Laurie,

Maureen is a feminist (ironically enough) who meant her accounts to have great
humor in them -- as well as a serious intent. Some of the happenigs of those
days, and today, are/was really funny. And, as you say, humiliating, and
outrageous, and enraging, and all the rest. I was there on the front lines, and
still am, it  seems more often than I like these days. In many ways, all of us
here are. My maternal grandmother was a suffragist, so I guess I come by it
natural-like. She was imprisoned and force fed.  I got off a lttle luckier, I
just got death threats when I published a newspaper the far right didn't like.
I am sorry to have annoyed you, and I want to take anything further off list --
this is politics, of the first order, and the beach is not a political forum. I
don't have the feeling that my intent was read correctly by you, and I think we
should both leave this right here. L. 


>>whoa whoa.... she wasn't talking about *us*... it was a generic, more
>>expansive "you"
>>just as, radical feminist or not, we weren't talking about
"Lezlie" but
>a
>>type. all hands stand down :)
>>no worries....
>
>Thanks, Kes --
>
>Didn't mean to ruffle feathers -- no jerks on this beach. The types you
>are
>describing are a minority -- they are in every movement, the
>anti-feminist and
>terrifically conservative types have many -- I have noticed --
>humorless snots
>who just don't get it. (You know, the variety that thinks "Star
Trek" is
>a
>satanic/communist plot). BTW, check out Maureen Reagan's accounts of the
>early
>protests during the '60s -- they  are a scream! Lezlie
>>
>I was *part* of the protests in the 60s - the first time I protested
>publicly against being treated unfairly was in 1959 - before we were
>protesting "for" anything, before the activities had been called a
>"movement" before the movement had been given a name. 
>
>I was part of the childhood of the 50s that knows "Happy
Days" was a lie
>- being a child in the 50s was good memories for a small minority - the
>middle-class white male. It was not a good time for anyone who was not
>male or not white. I was made to stand up in class so that the class
>could laugh at me for my answer to the question of what I wanted to do
>after school - and this was not considered a bad thing, this was
>considered to be good for me. One of my closest friends, actually she
>had been a foster sister in one of the foster homes I lived in as a
>child, was a news anchor in New Zealand and considered herself to be a
>big fish in a small pond, so she came over here to broaden her career
>options - she got no work at all in the United States, being told over
>and over that reading the news was not a woman's job, and that listeners
>would have no faith in a woman. She was offered jobs in Canada to be the
>weather girl, do the "women's things," or (because she was so good at
>her job) to teach in broadcast school - but again she couldn't be an
>anchor woman. This was 1968 and 1969.
>
>Some of it *was* a scream - some of it was heartbreaking and
>humiliating. 
>
>It hurts me to the core to see that a lifetime of working for equality
>has resulted in other people (like men in the court system) being denied
>the same rights we were denied - even before we've managed to obtain
>what we've been striving for in all areas. I'm for all people having the
>same rights and the same accountability. It's as if I've put all this
>time, effort, and pain into nothing when I see it turned into hurting
>others in the way we and our foremothers were hurt.
>
>Laurie
>

--- Rachel's Little NET2FIDO Gate v 0.9.9.8 Alpha