Part 4 and conclusion of the Series A Short History of Abortion and Contraception.
Read earlier parts first: Part 1 Cavewomen and Contraception Part 2 Bronze Age Birth Control Part 3 Witchcraft: the burining issue.
Medieval to Modern
The era known as the Enlightenment was not all sweetness and light for women who wanted to control their reproductive process. It also brought several outbreaks of religious fanaticism.
While the ideas of those who rejected religion in favour of reason seemed to offer hope of reviving the old skills of the wise women and village healers and refining them by bringing a more ordered and scientific approach to investigation and the recording of information, any progress that might have been made was nullified by the Industrial Revolution. The almost simultaneous mechanisations of agriculture and industry drove peasants off the land and away from the villages their families had lived in for generations while the mechanisation of industry and urbanisation of areas around the centres of industry removed those who still had the skills to use herbs for birth control from the source materials of their trade.
Not only was it hard to find tansy, pennyroyal, wormwood and rue in the close packed streets of the towns, it had become an offence punishable by transportation to the colonies to walk into the country, find a stretch of woodland and gather the plants. Every blade of grass was owned by somebody.
New religious groups were growing at this time too, among them the freethinking Moravians and the almost pagan Unitarians. These preached equal rights, not just on grounds of colour though both were totally opposed to slavery, but on grounds of gender too. The upstart churches, denounced as unchristian by mainstream religions won favour among the liberal minded bourgeoisie but many factory owners preferred the mainstream denominations or the more extreme versions of Pentecostalism for purely pragmatic reasons. The traditional patriarchal god, angry and implacable fitted nicely with the idea of the all powerful boss who controlled not only his workers livelihoods but their lives.
Though the rift between protestant and catholic churches had never been wider, one thing they remained united on was the vilification of women. The she-demon, temptress, the one whose sin in eating from the tree of knowledge had been punished by the monthly "curse," was still central to the doctrine of the major churches of the western world.
It was not "the monthlies" that truly cursed womanise' lives though, but the dogmas of male dominated churches and the ruthless greed of the men who controlled society.
Sewers and Socialism
In all pre-Christian societies from India to Ireland and even in the cities of the Mayan civilisation in Mexico and central America there is archaeological evidence of sewerage systems to take away the human waste to cesspits.
One would expect then that London, capital city of the world's greatest trading nation and the centre of a rapidly expanding empire that would soon dwarf the territories of Rome would, after twelve hundred years of Christianity have come up with a system of disposing of sewage more efficient than simply throwing it in the street. Novelist and magistrate Henry Fielding in his diary for 1750 wrote that because of the insanitary conditions in the streets three quarters of all children born in the city did not survive to their fifth birthday.
Progress under the patriarchal regimes then had moved from not caring about women's' physical health to disregarding their feelings to.
There was no bereavement counselling in those days, no social worker to offer any kind of cold comfort to women who had to watch child after child succumb to disease or malnutrition, only some tight - lipped and compassionless pastor piously intoning about accepting "the will of God."
Despite the warnings of Fielding and others the situation did not get better but worse. The Industrial Revolution had just begun when his complaint was written; as towns like Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds and Birmingham grew into cities, the overcrowded and filthy conditions exacerbated the hardships of poverty for millions more.
The influence of the liberated minds of humanists, Unitarians, Methodists and Moravians was working insidiously against the patriarchy though. Liberal writers began to argue for state education until the age of eleven, propose that the labouring classes organise into trade unions and friendly societies to offer mutual support in times of hardship. Intellectuals in Britain, Germany, France and The Netherlands resuscitated the ideals of equality. Inevitably these radicals turned their attention to women's' rights and eventually the right of women to control their reproductive process.
Nothing much changed initially, men were still firmly in control despite the work of female writers such as Mary Woolstonecraft, a friend and supporter of Tom Paine whose book The Rights of Man inspired several of the instigators of the American War of Independence.
Woolstonecraft, like Paine, campaigned in her writing for the education and politicisation of the working class, going as far as to open a school with the aim of proving girls could achieve as much in education as boys. She was also very vociferous in the cause of female emancipation because in those days throughout Europe and in the American colonies a woman was still the property of her father, guardian or husband.
While the radicalisation of the bourgeois middle class was fomenting such revolutionary thinking the march of capitalism in the industrial areas seemed unstoppable. As capitalists grew stronger so the lot of the poor worsened. Social reformers were starting to notice a correlation between poverty and uncontrolled breeding though.
Mary Woolstonecraft was a pioneer, though like many pioneers she achieved little in her lifetime her contribution was vital in the way it inspired others.
One of the people it inspired several decades later was the young George Bernard Shaw. In an early work addressed to the factory and mine owners he wrote, "Your slaves breed like rabbits, their poverty breeds filth, ugliness, dishonesty, disease, obscenity, drunkenness and violence. In the midst of the riches they pile up for you their misery grows."
Into the mess that was industrial society strode one of the most remarkable women of her era, Annie Besant.
The daughter of a wealthy middle class Irish family and estranged wife of a country preacher, Annie had rebelled against the lot of women and decided to make her own way in the world. She had been shocked and disgusted by the poverty and ignorance she had witnessed among her husband's parishioners and the damage done by repeated pregnancies and overlarge families. Was it the will of God she asked her church leaders, that while wealthy women such as herself had access to knowledge of birth control, the poor were condemned to this extra suffering as if poverty was not hard enough to bear? The Calvinist doctrine that worldly wealth indicated one was favoured by God, while the poor suffered because of the impurity of their souls was still popular at the time and Mrs. Besant did not win many friends. She did win some though.
When a British social reformer and radical politician Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant joined forces and published their work euphemistically titled The Fruits of Philosophy, which contained little about the thoughts of Plato and Socrates but was full of practical information on family planning and birth control, society egged on by church leaders and pious politicians, was scandalised.
Besant and Bradlaugh were brought to trial on charges of publishing obscene material and corrupting public morals. Even though both were sentenced to six months in prison it was a good result for them. They had courted prosecution and used the trial to shamelessly promote their publication.
All publicity is good publicity, The Fruits of Philosophy was widely circulated and knowledge of how to calculate the days of ovulation and avoid intercourse, use herbal preparations such as the old favourite Tansy and Pennyroyal to rectify the situation after a missed period and to use a small sponge attached to a length of silk ribbon and soaked in brine as a surprisingly effective combined barrier and spermicide spread throughout the working class communities.
Now poor women in towns had the knowledge the rich and countrywomen who still passed on the old knowledge from mother to daughter had always benefited from. There was only one enemy left to deal with, The Church.
The male spirit is nothing if not vengeful and Annie Besant was to pay a greater price than prison for her rebellion. The estranged husband who already had custody of their son now went to court to have Annie declared an unfit mother and gain custody of her daughter also.
After a period of depression she returned to her reforming work and joined a socialist group, The Fabian Society, which campaigned for social justice, and also continued to campaign on behalf of poor women, touring America and Europe to spread knowledge of birth control.
Later in life Annie Besant became spiritual, joining the Theosophist Church of Mme. Helena Blavatsky and publishing several works of her own on Theosophy.
(Not related to this article but is an interesting aside, the Wikipedia page for Annie Besant features a lot about her later enthusiasm but no detail on her much more important campaigning on Birth control and women's rights. The paragraphs dealing with that aspect of her life had very obviously been removed. I already had that information in history books and had only wanted to provide a link. The malicious edit shows the determination even now of some groups to suppress all information about Birth Control.)
We all owe a debt of gratitude to Annie Besant because what she did for women improved the quality of life for everybody.
At the height of Annie Besant's notoriety, in Corning, New York, a woman who would pick up and pass on the torch came into the world. Margaret Sanger was born into a devout Roman Catholic family, her mother went through eighteen pregnancies (with eleven live births.) Sanger was sixth of the eleven children and spent much of her childhood helping in the house and caring for younger siblings.
Having been radicalised while working as a nurse in the slums of New York, she began writing a column for the New York Call titled What Every Girl Should Know which featured advice on personal health matters, sex and birth control in fact it was she who coined the phrase "birth control." Sanger became even more an activist after separating from her husband, launching a monthly newsletter on contraception and family planning. Its title was The Female Rebel and the slogan it adopted was "No Gods, No Masters." she spread the message that "every woman should be the mistress of her own body."
That got her indicted for sending obscene material through the post.
She escaped to Europe, only returning when she felt safe from religious persecution. On her return Sanger opened birth control clinics and wrote incessantly of the link between the suppression of birth control and the poverty and squalor of the poor. She became a thorn in the side of the establishment, which as ever in the US was much influenced by extreme religionists. She died in 1966 after living long enough to promote the contraceptive pill.
In Britain Marie Stopes, born a year after Sanger, followed an almost identical career path to the New Yorker, although from a more privileged background. Her father Henry was a highly regarded scientist whilst her mother Charlotte was the first woman to gain entry to a Scottish University. Despite her academic ability Charlotte was not awarded a degree but a certificate although she had passed the same examinations as male students.
Charlotte's experiences at University turned her into a passionate feminist and campaigner for women's rights, a political stance she instilled into her daughter.
Marie inherited a talent for scientific work from both her parents and won a scholarship to University College of London in 1901.
There she achieved a double first in Botany and went on to earn a Doctorate of Science (now known as a PhD) in 1905, making her Britain's youngest Doctor of Science.
While she was a student Marie was active in the Suffragettes and was as passionate about women's rights as she was about science. She married in 1911 but found her husband held traditional views about how married women should behave. They divorced after five years.
One of the contributory factors to the break-up was Marie's writing a book on the marital relationship, arguing that marriage should be an equal partnership between man and woman.
Though initially rejected by publishers the book, Married Love, was accepted by a small publishing house owned by a socialist family and was an instant success.
When Married Love was published in the U.S.A. the courts immediately declared it obscene and banned it.
The next book from Stopes, inspired by her meeting Margaret Sanger in London after Sanger had fled America to escape prosecution, was about birth control and abortion. It was themed on the Sanger's slogan that "no woman can call herself free who does not control her own body,"
In 1918 Marie Stopes book Wise Parenthood angered leaders of both the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches and also most non conformist churches. There were calls for her imprisonment for corrupting public morals, the same offence as Besant and her collaborator Charles Bradlaugh had been jailed for.
Allying her scientific background and social connections to the nursing skills of Margaret Sanger though made Marie Stopes a more formidable opponent than Besant had been. Though church leaders railed and reminded the judiciary that all forms of contraception were equally abhorrent in the eyes of God no prosecution was brought and in 1921 Marie Stopes, backed by her wealthy second husband, founded a charity that still runs the Marie Stopes clinics which offer advice, counselling and free contraceptives in all major towns in Britain.
Although the first condoms were available at the time they were prohibitively expensive and not very efficient and also were thick enough to have been used to patch bicycle inner tubes according to jokes of the period. Stopes, an eminent scientist of her day, still advised use of the brine soaked sponge that wealthy women had used for centuries, backed up with properly prepared and supervised herbal infusions to prevent the development of an embryo at the earliest stage.
It is perhaps surprising to find that even the leaders of liberal churches regarded both pre and post coital contraception as a blasphemy only ninety years ago. Since the beginnings of the Marie Stopes charity, medical science and technology have moved a long way. We now have barely perceptible condoms (men are still reluctant to use them though) inter-uterine devices, vasectomy procedures (men are still reluctant to have the snip though, its ironic that the gender always most eager to face bullet or blade on the battlefield are so reluctant to submit to the scalpel on the surgeons table,) contraceptive pills and even more advanced medicines and technologies on the way
It has taken women three thousand years from the advent of the patriarchal religions to get from being evil demons, the concubines of Satan (see Part 2) intent on corrupting men's pure and immaculate souls (embarrassed cough from author) to where we are now and there is still a long way to go to Marie Stopes' Margaret Sanger's and Annie Besant's dreams of equality.)
THE END
(for now)Further reading and websites for ancient history:<BR>
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ online archive of ancient texts.
http://classics.mit.edu/ Home of the largest online archive of classical literature
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cv/index.htm Internet Sacred Texts Archive</A>, sacred texts from all over the ancient world
http://www.hinduwebsite.com/vedicsection/vedaindex.asp Hinduism Website
The Ayurveda, Bhagavad Gita, Ayur Veda, Rig Veda, Maharabharata and more
http://www.orgonelab.org/contracep.htm
Oregon Biophysical Research Lab
http://www.sisterzeus.com/Silphio.htm Sister Zeus website - Silphion pageModern pioneers of womens' right to choose.
Annie Besant & Charles Bradlaugh
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wbirth.htmBBC History
Annie Besant
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/besant_annie.shtmlMargaret Sanger biog
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_margaret_sanger.htmMargaret Sanger - the case for birth control
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/bl_sanger_1924.htmMarie Stopes - Life and achievements
http://www.users.bigpond.com/sarcasmo/sexpolitics/stopes.htmlMarie Stopes documents
http://rylibweb.man.ac.uk/specialcollections/collections/guide/atoz/stopes/History Books and Research Papers:
A History of Britain vol 2 & 3 - Simon Schama
The Myth of Eternal Return: Mircea Eliade (trans Willard Trask) Princeton 1994
Illustrated World Religions: Huston Smith
1) The Way Of Aminal Powers
2) Myths of the Primitive Hunter Gatherers
The intellectual Adventure of Early Man: H & H.A. Frankfort, Chicago 1947
The Epic of Gilgamesh (traditional - search for Gilgamesh)
The Zend Avesta (traditionl - search for Avesta)
The Golden Bough: Sir James Frazer
The White Goddess : Robert Graves
The Mythology and Rites of British Druids: Edward Davies
The Republic: Plato
The Virtues of Women: Plutarch
The Heritage of Persia: R.N. Frye.
other books too numerous to list have been referred to in preparing this article.
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 39
luckily, we had Roe vs Wade .... which legalized abortion and gave women the right to do what they felt was best ... for themselves and their own bodies ..... soon, however, that legal decision may be overturned thanks to Bush and the "pushing" of his religious beliefs ..... and that will set women's rights back a century or two .... what a load of shit ....
Right. With 6 kids you need an MPV rather than a sports coupe, these big family types haven't a clue. Ironically the mortality rate was so high because poor people had so many kids and could not afford to keep them.
thanks
Its stange, in the thread of a previous part someone it taking me to task for not being impartial and objective as an academic paper would be.
But people learn more from something wriiten in an entertaing style. And I trust my readers to know when I am being serious and when my comments are tongue in cheek.
I have argued through the comment threads on previous parts to this series the rate of unwanted teenage pregnancies in Germany, Holland, France, Sweden and Canada is less than ten per thousand and the abortion rate is negligable because detailed sex education is compulsory in schools. In Britain where there is still religious resistance to sex education the pregnancy rate in around 40 per thousand and in the USA over 80 per thousand.
The evidence is clear, education works, insisting on abstinence does not. If Bush wants to reduce the abortion rate the answer is starting him in the face.
Access to birth control made a big difference to the infant and female mortality rate but in a recent bad tempered argument in the British press between medical academics and social scientists with a lot of name calling and insult hurling (American liberals please note,) the point was repeatedly made by the social scientists that the biggest contributor was municipal engineering which contributed clean water and efficient sewers.
I believe that to be true but have no information to support my belief. A man named Joseph Bazalgette, the designer of London's sewerage system in the mid to late 19th century is always cited as one of Britain's forgotten heroes by the civil engineering profession though, so I guess there must be a case to support the argument.
We cannot measure how smaller families benefitted both parent and children but the improvement in quality of life must have been huge.
So medicine, birth control, civil engineering, improved diet (again largely a result of smaller families) and the result of Trade Unions combined with the socialist policies of the Liberal and Labour parties all contributed.
We need to get the message out, and we will not do it by letting the wingnuts shout us down.
Thanks for such a clear and compassionate account of these brave women. It is hard to read that such slow progress has been made over such a long period of time. And it is even harder to see that young women today don't even think about how much farther there is to go to reach true equality. They take these advances for granted and are even willing to give some of this hard-won progress back to please their current boyfriend or father or preacher.
Interesting article. Thanks.
Anyway, I kept pressing them to tell me whether the characters and the societal structure and interrelationships among the characters were realistic and representative, or whether Buck had simply not a clue about the real Chinese family unit and emotions although she had lived a good part of her life in China. The Chinese guests, despite some of the assertions of our overly politically correct moderator, said that for the most part, the book was truly representative of the culture and the people's views and actions in the 1910's and 1920's.
I thought of you because the wife in the book at a certain point kills her newborn in order to save it from starvation. The Chinese gentlemen said that when he got to this part of the book, he was revolted and could not go any further, which I thought was extremely interesting. We then discussed the "one child" rule in China right now and that the country is having a crisis with a huge difference in the number of young men in proportion to young women. I thought, "How in the world can this Chinese guy think that that actually happened?" The Chinese women were honest enough to say that female newborns are either killed or given to orphanages (the fortunate few would then be adopted by foreigners), but that it is the son in the family who is obliged to take care of his parents in old age...that that could not be done by the daughter.
It was maddening to say the least to hear these obviously educated "modern" Chinese adults speak in such a non-emotional way of how females are viewed and treated still in Chinese culture. And, I thought of your recent articles here on Gather.....how they may be about birth control, abortion and infanticide, but how the underlying theme of this entire thing is the domination of women......and the rules that men have forced upon women to make choices that were once natural and for the good of the tribe, but have been turned and twisted into something so evil and ingrained that educated "free" women in the 21st century can still sit and casually discuss how women are subjugated, how females are treated worse than animals in many respects, how a male-dominated culture can cull out the female and diminish her into, well, into non-existence.
I am beyond words to describe how I feel right now. And I'm even more angry at the reaction of the politically correct moderator who kept trying to reduce the discussion to universal themes of poverty and how important agrarian life was pre-industrial revolution. No one was willing to point out how inhumane, how cruel, how devoid of love, the characters (and hence the society) was in the book. In fact, one of the only truly humane moments in the book was when the mother killed her newborn to spare her the horror of slow starvation.
Anyway, I just had to vent....sorry, you can delete my comment if you wish. I just feel that in these articles, what you are really showing is how topsy-turvy this entire world has become once the male decided to dominate and have the sole say over women's reproductive prerogative.
If you have not read Buck's "The Good Earth", I would suggest it to you, but hesitate as it is just page after page of depressing, disgusting and revolting characters and actions. If you have read it, and in light of your views expressed here, I would love to hear your thoughts.
I don't detect much stridency or hostility in this piece. It does describe the horrific conditions women have been forced to live under for a long time. The sad part is, there are still many people in this country who would like to go back to the bad old days when women were property to be cuffed around and ordered to spread their legs when the lord and master commanded, and to bear children until their health collapses.
God forbid they should ever think of trying to terminate a pregnancy!
But now they have a fancy new name for such oppression. They call it "family values."
Good job, Ian...as usual. Excellent series. It should be featured on Gather, but I guarantee you that it will not. They don't feature anything controversial or argumentative. To be featured, the best thing is to write up a good recipe for traditional plum pudding or the like.
I'm Bitish. Whay American's call reasonable we call mealy mouthed. And I don't notice conciliatory attitudes winning many arguments in the USA.
But the tone of this is not strident or hostile, I can't imagine what you would have made of a secion I cut because the artyicle was overlong. It higlighted some of the background to Annie Besant's prosecution paricularly that it was only seven years before Besant began her campaign that British marital law was reformed. Up until 1870 (less than 150 years ago) the law in this supposedly civilised country, which at the time held a global hegemony as great as America's has been in the past two decades, permitted a man to beat his wife "provided he used a stick no thicker than his thumb."
Would you have criticised the campaigners for the repeal of that law for their strident hostility?
Trust me, without the constraints of political correctness, politics was a much more robust activity than it is now. In my opinion we are the poorer for losing that style of public debate.
When I get comments from a character who has the gall to call himself Antichrist, complaining I have been nasty to long dead people who were torturerers and murderers, I don't think the wider gather community is ready for me.
Thanks for your continued support.
Thanks for reminding us how far we in (most of) the west have progressed in the twentieth century.
When people start to take for granted the achievements of 19th and 20th century social reformers, the danger that the opportunists and short term profit seekers will take those advances away from large sections of the population.
I'm gratified to know that a few readers here at least, you, Sandy, Steph, Ann M, Bert and others realised these articles were not primarlty historical (though the history is accurate) but were political.
When I have said I'm a pagan follower of the goddess, many at gather are ready to jump to the conclusion that I'm into spells and love potions etc. Not so, some people go in for that stuff and good luck to them. Speaking personally, when I had a body worth showing off I was never slow at getting my kit off in public and had not need to excuse myself by pretending it was anything to do with religion.
Saying I am a pagan is very much a political stance for me. Green politics is not just about recycling and riding a bike, its about equality, responsibility and a belief that we must repay to the future the gifts the past has given us.
Bonus points. Hmm.
I've been sitting on an article for over a year that tells people how to get more traffic to their posts. I don't post it because gather continue to reward comments, invites etc. rather than rewarding people who attract traffic and thus earn them revenue.
So I guess if I was awarded bonus points I'd feel obliged to refuse them.
Does anyone know how many page views it takes to get a gather point. Its quite a lot I guess. But I'll make an article of revealing more.
I'm proud to say some of us have risen above those animal instincts ;-)
Evolution does play a big role, but better education and the denunciation of a few male myths ought to enable a lot more men to overcome their prejudices. We are after all the intelligent species. You'll find my arguments on this echo those of IVF pioneer Dr. Robert Winston in his book human evolution.
I don't know the Pearl S. Buck novel but I have read Jung Chang's Wild Swans, a more recent trilogy that tells a similar story of Chinese society.
I get a bit tetch at the PC faction who go on about how wonderful Chinese and Japanese culture are. There are many good aspects but I don't see any reason to laud societies that have treaded women so badly are shown great reluctance to make anything but cosmetic changes.
It is within the last deade a Prime Minister in Japan had to resign following foreign protests after he said a man is not really a man unless he has raped a woman.
To me that is the untimate failure of a man, worse than having to resort to commercial sex.
So as far as I'm concerned they can keep their haiku.
I agree. I have found an underlying lack of emotion in the cultures that I must say unsettles me. Oh, they're the tops at honor, responsibility and duty, but where is the love?
Which got me thinking last night - have you ever written anything on the evolution of the concept of emotional love in history and various cultures? The Chinese women smiled when I mentioned this lack of "love" in the novel - showing any, feeling any, within a family, between husband and wife, anywhere. Their stoic smiles seemd to say, "Oh, you silly westerner with your childish notions of romantic love - duty and respect is much more important." That is why marriages are still arranged in eastern countries, and if not formally arranged by a marriage broker, they are still calculated arrangements based on income and social status. (Of course at this point the PC moderator just HAD to make the point that that was how the royal families of Europe always viewed marriage.)
So, when and where DID this notion of "love", romantic or not, originate? Not lust, mind you.....we can see plenty of that going back to Herodotus, but actual love? Love between parent and child, love between husband and wife, love among siblings? I wonder if this is a purely Western notion that was conceived quite recently in history. Thoughts?
I haven'tb yet but the Birth Control series was a preview of a book project, love marriage etc. will all be part of it.
The Greeks had three words for different types of love, erota = carnal love; agape = family love and caritas = love of one's fellow humans ( but the Greeks were not big on inclusive pronouns of course)
But a wman's right to choose her partner is faily recent in western society. Even now in the British Royal Family, brides to be must often get told "what's love got to do with it."
The notion of romantic love, like chivalry, originates with the medieval troubadors / balladeers but both the European pagan and Middle Eastern pre patriarchal calendar systems have a very interesting myth that explains the origins of the phrase "my other half."
Its not romantic love but is about choice and compatibility.
I would love to read what you wrote/will write on this topic.
God forbid they should ever think of trying to terminate a pregnancy!
But now they have a fancy new name for such oppression. They call it "family values."
What's even sadder, Bert, is that women promote this. Quiverfull
Ian, the AntiChrist is one of my favorite people on (as well as off) Gather. I'm not trying to jump in the middle here, just want to say that I think you misread his intention.
I don't think Eastern cultures have it all over Western cultures - although I don't think the inverse is necessarily true either. There are strengths and weaknesses in both that I think we can learn from.
I find it interesting that, without consciously considering myself particularly political, my novels routinely favor strong female characters and often a maternalistic culture pocketed in an oppressive paternalistic culture. I guess I'm more of an activist than I thought.
I think love is older, quietly indulged in for all time, even if it wasn't supported by the establishment. However, I'm a romantic so that thought could be wishful thinking rather than a reflection of reality.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977241036&nav=Namespace
That's funny, Stephanie. ONe of the members of my book group quipped last night that she was not surprised that "The Good Earth" had made Oprah's recommended book listing, as it was about males oppressing females. We did a quick mental check on the past Oprah books and found this to be resoundingly the case.
Maybe you should submit yours for her consideration? If accepted, you would be rich!
Don't you think those women who promote sexist quasi religious organisations that are committed to suppressing women do so in order to please their husbands having been indoctrinated with the idea that to do so is the only thing a woman should aim for in life?
Here's my take on Quiverfull Bear in mind that though I have not mentioned it at Gather yet I am trying to raise the issue of overpopulation in British megablogs. Its as big an issue as overconsumtion, in fact the two are inexorably linked.
Steph's rant on women supporting anti female organisations
Antichrist misread my piece, which is fine but when he opened his first comment with the words "I'll give it to you straight," he was dead. When people do that in a public thread they are just showing off.
He's entitled to his opinion but I'm entitled to reject that opinion. The piece did exactly what I wanted it to and if he didn't like it, tough. He ought to have familiarised himself with the topic before commenting by using some of the links provided. Had he done so he would have learned that in the notorious Pendle Witch Trials one old woman was hanged for being a servant of Satan because witnesses said they had seen her talking to her cat. Another was convicted on witness testimony that she talked to herself and a simple minded girl whose mother was insane was hanged because her mother's madness allied to the fact of the girl's not knowing who her father was "proved" her mother had had sex with Satan and the girl was his child.
And Antichrist thinks I should not call these people fanatics?
Actually, said paragraphs never existed, I checked.
If you have done the research, however, you should add the relevant information to the article.