EQUALITY MYTH

STEP ONE: Reverse the gender of the subject of your article/paper/sentence.

STEP TWO: See if it sounds funny.

STEP THREE: If it does, choose another word.

"The typical typist was a liberated woman … She was a high flier in her day. She had achieved first class honours in philosophy from Oxford and was a skilled linguist."

Still: this is bigger than a sourcing problem. This is a byline problem, a Style section problem, a language problem, a trend story problem, a lazy journalism problem, an oversimplification problem. Also: I fundamentally reject the notion that women are less likely to want to be quoted.

There are free online databases to check for plagiarism. Maybe what we need is a free online database to check for dumbass, avoidable gender bias. 

Or: How Wendy Davis’s “rouge-red" Mizunos became an insta-badge of feminism.

What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?

Over the next month, more than 1 million women in this country will graduate from college. They will enter the workforce with higher GPAs than their male peers. Many will continue on to earn advanced degrees. For these bright young women, the world is their oyster.

Or is it?

Studies show that even after college, women are less ambitious than their male peers. They avoid leadership roles. They are afraid to speak up. 

Why do women harbor such fear? Why are they afraid to raise their hands? We asked young women to answer the question: What would you do if you weren’t afraid?The answers were inspiring, staggering, enlightening, eye-opening.

It wasn’t until 1920 that women were granted suffrage, but it was 1917 when members of the National Women’s Party — Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and others — picketed outside the White House, burning copies of Woodrow Wilson’s speeches and demanding the right to vote. What resulted — mass arrests (most for “obstructing traffic”), unlawful imprisonment and bloody beatings — became known as the Night of Terror, though it’s fair to say most among my generation don’t know it.

The Night of Terror took place on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Workhouse Prison, in Occoquan, Virginia, ordered his guards to teach the suffragists a lesson. For weeks, the women’s only water had come from an open pail. Their food had been infested with worms. But on this night, some 40 prison guards wielding clubs beat the women senseless — grabbing, dragging, choking, kicking and pinching them, according to affidavits recounting the attacks. 

November is Native American Heritage Month

All photos by Edward S. Curtis via the Library of Congress, original captions:

Top: O Che Che, Mohave Indian woman, Qahatika girl, Selawik Woman

Middle: Chaiwa—Tewa, Klamath woman, Cayuse woman