Uppity Woman (Child) #21: A Profile in Courage

From the Muslim Times, Veronique De Viguerie / Getty Images, file

From dictionary.com- 

Uppity: rebelliously self-assertive; not inclined to be tractable or deferential.

I know of no person who better embodies the spirit of the amazing women on my list of "Uppity Women" than Malala Yousafzai. Yet Malala is a child of only 14. She is "uppity" because she dared to blog, under a pseudonym, about the atrocities committed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Swat Valley for the BBC, that bastion of apostasy, in 2009, at the amazing age of 11. Her blog espoused both her desire and firm belief in her right to an education, and her outrage at the destruction of schools and the violence visited on peaceful Pakistanis who wanted their daughters to be educated or those who wanted to educate all children. The Taliban in the Swat Valley are clearly very threatened by the idea of educated females, and by Malala in particular, because yesterday two of their thugs proudly got on her school bus in Mingora, Swat and after asking which girl was Malala, shot her in the head and neck, then shot two other education righteous-thinking girls for good measure. Malala has survived the shooting, although just barely. Reports still insist the bullet did not penetrate her brain.

Malala, who was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize in 2011,  won the Pakistani National Peace Prize in December, 2011. The Government School for Girls was renamed the Malala Yousafzai School earlier this year. Her attempted assassination, for certainly she was a well-known and charismatic figure, has brought immense sorrow, anger and embarrassment in various circles in Pakistan. But among the Tehrik-i-Taliban there is only the consternation that she is the girl who lived, albeit precariously so at this point. Their leader, Ihsanullah Ihsan has said tersely, "Let this be a lesson," and promised they will try to kill her again for the obscenity of her desire for her rights and Western-tainted values. 

The Pakistani National Airline has said they are ready to fly her to any facility in the world for further medical care but she is evidently not stable enough to be moved. Meanwhile, demonstrators flooded the streets, as evidenced by the many photos on Al Jazeera and other Islamic news outlets. This morning the government of Pakistan offered a 10 Million Rupee bounty for the men that shot Malala and her friends, an extraordinary sum. Roads are barricaded, streets bear signs decrying the shooting and Pakistani PM Pervez Ashraf said of the attack, "She is our daughter." Journalist Nadeem F. Paracha said in a positively brutal tweet on Twitter, "Come on brothers, be REAL MEN. Kill a schoolgirl." Yet, the Karachi-based Paracha's column in today's Dawn lays the blame for Malala's suffering not just on the Taliban but on Pakistanis themselves, who he paints in stark contrast, due to their apathy, to brave souls like Malala.

A friend asked me this morning about whether Malala couldn't get asylum in the West. I guess the US or the UK would be able to grant her asylum. Surely there is ample cause. But imagine uprooting your entire family and struggling to rebuild their lives so far from home. Why should she, or they, have to seek asylum, is my thought. Why can't a 14 year old girl be safe on a school bus or in her government school? Why should she or her friends live in fear? Why should any of the lessons she's learning have to do with grown men shooting children? Why can't she study as long as she wants to, and whatever she wishes to? 

Malala, who was named after a Pashtun poet and warrior woman, clearly saw the risks of opposing the Taliban, based on her direct experience and as detailed in her blogging. And yet, she was a child and children never internalize risks as adults do. Perhaps her courage will galvanize her elder compatriots and make them see, yet again, that the very future of their country is being brutalized and terrorized. Demonstrators in Benghazi, Libya took matters into their own hands, striking against, and routing, the Ansar-al-Sharia who killed Ambassador Chris Stevens. Maybe the people of Swat Valley need to make their voices, and their will, clearer to the Tehrik-i-Taliban? Maybe the bravery of "their daughter" will be the catalyst for the change that Malala believes in. 

The world, excepting a pack of barbarians, wishes this child a full recovery.

Demonstrators protesting Malala's shooting in Peshawar.

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© Bright Nepenthe, 2012

Joy, Hope, Freedom

She is the most famous and recognizable political prisoner in the world. But she is prisoner no more.


The Lady is free!

"To achieve democracy the people should be united. that is very clear. It is a very plain fact," ... "If there is no unity of purpose we shall be unable to achieve anything at all"

Elections are past in Burma, but there is still hope that freedom will find the Burmese people.


I will never call Burma by that other name.




© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Excommunicating the Messenger

Sister Mary Helen McKillop

www.canterbury.nsw.gov.au

I've been reading about Australia's forthcoming saint, Mary McKillop. In 1871, at age 29 and after only four years as a nun, Mary McKillop was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Founder and Mother Superior of the order the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart in Adelaide, McKillop learned that a Father Keating of Kapunda parish, just north of Adelaide, was sexually abusing children. McKillop told their local priest in Adelaide, Father Woods, who then informed the Vicar General, who had Keating sent packing, back to Ireland*. A colleague of  Keating's, Father Paul Horan, swore revenge on Woods and McKillop and, as Acting Vicar a year later, managed to hoodwink the local bishop, Bishop Sheil, into excommunicating McKillop and tried to destroy her order. On his deathbed, Sheil changed his mind and absolved McKillop, restoring her standing in the Church. McKillop's order received papal approval in 1873.

McKillop is greatly revered in Australia, with numerous colleges named after her, an electoral district in South Australia in her name, a $1 AUD coin honoring her as well as a rose, among many other commemorations.

It's so interesting to see how the Church has improved their handling of abusive priests since the 1870's, isn't it?

Hmmmm...

Mary McKillop rose flowering in winter

(dorofofoto at Wikimedia Commons)

*Of course I'm sure he never, ever worked with children again. *cough*

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #27

    

wiki

                

NASA              

                                                                 wiki 


© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

  

Uppity Women #26

By popular request...

Hatshepsut

1508–1458 BC

Ma'at-Ka-Ra

"Truth in the soul of the sun."

(photo attribution unknown)

The fifth pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty in Ancient Egypt, Hatshepsut was a rare female ruler in Ancient Egypt (there were from all accounts less than ten over the course of more than two thousand years. Although purportedly her father Thutmose I's heir apparent, she had to marry her younger half-brother Thutmose II to become co-regent with him in the early years of her rule. It is uncertain when her father, and then her husband, died but what is certain is that Hatshepsut, who was to be regent while her stepson Thutmose III grew to adulthood instead declared herself Pharaoh. And what a Pharaoh she was....

Among her many legacies was the wide trade network that specialized in myrrh, as commemorated on the temple, Deir el-Bahri. She was one of the most prolific builders in Ancient Egypt, and led successful military campaigns in Syria, the Levant and Nubia. She excelled at Ancient Egyptian PR, aka self-promotion. Carved on her monuments of Amun:

"Welcome my sweet daughter, my favorite, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Maatkare, Hatshepsut. Thou art the Pharaoh, taking possession of the Two Lands.*"

Hatshepsut reigned for 22 years, and presided over one of the most peaceful and culturally successful periods of the Ancient Egyptian world. Her stepson Thumose III attempted, unsuccessfully, to remove all traces of her from Deir el-Bahri and Karnak, albeit after her death and his ascension to the throne. Her reign and its successes were documented so thoroughly, however, that they could not be lost in history.

Various of her temples, buildings and statuary still stand in Egypt and around the world today. And 3500 years later, we still know her name, while those of most other pharaohs are long forgotten.

That's true staying power...

Fragment of statue of Hatshepsut

Museum of Fine Arts

(Image credit: Keith Schengili-Roberts, Wikimedia Commons)

Deir el-Bahri, West Thebes

Built during the 18th Dynasty, 1550 - 1400 BC

(Image credit: Hajor, Wikimedia Commons)

*The two lands being Upper and Lower Egypt

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #25

It's been a while...

Judith Peabody, with her husband Samuel

(Image credit: Bill Cunningham/The New York Times )

Every once in a while someone comes along to abolish all your ideas about a particular strata of society. Socialite Judith Peabody, who died in late July, certainly did just that. A lifelong supporter, both financially and with her personal time and efforts, of causes as varied as juvenile delinquents, Lenny Bruce, rehabilitating former East Harlem gang members, the New York Shakespeare Festival, Reality House Drug Rehabilitation Center, Dance Theater of Harlem and most notably, the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Judith Peabody broke down many barriers.

Samuel Peabody told the Times that his wife's passion for helping others started early on. He met her when she was 20, when she was working at a center for delinquents. She told him not to tell her mother, who thought she was off taking French lessons, about where she was working.

In an article in the New York Times in 1987, the year I lost the first of my gay friends to HIV, she was noted as introducing herself as simply Judy to members in her counseling group (she had earned certification in psychological counseling) at the Gay Men's Health Crisis. They had no idea what her life circumstances were, of course. Her advocacy, and fearless championing of HIV patients was remarkable both for her active engagement and her sustained commitment over many decades. From the NY Times' obituary,

“Mrs. Peabody was someone who recognized the challenge of AIDS long before it was fashionable,” Marjorie J. Hill, the chief executive of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, said in an interview on Monday. “She did everything she could, on a personal level and an institutional level, to combat the stigma of the disease among people living with H.I.V. and their caretakers. She left her mark on thousands of lives at G.M.H.C.”

She had serious moxie. I can't imagine how uppity a high society matron would have to be to have opened a Drug Rehab and work there. Ditto on GMHC in the 1980's, when I remember friends of mine cringing while watching me hug or eat meals with or even spend time nursing my friends Bobby, Mike or Brian, because, like, they were diseased and what was I thinking? My younger and liberal readers likely will have no sense of how deep the prejudice, the venom and the stigma of AIDS was back then. Having someone like Judith Peabody working for your cause would have been quite an imprimatur.

Frank Rich had a great column on Saturday, titled Angels in America. Judith Peabody certainly was one, from all accounts.

But an uppity, Amazon-y kind of angel. The very best kind.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #25

Image credit: Harvard Law

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #24

A Tale of Two Marjories

            

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings                           Marjory Stoneman Douglas

(image credits: Wikimedia Commons)

In the late 1930's Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote The Yearling, a book about a boy and his dysfunctional family scarred by loss. The book, set in swampy Central Florida, was one of the first books to introduce the American readership to the dense backwater swamps and hard life of Florida residents. She continued with her success in attuning readers to the life and community in the Florida hammocks with Cross Creek. American readers became intrigued by the harsh but lush and beautiful Florida environment. Kinnan Rawlings was a great supporter of rural Florida and of its small hamlets like her own Cross Creek (in Hawthorne). She wrote:

"Now, having left cities behind me, turned
Away forever from the strange, gregarious
Huddling of men by stones, I find those various
Great towns I knew fused into one, burned
Together in the fire of my despising..."

Five years after the publication of Cross Creek, Marjory Stoneman Douglas presaged the work of a forthcoming Uppity Woman entrant, Rachel Carson, with The Everglades: River of Grass, published in 1947. Stoneman Douglas was a galvanizing force in the battle to conserve and preserve the fragile environment of the Everglades. She first became involved in the Everglades conservation movement in the 1920's. She explained her involvement in environmental conservation saying, "It is a woman's business to be interested in the environment. It's an extended form of housekeeping." She opposed sugar plantations and development in the Everglades and fought hard against their development.

A longtime reporter for the Miami Herald, she was also a suffragist, and an activist for racial equality and better civic services to blacks in the Miami area. Along with Elizabeth Virrick, she vocally advocated for running water and county sewage services for the racially segregated areas in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami and won. She tirelessly wrote columns in the Miami Herald championing this  and many other worthy causes.

Stoneman Douglas continued to work on Everglades conservation issues until shortly before her death at the age of 108 years.

Florida owes her a great, great debt for her work. She preserved a region unlike any other in the world with her efforts.

"There are no other Everglades in the world..."

The Southern Tip of Florida and the Everglades

Image Credit: NASA

Attribution unknown

Image credit: Mind's Eye

Image credit: Wayne

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #23

Marie Curie

"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained." 

Marie Skłodowska Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (one of only two people to have won two: Physics, 1903, shared with Pierre Curie; Chemistry, 1911) and the first female professor at the University of Paris. Curie's work centered on radioactive elements. She coined the term radioactivity, after her studies of pitchblende revealed the elements radium and polonium in the uranium containing mineral. A physicist by training, she also advanced the idea of treating neoplasms, growths either malignant or benign, with radiation. She met her soul mate in Pierre Curie, a chemist and physicist at the Sorbonne, in 1893. After a brief time apart during which she returned to her native Poland to (unsuccessfully) seek a position teaching at Krakow University, she returned to Paris and they married 1895. In the eleven years that followed they were seldom if ever apart and seldom out of their laboratory.

Marie Curie was the first to realize that known salts of uranium had a second element in them. After years of painstaking separation, the element of radium was isolated by the technique of differential crystallization. A difficult process that absorbed the Curies over the course of four years, they were able to isolate 0.10 gram of radium chloride salt from one metric ton of pitchblende by 1902. (The Curies were unaware of its toxic effects.) By 1910, four years after the tragic death of Pierre Curie in an accident on the streets of Paris, Marie Curie had isolated the pure radium metal. In an act of true scientific generosity of spirit, Marie Curie never sought to patent her process for obtaining pure radium. She wanted the scientific community to have easy access to it.

What is less well known is the dark intrigue that surrounded Marie Curie in Paris in the years following Pierre Curie's death. While the mother of two worked on in the lab, in utter despair for a time, she also embarked on a shocking, for its day, love affair with one of Pierre's students, Paul Langevin, who was separated from his wife. The scandal, which was in part brought to light by his disgruntled and estranged wife, almost completely derailed Marie Curie's career. Because of her Polish heritage, she was already suspect in the eyes of the French. The affair and its publicity were literally almost the final straw. Socially ostracized for a time, the affair also almost cost her the second Nobel Prize. It was at the insistence of colleagues of Curie that the Nobel committee moved forward with the controversial award. They felt her work so far exceeded any notoriety that the Committee should focus on her achievements. (What a concept...)

Imagine how remarkable her work was that in 1910-11 male colleagues stepped forward to defend her, defend her work and seek to laud her for it? 

Marie Curie died in 1934 from aplastic anemia, a condition indicative of complete bone marrow failure in the production of blood cells. It almost certainly was due to the massive exposure to radiation over the many years of research. Indeed, areas of her preserved laboratory in Paris still glow in the dark to this day.

Observed Cornell professor L. Pearce Williams:

"The result of the Curies' work was truly epoch-making. Radium's radioactivity was so great that it could not be ignored. It seemed to contradict the principle of the conservation of energy and therefore forced a reconsideration of the very foundations of physics."

Reserved, laconic, and tenacious, Marie Curie survived the loss not just of Pierre, then  Paul and her reputation, but, in spite of it all, continued to work in the laboratory until the very last months of her life. In later years, Marie Curie headed the Pasteur Institute in Paris and ran a laboratory for the study of radioactivity built for her by the University of Paris. Nevertheless, with their tandem prejudice against both women and foreigners, the French Academy of Sciences refused to ever elect her to their membership. In fact the first woman elected to the Academy was a student of Curie's, who was elected some half century after Curie's second Nobel win, in 1962.

Marie Curie's daughter Irène and son-in-law Frédéric Joliot also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work related to radioactivity, as well. Her daughter Eve was the author of the first major biographical work of her life. Susan Quinn's biography of Marie Curie is considered to be the finest work on the scientist to date. A passionate and truly gifted person, Marie Curie was a quiet Amazon and a scientist of the highest caliber.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #22

Julia Gillard

(image credit-  AAP: Dean Lewins)

Julia Gillard has broken the mold for political leadership in so many ways, it's hard to know where to start in listing them.

✔1. Australia's first female Prime Minister.


✔2. Avowed atheist.


✔3. Lives, unmarried, with life partner Tim Mathieson.


✔4. No children.


✔5. Has made not just healthcare but mental healthcare a priority in her administration, along with education and a solid program with incentives for actions geared toward preventing climate change.


How many ways can you say marvelous?


I'm sure my longtime reader Sally will be happy to see her recognized as such!









© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #21

Melanie and Vanessa Alenier

Sometimes when you see the list of names of my Uppity Women it's really hard to remember that almost all these great women started out as just simple people with a passionate belief in some cause, or interest in science or research. They probably didn't set out to do great deeds but they did, even when the road was long and hard.

Melanie and Vanessa Alenier have a passionate cause. They want to legally adopt their son Ethan, for whom they have cared since he was 9 days old. The road lies before them and it isn't a smooth one. In its cryptic logic, the State of Florida thought that Vanessa was fit enough to be paid to care for Ethan, to whom she is a biological relative. But they do not think that she is fit enough to adopt him. When filling out the copious forms to adopt Ethan, Vanessa came to the simple question "Are you gay?" She answered truthfully, because she "did not what to begin her journey as a parent with a lie." For that, she will forever be my hero.

I attended a fundraiser yesterday evening in support of their appellate battle with the State of Florida, which would like to overturn Judge Maria Sampedro-Iglesia's ruling that the State's ban on adoption by homosexuals is unconstitutional and issuance of an judgment of adoption for Ethan. I've talked in the past about the simply astonishing waste of money that our state has expended on fighting adoptions that were recommended by Guardians ad Litem, Case Managers, and now from the position of privatized child welfare agencies freed from the strictures of the Florida Department of Children and Families, entire Case Management Agencies. With so many people recommending that a prospective adopter should be allowed to adopt, it is really amazing to think that legislators who have never seen or met these families and children could have any insight into their needs and say that's wrong.

You can read a bit more about yesterday's event and about Melanie, Vanessa and Ethan on my mirror site, It's Not About Politics, It's About Children.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #20

Somaly Mam

Survivor. Activist. Hero. Amazon.

Those are but a few words that can describe Somaly Mam.

Abandoned as a child in Cambodia, Mam was repeatedly raped and beaten prior to age 13 by a man who said that he would reunite her with her family. Instead, it got much, much worse. He sold her into the sex trade.

The sex trade in Southeast Asia is rife with child prostitution, child abuse, child murder and just about every brand of despicable that you can envision. And many, many things that you cannot. 

After witnessing her best friend sadistically murdered, Mam managed to escape. Rather than hide, she has been incredibly vocal. Downright LOUD.

One of the founders of AFESIP - Acting for Women in Distressing Situations , a nice little euphemism for women and girls who had been hideously trafficked into the sex trade, Mam has since formed her own private foundation. She doesn't back away, hang quiet and feel shame. She doesn't hide what people are doing to hundreds, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asian children and what was done to her, day after day for years. Some people travel to Southeast Asia to have sex with children. They even kill children doing it. And it is all part of a dark side to the Southeast Asian tourist industry that is simply beyond our imagining.

These children and young women are lucky if they survive and escape with their lives. But all too often, they escape with HIV.

Somaly's story has potency for me, not just because of her incredibly courageous work, her book and her vocalness, but because I personally know a child, or now a young woman, who was trafficked. And I know, too, of her friend, who died a harrowing death from HIV at age 16. I first read about Somaly in 2003 in an article in Marie Claire magazine. I've been an admirer ever since.

I really don't think that there are sufficient words to describe what Somaly and so many other young women and children have endured and indeed endure right now, as you read this post. Westerners flock to Bangkok, Phnom Penh and other places in Southeast Asia for the 'delight' of having sex with children and young women who have lost everything except their hope to escape. If you look at the statistics on her website, the number of women and children who are trafficked each year is simply horrifying. And many will not survive the experience.

Somaly is their savior. They help these women and children get away. And they'll teach them a trade, like weaving or jewelry-making or anything other than sex in order to give them a second chance at life.

You can order Somaly's book through her foundation's website and have a portion of the funds donated to Somaly.org. They may not be slick and professional at her website shop, but they are 100% dedicated to accruing the funds to help any child they can possibly afford to get out of a situation that about 99.9% of us cannot even begin to really imagine. And to find another life in which they maybe, just maybe, will be whole again.

Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somaly Mam is a voice and a light in the dark reality that many children and women endure every hour of every day.

May those voices never be silenced.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #19

Margaret Sanger

"It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization. For upon the foundation of an enlightened and voluntary motherhood shall a future civilization emerge."

Margaret Sanger's Catholic mother lived through 18 pregnancies, had 11 children and died of TB and cervical cancer. A nurse, Sanger thought the idea of women being able to determine when and IF they wanted to have a child was paramount. She also thought that being able to have sex without fear of pregnancy might be a really good idea. Sanger and her husband, architect, William Sanger were arrested and charged under the archaic Comstock Law which banned dissemination of contraceptive information as lewd.

We take contraception for granted these days. It was not until 1972 that the last laws banning dissemination of contraceptive devices was overturned.

Sanger was controversial not just because of her stance on birth control but because of her thoughts on eugenics, masturbation (against!) and immigration.

Her legacy is Planned Parenthood. But I'm sure she'd still be outraged that many women must pay out of pocket for birth control and that their health insurance will not cover it.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #18

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is such a tough act to follow. But Rachel Maddow holds her own every night on MSNBC. A relative newbie to broadcast journalism, Maddow began her career in liberal journalism as part of the vast left wing media conspiracy that was Air America. She joined MSNBC in 2008 and by August of 2008, after substitute host experience on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, had her own show. Describing herself as a 'national security liberal' and non-partisan, she has continued to assail the foolishness of both the Republicans and Democrats and call legislators and big business lobbies to task. 

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #17

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I really don't think that there are words enough to describe my admiration for Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Her dispassionate (especially given her personal experience) rhetoric can totally dismantle any argument for supporting Islamic culture's treatment of women. The epitome of understated, directed and firmly expressed intelligence, she reduces even the ever self-aggrandizing and bitterly mocking Bill Maher to listening silently when she speaks. She is the face of undaunted courage, of reason and of women's rights to me. Read her books, surf the resources of her foundation. 

She is a true Amazon among women.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Uppity Women #16

Temple Grandin

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Brave New World Revisited: Reflections on Uppity Women, Reframing the Concept of Homosexuality as a Disorder

Pandora by Martha Dahlig

I've had some very interesting conversations with readers, friends and family since I first blogged about Dr. Maria New in Brave New World and started my Uppity Women series. While the consensus of responses about the Uppity Women series has been overwhelmingly positive,  it seems as if for a few, the sense of sarcasm with which I call these women "Uppity" has been lost in the rhetoric. When my fellow uppity woman TL questions it, clearly I'm missing the mark. So I thought I'd mention the backstory for the Uppity Women concept, and revisit some of the serious issues that Dr. New is convolving with what she terms as "masculinized" behavior in women.


My concept of Uppity Women is, of course, borne from the series of books, by author Vicki Leon, that came out in the 1990's. Leon recounts various historical women who were going against the grain of subservience or gender expectations (and sometimes very cleverly so) in their era. As an amusing aside, in my Guardian ad Litem work, the first time I had one of my GAL kids talk with their judge in her chambers, I was delighted to see that she had several Uppity Women books, just like me. It, almost irrationally, set me totally at ease to think that she liked the idea of uppity women throughout history. But then, she's pretty uppity, herself, so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise. Leon's titles include Uppity Women of Ancient Times, Uppity Women of Medieval Times, Uppity Women of the Renaissance, Uppity Women of Shakespearian Times, and Uppity Women of the New World.

When I look at the meaning of uppity in my lovely Apple New Oxford American Dictionary, I see:


uppity |ˈəpətē|adjective informalself-important; arrogant : an uppity sister-in-law.ORIGIN late 19th cent.: a fanciful formation from up .

Whence I can definitely relate to TL's unhappiness with the term. She thinks the whole idea that accomplished and enterprising women would be called uppity is just like a form of racism. But that's also my  entire point. Are women who seek to pursue careers or lifestyles more traditionally associated with men being arrogant or self-important? Well, of course they aren't. At least not in my mind. They are seeking to make personal choices about self-fulfilment, self-actualization, or the pursuit of happiness. Whatever you want to call it, they are finding themselves and last I checked, since we're not in a country run by the Taliban or certain mullahs or ayatollahs with an interest in keeping women subservient, we thankfully get to make such choices and not have them, or so I thought, labeled disordered. We can have jobs that are usually associated with men. (Just like Dr. New who was Chief of Pediatric Endocrinology from 1964 through 2002 at Cornell's Weill Medical College and Chairman of the Pediatric Department from 1980 through 2002, as well.) We can skip having children. We can skip having a male significant other or in fact, any significant other at all. Short of some fundamentalist (and that could be Christian just as easily as many other faiths*) agenda in keeping women at home, having and raising children, it's really hard to see what's wrong with a woman exhibiting these purportedly "masculine" behaviors. I actually went back to Dr. New's foundation website, The Maria New Children's Hormone Foundation, and have found that they have altered some of their text and even removed some items, no doubt in response to the massive 'feminist' (I'd rather think of it as humanist) outcry about her treatment of fetuses with off-label dexamethasone in an attempt to remove the risks of Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia and specifically as had been mentioned on her website, non-traditional feminine behaviors. I find it fascinating that they have removed all reference to the behavioral aspects of androgenized women. But they can't remove (short of withdrawing the publications) the studies in the literature that point in the direction of Dr. New's evident interest in preventing lesbianism:

[Abstract Reproduced for Educational Purposes, emphasis mine]

Arch Sex Behav. 2008 Feb;37(1):85-99.

Sexual orientation in women with classical or non-classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia as a function of degree of prenatal androgen excess.

Meyer-Bahlburg HF, Dolezal C, Baker SW, New MI.

New York State Psychiatric Institute & Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, 1051 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10032, USA. meyerb@childpsych.columbia.edu

Abstract

46,XX individuals with classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) due to deficiency of the enzyme, 21-hydroxylase, show variable degrees of masculinization of body and behavior due to excess adrenal androgen production. Increased bisexuality and homosexuality have also been reported. This article provides a review of existing reports of the latter and presents a new study aimed at replicating the previous findings with detailed assessments of sexual orientation on relatively large samples, and at extending the investigation to the mildest form, non-classical (NC) CAH. Also, this is the first study to relate sexual orientation to the specific molecular genotypes of CAH. In the present study, 40 salt-wasters (SW), 21 SV (simple-virilizing), 82 NC, and 24 non-CAH control women (sisters and female cousins of CAH women) were blindly administered the Sexual Behavior Assessment Schedule (SEBAS-A, 1983 ed.; H. F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg & A. A. Ehrhardt, Privately printed). Most women were heterosexual, but the rates of bisexual and homosexual orientation were increased above controls not only in women with classical CAH, but also in NC women, and correlated with the degree of prenatal androgenization. Classifying women by molecular genotypes did not further increase the correlation. Diverse aspects of sexual orientation were highly intercorrelated, and principal components analysis yielded one general factor. Bisexual/homosexual orientation was (modestly) correlated with global measures of masculinization of non-sexual behavior and predicted independently by the degree of both prenatal androgenization and masculinization of childhood behavior. We conclude that the findings support a sexual-differentiation perspective involving prenatal androgens on the development of sexual orientation.

PMID: 18157628 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

In text now removed from her website, Dr. New offers treatment for fetuses in families "at risk" of having the dread anomaly, a lesbian daughter or even just a daughter who doesn't like dolls, want babies or to embody the gender stereotypical Stepford Wife female behavior. (Ironic, coming from you, Dr. New, so ironic that I continue to ponder you and the reason you left Cornell...) 

I had an interesting discussion with my father, a retired academic physician, about Dr. New's work, my take on it, her take on homosexuality and my take on her take. My father is of the mind that clearly since CAH is correlated with homosexuality in women, it proves that homosexuality is a disorder that is potentially treatable and that Dr. New is just trying to treat. Make no mistake- CAH can be an extremely serious (especially in males) in its classical form. But as the Time magazine article states, many women are offered Dr. New's treatment (by other physicians) even when they don't know the gender of their fetus. What kind of scary crap shoot is that? 

In its milder manifestations, I'm still considering the scoping problem of this concept of disordered behavior. Is wanting to do a conventionally man's job and not have children disordered? Why? Says who? Who got to be the arbiter of what was normal for a woman? Dr. New? Ayatollah Khameni? Pope Benedict? Me? (Talking about giving people a wide berth!) You? 

Evolution is all about reproduction. In theory, anyway. [groan] ;) Genetic changes typically occur by mutation and selective pressure (meaning whether a particular mutation or variation is either more or less successful) usually determines whether or not a mutation will be passed on. Clearly you're less likely to reproduce if you are homosexual (although I know an awful lot of gays and lesbians who have had biological children...) so that would disfavor propagation of any "gay" genes. But I have still a lot of questions about when something ceases to be a disorder and just becomes a normal variation. I can go back to the blue eyes versus brown eyes business, for instance. Or light skin versus dark skin, or short versus tall, or any number of things that are genetic. I'm betting the first relatively tall, relatively white, blue-eyed human was probably considered aberrant in their culture of shorter, darker, brown eyed humans. Can selective pressure start to disfavor reproduction on an overcrowded planet, I wonder? Shades of Children of Men, for sure, right? 

Anyway, from the perspective of the whole evolution and genetics argument, I look at all the gay and lesbian friends I've had and I could never pigeonhole them, saying they were all creative or all somehow gifted in other ways that made the reason for them to be here evolutionarily obvious to me. But what I can say, as the person who can always be counted upon to be fascinated by the new, the different, the foreign, the elusive, and to be more curious than threatened by people who are not just like me, is that I like them just as they are. I might want Brian to be more punctual or Bobby to have been less verbally caustic, but the very last thing I'd change about any of them would be their sexual orientation. If they don't care, I don't care. Maybe it's the perspective of a liberal, atheist, middle age person, but I really just don't think that who you're having sex with is that all important in the scheme of things, as long as it's consensual and you're kind to your partner. 

Likewise, I really just don't think that whether a little girl plays with dolls and wants babies defines female normalcy.  

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* To be honest, I used to say I was a fundamentalist Buddhist. I was extremely tolerant of other peoples beliefs and ways of being because I figured sometimes it's so hard being here in the first place, I'd best not be judging how other people get by unless they do something very obviously (to me) immoral. (You know, cruelty to animals, abusing children, rape, murder, that kind of stuff). This drove my spouse to the edge of insanity. He thought I was way too tolerant, especially of cultures that end up using their beliefs to justify abuse of women. (Though I already had plenty of bad words to say about things like honor killings, child marriage, female circumcision, purdah and such.) I just... tried to accept that other people had the right to do things another way, or differently. Now, in my pre-50's dotage,  I've decided he's totally spot on. A bit of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, some Mukhtar Mai, a dash of Somaly Mam and Nujood Ali, and even just reflecting on the fact that I was raised in a pro-civil rights home in Georgia and Florida in the 1960's, and hey, basic decency to living creatures trumps human rights, women's rights, and civil rights. Because it comprises all of them.

I know my Won Buddhist teacher would say it's definitely sattva to say that, maybe just maybe, people ought to be more tolerant. Step back and realize that so few of other people's personal choices really affect us or our own choices. With a nod in his direction, I honor him, his principles and the remembrance of the hardest concept I've ever (including superposition and the particle/wavelike duality) pondered. 

Detached Compassion, if you're interested.

Maybe all these people who think that females should all be girly girls should give it a spin? 

When they're not busy being in awe of what all these uppity women out there are doing or have done, that is.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010