Remembering Lennon

His work as a great musician, poet, thinker, has touched the whole world and continues to do so. There was more coverage on the news today of the anniversary of his death than there was of Pearl Harbor day yesterday.

I find his outside the box political activism particularly inspiring. His cause expressed again and again:
"All We Need is Love." Peace, love and understanding are what he stood up for.

In that spirit I thought these 2 offerings by others expressing his words for social causes really capture the feeling of what he was saying in so many ways in so many songs.



Remembering this version sung in the America Tribute for Heroes concert for victims of 9/11:




He's still singing from here:

We Who Believe in Freedom

Inspired by Bodhi Haraldsson's post today announcing that today is National Day for Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada, I started contemplating why it's necessary for us to have such a day. It's amazing to me, after all the years of asserting the need for equality of women as humans, how much prejudice against strong, intelligent, powerful, expressive women still exists.

If it's not expressed as actual violence, domestic or random, workplace sexual abuse or rape, it is still so heavily embedded in the language and imagery of our society that it's almost understandable how an abused unstable man, like Marc Lépine, decided to take his dark psychological unfinished business out on so many women, killing 14 and wounding 10 more and 4 men before killing himself.

This horrific act is what inspired a National Day for Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Bravo to the Canadian government for their response, but I do wonder why, in 1989, did we still need such a dramatic violent act for a country to acknowledge the need to support a woman's right to walk safely among men and expect to be respected, treated well.

How many examples do we still have of women in powerful positions asserting their views effectively and being called "Ball Busters" for doing so?

Let's see... the early examples speaking for equal rights for women, were given such handles; Mary Wollstonecraft (mother of Mary Shelley) villified as 'Amazon of the pen' in the late 18th century for her independent stance and open sexual explorations, while, for men of her time, sexual trysts were simply business as usual.

Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and many other fighters for women's suffrage, had been beaten and were arrested for standing up against slavery and for women's right to vote and be educated.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, were at odds with many other suffragists over the 14th and 15th amendments because these amendments did not also include women's right to vote.
Although these amendments abolished slavery, insured due process and equal protection under the law and voting rights for all races, they did not do so for both sexes. Slaves were emancipated and given the right to vote by the 14th and 15th amendments in 1868 and 1870 but not until 1920, did the Nineteenth Amendment prohibit state and federal agencies from gender-based restrictions on voting.

Many women suffragists started their social activism as abolitionists in their efforts to assure equal rights under the law,
yet didn't see their own rights written into law until 50 years after slavery was abolished and all races were enfranchised by law. During the beginning of the twentieth century, suffragists were still subject to arrests and many were jailed. Still vilified and fighting for voting rights until 1920, women were.

I've personally heard Gloria Steinem, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Streisand as director, all called ball busters for asserting their views, holding on to their power. Yoko Ono, an already famous gutsy performance artist before she met John Lennon was blamed for breaking up the Beatles and demonized as a controlling bitch keeping him on a short leash.

Jane Fonda, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Maxine Hong Kingston, how many more accused of being raging feminists for simply standing up for what is right and for what men take for granted as their birthright.

What powerful man do you know is put down for asserting his power skillfully? I'm not talkin about misuse of it or other forms of patriarchal or chauvinistic abuse and tyranny, but simply being skillfully powerful. I don't know any, except, maybe Obama. He's been so wimpy on so many important issues once in office that for me his skillful use of power is blown.

In the 19th century, George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) wrote as a man to get published, have her work taken seriously and keep her 20 year clandestine live in relationship with a married man private. Other fiction writers wrote of the plight of women and served to raise consciousness; Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, journalist Fanny Fern, Louisa May Alcott.

After the effort of all these women and many more, to simply ascertain a status of equality among men, we are still considered haughty, overly aggressive, called ball busters, lesbos or dykes, accused of being gay men haters or simply in need of a good lay for taking a stand and not budging from it when confronted by a man to do so.

The word feminism or feminist has negative connotations even more today than it did in the 70s
during the rise of the women's movement, NOW, and when the Woman's Building was being birthed for women artists in LA. Feminist is often used as a dismissive put down, negating the content of the issue being addressed. "Oh she's just a raging feminist."

With lyrics in rap expressing overt violence against and hatred of women, game points given for rape and violent attacks on computer games, Sarah Palin on one hand rallying right wingers with her cutsy stupidity and Ann Coulter on the other with her hateful rhetoric, where is the voice of empowered femininity today? It ain't Brittany Spears, Cristina Aguilera, the Spice Girls or any of the other pretty girl singers, models or actresses. They know they're mostly arm candy and for them that's apparently an acceptable path to wealth and fame.

I feel for parents of young women today. Teen girls read fashion magazines and try for bodies that no one without photoshop can achieve. Anorexia and bulimia are epidemic among teenage girls, increasing 36% every 5 years since the 1950s, according to a Mayo Clinic study.

Where are their role models?

There have always been enlightened men on the side of women's rights and for that we are grateful, but they are a distinct minority. Today many younger men seem less threatened by strong women than they did in my day, but I am still not seeing women being treated with equal respect for their achievements or hearing their ideas spoken of with the same admiration as men. I often hear men say, "You did that like a girl." as a put down for poor performance, especially in sport.

It's been 90 years since we gained the right to vote in America. Better late than never. Yet we still are seen either as arm candy, sex toys straddling the hoods of cars in blatant crotch shots to sell em on TV, as a man's personal assistant wife administrator home organizer, or as their mothers. There to be comfort and support when men need it but don't nag too much about responsibilities or you'll become a real downer, a ball buster, someone whose got him by the short hairs, in need of a good lay and ripe for abandonment during mid life crisis when it's about time to buy that hot car with the girl straddling it.

I'm ranting. It's National Day for Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada and I'm pissed off that it isn't National Day of Respect and Admiration for the Women who stand beside us as fellow adventurers, companions, advisors and spiritual buddies, a day in appreciation of how hard we've worked to achieve the recognition we so richly deserve.

Where would we be without strong gutsy women?!