannesburg, Mar 8 (Prensa Latina) On International Women’s Day, the
    South African government has launched Wednesday an extended program
    of action to mark the 50th anniversary of the anti-pass march by
    South African women to Pretoria, BUA News reports.

    The march -part of a Congress Alliance campaign against several
    apartheid laws, most prominently the dehumanising pass laws- took
    place on August 9, 1956 and became celebrated after the advent of
    democracy in 1994 as National Women’s Day, BUA News recalls.

    Today an inter-ministerial cabinet committee, led by Pallo Jordan,
    Minister of Arts and Culture accompanied by Minister of Foreign
    Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Minister of Public Works Stella
    Sigcau, launched a year-long program of action to commemorate this
    major landmark in the history of South Africa’s struggle against
    oppression and to highlight the roles of women.

    A number of other anniversaries are being commemorated this year,
    including the 100th anniversary of the Bambatha uprising against a
    tax imposed by colonial authorities, the 30th anniversary of the
    Soweto uprising by students and the 100th anniversary of the
    Satyagraha non-violent resistance pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi.

    Also the 50th anniversary of the Treason Trial that eventually
    imprisoned former president Nelson Mandela along with Govan Mbeki,
    President Thabo Mbeki’s father, and several others.

    President Mbeki has emphasized the need to use this year to work
    towards a South African women’s social movement, said Jordan today,
    adding that South Africa would host the Pan African Women’s
    Organisation in July.

    mh

    8 March 2006, 6:11 pm

17. Charles Brown:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft

    Mary Wollstonecraft

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Mary Wollstonecraft; stipple engraving by James Heath, ca. 1797, after a painting by John Opie.
    Enlarge
    Mary Wollstonecraft; stipple engraving by James Heath, ca. 1797, after a painting by John Opie.

    Mary Wollstonecraft (27 April 1759 - 10 September 1797) was a noted writer during the 18th century. She was born in Spitalfields, London. Wollstonecraft had a momentous but tragically brief career of nine years; she wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, as well as a full range of work across disciplinary boundaries separating philosophy, letters, education, advice, politics, history, religion, sexuality, and feminism itself (Johnson, preface).

    Once viewed solely in relation to the history of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft is now recognized as a great writer across a range of genres, including journalism, letters, and travel writing (Johnson, preface). Her personal struggles as a woman and an author contributed to her articulation of the dynamic connection between political writing and political rights, both of which she argued had been “confined to the male line since Adam downward”. (Gunther,171). Her writing challenges the male birthright, bringing to life a new form of political analysis (Gunther, 171). Today, she is celebrated for her early advocacy of women’s equality and rationality, and for arguing against the degradation and subjugation of women justified by “the arbitrary power of beauty” (Leitch, 585).

    Contents

    * 1 Biography
    * 2 Works

    * 2.1 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787)
    * 2.2 Mary: A fiction (1788)
    * 2.3 Original Stories from Real Life (1788)
    * 2.4 Of the Importance of Religious Opinions (1788)
    * 2.5 The Female Reader (1789)
    * 2.6 Young Grandison (1790)
    * 2.7 Elements of Morality (1790)
    * 2.8 A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
    * 2.9 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
    * 2.10 An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (1794)
    * 2.11 Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796)

    * 3 Posthumous Works

    * 3.1 The Cave of Fancy (1798)
    * 3.2 The Wrongs of Women (1798)
    * 3.3 Letters to Imlay (1798)
    * 3.4 Letters on the Management of Infants (1798)
    * 3.5 Lessons (1798)

    * 4 Influence
    * 5 Further reading
    * 6 External links
    * 7 References

    [edit]

    Biography

    Mary Wollstonecraft was the second child of seven, and the eldest daughter of Edward and Elizabeth Wollstonecraft. Mary’s parents shared preference for her older brother (Johnson, xv), which contributed to her loss of economic and class status as a young woman (Franklin, 1). Her grandfather was a wealthy silk merchant who left 10,000 pounds to her father, but Mary’s father tried to distance himself from the trade and set up as a gentleman farmer first in Essex, and then near Beverley in Yorkshire (Franklin, 1).

    Mary’s grandfather wanted his family to rise in the world, and desired a country retreat for his privileged son more than for himself; along with the city house in Primrose Street, he provided Edward’s first farm in Essex, where Mary lived at age four and five, and where her other sister, Everina was born (Todd, 6).

    In less than four years, Edward’s farm in Essex failed. The failure drove Edward’s career across England and Wales, to poorer and more remote farms, eventually squandering his inheritance and ultimately making his children rootless (Todd, 8). He developed a drinking problem and began to verbally, and perhaps even physically, abuse Mary’s mother; Mary tried to shield her mother from Edward’s aggression by sleeping nights on the landing near her mother’s bedroom door (Todd, 8). As a result of the neglect to which her parents subjected her, Mary assumed a mother’s role for the children that followed, especially the girls (Todd, 11).

    In 1768, the Wollstonecrafts moved to a farm outside of Beverley, where Mary attended a local day-school for girls; the school attended to housewifery and morals, and the curriculum aimed at making a girl marriageable and ladylike — rudimentary French language, needlework, music, dancing, writing, and possibly some botany and accounts (Todd, 12). At home or with friends she read general books, magazines and newspapers, and learned to consider social issues troubling Kingdom of Great Britain in general and Beverley in particular (Todd, 12). Beyond schooling and access to print, Beverley gave Mary cultured society (Todd, 14).

    The Wollstonecrafts left Beverley for Hoxton, London, when Mary was fifteen (Franklin, 5). Disinherited both economically and emotionally, Mary became an autodidact, who learned through reading and by participating in the public sphere; the city and provinces held informal and formal discussion groups, public lectures and clubs, libraries made books affordable, and coffee shops offered the latest periodicals and newspapers (Franklin, 5). When in Beverley, she attended the lectures of John Arden on experimental science; he also taught her along with his daughter Jane Arden (Todd, 15), how to use globes and on how to argue philosophical problems (Franklin, 6).

    In Hoxton, Mary also found mentors in her next-door neighbors, the Reverend Mr. Clare and his wife, who recommended and encouraged her to read proper books (Franklin, 8). It is through Mrs. Clare that Mary met Fanny Blood, a woman two years her senior, who became the emotional centre of Wollstonecraft’s life for the following ten years (Franklin, 9). Fanny was a role-model to Mary, who inspired her to think of leaving her unhappy family life and of obtaining employment (Franklin, 9). Mary was prepared to leave, but was begged to stay by her mother; in exchange for staying, she was given a place to live near Fanny, lodging with an unusual couple: Thomas Taylor “the Platonist” and his wife (Franklin, 9). Mary became friends with them and began to read Plato, which helped to influence her ardent religiosity (Franklin, 10).

    Mary eventually moved in with Fanny and her family after Elizabeth Wollstonecraft’s death in 1782, prompting Mary to throw all her energy into supporting the Bloods, as well as her own younger sisters (Franklin, 11). Early in 1784, Wollstonecraft, her two sisters, and Fanny Blood set up a school on Newington Green, then a village just to the north of London and now part of Islington. The following year, Fanny Blood left the school and sailed to Lisbon to marry. Later, Mary followed her friend to assist her in childbirth, but Fanny died, a precursor to Mary’s own fate (Johnson, xvi).

    In 1786, Mary closed her school because of financial problems that had mounted during her absence. To raise money and improve her spirits, Mary began to write Thoughts on the Education of Daughters; the work was published in 1787 by Joseph Johnson, and earned her ten guineas, which she gave to the Blood family (Johnson, xvi). She also composed Mary, A Fiction and “Cave of Fancy”, and worked as a reader and translator with Joseph Johnson, beginning her career as a published writer (Johnson, xvii).

    In 1788, Joseph Johnson also published Wollstonecraft’s, Mary: A fiction, Original Stories from Real Life and Of the Importance of Religious Opinions, and she began to work as a reviewer for the Analytical Review, a monthly periodical started by Joseph Johnson and Thomas Christie (Johnson, xvii).

    In 1790, Mary published Young Grandison, a translation of Maria van de Werken de Cambon’s adaptation of the novel by Samuel Richardson, followed by a translation of Elements of Morality by Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (Johnson, xvii). In November of that year, she published A Vindication of the Rights of Men anonymously, then, one month later, she published the second edition bearing her name, establishing her reputation as a partisan of reform (Johnson, xvii). One year later, in 1791, she published a second edition of Original Stories, and started to write A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; she also met her future husband, the philosopher William Godwin, through Joseph Johnson in November of that year (Johnson, xvii).

    In January 1792, Mary published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which received several favorable reviews; she published a second edition later that year, and had planned to write a second part but never did, though Godwin published her “Hints” of it in Posthumous Works (1798) (Johnson, xvii). In 1793, Mary met Gilbert Imlay, had an affair with him and although not married, she registered as his wife at the American Embassy to claim protection of United States citizenship (Johnson, xviii). In 1794, Fanny Imlay was born, and in 1795, Mary learned of Gilbert’s infidelity and attempted suicide twice; she saw Imlay for the last time in 1796, and met Godwin again in April (Johnson, xviii). She also published Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, started to write Wrongs of Woman, and began her relationship with Godwin by mid-summer (Johnson, xviii).

    Finally, in 1797, Mary married Godwin, and their daughter, later known as Mary Shelley, was born in August; Wollstonecraft died in September of complications resulting from childbirth (Johnson, xix), probably puerpal fever. In 1798, Godwin published Mary’s Posthumous Works, including, The Wrongs of Women, or Maria, “The Cave of Fancy”, her Letters to Imlay and other miscellaneous pieces; he also includes his own Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary’s first biography (Johnson, xix). Arguably Mary Wollstonecraft’s greatest posthumous work was her daughter, known to history as Mary Shelley. Her husband brought up the younger Mary in a loving but rigorously rational manner, and the only way she could rebel as a teenager was to elope with the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and would eventually write Frankenstein.

    [edit]

    Works

    [edit]

    Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787)

    This was the first book to establish Mary Wollstonecraft as an author. The title echoes John Locke’s Some Thoughts on Education, and maintains familiar ideas from the Lockean tradition: the ideal of a domestic education supervised by parents; the bourgeois distrust of servants; the banishment of improbable tales and superstitious accounts from the child’s library; and the importance of an inflexible adherence to rules (Richardson, 26). Wollstonecraft summarizes the main articles of early education as a strict adherence to truth; a proper submission to superiors; and condescension to inferiors; she also argues for the development of sound moral understanding over the mindless cultivation of exterior accomplishments like drawing and music (Richardson, 27). She passionately criticizes the scarceness of careers for women, saying that the school teacher is a kind of upper servant, and a governess is a humble companion (Richardson, 27). She also says that artificial manners obscure natural sincerity and fine clothes and made up faces should not take the place of unaffected manners and natural play of thought and emotion (Richardson, 27).

    [edit]

    Mary: A fiction (1788)

    This story was Wollstonecraft’s first novel; she began writing with Rousseau’s idea that a genius will educate itself, and used this idea as a summary for her book by presenting Emile, a female who educates herself through sensations, nature and solitary thinking (Todd, 111).

    [edit]

    Original Stories from Real Life (1788)

    Described as a series of harsh tales, Original Stories was Wollstonecraft’s first commercial success (Johnson, 29). The book is a sort of governess fantasy, in which children are rescued from sophisticated aristocrats by a discerning surrogate, Mrs. Mason, who acts out of high-minded compassion, not greed (Todd, 127). Throughout Original Stories, the tie between higher and lower remains charity, and story after story which cries out for resolution in social reform is answered by personal goodwill (Todd, 128).

    [edit]

    Of the Importance of Religious Opinions (1788)

    Mary was not fluent in French, but at the time she had the rudiments and so could tackle the more ambitious translating project, Of the Importance of Religious Opinions, by the French politician, Jacques Necker. Mary liked his emphasis on constant self-improvement and his praise of reason as a divine gift in agreement with religion (Todd, 135). Later, when she disapproved of Necker’s political activities before the French Revolution, she came to despise his book, describing it as, “various metaphysical shreds of arguments” in a style as “inflated and confused as the thoughts were far-fetched and unconnected.” (Todd, 135).

    [edit]

    The Female Reader (1789)

    A collection of short pieces and extracts edited by Wollstonecraft but published by Johnson under a popular writer’s name, Mr. Creswick (Richardson, 28). She advocates simplicity and sincerity in style as well as behaviour, recommends works addressed to the imagination over cold arguments and mere declamation, and characterizes children formed by rote learning as miseducated monsters (Richardson, 28).

    [edit]

    Young Grandison (1790)

    By the time Wollstonecraft published this translation of de Cambon’s De kleine Grandisson, de gehoorzaame zoon, or Young Grandison, she had grown impatient with doctrines that “cramped” the child’s understanding in making a child submit to any other authority than that of reason (Richardson, 37). In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she rejects the arbitrary principle of parental authority and the blind obedience that renders children “slavish” in character; Wollstonecraft urges that parent-child relations be predicated instead on a principle of reciprocal duty (Richardson, 37). She insists that parents should earn their children’s respect through carefully attending to their education and basic needs, and that children will return the obligation through caring for their parents in their old age (Richardson, 37).

    [edit]

    Elements of Morality (1790)

    This was an adaptation more than a translation of Christian Salzmann’s Moralisches Elementarbuch or Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children; with an Introductory Address to Parents, because Mary had limited knowledge of the German language and had begun the translation to help herself learn the language (Todd, 135). She found his work very rational, and the book’s arguments agreed with her view that pain, whatever its physical cause, was in God’s plan and led to good character (Todd, 135). She approved of Salzmann’s opinion that happiness was not the measure of virtue and its aim was to insinuate a taste for domestic pleasures into the hearts of both parents and children (Todd, 135). She kept Salzmann’s moral stories and added one herself to persuade children to consider Indians their brothers, a more relevant tale for British than German youth; she also toned down the sentimental effusions and the ingratiating remarks about the upper orders (Todd, 135).

    [edit]

    A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)

    This work begins with Edmund Burke’s Reflections of the Revolution in France, a melodramatic evocation of Louis XVI of France and his family plagued by a murderous mob and his predictions of anarchy and slaughter (Franklin, 87). The French Revolution provided Burke with raw material to create a cautionary tale to frighten the British away from following suit (Franklin, 87). Mary wrote this passionate rebuttal, which turned into her first political polemic (Franklin, 88).

    Wollstonecraft affirms her support for the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen by addressing a reply to Burke in the second person, in the form of a letter (Franklin, 92). She wrote anonymously, satirizing Burke’s sensibility and imagination as mere literary fictions (Franklin, 95). She also puts her ideals of justice and human rights on a moral basis, fighting against a corrupt state which impedes the freedom of the individual to make moral choices and to participate in improving society (Franklin, 96). In her response, she demands a more equal society, responding to Burke’s cynical contempt for the poor (Franklin, 96). The book publicly established Wollstonecraft, spurring some criticism that doubted whether such a good pamphlet could really have been written by a “fair lady” (Franklin, 98). Her confidence growing, Mary was already at work on Rights of Woman by the time Rights of Men was under review.

    [edit]

    A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

    Godwin asserted that Mary wrote Rights of Woman in six weeks (Franklin, 101). She says, “Had I allowed myself more time I could have written a better book” (Jacobs, 110). Mary promised greater care on a second volume, but there is no sign that she ever began it (Jacobs, 110). She was not interested in conforming to scholarly conventions, but her vehemence and personal tone are a conscious attempt to reproduce, in literary style, a persuasive political speech (Franklin, 101).

    Wollstonecraft put the rights of women in the context of social optimism (Jacobs, 101); she argues that the minds of women are no different from the minds of men, but that only men and women differ in their bodies (Jacobs, 102). As a result, she affirms universal human rights—-females are in all the most important aspects the same as males, possessing the same souls, the same mental capacities and thus the same human rights (Mellor, 141). Therefore, she argues that a system based on one’s sex’s dependence is demeaning to everyone (Jacobs, 102).

    The book also contends that women, like men, are born free (Gunther, 39). It raises a serious discussion of women’s citizenship, linking the objectification of women to the subjection of her sex (Gunther, 6). The point of Vindication is that women become silly creatures because the goal of their education is to lure a man (Jacobs, 102). She feels that sexually differentiated instruction only disguises female ignorance as innocence, and so Wollstonecraft offers her own system of female education for independence that aims at creating a citizen woman capable of governing herself (Gunther, 6). She also calls for coeducational government-sponsored schools (Jacobs, 105), and on her philosophical assumption of sexual equality, Wollstonecraft mounts this campaign for the reform of female education, arguing that girls should be educated in the same subjects and by the same methods as boys (Mellor, 142). She exclaims, “Let an enlightened nation then allow women to share the advantages of education and government with man, see whether they will become better as they grow wiser and become free.” (Jacobs, 105).

    According to her scheme, between the ages of five and nine, “rich and poor” children of both sexes would attend national day schools; but she cautions that not every child has an intellectual future, and so after the age of nine, only boys and girls of wealth or ability would pursue academic courses, while the others have the option of trade schools (Jacobs, 105). Coeducation is crucial for she says “men and women were made for each other, though not to become one being, and if [men] will not improve women, they will deprave them” (Jacobs, 106).

    She further advocated a radical revision of British law to enable a new, egalitarian marriage in which women would share equally in the management and possession of all household resources, and demands women be paid equally for their labour, gain civil and legal rights to possess and distribute property, be admitted to all professions, and be given the vote (Mellor, 142). She insisted that a revolution in female manners would dramatically change both genders, as it would produce women who acted with reason, providence and generosity; it would produce men who would treat women with respect and act toward all with benevolence, justice and sound reason; and it would also produce egalitarian marriages based on compatibility, mutual affection, and respect (Mellor, 142).

    She proclaims that women must articulate the story of their own lives and act for themselves; she says to become democratic citizens and to participate in the public world, women must challenge social custom and change personal habits (Gunther, 36). The revolution in female manners incites other women to claim the feminist authority of representing themselves and their own interests in word and deed (Gunther, 36). Lastly, she insists that the female reader can become a revolutionary agent of change by taking part in the historical dramas of their nation (Gunther, 37).

    Mary Wollstonecraft wanted to bring about change, considering herself as standing forth in defense of one half of the human species who have been degraded from the station of rational beings (Franklin, 101). Thus, she calls for a “revolution in female manners”, and proposes a model of what we would now call “equality” or “liberal” feminism (Mellor, 141). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman has proven to be one of the most important works in the history of western feminism, and has been a touchstone for generations of women committed to sexual equality (Gunther, 99).

    [edit]

    An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (1794)

    In this work, Mary concedes that the effeminacy of the French was responsible for anarchy, but maintains that this subverted a revolution that had been motivated by nobler motives (Jones, 52). She wrote only one volume, despite promising two or three more in the advertisement for it. Wollstonecraft found it necessary to analyze what had gone so horrifyingly wrong in France; however, she confined herself to commenting on the less contentious events up to 1790, making her book a retrospective analysis that contributed to the revolution debate (Franklin, 130). Adopting the stance of a modern, philosophically opinionated historian, she intersperses her narrative of events with passages of critical commentary on the dialectic between constitutional change and the stage France had reached in civilization (Franklin, 131).

    [edit]

    Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796)

    This was the last book published before Wollstonecraft’s death; she takes the restlessness and dislocation that marked her own life, as well as the society she observed in Northern Europe, and tries to shape them into a style, an argument, and a political stance (Favret, 209). Her travelogue tells the reader more about the mind of the traveler-subject, charting her path through a “heterogeneous modernity” than about the three countries she visits (Favret, 209). The narrator adopts several modes of travel but never settles; however, as the story unfolds, the mobility of the subject, which had initially presented itself as both liberating and creative, changes into something compromised, inescapable (Favret, 209). The desire to escape is a recurring motif, but in the course of these lengthy twenty-five letters, the narrator loses her faith in the freedom of movement (Favret, 210).

    [edit]

    Posthumous Works

    [edit]

    The Cave of Fancy (1798)

    Published by William Godwin after her death, Wollstonecraft’s, “The Cave of Fancy” is a work where she allows the expression of passion to be romanticized (Todd, 182). She began the novel by writing about a f

    [edit]

    The Wrongs of Women (1798)

    This novel was designed to show the injustice and immorality built in to marriage (Franklin, 177), and more daring than most feminists, to show the wrongs of different classes of women, linking their fates together as equals (Franklin, 178). Her novel hosts a man and two women who tell stories that also incorporate miserable accounts of other oppressed women (Todd, 427). The story’s setting is an asylum, and the twist is that the heroine, Maria, who narrates a tale of domestic betrayals, is only disappointed in love and not actually mad, even though she sometimes sounds like it (Todd, 427). Wollstonecraft most likely started this novel in the Summer of 1796, but her lack of confidence and unwillingness to conform to literary convention stopped her from completing the novel (Franklin, 186). Wollstonecraft’s death is why she was unable to complete “Maria, or The Wrongs of Women.”

    [edit]

    Letters to Imlay (1798)

    When Godwin decided to publish her Letters to Imlay, he did so as a part of his honest presentation of a beloved partner and because he admired them as literary constructions; they are the proper self-expression of a sensitive woman (Todd, 363). The letters are extraordinary because they are, as Godwin professed, “the finest examples of the language of sentiment and passion ever presented to the world” (Todd, 363).

    [edit]

    Letters on the Management of Infants (1798)

    Only part of the first letters survived for publishing–the letters were meant to illustrate a program of infant care based on simplicity and the author’s own successful practice for women ready to depart from the conventional errors that contributed to the high infant mortality rate of the time; her healthy daughter was a living argument for rational motherhood and for giving children as much freedom and stimulation as possible (Richardson, 37-38).

    [edit]

    Lessons (1798)

    The fragmentary “Lessons” (ten in all) address a little girl whose life narrative develops as the lessons progress; the lessons were designed for use in learning to read (Richardson, 38). Wollstonecraft tries to provide new readers with age-appropriate, concrete, engaging material in a simple style and parental voice. Had Wollstonecraft lived to complete Lessons, it would have made a pronounced contrast to the steely didacticism of Original Stories, and would have provided an innovative and compelling model for children’s writers to come (Richardson, 39).

    [edit]

    Influence

    Mary Wollstonecraft proves to be a prophetic visionary for 19th century, 20th century, and 21st century feminist politics (Bahar, 177). As a feminist author, she has been reinvented and her work read again and again by women yearning to understand their history and eager to create their future (Gunther, 154). Wollstonecraft’s scholarship has played a leading role in a shift from the study of the experience or writings of women as a separate category of literary or historical analysis, and toward the complex involvement of women and of gender difference in all areas of eighteenth century life and thought (Kaplan, 247). At the end of the nineteenth century, Wollstonecraft’s ideas were explored by Victorian era feminists who put sexual freedom on their agenda (Franklin, 210). Yet it was not until the twentieth century that Wollstonecraft’s broader philosophical critique of the cultural and economic constraints on women would come into its own (Franklin, 210). In fact, late twentieth century feminism adopted Wollstonecraft as an icon for her success in placing women’s rights and sexual difference at the center of social and political debates, and in so doing, made the genealogy of feminist ideas in modernity of interest to a wider public (Kaplan, 247).

    Both in the first and second waves of feminism, in the 1920s/1930s and 1960s/1970s, feminists turned to Wollstonecraft as a vital, still-relevant thinker (Franklin, 210). Virginia Woolf, in 1929, described Mary Wollstonecraft saying that, “she is alive and active, she argues and experiments, we hear her voice and trace her influence even now among the living” (Kaplan, 246). The story of Wollstonecraft’s life was seized upon by feminist intellectuals, and became re-told as a tale of principle instead of illicit passion (Franklin, 210). Her attack on conventional femininity helped inspire a 1970s feminism based on consciousness-raising and women’s scrutiny of their life experiences (Franklin, 210). The combination of an outpouring of feminist scholarship and the movement towards historicism in romantic studies since the 1980s has produced a new portrait of Wollstonecraft (Franklin, 210). She laid down a tradition of feminism saturated in the word, in literacy and literature, in her participation in print culture and in concern with representation whose effects are felt to this day (Franklin, 211).

    [edit]

    Further reading

    * Falco, Maria J. ed. Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. University Park: Penn State Press, 1996.
    * Gordon, Lyndall. Mary Wollstonecraft. Little Brown, 2005.
    * Gubar, Susan. Critical Condition: Feminism at the Turn of the Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
    * Jump, Harriet. Mary Wollstonecraft: Writer. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.
    * Kelly, Gary. Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: St. Martin’s, 1992.
    * Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
    * Macdonald, D.L. and Kathleen Scherf ed. The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman, By Mary Wollstonecraft. Broadview Press, 1997.
    * Todd, Janet and Marilyn Butler. The Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. 7 vols. New York: New York University Press, 1989.
    * Todd, Janet. The Complete Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
    * Todd, Janet. The Political Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.
    * Todd, Janet. Mary Wollstonecraft: Mary, A Fiction. New York: Schocken Books, 1977.
    * Todd, Janet. A Wollstonecraft Anthology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
    * Todd, Janet. Mary Wollstonecraft: Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution. New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1975.
    * Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of May Wollstonecraft. Penguin, 1992.

    [edit]

    External links

    * A thorough reference guide for websites, materials and links at Epistemlinks

    Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
    Mary Wollstonecraft

    * Some of Mary Wollstonecraft’s works at Project Gutenberg
    * Short bio, pic and ‘Vindication’ ebook at Bartleby.com
    * Works by Mary Wollstonecraft at Project Gutenberg

    * Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman , by William Godwin, at Project Gutenberg

    * Another short bio, ‘Vindication…’ and ‘Maria…’ at The History guide.

    [edit]

    References

    * Alderson, Brian. “”Mister Gobwin” and His “Interesting Little Books, Adorned with Beautiful Copper-Plates.” 03 Nov. 2005
    * Bahar, Saba. Mary Wollstonecraft’s Social and Aesthetic Philosophy: ‘An Eve to Please Me’. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002.
    * “De kleine Grandisson, of de gehoorzaame zoon: Maria Geertruid de Cambon-van der Werken.” Digitale bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letternen. 03 Nov. 2005 .
    * Franklin, Caroline. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Literary Life. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004.
    * Favret, Mary. “Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark: traveling with Mary Wollstonecraft.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 209-227.
    * Gunther, Wendy. Rebel Writer: Mary Wollstonecraft and Enlightenment Politics. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001.
    * Jacobs, Diane. Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
    * Jones, Chris. “Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindications and their Political Tradition.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 42-58.
    * Kaplan, Cora. “Mary Wollstonecraft’s Reception and Legacies.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 246-269.
    * Mellor, Anne K. “Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of The Rights of Women and the women writers of her day” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 141-159.
    * Richardson, Alan. “Mary Wollstonecraft on Education.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 24-39.
    * Todd, Janet. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
    * Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Norton Anthology: Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch, William E. Cain, Laurie Fink, Barbara Johnson, John McGowan, and Jeffery J. Williams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001. 582-593.

    Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft”

    Categories: 1759 births | 1797 deaths | 18th century philosophers | English travel writers | Enlightenment philosophers | Feminists | Londoners | Women writers

    22 March 2006, 11:41 am

18. Charles Brown:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley

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    Mary Shelley

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    Mary Shelley
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    Mary Shelley

    Mary Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.

    She was married to the notable Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

    [edit]

    Biography

    Mary Shelley was born ‘Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in London, England, the second daughter of famed feminist, educator and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the equally famous liberal philosopher, anarchic journalist and atheist dissenter, William Godwin. Her mother died eleven days after her birth and her father, left to care for Mary and her older half-sister Fanny Imlay, quickly married again. Under his tutelage, Mary received an excellent education unusual for girls at the time.

    She met Percy Bysshe Shelley, a political radical and free-thinker like her father, when Percy and his first wife Harriet visited Godwin’s home and bookshop in London. Percy, unhappy in his marriage, began to visit Godwin more frequently (and alone). In the summer of 1814 he and Mary (then only 16) fell in love. They eloped to France on 27 July, with Mary’s stepsister, Jane Clairmont, in tow. This was the poet’s second elopement, as he had also eloped with Harriet three years before. Upon their return several weeks later, the young couple were dismayed to find that Godwin, whose views on free love apparently did not apply to his daughter, refused to see them.

    Mary consoled herself with her studies and with Percy, who would always be, despite disillusionment and tragedy, the love of her life. Percy, too, was more than satisfied with his new partner in these first years. He exulted that Mary was “one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy” — although she, like Harriet before her, refused his attempts to share her with his friend Thomas Hogg. Mary thus learned that Percy’s loyalty to Godwin’s free love ideals would always conflict with his deep desire for “true love” as expressed in so much of his poetry.

    Mary and Percy shared a love of languages and literature. They enjoyed reading and discussing books together, such as the classics that Percy took to reading upon their return to London towards the end of the year. During this time Percy Shelley wrote “Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude”, in which he counsels against the loss of “sweet human love” in exchange for the activism that he himself was to promote and indulge in for much of his life.

    During May of 1816, the couple, again with Jane (now Claire) Clairmont, traveled to Lake Geneva to summer near the famous and scandalous poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her both pregnant and somewhat obsessed with him. In terms of English literature, it was to be a productive summer. Percy began work on “Hymn To Intellectual Beauty” and “Mont Blanc”. Mary, in the meantime, was inspired to write an enduring masterpiece of her own.

    Forced to stay indoors by the climatic events of the “Year Without a Summer” on one particular evening, the group of young writers and intellectuals, enthralled by the ghost stories from the book ‘Fantasmagoriana’, decided to have a ghost-story writing contest. Another guest, Dr. John Polidori, came up with The Vampyre, later to become a strong influence on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

    Other guests wove tales of equal horror, but Mary found herself unable to invent one. That night, however, she had a waking dream where she saw “the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.” Then she set herself to put the story on paper. In time it would be published as Frankenstein. Its success would endure long after the other writings produced that summer had faded.

    Mary had incorporated a number of different sources into her work, not the least of which was the Promethean myth from Ovid. The influence of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the book the ‘creature’ finds in the cabin, is also clearly evident within the novel. Also, both Shelleys had read William Beckford’s Vathek (a Gothic novel that has been likened to an Arabesque). Frankenstein is also full of references to her mother, Mary Wolstonecraft, and her major work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which discusses the lack of equal education for males and females. The inclusion of her mother’s ideas in her work is also related to the theme of creation/motherhood in the novel.

    Can one miss the darkling reflection of the Beckford character’s “insolent desire to “penetrate the secrets of heaven” in both “Alastor” (”I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins”) and Mary’s acclaimed piece (”Who shall perceive the horrors …as I dabbled among the unhallowed damp of the grave, or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay”)? Indeed, many, if not most, commentators take this “desire” to be a major theme of Frankenstein.

    Mary and Percy were both ethical vegetarians and strong advocates for animals. One can see references to vegetarianism in her writing. For example, in her novel Frankenstein, the creature was a vegetarian.

    Returning to England in September of 1816, Mary and Percy were stunned by two family suicides in quick succession. On 9 October 1816, Mary’s older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, left the Godwin home and took her own life at a distant inn. On 10 December, Percy’s first wife drowned herself in London’s Hyde Park. Discarded and pregnant, she had not welcomed Percy’s invitation to join Mary and himself in their new household.

    On 30 December 1816, shortly after Harriet’s death, Percy and Mary were married, now with Godwin’s blessing. Their attempts to gain custody of Percy’s two children by Harriet failed, but their writing careers enjoyed more success when, in the spring of 1817, Mary finished Frankenstein.

    Over the following years, Mary’s household grew to include her own children by Percy, occasional friends, and Claire’s daughter by Byron. Shelley moved his menage from place to place first in England and then in Italy. Mary suffered the death of her infant daughter Clara outside Venice, after which her young son Will died too, in Rome, as Percy moved the household yet again. By now Mary had resigned herself to her husband’s self-centered restlessness and his romantic enthusiasms for other women. The birth of her only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley, consoled her somewhat for her losses.

    Eventually the group settled in Lerici, a town close to La Spezia in Italy, but it was an ill-fated choice. It was here that Claire learned of her daughter’s death at the Italian convent to which Byron had sent her, and that Mary almost died of a miscarriage. And it was from here, in July 1822, that Percy sailed away up the coast to Livorno to plan the founding of a journal with a group of friends. Caught in a storm on his return, he drowned at sea on 8 July 1822, aged 30, along with his friend Edward Williams and a young boat attendant. Percy left his last poem, a shadowy work called The Triumph Of Life, unfinished.

    Mary was tireless in promoting her late husband’s work, including editing and annotating unpublished material. Despite their troubled later life together, she revered her late husband’s memory and helped build his reputation as one of the major poets of the English Romantic period. But she also found occasions to write a few more novels, including Valperga, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck and Falkner. Critics say these works do not begin to approach the power and fame of Frankenstein; The Last Man, a pioneering science fiction novel of the human apocalypse in the distant future, is, however, sometimes considered her best work, as is Maria, a novel published posthumously. Matilda is a short novel which was not published until the 1950’s. It is perhaps her most controversial work since it involves the taboo subject of incest. Godwin, Shelley’s father, refused to publish the work probably because of its subject matter and its obvious autobiographical undertones.

    Mary Shelley died of brain cancer on 1 February 1851, aged 53, in London and was interred at St. Peter’s Churchyard in Bournemouth, in the English county of Dorset. At the time of her death, she was a recognized novelist.

    [edit]

    Mary Shelley on film

    The genesis of the Frankenstein story in 1816 has been a popular subject for filmmakers and appears in at least four films:

    * Gothic (Ken Russell, 1986); Natasha Richardson plays Mary Shelley
    * Haunted Summer (Ivan Passer, 1988); Alice Krige plays Mary Shelley
    * Rowing With the Wind (Gonzalo Suárez, 1988); Lizzy McInnery plays Mary Shelley
    * Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935); Elsa Lanchester plays Mary Shelley
    * The Arthur (cartoon) series had one episode depicting a renactment of the night the novel was created, titled “Ferkenstein’s Monster.”
    * In Frankenstein Unbound, a 21st century time traveler encounters both Frankenstein and the Shelleys

    [edit]

    External links

    Wikisource
    Wikisource has original works written by or about:
    Mary Shelley

    Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
    Mary Shelley

    Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
    Mary Shelley

    * Works by Mary Shelley at Project Gutenberg
    * Brandeis University article on Mary’s life and work
    * Free audiobook of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus from LibriVox (without prefaces and edition information)
    * Frankenstein: A New Reality!
    * Comroe, Julius H., Jr. (1975). Frankenstein, Pickwick, and Ondine Retrospectroscope article . Analyzes errors in the re-telling of Mary Shelley’s original plot.
    * Literary Encyclopedia biography
    * Biography
    * The first Full English translation of Fantasmagoriana (Tales of The Dead)

    Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley”

    Categories: 1797 births | 1851 deaths | Cancer deaths | Deaths by brain tumour | English novelists | English science fiction writers | English travel writers | English horror writers | Londoners | Romanticism | Vegetarians | Women writers

    22 March 2006, 11:47 am

19. Charles Brown:

    Fascistic Male Supremacism

    NY Times Magazine, April 9, 2006
    Pro-Life Nation
    By JACK HITT

    It was a sunny midafternoon in a shiny new global-economy mall in San
    Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, and a young woman I was hoping
    to meet appeared to be getting cold feet. She had agreed to rendezvous with
    a go-between not far from the Payless shoe store and then come to a nearby
    hotel to talk to me. She was an hour late. Alone in the hotel lobby, I was
    feeling nervous; I was stood up the day before by another woman in a
    similar situation. I had been warned that interviewing anyone who had had
    an abortion in El Salvador would be difficult. The problem was not simply
    that in this very Catholic country a shy 24-year-old unmarried woman might
    feel shame telling her story to an older man. There was also the criminal
    stigma. And this was why I had come to El Salvador: Abortion is a serious
    felony here for everyone involved, including the woman who has the
    abortion. Some young women are now serving prison sentences, a few as long
    as 30 years.

    More than a dozen countries have liberalized their abortion laws in recent
    years, including South Africa, Switzerland, Cambodia and Chad. In a handful
    of others, including Russia and the United States (or parts of it), the
    movement has been toward criminalizing more and different types of
    abortions. In South Dakota, the governor recently signed the most
    restrictive abortion bill since the Supreme Court ruled in 1973, in Roe v.
    Wade, that state laws prohibiting abortion were unconstitutional. The South
    Dakota law, which its backers acknowledge is designed to test Roe v. Wade
    in the courts, forbids abortion, including those cases in which the
    pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. Only if an abortion is necessary
    to save the life of the mother is the procedure permitted. A similar though
    less restrictive bill is now making its way through the Mississippi
    Legislature.

    In this new movement toward criminalization, El Salvador is in the
    vanguard. The array of exceptions that tend to exist even in countries
    where abortion is circumscribed — rape, incest, fetal malformation, life of
    the mother — don’t apply in El Salvador. They were rejected in the late
    1990’s, in a period after the country’s long civil war ended. The country’s
    penal system was revamped and its constitution was amended. Abortion is now
    absolutely forbidden in every possible circumstance. No exceptions.

    There are other countries in the world that, like El Salvador, completely
    ban abortion, including Malta, Chile and Colombia. El Salvador, however,
    has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement
    apparatus — the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina
    inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor’s office responsible
    for Crimes Against Minors and Women, a unit charged with capturing, trying
    and incarcerating an unusual kind of criminal. Like the woman I was waiting
    to meet.

    I was on my sixth cup of coffee when I spotted my contacts — two abortion
    rights advocates who work in the region and a local nurse who had heard
    this young woman’s story. They entered the lobby surrounding another woman
    like Secret Service agents. A quick glance let me know that I shouldn’t
    make a premature appearance. Even as I retreated to some large sofas, I
    could hear the Spanish flying — words of comfort, of being brave, of the
    importance that others understand what is happening in El Salvador. At last
    the retinue approached. I was not quite ready for what I saw. The woman, I
    had been told, lived in a hovel in a very poor part of the town. Somehow
    that had put a certain picture in my head. I don’t know, call it sexism. I
    just didn’t expect to see a tall and strikingly beautiful woman with the
    kind of big grin that could very well appear in one of those full-page ads
    you might see in an airline magazine inviting people to “Vacation in El
    Salvador!”

    We chatted briefly about the one thing I knew we had in common — malls —
    before we went up to a quiet hotel room, where she and I could talk. One
    intermediary acted as our interpreter. I agreed to call her by her
    initials, D.C.; she is afraid to be identified by name, though she did
    agree to be photographed. (While it was impossible to confirm every detail
    of her story, I did later see legal records that corroborated her
    description of events.) D.C. sat down, and now that we were ready to talk
    about her experience, she started to cry. She wiped her eyes several times
    with a paper napkin. She spent a few minutes folding and twisting it. D.C.
    crossed her ankles and stared down at the shrinking napkin, now tightly
    compacted into a large pill. Then she began to tell me her story.

    I worked in a clothing factory two years ago. I have a son, 7 years old.
    Well, when I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t know what to do. I told my
    friend. She told me if I was going to have it, I needed to think about
    that. I had a child already. I told the father. He said he didn’t want
    another child. He didn’t want to deal with problems like this. My mother
    told me she would kick me out if I ever got pregnant again.

    I started talking to my friend. Every day was so hard. I cried, and I
    didn’t do anything. I didn’t want to see anybody, and I didn’t sleep. My
    friend told me to go to a man, and he gave me some pills. I was two months
    pregnant. He said that I could put them in my vagina. I did, and after that
    I just bled a couple of times. Two months more went by. I was still
    pregnant. I cried and didn’t know what to do. When I was about four months
    along, my friend told me one of her friends lived near a house where there
    was a woman who did abortions. I felt so worried. I didn’t know what to do,
    whether I should go talk to the woman. But then one day, I went.

    With the signing of the Chapultepec Agreements in Mexico in 1992, El
    Salvador’s civil war came to an end. As the nation turned away from its
    violent years, there were calls from both sides of the political divide
    that it was time to re-examine certain social issues. One of them was
    abortion. The country’s abortion law, like the law in most Latin American
    countries at the time, was already a near-ban with only a few exceptions,
    specifically in cases of rape, serious fetal malformation and grave risk