Conference turris::womannotes-v2

    from the notebooks of Lazarus Long, fictional character created
    by Robert A. Heinlein:
    
    	Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men,
    	they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick.
    	What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men,
    	and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all
    	the traffic will bear.  They should never settle merely for
    	equality.  For women, "equality" is a disaster.
    

    re .1, that remains to be seen.  Maybe if we (women in general)
    ever get equality we'll find out.
    
    Lorna
    

    I've always liked this one from Emerson.  It reminds me how unlimited
    we really are...
    
    "Oh, Man, there is no planet, sun or star could hold you, if you
    but knew what you are."

    <--(.1)
    
    My view:  RAH was a fine person and a swell storyteller (most of my
    favorite SF was his), but he grew up in the wrong time (early 1900s)
    and place (Missouri) to really understand equality.  As far as I can
    tell he was *far* from being an MCP but, Spider Robinson's attempted
    defence notwithstanding, he was indeed sexist in his views.  His notion
    of "superior" was verrrrrry freudian and even in the epic Time Enough
    For Love there was still an undercurrent of "men and women are equally
    valuable, but men should take the lead in things because women have
    enough to do raising children which is after all the most important
    activity in the sidereal universe".  I guess I should give him points
    for travelling a long philosophic road (how many other male authors of
    his age, upbringing, and heterosexual orientation could write warmly
    and convincingly about homosexual love between men!?), but I feel
    unwilling to let silence=agreement upon reading some quote like that. 
    
    						=maggie

    
    Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her
    children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam,
    keep her from drowning them at birth.
    
    
    All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and
    young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment,
    luxury, or folly which can--and must--be dumped in emergency to
    preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal
    morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect
    society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!"
    is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless,
    starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly--and
    no doubt will keep on trying.

    
        
    All men are created unequal.
    
    
    Money is the sincerest of all flattery.
    	Women love to be flattered.
    	So do men.

    
    re: .1
    
    Special privileges does not equal equality. I'd prefer equality.
    
    A prisoner has the special privilege of being fed and housed by
    the government, but most would probably prefer the equality of not
    being in jail.                                                  
    
    Thanks just the same.

    "We are all of us in the gutter, 
    but some of us are looking at the stars."
    
    This was first brought to my attention as a lyric in a song
    by Chryssie Hynde and The Pretenders, but I've since learned
    its original author was Oscar Wilde.
    
    DougO

    
    
    I have never yet met a man who was truly awake.  How
    could I have looked him in the face??
    
    H.D. Thoreau

    Here is a quote from a woman who assumed a man's name and exceed
    most men's abilities by her work. 
    
    I include the quote because it has come to be especially meaningful
    to me at this time in my life.
    
       The old woman I shall become will be quite different 
       from the woman I am now.  Another I is beginning...
    
    Frankly, I am at that time in my life where I don't give a
    da*n what a man thinks--or has thought--about what a woman's
    role in life is or should be.  
    
    It is what I think that matters and what I intend to do about
    what I think.
    
    Marilyn
    
    
    

    "The more you know vis-a-vis about your lawyer, your home contractor,
    your doctor, the more they're going to shape up - they're are going
    to bring out the best in themselves."
    
    Works for me!
   
    Ralph was on Donahue today - he has a new book out called "The Home
    Book" - PRETTY SCARY STUFF!  The gases and chemicals that are in
    our homes and apartments is overwhelming.
    
    This man has made me change a lot of things in my life.  And I'm
    sure for the best!  
   

    re:379.10
    
    I find it humorous that evry listens to Ralph Nader like a beacon
    in the night. A man that has never married, does not drive, has
    never owned a home (lives in a boarding house). How is it that this
    man is so revered?? He hardly lives in the mainstream. I have meet
    him on numerous occasions (I'm a safety engineer), and he is an
    impressive alarmist. 
    
    I find even more humorous that I've been teaching chemical safety
    in the home and workplace for DEC over four years, lecture at UMass
    Amherst and NU schools of Elec. Eng. and Computer Science and Nader
    is getting credit for my lectures and research. I've also done home
    chemical safety training for Fire Departments in Marlboro and Boylston,
    MA., EMT's from same, and the Emergency Rooms at UMass Med and Marlboro
    Hospitals.
    
    DEC offers a "Chemical Safety Handbook" and I'd be more than happy
    to send it to anyone who wishes a copy. Send me a note with your
    mailstop and I'll get them out ASAP. 
    
    Your lives are chemical reactions 24 hours a day. The best advice
    is everything in moderation, nothing in excess.
    
    Ken

    Re: .11
    
    >Nader is getting credit for my lectures and research.
    
    Isn't that how academia works -- whoso publishes first gets credit?
    
    Re: quotable men
    
    Ogden Nash, in a rare serious mood, wrote one about a woman who
    woke up feeling "old and grey and dirty.  Last night she was but
    twenty-nine; this morning she is thirty."  The last line I have
    always loved:
    
    "How old is spring, Miranda?"

    This is a quote that I have always liked from a Carl Sandburg poem,
    "Timesweep":
    
    "There are hungers for a nameless bread
     Out of the dust of the hard earth
     Out of the blaze of the calm sun."

    
    Lorna
    

    
    
    
    "Sexism's not just impolite. It can be lethal."
    
    -Alan Alda in an interview a few years ago. (I can't remember the
    details but he told how, when he was a small boy, his life was saved
    by a female doctor)
    
    Roberta
    
    
    

    
    		"These are not animals.
   
    		These are wild quail"
    
    President-still-elect-Bush...
    
    When asked how he justified killing ANIMALS and a "more gentler,
    kinder, etc.....
    

       To live with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury,
       and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not
       respectable, and wealthy not rich; to study hard, think quietly,
       talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes
       and sages with an open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all
       bravely, await occasions, hurry never.  In a word to let the
       spiritual unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common. 
       This is my symphony.

       				  William Ellery Channing

       				  (American writer of the late 1800's)

    "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked
    through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of
    bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient
    proof that everything can be taken from a man except one thing:
    the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any
    given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
    
    Victor Frankl

    � If the fetus does have a "right to life" it must be a right to
    a real, healthy life; not just a right to existence. �
    
    --- jerry

    I just spent 10 minutes looking for this quote, so I thought I'd
    copy over to a more conspicuous location.
                                                          Sm
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    Alison, the quote you're looking for is typically attributed (though no
    record can actually be found of it in any of his writings) to Edmund
    Burke, an english statesman and member of Parliament during the
    american Revolution, and goes "The only thing necessary for the triumph
    of evil is that enough good men should do nothing". 
    
    						=maggie

    Technology without   morality   is   barbarous;  morality  without
    technology is impotent.

From a  discussion  of  attempts  to get rid of nuclear weapons in
"Infinite in All Directions" by Freeman Dyson.

--David

    
    Religion controls us with the fear that we are evil.
    
    Psychiatry controls us with the fear that we are crazy.
    
    Society controls us with the fear that we are less than others.
    
    Is it any wonder that so many people are nervous wrecks?
    
    --anon

From off the net. Pretty funny:


Subject: Ambrose Bierce, equal-opportunity misanthrope
 
The following definitions are from Bierce's ``Devil's Dictionary''
 
Male, n.  A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex.  The male
of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man.
The genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.
 
Female, n.  One of the opposing, or unfair sex.
 
Marriage, n.  The state or condition of a community consisting of a
master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
 
Wedding, n.  A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become
one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to
become supportable.
 
Miss, n.  A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate
that they are in the market.  Miss, Missis (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.)
are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in
sound and sense.  Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of
Master.  In the general abolition of social titles in this our
country they miraculously escaped to plague us.  If we must have
them let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man.  I
venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to Mh.

                           CONTEMPORARY COMMANDMENTS

   I  Never, ever, ever be *nice* to politicians.  George Frazier

  II  Remember that everyone always wants it both ways.

 III  Always clean up your own mess.
      Wilson Mizner:  -- Carry out your own dead. --

  IV  Never take anything literally.  As Henri Poincar� has said: -- To doubt 
      everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions:
      both dispense with the necessity for thought. --

   V  Sex is never to be despised.  In the final analysis, just about everyone 
      would rather be indulging it it.  However, always be nice to children and 
      to the elderly.

  VI  Fear and insecurity are the dominant motivations of nearly all human 
      activity.  Love covers the rest.

 VII  Time is priceless.  It is infinitely more valuable than money.  Good 
      deeds and clear thinking can never be purchased.

VIII  The greatest sin is leading others into temptation; the next greatest, 
      is refusing to admit it.

  IX  Always remember that -- there is nothing as passionate as a vested 
      interest disguised as an intellectual conviction. -- Sean O'Casey

   X  Any of the above may be temporarily suspended in order to expose 
      Reaganism as moral pigmyism and intellectual dwarfism.


                                            Gordon A. Cronin
                                                                     

The commercial prostitution of love is the last outcome of our whole
social system, and its most clear condemnation.  It flaunts in our
streets, it hides itself in the garment of respectability under the
name of matrimony, ... it is fed by the oppression and the ignorance
of women, by their poverty and denied means of livelihood, and by the
hypocritical puritianism which forbids them by millions not only to
gratify but even to speak of their natural desires; and it is
encouraged by the callousness of an age which has accustomed men to
buy and sell for money every most precious thing -- even the life-long
labor of their brothers, therefore why not also the very bodies of
their sisters? 
			-- Edward Carpenter (1844-1929)

      Kingsley Amis writing about women poets...

      ...the awful way their poems lay them open
      Just doesn't strike them.
      Women are really much nicer than men:
      No wonder we like them.

    "Life is Plan B"  
    
    Dean Ing in "The Big Lifters"

    The rich will always be able to go overseas and kill their children.
		-- Randall Terry, head of Operation Rescue, July 4, 1989.

    
    An interesting quote: but is it true? When I moved to America four
    years ago, amongst the paper work I was given was a pamphlet that
    contained the statement that "US law is in many respects unique
    in that it claims global jurisdiction".
    
    I would suspect that were it made illegal for an American to 'kill
    their children' then the geographical location in which they chose
    to do so would not be relevant.
    
    /. Ian .\

    
    An interesting quote: but is it true?

Would my television lie? (Don't answer that...)  The quote makes sense
only if you know that Randall Terry is the head of a militant
anti-abortion movment.  What he was saying in his ever-so-charming
fashion is that as long as his movement hasn't reached around the world,
people who can afford abortions will be able to get them.

Martin.

    
    shucks Martin, sorry about .31: a bit picky I know but it was such
    a quiet day with you folks celebrating the anniversary of our throwing
    you out, that I just had to say something... :-)
    
    /. Ian .\

    enough chit-chat - this is a string for quotes by men.  If you wish
    to discuss this in a separate topic, please do.....
    
    -Jody
    

re: .34:

Ian and I are both Quotable Men.

Martin.

    re .35 >Ian and I are both Quotable Men
    
    May I quote you on that ?

    
    I nearly said much the same thing as Martin. Considering the number
    of times people say "I saw what you said about <x> in <y> conference",
    I'm sure you could quote me on it :-)
    
    Anyway the holiday is over, and much more improtant things are here
    to be discussed.
    
    c-r-e-e-e-e-a-k  [FX: the sound of a rathole closing]
                          
    /. Ian .\

    A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.
    						-John A. Shedd
    
    Know that ever about you stands the reality of love, and each moment
    you have the power to transform your world by what you have learned.
    						-Richard Bach
    
    

    Satchel Paige:  Never look back, 'cus you might see something gaining
    on you.
    
    

    Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will.  Its seat
    is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being.

    	Mohandas K. Gandhi

    In a world which is morally unstable, the fact that a state claims the
    right to take life may well be used by others to also claim the right
    to take life...I would like to see this great nation, the United States
    of America, give an example to the rest of the world by the abolishment
    of capital punishment.

    	Sean MacBride, Co-founder of Amnesty International and recipient of
    	the Nobel Peace Prize

    "Near our tent, on the sides of large trees peeled for that purpose
    were various representations of men going to and returning from the
    wars, and of some killed in battle, this being a path heretofore used by
    warriors.  And as I walked about viewing those Indian histories, which
    were painted mostly in red but some with black, and thinking on the
    innumerable afflictions which the proud, fierce spirit produceth in the
    world--thinking on the toils and fatigues of warriors travelling over
    mountains and deserts, thinking on their miseries and distresses when
    wounded far from home by their enemies, and of their bruises and great
    weariness in chasing one another over the rocks and mountains, and of
    their restless, unquiet state of mind who live in this spirit, and of
    the hatred which mutually grows up in the minds of the children of
    those nations engaged in war with each other--during those meditations
    the desire to cherish the spirit of love and peace amongst these people
    arose very fresh in me."

    	From the Journal of John Woolman, 1763

    Thirty spokes unite at the wheel's hub;
    It is the center hole that makes it useful.
    Shape clay into a vessel;
    It is the space within that makes it useful.
    Cut out doors and windows for a room;
    It is the holes that make it useful.
    Therefore profit comes from what is there;
    Usefulness from what is not there.

    Lao-tzu, translated by Gia-fu Feng
    taken from "Tao:The Watercourse Way" by Alan Watts

    DON MARQUIS: Always begin with a woman by telling her that you don't
     		 understand women.  You will be able to prove it to her 
    		 satisfaction more certainly than anything else you will ever 
    		 tell her.
    
    NICOL WILLIAMSON: If you can make a woman laugh you can do anything
                      with her.
    
    MARK TWAIN: One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a 
    		beautiful woman is after considerable acquaintance with
    		her.
    
    ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know
    		     will not hurt me.
    
    W.C. FIELDS: Never try to impress a woman, because if you do she'll
    	         expect you to keep up the standard for the rest of your
    		 life.
    
    JOHANN VON SCHILLER: Honor women! They entwine and weave heavenly roses
    		         in our earthly life.
    
    JOSEPH CONRAD: Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade, since it
    		   consists principally of dealing with men.
    
    ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE: There is a woman at the beginning of all great
    			   things.

    From the TV show "Star Trek: The Next Generation":
    
     Various members of the Enterprise are leaving the ship to play some
    kind of physcial game (?volleyball, football?) against the crew of
    another ship. One of the players is Lt. WORF, a Klingon� security
    officer.  RIKER, the executive officer, expresses concern at Worf
    playing the game as a "sport"
    
    RIKER:  Winning isn't everything, Worf; Remember, it's only a game!
    
    WORF:   Commander, if winning is unimportant, then why keep score?
    
    
    					Nigel
    
    �: Klingons are warrior humanoids, with very rigid (but non-human)
    codes of ethics.  They're big, mean and strong by Earth standards.

"The tendency to identify manhood with a capacity for physical
 violence has a long history in America."

 -- Marshall Fishwick

    
    
    		"At some point, silence becomes complicity"
    
    			Jackson Katz of "Real Men"
    		in a speech on why men should speak out on
    	        	violence against women  
        	(1/28/90 after a walk to protest violence against women)

 "Courage is doing that which you are afraid of..."

                                  Eddie Rickenbacker

    "All the movements now are encouraging women to be stronger.  I'd
    like to be in a movement for men to be weaker.  The right to be
    weak, the right to be passive, the right to do nothing.  Why do
    men always have to be strong?  We're not, and we know it.  Why do
    we force ourselves to play those roles and why do men and women
    force those roles on each other?"
    
    "I looked at my mother.  She raised seven children, cleaned the
    house, fed us all, made do with a small amount of food.  Why was
    my perception of her that she was weak?  I can see her on the Sabbath,
    sitting calmly in the rocking chair.  I always assumed that my father
    was the strong one, but maybe my mother was stronger.  Maybe?  She
    was.  Beware of women - sometimes they seem weak, but they're really
    strong."
    
                     Kirk Douglas, from his autobiography, "The Ragman's
                                                              Son"
    

    From Jane Austen's clergyman father,in a letter, to her brother,
    Francis, when he, at the age of 14, had finished his training as an
    officer at the Royal Naval Academy, and was about to go to sea:
    (very early 1800's)
    
    "I think it necessary, therefore, before your departure, to give
    my sentiments on such general subjects as I conceive of the greatest
    importance to you...  You may either by a contemptuous, unkind and
    selfish manner create disgust and dislike: or by affability, good
    humour and compliance, become the object of esteem and affection:
    which of these very opposite paths 'tis your interest to pursue
    I need not say."
     

For pure arrogance I've always liked this one:

	"I may not be as smart as God, but I am as smart as God
	 was when he was my age."

	Henry Kissenger