Daughter of No Comment -- March 2007

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"I do not believe in using women in combat, because they are too fierce." Margaret Mead (1901-1978) Daughter agrees and feels the same way about men. Janet Conney, a former professor at the University of California- Los Angeles, will receive a $4.07 million jury award in a sex discrimination and harassment case, the American Association of University Women Legal Advocacy Fund, who represented the plaintiff, announced March 14. Conney was denied a promotion and reassigned with a reduced salary to a part-time position, while her male colleagues were paid double or more. Isn't it sad that academia discriminates against women as much as any other institution? Where is that much touted "level playing field?" Women cannot claim a higher moral state simply because they are women as the following story illustrates. They can also have a firm grip on stupidity. A female Sarasota school bus driver was arrested on charges that she showed pornographic videos stored on her cell phone to pupils on route to their elementary school. One boy told deputies that "Miss Amber" also showed him a camera phone picture of "her private area." Ellen Goodman points out that she was at Harvard in the '60's without ever seeing a woman professor (as did daughter in the '50's at Chicago) and that in 1869 Harvard President Charles Eliot expressed doubts about the "natural mental capacities of the female sex." In 2006, then Harvard president, Larry Summers suggested that a lack of "intrinsic aptitude" was partly to blame for why few women made it in academic science. Some conservative women are saying women now have too many choices, too much pressure, as if the success of feminism was to blame rather than entrenched social attitudes. It took Mary Cheney to speak to women's reality at Barnard College. "This notion that women today are overwhelmed with choices, My God, my grandmother would have killed to have these choices." And so would Daughters Phi Beta Kappa mother who had to go in the side door of her fathers club and who went so quietly that Daughter never understood how degrading it was until much later. On a more exciting note, Daughter has discussed bra design in the past and now (are you ready for this?) men are buying sexy briefs such as C-In2 brand which carries a 'sling' brief that provides a lift similar to the Wonder Bra. It is such a big hit-selling 500,000 pairs in two years-that the upstart now offers a new marvel of gravity defying engineering: the trophy shelf. Says Julie Hornburg , director of sales for intimates at Diesel, "They want to have nice underwear on, for when they finally drop their pants." It used to be boxers or briefs. Now it's sling or trophy shelf. Ain't progress wonderful? A web site that may be of interest to you or someone you know is www.socialsecurity.gov/women. The first social security check was issued to a woman, Ida May Fuller in January 1940 in the amount of $22.54. Daughter salutes and mourns the passing of Barbara Gittings, 74, an early gay rights activist who, in the late '50's, founded the New York Chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national organization for lesbians. She took part in early (1965) gay rights demonstrations at the White House and lobbied the American Psychiatric Association in the '70's to change its position on homosexuality as a mental disease. Author David Carter said "She was one of the rare people in the homophile movement, before Stonewall, who took a militant stance and she not only took a militant stance, but she was in the forefront." Women's equality issues are not getting any easier and Daughter wonders where our effective leaders are and whether we need to decide how hard and by what means we can be most effective. Finding women's actual place in history can be amazing. Who knew or imagined that the famous glass Tiffany lamps (including the prize winning dragonfly lamp) that are featured in so many museums and so avidly collected were designed, not by Tiffany, but by a woman, Clara Driscoll. Emeritus professor of art history Martin Eidelberg, said, "I think Tiffany would have died" if word had gotten out that Driscoll had designed some of his most famous lamps (30 or so). Scholarship by several people, professors and writers and finding a treasure trove of her letters has put the pieces of the puzzle together. Her work at Tiffany ended in 1909 because, newly married, she could no longer work there. The "new problem" male identity crisis is getting a lot of play. Author Marian Salzman says "We've been very black and white about what is male,,,I think we need to wake up and say male can be a lot of things." What does it mean to be a man? Stony Brook University professor, Michael Kimmel says "What I'm worried about is what happens to them when they have inherited these ideas about masculinity and they can't reconcile them with the world they are actually living in. So they are torn between two worlds, the world of the present and that of the past. And their peers trying to pull them back into this past world of masculinity," Daughter thinks that if they had paid attention in biology they would know that animals the are flexible and can adapt do better. Women don't really know very much about their past accomplishments since they have been so well hidden and history has reflected the culture and bias of the historian. The continuum concept seems to work so well and allow the individual the most freedom.We know that pedestals are really small prisons.