The end of Women's History Month 2010

I suddenly realized tonight that this is the last day of the month, and thus I needed a good quote. I was reading through countless ones trying to choose one I really liked. Most were several sentences long. And then I happened upon this one. I stopped dead and fell in love and decided it was the one.

Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.

- Emma Goldman

My greatest fear...

Let me preface this quote by saying I've never read the book from which it comes, I first read this quote on a blog of a friend's Meg Ricketts and connected with it immediately. It is quite honestly one of, if not my greatest fear.

It's knowing that I'll never have what she has -- a beauty so powerful it brings things to you. I fear I will always have to chase the things I want. I'll always have to wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for.

– A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

Which will you choose?

The individual woman is required... a thousand times a day to choose either to accept her appointed role and thereby rescue her good disposition out of the wreckage of her self-respect, or else follow an independent line of behavior and rescue her self-respect out of the wreckage of her good disposition.

-Jeannette Rankin

To land my playing piece back on Go

I want to land my playing piece back on Go.
You know, like when you're a little kid playing a game and something goes wrong.

Everybody yells, Do over!

I want that— I want a do-over.

- From Bottled Up by Jaye Murray

 

But because we cannot have do overs, we must move on. Play the hand we're dealt to be cliche. Eventually we'll figure it out, maybe we'll even win sometimes

 

Be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
- Susan B Anthony

If you spend all your time worrying about how your actions will be perceived, or if he or she or whomever will misinterpret or dislike them, then what time is left to make a significant change for the better? Sometimes the best decisions are the most unpopular. Be unafraid to be out of vogue, sure it can be painful, but I have this sneaking suspicion that in the end it will be far more important to have done the better albeit less popular thing. Make decisions with a potent combination of your own mind and heart. Saying it doesn't mean I (always) do, but I think it's something we should all try to do.

It's like being between trapezes.

It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.

- Marilyn Ferguson

Neither wanting more, neither asking why

So here's a beautiful poem. Dedicated to those of you who are "comfortable" yet static, who are content in just being in the moment with someone. Whether that moment is a friendship, an almost relationship, a relationship -- whatever. Comfort and not knowing or not needing to know whether it should be pushed
forward or not. Neither wanting more, neither asking why...

Neither wanting more

by May Swenson

To lie with you

in a field of grass

to lie there forever

and let time pass

Touching lightly

shoulder and thigh

Neither wanting more

Neither asking why

To have your whole

cool body's length

along my own

to know the stregnth

of a secret tide

of longing seep

into our veins

go deep...deep

Dissolving flesh

and melting bone

Oh, to lie with you

alone

To feel your breast

rise with my sigh

To hold you mirrored

in my eye

Neither wanting more
Neither asking why

Juchitán

There's a society in Oaxaca, Mexico called Juchitán. It's one of the few matriarchal societies in the current day and age. It's really just a super neat place that's "free" of competition, where women are the bread winners. But what's cool is that the women are respected and honored not generally envied and disliked for their success and position in the social structure. I guess you can wiki it, I first heard of Juchitán in one of my Spanish classes. Yeah, this is kind of random.

To the girls with whom I can 'speak fearlessly on any subject'

But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. ~Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life, 1859

I spent the evening with some of my oldest and dearest friends (eff we're 20 years old) some of whom I've known since kindergarten, others since what? second grade? It's amazing how even after months of sparse contact, we can come together in a night and talk as though no time has passed. I'm convinced that each of us only gets that opportunity with a few people and that these are the lasting friendships we need to most cherish and work to maintain -- luckily they are also the ones that seem to take the least effort to maintain.
 
I love you girls.
 

A shoutout to the men who support women's strength

So for this month I've tried to include sayings and such by women, but today I'm going to take a little detour and include something by men. This is to give credit to the male singers who sing about strong women and appreciate them (or at least sing for those who do appreciate strength in women).

Miss Independent by Ne-Yo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6M5C-oKw9k

She's Her Own Woman by Brad Paisley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NeawYqxX2c

No Reins by Rascal Flatts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfUcAmsnVbk

And not totally as fitting but for those of you rock-pop lovers:
Saying Goodbye by Sugarcult http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBUn7O7Ma6o

A couple other songs you should look up that I couldn't find originals of on youtube:
She Runs by Joe Nichols
She's Every Woman by Garth Brooks

Become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.

Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.

- Ada Louise Huxtable

Yeah, it's not summer yet but with the weather in California lately, you could've fooled me (so I'm going to cheat and use this for yesterday anyway). To say that Spring break is a needed escape would be the understatement of the year. I'm so glad to have this weather. Thank goodness. I may use this when it's actually summer, depends we'll see.

We can endure much more than we think we can

At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can. -- Frida Kahlo*

To be honest, I heard this quote in the biopic of Frida Kahlo starring Salma Hayek and I don't know if Frida Kahlo actually said it, but whether she did or not it's a beautiful quote.

Is there a way to reconcile family with power and passion?

Just sharing a little quip I wrote:

It’s scary because it seems to be an incredible woman you have to be single or single for too much of your life. You have to be unmarried, or divorced, or in a confused relationship –often without children. Is there a way to reconcile family with power and passion?

- Mariah Kelly

This is me damn it!

"There comes a time when you have to stand up and shout:

This is me damn it! I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel, love the way I love! I am a whole complex package. Take me... or leave me. Accept me - or walk away! Do not try to make me feel like less of a person, just because I don't fit your idea of who I should be and don't try to change me to fit your mold. If I need to change, I alone will make that decision.

When you are strong enough to love yourself 100%, good and bad - you will be amazed at the opportunities that life presents you."
- Stacey Charter

I started bolding and increasing text size and trying to manipulate this to make the most important parts stand out, until I realized that it was pretty much all bolded. I found this today by chance and fell absolutely in love with it. If this doesn't empower you, I have to say you're pretty much unempowerable (yes, I did just make up a word). Ugh, reading that just makes me feel so ALIVE. Thank goodness I read this. On the road to recovery from low self-worth, self-confidence, and overall self-doubt.

It somewhat reminds me of this song I try to live my life by in a way...

"One day you'll see her and you'll know what I mean,

Take her or leave her she will still be the same

She'll not try to buy you with her time

But nothing's the same as you will see when she's gone"

- "This Side" by Nickel Creek

I didn't know who Stacey Charter was (originator of the quote that started this post), so I googled her. And this what came up -- a response authored by her to a post on some forum asking who she was:

Hi I am Stacey Charter. Not famous though my quotes end up in places that say I'm famous. Cancer Survivor, divorce survivor, attack survivor and all around positive person. Still learning to love myself 100% and thrilled that others have discovered the little pieces of myself I've placed on line. And yes - It's really me and yes I really did write those quotes. And someday I'd love to write a book filled with quotes and stories and tears and laughter. Thanks for asking! staceycharter@yahoo.com [from yedda.com]

(Note: Stacey gave me permission to post her email address [see above] if you would like to contact her.)

The truth universally acknowledged...

So. I'm kind of a movie freak. Subscribing to Netflix last summer is up there on my list of "best decisions ever made." (Here's hoping they spot this plug and give me free netflix hahaha). Anyway! That was just a point of reference, so my point is I love movies and quote them constantly b/c I think some of the truest things about life were written into screenplays. I wanted to try to not to quote movies on here, I'm not sure why. Maybe b/c they're too much of my regular life, or maybe b/c I wanted to challenge myself more and find other quotes. But I'm going to break that today, and maybe other days. This quote is painfullly true for me right now.

For today, a quote from Bridget Jones' Diary said by title character Renee Zelwegger:

"It's the truth universally acknowledged that the moment one area of your life starts going okay, another part of it falls spectacularly to pieces."

Or...you know...every other part of your life.

For those who've conquered death

Invocation

Marilyn Hacker

This is for Elsa, also known as Liz,

an ample-bosomed gospel singer, five

discrete malignancies in one full brest.

This is for auburn Jaqueline, who is

celebrating fifty years alive,

one since she finished chemotherapy,

with fireworks on the fifteenth of July.

This is for June, whose words lean and mean

as she is, elucidating our protest.

This is for Lucille, who shines a wide

beam for us with her dark cadences.

This is for long-limbed Maxine, astride

a horse like conscience. This is for Aline

who taught her lover to caress the scar.

This is for Eve, who thought of AZT

as hpoeful poisons pumped into a vein.

This is for Nanette in the Midwest.

This is for Alicia, shaking back her dark hair,

dancing one-breasted with the Sabbath bride.

This is for Judy on a mountainside,

plunging her gloved hands in a glistening hive.

Hilda, Patricia, Gaylord, Emilienne,

Tania, Eunice: this is for everyone

who marks the distance on a calendar

from what's less likely to "recur."

Our saved-for-now lives are life sentences

-- which we prefer to the alternative

For Strong Women

This is by far my favorite piece of poetry. I've been waiting to post it. Today is the day because I feel like I'm lacking strength more than ever. My hope is that all women identify with it, I know I do, sometimes painfully so. (It's long, but so worth it.) P.S. all bold and italicized font was done by me, the change in type face is not part of the poem.

For Strong Women

Marge Piercy

A strong woman is a woman who is straining.

A strong woman is a woman standing

on tiptoe and lifting a barbell

while trying to sing Boris Godunov.

A strong woman is a woman at work

cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,

and while she shovels, she stalks about

how she doesn't mind crying, it opens

the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up

develops the stomach muscles, and

she goes on shoveling with tears

in her nose.

A strong woman is a woman in whose head

a voice is repeating, I told you so,

ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,

ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,

why aren't you feminine, why aren't

you soft, why aren't you quiet, why

aren't you dead?

A strong woman is a woman determined

to do something others are determined

not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom

of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise

a manhole cover with her head, she is trying

to butt her head through a steel wall.

Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole

to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.

A strong woman is a woman bleeding

inside. A strong woman is a woman making

herself strong every morning while her teeth

loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,

a tooth, midwives used to say, and now

every battle a scar. A strong woman

is a mass of scar tissue that aches

when it rains and wounds that bleed

when you bump them and memories that get up

in the night and pace in boots to and fro.

A strong woman is a woman who craves love

like oxygen or she turns blue choking.

A strong woman is a woman who loves

strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly

terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong

in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;

she is not strong as stone but as a wolf

suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she

enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

What comforts her is others loving

her equally for the strength and for the weakness

from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.

Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.

Only water of connection remains,

flowing through us. Strong is what we make

each other. Until we are all strong together,

a strong woman is strongly afraid.

Liberate yourself from fear

         "Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

This quote is from Marianne Williamson's book A Return to Love. It is often misattributed to Nelson Mandella who used this quote in a speech. I first heard it in the film Akeelah and the Bee and fell in love with it. Be unfraid to be yourself, people insecure with themselves will try to make you shrink down to their level so that they can be equal to you, instead they should learn to raise themselves up. On the surface it may sound conceited, but insecurity and low self-worth are only imagined, if we are the best versions of ourselves we will see we are all equal in capability and existence.

Love life as it really happens

“People have to face regrets. Becoming mature means learning to accept what you cannot change, facing unresolved sorrows and learning to love life as it really happens, not as you would have it happen. When someone attaches unkindness to criticism, she's angry. Angry people need to criticize as an outlet for their anger. That's why you must reject unkind criticism. Unkind criticism is never part of a meaningful critique of you. Its purpose is not to teach or to help, its purpose is to punish. Life isn't supposed to be an all or nothing battle between misery and bliss. Life isn't supposed to be a battle at all. And when it comes to happiness, well, sometimes life is just okay, sometimes it's comfortable, sometimes wonderful, sometimes boring, sometimes unpleasant. When your day's not perfect, it's not a failure or a terrible loss.

It's just another day.”

- Barbara Sher

I don't know if this is true, but I'd like to hope it is.

When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful. ~Barbara Bloom

Be unafraid to show your cracks, without them you wouldn't be you.

Selfish, impatient, insecure

I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out of control, but if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best. - Marilyn Monroe

It's often just enough to be with someone. I don't need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between you both. You're not alone.

Oye Carnal

I read this poem in my HILD7C Chicano History class and fell in love with it. It's so strong and fights tirelessly against the double-standards in society in general and more specifically found in el Movimiento and Chicano/a culture.

Notes From a Chicana Co-ed

By Bernice Zamora

To cry that the gabacho

Is our oppressor is to shout

In abstraction, carnal

He no more oppresses us
Than you do now as you tell me

“It’s the gringo who oppresses you, Babe.”

You cry “the gringo is our oppressor.”

To the tune of $20,000 to $30,000

A year, brother, and I wake up

Alone each morning and ask,

“Can I feed my children today?”…

And when I mention

Your G.I. Bill, your

Ford Fellowship, your

Working wife, your

Three gabacha guisas

Then you ask me to

Write your thesis

You’re quick to shout,

“Don’t give me that

Women’s lib trip, mujer

That only divides us, and we have to work

Together for the movimiento

The gabacho is oppressing us!

Oye carnal, you may as well

Tell me that moon water

cures constipation, that

penguin soup prevents crudas

or that the Arctic Ocean is Menudo…

Aimee Mullins - a woman of strength

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/09/mullins.beyond.disability/index.html?hpt=C2

A video of an incredibly strong woman speaking about her life, and the necessity for society to redefine their idea of "disabled"

"People come up to Aimee Mullins all the time and say, "you know, I have to tell you, you just don't look disabled."


The record-setting athlete, actress and model says, "And it's sweet because I know that they're confused, and they're telling me this because they know I'm missing both legs from the shin down, but they're presented with this package of a highly capable young woman. This has happened all over the world. I tell them it's interesting because I don't feel disabled." - CNN.com on Aimee Mullins

We all know what little girls are made of...

So let me warn you, I absolutely love Marge Piercy, so I will be posting another poem by her which is just amazing, but this one is for today:

What Are Big Girl's Made Of

Marge Piercy

The construction of a woman:

a woman is not made of flesh

of bone and sinew

belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe.

She is manufactured like a sports sedan.

She is retooled, refitted and redesigned

every decade.

Cecile had been seduction itself in college.

She wriggled through bars like a satin eel,

her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed

in the dark red lipstick of desire.

She visited in '68 still wearing skirts

tight to the knees, dark red lipstick,

while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt,

lipstick pale as apricot milk,

hair loose as a horse's mane. Oh dear,

I thought in my superiority of the moment,

whatever has happened to poor Cecile?

She was out of fashion, out of the game,

disqualified, disdained, dis-

membered from the club of desire.

Look at pictures in French fashion

magazines of the 18th century:

century of the ultimate lady

fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.

Paniers bring her hips out three feet

each way, while the waist is pinched

and the belly flattened under wood.

The breasts are stuffed up and out

offered like apples in a bowl.

The tiny foot is encased in a slipper

never meant for walking.

On top is a grandiose headache:

hair like a museum piece, daily

ornamented with ribbons, vases,

grottoes, mountains, frigates in full

sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy

of a hairdresser turned loose.

The hats were rococo wedding cakes

that would dim the Las Vegas strip.

Here is a woman forced into shape

rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh:

a woman made of pain.

How superior we are now: see the modern woman

thin as a blade of scissors.

She runs on a treadmill every morning,

fits herself into machines of weights

and pulleys to heave and grunt,

an image in her mind she can never

approximate, a body of rosy

glass that never wrinkles,

never grows, never fades. She

sits at the table closing her eyes to food

hungry, always hungry:
a woman made of pain.

A cat or dog approaches another,

they sniff noses. They sniff asses.

They bristle or lick. They fall

in love as often as we do,

as passionately. But they fall

in love or lust with furry flesh,

not hoop skirts or push up bras

rib removal or liposuction.

It is not for male or female dogs

that poodles are clipped
to topiary hedges.

If only we could like each other raw.

If only we could love ourselves

like healthy babies burbling in our arms.

If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed

to need what is sold us.

Why should we want to live inside ads?

Why should we want to scourge our softness

to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?

Why should we punish each other with scorn

as if to have a large ass

were worse than being greedy or mean?

When will women not be compelled

to view their bodies as science projects,

gardens to be weeded,

dogs to be trained?

When will a woman cease

to be made of pain?

P.S. Happy International Women's Day

You not a no-place anonymous girl

One of my favorite poems, it's truly beautiful.

What the Mirror Said

by Lucille Clifton

listen,

you a wonder.

you a city

of a woman.

you got a geography

of your own.
listen,

somebody need a map

to understand you.

somebody need directions

to move around you.

listen,

woman,

you not a noplace

anonymous

girl;

mister with his hands on you

he got his hands on

some

damn

body!

An honest, straight-forward contradiction

It upsets women to be, or not to be, stared at hungrily.

 -Mignon McLaughlin

Run the risk of exposure to more interesting people

A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men -- and people in general.

- Lorainne Hansberry

Youth may be headstrong, but it WILL advance

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

 

The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.


Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

^ all quotes from Helen Keller

San Diego youth (and its allies) March 4, 2010

Things we thought we could never forget

A snippet from Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4am of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.

- Joan Didion

There's just something so beautiful about this quote to me. How many times have I changed, become a new person, and pushed the old pieces into the closet only to recall them again at uncomfortable times.

Anais Nin -- Treat me like a woman

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.

 -- Anais Nin

I could do a whole blog on Anais Nin based on the countless sayings I've collected of hers, but I'll just dedicate today, March 2, 2010 to her instead. Keep in mind she was born in 1903 and died in 1977, this frame of reference I think truly impresses what a revolutionary she was. Here are a few bits of wisdom she left with us:

"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself."
"People living deeply have no fear of death"

On personal courage:
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Perhaps an alternate view?
"I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding."

First day of women's history month

This may be my favorite month. I will be including lots of quotes from women who don't fit into the cookie-cutter norm women are generally expected to fit into. These women are provactive and honest, in some cases possibly extreme. I wouldn't peg myself as a feminist however, a good definition of feminism may be the perfect way to kick off this month. And so, a quote I love:

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute. ~Rebecca West

(photo from: http://www.eohoppe.com/assets/portraits/literary%20artists/images/14391-F.jpg)