Fight Like a Girl

 



Proving that if I’m ever attacked by a 7-foot-tall man, I’ll be able to kick him directly under the chin while standing on his foot.
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On a more serious note...
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In 1847, Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre (a protofeminist work) under a man's name so she'd be taken seriously.

In 1861, George Eliot wrote Silas Marner (a book about a man) under a man’s name so she'd be taken seriously writing an “unfeminine” book.

It’s 2020, and in the last couple months I’ve written numerous e-mails I’ve asked men to send and drafted talking points and scripts for phone calls I’ve asked men to make so the words will be taken seriously because when the same words came from me they were ignored. Even (and sometimes especially) when the person on the other end was a woman.

When I speak passionately about something, I'm often referred to as "cute" or "precious" for voicing my beliefs so strongly, and I was recently told someone was gossiping about me trying to "figure me out" because of the way I took charge in a situation, which didn't jibe with her idea of a young woman.

It's been 173 years since Jane Eyre. Women aren't cute for being passionate, and we're not something to be “figured out” for being smart and assertive. And our words matter.

So fight with your words. Fight with your heart. Fight with your actions. Fight with all your might. Fight like a girl.

Literacy day

I realized I missed International Literacy Day last week, so here I am with my quarantine reading list. I highly recommend every book here, both for reading and for stretching. List and descriptions below.

Fiction pile: 

Novels and Stories, by Shirley Jackson (Looking for an exploration of everyday evil and how we pass it or commit it without even noticing it? Look here.)
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Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte (some awesome protofeminism by the Bronte sisters here)
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41 Stories by O. Henry
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The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (If you've seen the TV adaptations, they were completely unfaithful and missed the point. Read the book.)
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Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith
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Gothic Tales, by Elizabeth Gaskell (Never heard of her? That's because she didn't write how women were supposed to write during the mid 1800s. She even dared to write from a man's perspective. Plus she wrote about an unwed mother. Jane Austen she is not.)
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Einstein's Dreams: A Novel, by Alan Lightman (It will color how you see time forevermore.)

Nonfiction pile:

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal (Spoiler alert: we usually are not.)
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The Ape and The Sushi Master, by Frans de Waal
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American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant, by Ronald C. White (Travel through time—seriously, this book transports you and brings the man and his time to life better than any movie)
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The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins, by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell (Humans are far from the only animals with cultural lives.)