The second in my set of Three Wise H’s. Poor, tragic Heloise was one of the great minds of the twelfth century. Eventually Abbess of the Oratory of the Paraclete, she was not a nun by vocation, but through the medieval systems of sexual repression and ultra-strict gender role enforcement, along with a good sized dollop of bad luck.
history
those who do not know are doomed to repeat etc, besides it’s fascinating
There can be no healing at Nottoway Plantation
In yet another example of white feminist cluelessness, Singer Ani DiFranco will hold her annual songwriting retreat this year on Nottoway Plantation in Louisiana. Righteous Retreat Song Camp is billed as a feminist songwriting retreat, and DiFranco’s choice to hold the event at this locale has drawn ire from Black women who note the offensiveness of the location.
Quick, Late Friday-Now-Saturday Hoyden courtesy of my crashing internet connection: Saint Lucy
Saint Lucy’s Day is celebrated throughout Scandinavia, particularly in Sweden, and is a very special marker in the lead-up to Christmas. It is traditionally celebrated by the young girls of the town walking in procession wearing white dresses with red sashes and carrying lighted candles. The eldest wears a crown of candles to represent the saint herself.
Time to End the Valorisation of Ignorance
The federal government is quite open about its plans to interfere with the independence of academic research, and to shut down according to its whim any research they fancy that falls outside a narrow selection of medicine and technology projects. I hope the only reason that this hasn’t been howled down instantly is that we haven’t yet processed what this really means.
The #NotYourAsianSidekick conversation
Watching the white supremacists try to derail the conversation with the #AsianPrivilege hashtag and by coopting the Shoah has been infuriating.
Crowdsourcing the Shakespeare Authorship Question
Yet another book.
Vale Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013
No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.
Friday Hoyden: Graça Machel
With the news of the death of Nelson Mandela, for the next while there will be many reflections published on his life and its impact. It is worthwhile to take some time to think of one of the people who will be feeling his death most keenly, his wife Graça Machel.
Why I almost didn’t write a post for White Ribbon Day this year
Because the neverending pushback against it year after year after year had very almost ground me down, to the point where I was avoiding reading WRD posts so that I wouldn’t have to see the comments. This post by Jane Gilmore at King’s Tribune (via Clementine Ford’s discussion of it on her FB timeline) made me decide to post after all.
Obligatory Joss Whedon Feminist Speech Post
Whedon, then, delivers a speech on the term “feminist” without any reference to feminist history, without any apparent awareness of feminist theory, and without even any demonstrated knowledge of the most important objections or conflicts around the term “feminist,” the use of which he is purportedly discussing.