I was a judo player through my university years. Judo was an essential ingredient in my personal realisation of my bodily strength and mental power. I learned that I could jump, fall, roll, lift, and throw; and I learned that I could escape a stranglehold or an armlock or a larger person trying to pin me to the ground. Women were outnumbered by men in our club, but much better represented than in other adult judo clubs: we made an effort to welcome and respect women. I competed in national Intervarsity competitions, and I helped teach a beginner’s class for women and men just starting explore judo as art or as sport. Judo was an key ingredient in the start of my adult journey toward feminism. I learned that I could be strong instead of vulnerable; that I could compete in a physical sport and not just in academics (I hated high school sport!); that I could lead and organise in a male-dominated arena; and even that it was ok to be sweaty and dishevelled and grunt and shout.
Every martial artist needs a hero: mine was Keiko Fukuda, and she’s a hero in anyone’s language.
[image credit: Judo Info]
Fukuda, born in 1913, was a judo student studying under the founder of the martial art, Jigoro Kano, and is his last living pupil. From JudoInfo:
When Fukuda began taking lessons in 1935, she was one of only two-dozen women in the school, which is known today as the Kodokan International Judo Center. Kano had invited her to study judo because of her martial art lineage. She was the granddaughter of a renowned jujitsu master, who had taught that Japanese martial art to Kano. “At that time, I was only 21 years old, being taught the ways of Flower Arranging, Formal Tea Ceremony and Brush Writing, which was customary for young ladies in Japanese society,” Fukuda wrote in her 1973 book, “Born for the Mat”.
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Filed under: Friday Hoyden, history, sport
Read ‘Ems for today:
Sunday Telegraph: Quadriplegic left on train
Mark McCauley, a man with quadriplegia, was abandoned on a New South Wales CityRail train for four hours when the train lost power. The ambulatory passengers were all evacuated one hour into the debacle. Luckily, he had his mobile phone on him. His first call, to CityRail, wasn’t so helpful:
“I rang CityRail and told the lady I was stuck . . . and at the end of the conversation she said ‘That’s fine sir, somebody will get back to you in two or three days’.
His second call was to 000. They just rang CityRail and had a manager call him back. McCauley reports:
“She said we can’t get you off the train until we restore power – it could be in the early hours of the morning.”
Mr McCauley was in need of medication by then. Luckily, construction workers volunteered to remove him from the train with a forklift.
CityRail’s apology? Two one-day free rail passes.
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Filed under: Read 'ems, disability, fat-hating, history, indigenous, moral panics
(Now crossposted at Feministe – I’m guest-blogging there this week. Thanks, Jill!)
10 points to Indian journalist Saira Kurup for debunking the myth of bra-burning feminists as part of a column about the history of the bra.
-100 points for not getting the larger point, although Kurup is far from the only one who missed out on a crucial word in the history of the 1968 protests outside the Miss America beauty pageant.
The 1940s and ’50s embraced the new curves. But with the 1960s came consciousness about the way women are portrayed and “sexualised”. Feminist thinking was breaking new ground. Radicals like Germaine Greer raised a storm by saying that the “willingly suffered discomfort of the sixties’ bra was a hideous symbol of male oppression”, though not all feminists agreed.
Around the same time, a London School of Economics male professor said the bra’s achievement was in “converting the primitive droop into a civilised thrust”. Quite a provocative statement. In 1968, some activists demonstrated against the Miss America beauty pageant and threw objects of “female oppression” — bras, high-heeled shoes, girdles, curlers — into a trash can. They were arguing about liberation — there was never any bra-burning — but the myth of the feminist as a bra-burner was created by the western media. The image of the braless, man-hating women’s libbers was hard to shake off. (emphasis mine)
You’re not kidding about the image being hard to shake off. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Media, myth/legend, urban legends
If Iran Were America (And We Were Iran): A Timeline
This is a very well done example of reversing protagonists and putting shoes on other feet. It’s also a useful pointer for people who have been previously unaware of just how much throttling of autonomous political movements in ex-colonial resource-rich states has been done by the industrial powers of the West over generations.
Via Pandagon.
Filed under: economics, history, islamophobia, middle east
Australia’s own Annette Kellerman, swimming champion and inventor of the women’s one-piece bathing suit, starred in the first ever million-dollar Hollywood film (which of course means that the title of the Esther William’s biopic “Million Dollar Mermaid” now makes so much more sense).
The film was “A Daughter Of the Gods” made in 1916, which used thousands of extras, elaborate sets and over 40 miles of film in its production for a final cut that ran for 180 minutes. The film was hugely controversial because Kellerman appeared naked. No known copies of the film survive.
Kellerman is one of Hoyden About Town’s banner hoydens.
Filed under: history, performance
This week’s One Question is from Harry Clarke, who writes in an earlier post:
In assessing testimony in a court of law motives are important. Elsewhere they are less so but they pervasively affect our attitudes. Some have argued that the ‘The Motive Fallacy’ (specifically, believing that exposing the motives behind an expressed opinion shows that the opinion is false) is so common in politics that serious policy debate is almost nonexistent.
…The problem with falling prey to the Motives Fallacy in a political debate is that attention is turned away from the analysis of policy consequences. Policies just become part of a political game that seeks to establish who might win or lose. The specific effects of policies remain unanalyzed by the person who says ‘X is only just saying that because of Y’ where Y has nothing to do with the effects of the policy.
My fellow 1Q contributors have largely concentrated on current events, and made many of the best points (teach me to get weighed down and be late). I plan to look back at how motives have been weighed as to relevance in the past, and particularly the roots of the idea of weighing motives in a truly ancient debate, albeit a debate that probably long predates its first recorded pithy summation.
“Cui bono?” (to whose benefit?) were the words flung by the orator Marcus Tullus Cicero repeatedly at a jury in Rome, words he attributed to the consul and censor Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla, as he defended a client charged with murder and succeeded in vindicating him. As Harry alludes to above, the principle of cui bono? forms the basis of criminal investigations today, in determining who is a credible suspect, and in weighing the strength of various motives according to the benefit derived. Whether the benefit is tangible, intangible or even delusional, the belief in a benefit to be gained through committing a crime underpins our concept of what constitutes a motive.
But the political arena is not susceptible to the same simplifications and controlled microinvestigation as the criminal court, and political policy decisions have ongoing ramifications and ripple effects that a single concrete criminal act does not. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: 1Question, Media, Politics, ethics, history, skeptics
I’ve blogged a couple of times in recent weeks about the Stolen Generations of indigenous children, and about the anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report:
Referendum Roundup, and Indigenous Health “Report Card”
Australian linguistocide, and antipodeal approaches to aboriginal education
For most of the twentieth century, the Australian government removed 10-30% of indigenous children from their parents, typically under false pretences or by force. They handed the children over to white parents to raise, in an attempt to “breed out” indigenous blood. They did this under the guise of it being “for their own good”, as indigenous parents were assumed to be culturally and mentally inferior, alcoholic, neglectful, abusive.
Image Credit: BBC News
Today, BBC Wales brings us the story of Leonie Pope, a woman who was stolen from her parents in Brisbane 35 years ago and removed to Wales by her adoptive parents. Born at home, Leonie and her mother were then taken to hospital, and her mother lied to about “inoculation” papers that were actually foster papers.
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Filed under: Politics, authoritarianism, history, indigenous, racism
This is the container of leftover sausages I put away in the frig last night.
This morning when I woke up and went to the frig for milk, not a single one of those sausages had been eaten.
What can have happened to the Phantom Sausage Snaffler?
Sydney, 25/5/2007
Police hold grave fears for the safety of the Phantom Sausage Eater after a plate of sausages remained intact overnight in the Sydney Suburb of Togsville. A source who claimed to be close to the Phantom told us that the Phantom may have been distracted by an especially satisfying evening meal and the unexpected appearance of raisin toast at breakfast. A Police spokesman revealed that the sausages are to be left unattended again tonight in the hope that the Phantom will strike again and allay public concern for his safety.
APP Reooters
The Phantom has been a friendly ectoplasmic cohabitant in the tigtog household since mr tog and I first met. I find his disapparation inexplicable and most alarming. And who else is going to eat all those sausages?
Filed under: food/drink, myth/legend
