Friday, February 29, 2008

Is there more to history than killing each orther or looking hot?

There is certainly a wide range of topics along the grand pole of history. Likely the killing and destruction found in wars, which is not the only interest men have, is on one end while doing everything possible to be considered sexy, which is also not the only interest women have, is on the other.
But too often history about women is either found in Women’s History Departments of Universities or on what is called the “fringe” giving people the impression it isn’t very interesting or doesn’t affect their lives. Many people automatically connect the term feminism with violent beliefs about sexuality. Pro-Choice also includes having children outside the current legal boundaries and is not exclusively about exercising abortion. And all the men I know who are very much interested in equality for women, knowing full well it affects their ability to enjoy equality themselves, are turned off by the word feminism and what is available about the history of women in the main-stream market today.
I have taught private workshops on Dream Interpretation and Analysis from a Jungian perspective for a decade. Believe me, a person’s dreams are a reflection of what they believe about themselves. What we believe is based on what we are taught. A person’s well being or ill health is affected by self-esteem. We find ourselves experiencing physical pains caused by our fears until we make conscious choices. Knowing all history helps sort out our personal beliefs. Until then, women’s history continues to be thought of as “second class”.
Let’s face it, how many people are going to spend their highly limited free time reading “The Feminist Papers – Adams through Beauvoir”? Not too many, other than those required to read it when taking a course to get their college degree. Yes, there are some books that deal with the pioneering lives of women in our past. Most of it, however, continues to dwell on how women should be “super” achievers and be willing to over-achieve. The vast majority of non-fiction literature published about historical women during the past fifteen years is about the Goddess. There is certainly no problem with that—I used a great deal of it when researching my book, Infamous Eve, A History—other than it does not always attract the interest of the general reader.
Right now the history of women seems to fall into the perceived categories of: 1. Uninteresting, 2. A sales job on how women should continue to be everything to everyone, or 3. Goddess worship is the way for religion to be experienced so that everyone gets to be happy.
The biggest real problem is that most of the popular biblical history found in the main-stream is written about the men—heroes—even though those heroes were war mongers taking land belonging to others, murderers to get or keep their heart’s desires, and without a doubt control freaks. Other than the ones with a distinctly biased position, the religious histories written about women are few and far between. So much was ignored, suppressed, deleted, or plundered and re-written so that it appears to be about men instead that tenacity is required to actually write about it.
Too often exercising our free-will is still considered a bad option. Regardless of individual perspectives and beliefs about Equal Rights for Women, there is an undeniable existence of a barrier that keeps women on a level lower than men. As long as social customs and political laws bind women to men the biblical Eve will still be used to constrain women, especially regarding work, marriage, and children.
Past historical mistakes cannot be prevented from recurring over and over again when they remain unknown. When we do know what they are, the status quo, that keeps both women and men without equality, ends.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Is history being revisited?

Is the grand Universe offering us an opportunity to deal with a lesson in our history not previously understood? Are we re-living a version of the events that surrounded the ratification of United States Constitution’s 14th and 15th Amendments? Those events greatly concerned and involved two of our most important historical figures. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the woman responsible for initiating women rights in this country and Frederick Douglass, who was born into slavery, is a major figure in the effort to release the United States of America from the horrors of slavery. They worked closely together, but in July, 1868 they had to face the fact that their primary objective of freedom for all did not survive when the legislators of the day banned together to block the powerful union of women and black people to only offer males the vote.

The 14th amendment said: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The idea was to make sure freed slaves were not prevented from voting, but it only gave franchise to males rather than all citizens.

But then the Supreme Court case of Minor vs. Happersett allowed the individual states to determine which males got to vote anyway.

The cause of the amendments failure:
1. The rights of women were not included.
2. The Federal government did not prevent the individual states from initiating voter qualification laws like literacy tests and pole taxes.

Are we being beguiled into allowing the seemingly towering objective of gaining the highest office in the land by either a black man or a woman to deflect away from the primary objective and divide us so that no one really gains anything and those of us in this country who love it and care about equality are again torn apart in an attempt to undermine the power women and blacks exhibit together?

Thursday, February 21, 2008

My gratitude is great

Publicity and marketing are extremely important to any author—known or especially unknown. Of course those who are well known have more publicity and thus free marketing. The rest must use whatever means are at our disposal to get our names and books known by an ever expanding audience.

Some of the groups who have given space on their web-sites to my book, Infamous Eve, A History are:

http://www.bookfetish.com/
http://www.wandakeesey.com/
http://www.mysteryfiction.net/
http://www.newbookreviews.org/
http://www.readerviews.com/
http://www.bookviews.com/
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/

I certainly am grateful to each and every one.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Hoorah for the internet

Information is a key element to freedom. One of the greatest events in our history is the ability for all sorts of knowledge to be available, to anyone interested, without the self-appointed watchers—meaning censors who generally have been made up of the wealthy because of the high costs involved in publishing, publicity, and marketing—preventing it.

The internet, although it can be abused, is one of the best ideas achieved on this planet! What I’ve found most interesting is that during the past 5 years it became possible to buy many more books from the traditional retailers than ever before then. Why is that occurring? Well, because the internet allows access to so much free information. Book stores and the libraries of colleges and universities are no longer in a position to block access to knowledge required by serious authors seeking facts and support for their own works. One of the most excellent out-comes is I no longer need to pay high shipping costs to get the books I need from Great Britain.

There are so many web-sites that with a small amount of effort previously little known works can be published and read. If one site says no, others will say yes. One of the sites that was pleased to publish my article on the Sacred Marriage is www.prescottweddings.com, which is one of the best places on the internet to get information about weddings—pre-history, history, and current.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

March is Women's History Month

Last year the only program I saw about women on the History Channel during the month of March—Women’s History Month—was a documentary about pioneering on at 6AM on a single Sunday morning. I am hoping to see many more this year, but don’t forget there is a women’s radio program on the internet where topics of varied interest are aired on a regular basis throughout the year. Pat Lynch, Editor-in-Chief of http://www.womensradio.com is a great woman who uses her resources to speak with people who know there is more to history than killing each other or looking hot. I’ll be sure to let you know when I talk with her on “Speak Up!”.