Fem Speak

Reading Between the (Head)lines

A Canton, Georgia headline reads, “Couple, child victims of apparent murder-suicide.”  The headline is sanitized and de-sexed, suggesting that everyone involved is a victim, as if none of the three were to blame.  The headline does not tell us who shot who, but we all know.  It is not just that 94% of murder-suicides are male on female.  It is the headline that gives it away, by what is left unsaid.  If the shooter had been female, the headline would read “Woman murders husband, leaves baby to starve.”  As another example, consider two arrests that were made Easter weekend.  The male-on-female murder was noted in this gender-neutral manner:  “Arrest made in teens’ death.”  But when three women were arrested for delivering a baby and discarding it, that headline read:  “NY sisters arrested in baby’s death.”

Acts of violence by women against men are still extraordinary enough to rate “Man bites dog” news status.  When Lorena Bobbitt was arrested for maiming her husband, that story was a great headline-grabber.  News of the forced abortion and the continual abuse she had endured at his hands -- so horrible that the judge chose to acquit her for the attack -- barely made a ripple on the news radar.

The media gender bias extends beyond perpetrators; it is also evident in the treatment of victims.  Consider the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal.  The world was outraged at the discovery that priests were molesting altar boys.  We barely noticed that they victimized girls, too.  One priest raped numerous teenage girls upon the altar, yet it was boys who made the news.  Defenders of the Roman Catholic Church note that children are more likely to be sexually victimized by school teachers than by their priest or pastor.  Yet public outrage against student sex abuse has never risen to the level of calling it a scandal.  The difference?  Girls are the usual target.

Abu Ghraib stands as the strongest testament to the media neglect of female victimization.  Emblazoned on our collective consciousness are the images of abused and humiliated men, out of context with Lynndie England’s thumbs-up and happy camper smile.  But where are the photos and the stories of the women who were tortured at Abu Ghraib?  Perhaps you’ll have to look it up, as I did, but women were (and still are) incarcerated in Abu Ghraib.  Many women were stripped of their clothes, tortured, raped, and sexually humiliated right along with the men.  A 70-year-old Iraqi woman was harnessed and ridden like donkey.  But it was only violence against women, so it did not make the front page.

When mentioned at all, the abuse of women at Abu Ghraib is downplayed.  The Taguba report makes no bones about the sadistic torture inflicted on male Abu Ghraib prisoners.  As for the women, the report includes an innocuous-sounding admission of “a male MP guard having sex with a female detainee.”  The legal term for such an event is rape, because the law recognizes that a prisoner cannot give meaningful consent to an armed guard.  Acts against males that involved penetration were termed rape, but the rape of women was categorized as sex.  The women who have been released alive went home tight-lipped.  After all, this is a culture where a rape victim’s family often stones her to death in order to restore their “honor.”

Journalists tell us about violence against women in the passive voice, as if these things just happen.  Consider “school shootings.”  Schools don’t get shot; people do.  And someone does the shooting.  The shooters are nearly always male (boy students or sometimes a man from the community) and the victims are predominantly female.  Sometimes the shooters even excuse the males and shoot girls exclusively.  Very few media outlets have noted the gender component, preferring instead to imagine that school shootings are senseless or random acts of violence.

Another passive term the media likes is “domestic disputes.”  This one sounds like two people on an equal playing field, who are having a bit of trouble working something out.  Yet we most often hear this term after the discovery of a dead body (usually female), e.g. “The couple had a history of domestic disputes.”  To me, a domestic dispute is what happens when somebody uses up all the hot water on a Sunday morning.  The term does not adequately describe what it is like for a woman to be dragged through her house by her hair, choked, or threatened by a person who may be twice her size.  Journalists should avoid using vague, sexless terms like “domestic dispute” and instead write strong sentences such as, “Police reports indicate this was not the first time the man choked his wife.”

Statisticians are also guilty of using this neutered, passive vocabulary.  For example, they inform us that 1 out of 3 girls “will be sexually victimized” before age 18.  Although sexual abusers are almost invariably male, we do not read that “Men sexually abuse 1 out of 3 girls before the age of 18.”  Nor do we ever hear the percentage of men who abuse.  We read about women in the military “getting raped,” not about “male soldiers raping their female comrades.”

If my rephrasing of these sentences disturbs readers, it should.  We should be very disturbed that there are men in our midst, in this very community, perhaps at our church or our children’s schools, who perpetrate crimes against women and children we know.  According to the CDC, men commit over 90% of the sexual violence in America against victims who are 78% female.  Every year, American men kill 1,000 wives or girlfriends and rape or sexually abuse hundreds of thousands more.

Male-on-female violence is pervasive and is mostly ignored by our society.  We cannot adequately address it by talking about how many women are abused.  The problem is not abused women.  The problem is abusive men.

-- Jeannie Babb Taylor

On the Other Hand

April, 2007

The Law of Attraction, Science, and a Challenge to Rhonda Byrne

I am a mystic, but I am also a science geek. I used to teach science to elementary school students. I believe in miracles, but I believe these miracles occur within the framework of a very real world that is subject to certain laws of physics. Science is very complicated, and you cannot reduce the way the universe operates down to one simple formula.

Yet, many are accepting the idea that the so-called Law of Attraction is the way the universe works, or, in the least, the way people’s lives work. This idea, now put forth into the mainstream by The Secret, has been called “scientific” by many of its adherents. Yet, this label is not only misleading but downright false.

The basic idea behind the Law of Attraction is “like attracts like.” Adherents point to science as the reason this is true, citing magnets or quantum physics as “proof.” Actually, science does not say “like attracts like” whatsoever. In the most simplest of scientific explanations, the real truth is “opposites attract.”

Explained simply: A positively charged particle will attract a negatively charged particle and vice versa. Two positively charged particles will repel one another.

This is how magnets really work. This is how electricity works.

So right away, we see how science does not prove the Law of Attraction; in fact, science can be said to completely negate the Law of Attraction.

Yet, we’re not really talking particles here, are we? The Law of Attraction is dealing with human life and interactions, so what we’re really looking at is apples and oranges.

So let’s just step back and look at the concept that one simple law can explain everything that happens. I’ve seen, over and over again, people trying to justify the “truth” of the Law of Attraction by stating that universe is simple and runs by very simple laws. So, the logic goes, people’s lives must be just as simple.

Are the laws of the universe really that simple? Can they be reduced to one simple statement? In fact, when you study science at all, you realize that the universe functions smoothly not because of one reductionist law, but because of a complex series of forces and opposing forces that create a certain amount of equilibrium that allows for the creation of life. (Still, over time, this equilibrium will disintegrate, as entropy and energy dispersal breaks down the fabric of the universe as we know it.)

For example, if the only law of the universe was the law of gravity (and no other forces were opposing gravity), then everything would just stick to everything else and there would be no motion, no movement, no life.

The conflicting forces of the universe create a dynamic interplay that allows for the complex interactions that occur in the natural world. Inertia, for example, could keep that baseball you’ve thrown into the air moving on its trajectory for all of eternity, but it is gravity that ultimately pulls the ball down out of the sky. Inertia, however, is what helps the ball fly in the first place. It’s all interrelated.

It is thus scientific nonsense to suggest that one simple law such as the Law of Attraction is solely responsible for all interactions between humans. Is it possible that “attraction” can and does affect human interactions? Of course. But there are also other opposing forces that temper and mold “attraction” to create a complex system just like the one that operates in our natural world.

What then, of the idea that thoughts create our reality? Let’s give this the mystical benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it is possible that our thoughts have some organizing effect. Yet, those thoughts are also interacting with other thoughts and forces. What determines what will win out? The thought? Or the basic laws of the universe? Is the power of a thought more powerful than scientific law? Is it more powerful than gravity? Care to try that out by jumping off a tall building and believing you can fly?

Thus, when Law of Attraction proponents claim it is “scientific,” they are showing a poor understanding of science.

The true irony, of course, is that the people behind The Secret want you to believe the science “proves” their claims, yet, they are more than willing to dismiss science when it is inconvenient for them.

In a most egregious example, Rhonda Byrne, author of the book The Secret, claims that overeating will not make you gain weight. She writes:

“The most common thought that people hold, and I held it too, is that food was responsible for my weight gain. That is a belief that does not serve you, and in my mind now it is complete balderdash! Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight. Remember, thoughts are primary cause of everything, and the rest is effects from those thoughts. Think perfect thoughts and the result must be perfect weight.”

This flies in the face of every study that has ever been done on the cause of obesity. It flies in the face of biology. It flies in the face of common sense.

And yet, when you look at Rhonda Byrne, she has aged. Isn’t it her belief about aging that makes her age? C’mon, Rhonda, make yourself younger already!

But it’s no surprise that Rhonda can’t take the wrinkles off her face. And you won’t see Rhonda Byrne flying around in the sky like Superman anytime soon. So one has to ask: Why isn’t she? If thoughts truly are the cause of everything, then why isn’t she defying gravity and wowing us with her mental prowess as a high-flying superhero?

So thoughts affect your metabolism, but not your aging or your flying ability? Hm.

Well, let’s give Rhonda the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe she can affect her metabolism, like a seasoned yogi on a mountaintop.

If this is the case, prove it. Here’s the way to do it scientifically. It’s called the “Supersize Me” Challenge, inspired by the documentary of the same name. So I challenge Rhonda Byrne:

Go overeat at McDonald’s every day for three months. We’ll monitor your health and fitness before, during and after. You must eat nothing but McDonald’s, and not just the salads but the hamburgers too. You must eat until you are stuffed and then some. And we’re going to follow you into the bathroom to make sure you aren’t purging yourself of the food. Finally, you cannot exercise during this time.

If, after three months, you show absolutely no weight gain or adverse health effects, then, maybe then, you will have shown some scientific evidence that what you say is true.

But Rhonda, as we can guess, probably won’t take up this challenge. There is always some sort of excuse or modifier put on these challenges. And that should be your first clue that the “truth” that they espouse isn’t so cut and dry after all.

We in America have been suffering from poor quality science education for decades. As our mystics continue to dilute the discourse with false science, we are in danger of creating an ignorant populace that bases decisions on superstition instead of critical thinking.

I am a believer in the mystical. But I don’t think mysticism or spirituality should conflict with science. The two, in fact, should support each other. True spirituality will not conflict with science whatsoever, but see science as evidence of the beautiful intelligent consciousness underneath it all.

Stephanie Brail

The Sexualization of Girls

Yesterday I happened across something on TV that I didn't watch long enough to learn the name of the program, nor who was speaking, but it was interviewing experts and others about the problems young girls have who sexually mature early.

They said the effects on those children were multiple and affected them at school and at home, causing both their school mates and the adults in their lives to treat them differently than if they had not developed early.

They were teased and resented at school by their peers and subjected to inappropriate sexual attention from older males. Their parents tended to expect more of them than would be reasonable for children their age because they looked older than they were. Girls who developed early were more likely to become depressed than those who had not.

Recently the BBC news web site, USA Today, and other sites have featured items about the damaging effects on girls of commercial efforts to sexualize them.

Among the contributing elements to sexualize young girls are sexually suggestive dolls. Everyone knows that Barbie is a sexualized doll, but now we also have the very popular Bratz doll series.

Linked to the Bratz dolls are suggestive clothing for girls that match up with Bratz doll clothing.

Let's allow our children to be children.

And let's allow all females to be fully human persons, not objects.

Don't buy the dolls.

Don't buy the clothing.

Write or email companies that sexually exploit children, even if they do it indirectly, and object.

Treat children like children, even if they have developed early.

It is their right.

Enough With the Girls Gone Wild Ads

I am not a huge fan of porn for a variety of reasons, but if people want to watch it, that's their business. Just don't shove it in my face. Yet, that's exactly what happens if you watch Comedy Central late at night.

The Girls Gone Wild juggernaut is a soft-core porn empire that builds its business on the backs of drunken teenagers who strip and perform sex acts for the camera. Usually, these girls are picked up at nightclubs where they are already drunk and not quite in their right minds. (Read this article for an eye-opening look at what really goes on behind the scenes at Girls Gone Wild.)

The "brilliant" marketing strategy of Girls Gone Wild has been to pander to mainstream audiences by advertising on cable networks such as Comedy Central. Originally, the ads were tasteless but cheesy more than anything, and involved shots of girls flipping up their shirts for a quick flash that was censored by a black bar across the chest.

Now, the Girls Gone Wild ads have turned into full-on soft-core pornography. Women lick other women's breasts, take each other's clothes off, and quite obviously masterbate onscreen - all in a 30 second commercial.

Trendy lesbianism is the focus of the current ads, which seem to be all about showing women having sex with other women.

The ad I saw last weekend was during a showing of an edited version of Trading Places, where Eddie Murphy couldn't even say the word "fart" on the air. Yet, misogynist porn seemed to be OK as long as it was in an ad form and shown 10 minutes after midnight.

Frankly, I'm sick of being subjected to pornography when I simply want to watch some comedy. I'm also sick of men thinking this sort of thing is "normal." (I got accosted by a man at a gas station last week who wanted me to flash him.)

Therefore, I have started a campaign to ask Comedy Central to stop showing the pornographic Girls Gone Wild ads. I'd be thrilled if they stopped showing all Girls Gone Wild ads, period, but I feel it would be at least some small victory if they would tone the ads down in the least.

If people want porn, they can go pick it up from an adult store or pay extra for the Playboy Channel. It should be kept off of mainstream cable channels as far as I'm concerned.

If you agree, please sign the following petition and forward to as many like-minded folks as possible. Since I just posted it, there aren't many signatures yet, but it needs to gain momentum to carry any sort of weight.

Remove Pornographic Girls Gone Wild Ads From Comedy Central

Thank you.

Stephanie Brail

Workman's Comp - Corporate Abuse

They want you to think they are taking care of you.  They also want you to be grateful.  And they want you to know that they are watching you because it’s been their experience that so very many employees have abused the system in some fashion or another costing them more money than they should have to spend.  They are the benevolent landowners and the employees are the slacking workers.

The bottom line is so important to many corporations that they will take from the workers to make sure they are always making a profit. While there is a big push for safety, the push is for the workers to be careful not for the corporations to carefully provide a safer environment.  Customer first, corporation second, employees last.

So what happens when you are the victim of a corporate accident due to their negligence? I’m here to tell you that NO ONE will tell the victim what his rights are, what to expect, what choices he has, or what to prepare for.  There is no ombudsman in Hawaii for accident victims of corporations.  Once you get in the Workman’s Comp system you are a victim all over at the mercy of the system.  A lawyer is your only hope.  And even they are limited. So you pay the lawyer to ease your already tortured mental state dealing with the merciless corporations, knowing it will be costly for you in the end.  The workman’s comp system is going to mess you over and spit you out if they can.

Even the doctors won’t like you because they know they will have to deal with a workman’s insurance company that does not like to pay.  I’ve been told that if the workman’s insurance can find a way not to pay they will.  They get between the doctors, the therapists, the health workers and the patient.  They do their best to stay within the law while they seek to limit your care.  Their concern is not to get you the best care possible but to get you up on your feet as quickly as they can and back to work regardless if that is going to be in your best interest.  It’s all about the bottom dollar.  Their biggest joy would be if you would in some manner not want to comply with their demands and just go take care of yourself. 

They will send you a case worker whose job is to limit your care, to stall, to not find what you request because they think you can get by without it.  If they stall long enough with what you need, or provide you with poor service, chances are you will call some friends and they will help you so that the insurance company does not have to pay. That caseworker that is supposed to be helping you does not work for you, but the insurance company who wants to spend as little money as possible.  That caseworker is also there to see if you are faking your injury to any degree or to see if they can make it look like you are.  This is really important, because workers in big businesses are of such a low class of people that most injured workers will try to take advantage of the situation and pretend they are still injured when they are not. This is what the corporations tell us.  Thus the injured is now the enemy, a potential criminal, under suspicion, guilty until proven innocent.

But the truth is that according to the CAAA (Calif. Applicants' Attorneys Assoc.) less than one tenth of 1% of claims are of a fraudulent nature.

It is likely the caseworkers are skilled in obtuseness.  If they can intimidate the doctor into saying you could do some menial task for a couple hours, then you will be back at work regardless if that is going to help your continued recovery.  And then they start playing a game of which only they know the rules.  Better than the Jehovah Witnesses, they have all the questions and answers memorized.  If you can actually get back to the real job you were hired for you will be ever so lucky.  If not, then they have legal ways of getting rid of you the burden.  Even if they have by their negligence maimed you for life, they will pay precious little to help you live the rest of your life in that condition.   

I seldom hear a success story about a work injury, other than finally the surgeries were obtained. This system needs to be changed.  It is very similar to what the victims of rape used to go through, where the victim was considered at blame and raked through the coals if she tried to stand up for the truth and catch her assailant.

The best advice I ever heard for the victim of a work accident:  be sure to get in a car accident on the way to the hospital!

TL

Domination Cults: Fundies, Jeffs, Cybelians

by Pat Gundry

After posting a link from my new War Against Women blog to a blog that features quite a bit of anti-woman rhetoric I was taken to task and denounced on the linked to blog. If you go there to read about it be sure to also read the comments. I posted a comment, but it never appeared. In my comment I simply thanked them for the link, said I was puzzled about why they linked to FemSpeak instead of the blog they were commenting about, and provided a link to it and my Noodling blog.

Though I hadn't been reading that blog, only went there because someone had forwarded the link to me of the offensive post, I've done a bit of searching and reading on it since then. It's not going to be a regular read for me, though, because I've heard all that before and don't need to read it again and again. And I have no personal need to try and convince women haters to learn to love us.

But, thinking about what I saw there, and something I happened across late last night searching Google for images relevant to a friend's forthcoming book (I'll share it here when it is released) made me notice the similarities between the fundie extremes of female restriction and oppression evidenced on the blog I linked to originally and the practices of the Mormon fundy Warren Jeffs who has just been captured by law enforcement and is being extradited to Utah for trial.

Watching the Larry King show on CNN yesterday evening, which focused on Warren Jeff's Mormonistic cult, and hearing one of the researchers interviewed say that Jeffs commanded women in his cult to produce a baby every year reminded me of the Christian fundy who said the thing he appreciated most about his wife was her fertility. I realized that both the Christian fundy and Jeffs were simply religious cultists. They have in common the use of women as baby machines, the belief in male "authority" over women, and the fortress mentality that many cults exhibit.

Then, searching online to see if there were images of "submissive women," thinking maybe I'd find a graphic or image suitable for a book cover someone was designing led me to a rather surprising site that I don't want to directly link to because it contains nude photos and one in particular that I'm sure would be offensive to many people. But, it's the site for an organization called the Cybelians: First Church of Female Supremacy.

They have everything the above mentioned cultic groups have, in reverse. Instead of forced or coerced pregnancy through unavoidable insemination, their men drink the wife's urine. Sounds really extreme and gross until one realizes that unavoidable insemination has worse consequences than urine drinking and is even more demeaning and more of a dominance act.

I'd realized that the Jeffs group was cultic, and had excused the Christian fundies of a considerable bit of that negative term until I happened on the Cybelians. I had thought the Christian fundies were just people stuck in the Middle Ages, hidebound, some of them obviously women haters, some not. But the Jeffs followers are also throwbacks to the Mormon past. The Cybelians are also past oriented, picking up an ancient religion and bringing it into play again, with innovations.

Interesting what happens if you reverse the genders and see what it looks like that way.

It seems to me that sexual bondage is at the heart of all three groups. Whether one is tied up, dressed in leather, and flicked with whips or not, it's about bondage, and those who practice it are getting their jollies to some extent by having sexual power over the submissive partner or group.

The Cybelians claim their men want it that way, and that the marriages are happy and stable and long lasting. The Christian fundies claim the same thing for their women, and I'd bet that Jeffs group says their women just love to be baby machines, living on welfare fraud money, and unable to protect their teenage sons from being expelled from the community and their teenage daughters from forced marriages to aged inseminators bent on making more Mormonites.

Everyone is happy, except those who get away. And, of course, they were just malcontent troublemakers. Not.

I happened upon just the thing for the Jeffs and Christian fundy submissive woman cultists: special underwear. I hope they are reading this so they can buy some. I haven't seen any for the Cybelians yet.

For the Male Supremacists

For Their Submissive Women

If You're Visiting From The Bayly Blog

A post of mine on my blog War Against Women that contains links to the Bayly brother's blog Out Of Our Minds Too has been reciprocally linked here to FemSpeak instead of to the blog pertinent to their post about my WarAgainstWomen.com item, making it impossible for their readers to see the original material relevant to the diatribe against me on the Bayly blog.

If you'd like to read the original post I made, in its own environment and context, you'll find it at http://www.waragainstwomen.com titled "Complementarian Christian Hate," under the sidebar category Religious Hate.

And if you'd like to visit my other blogs and main website, you'll find them linked from the sidebar of my blog Noodling, at http://www.noodlefactory.net.

Thanks for visiting this blog, come back often.

Pat Gundry

Guess This is Why I'm Not Religious

No offense, but when I read some of the posts here about women's roles in the church, I just don't get it.
Why be in a church that is subjugating you? Why be in a Christian denomination that has issues with women having more prominent roles?

Chalk this up to my liberal upbringing in the Episcopal Church (where we had a gay curate back in the 1980s!) - but this whole Southern-esque religious culture in the US just doesn't make much sense to me whatsoever. What's the draw?

If you're not getting the voice and respect you deserve in your current denomination, maybe it's time to switch...just a thought...

Stephanie Brail

Internet Super Intellectuals

Over the past ten or so years that I’ve been on the internet I’ve found an interesting phenomenon that pops up regardless of where I am. It doesn’t matter if I’m on forums or email lists. It doesn’t matter if the subject matter is religion (in general), Christianity, feminism, dating, cooking, healthy living, or any other of the plethora of spaces I’ve been. There is a group of people who, when they go on the internet, pull on their magical-mystical “Internet Cloak of Disguise”. It’s almost as though they are 3-4 year olds using an old blanket around their shoulders and pretending to be Superman/woman.

They come on to an email list or forum and spread their particular “gospel” of their own godliness. They are always right. They are always the best and most knowledgeable. No matter what anyone else says, *they* are the ones with the inside awareness that everyone else should heed.

It used to irritate me. Then I found myself doing it. Eeeek! That came to a quick halt. I have chosen not to be anything other than who I am when I post on a forum or list. Granted, I use a variety of nicks, depending on how much I trust the truthfulness of other people on the forum or list, but *who* I am stays the same.

At first I thought this was only related to one particular issue. Then I ventured out a little further into the waters of the Internet. Oh my! They are *everywhere*! Some are single men looking for the perfect Barbie doll and telling anyone who does not match their own perfection (looking at their pictures they usually aren’t!) that they should look someplace else where men will accept such losers. Some are theologians who seem to think that God has appointed them the Lord’s mouthpiece. Interesting how the smell of their words has less to do with a mouth and more to do with the other end of the digestive tract. Some are cooks who like to spout off as though they have all the secrets of the kitchen but talk like they’ve never made an entire Thanksgiving dinner, from scratch, by themselves.

What’s even more amusing to me these days is when I see their pictures or talk with someone who knows them in real-life. I often find out that the most boorish of the Internet Super Intellectual is actually quite the milquetoast. They can hurl nasty insults at other people on line, but have never been heard to utter a cross word in public. The men looking for Barbie dolls will often be grossly overweight and unwilling to practice basic hygiene. The chefs have never done more than watch Alton Brown, Iron Chef, and Rachel Ray yet they know how to cook better than professional working chefs. And it happens in every group for every interest under the sun.

Bottom line, just because someone is on the Internet and says they know what they are talking about does not mean that they do. Those magical-mystery cloaks of disguise can be had by turning on the computer and logging on to the Internet.

Women and Power

Having grown up under the thumb of male pre-eminence and dominance I never truly understood the power of women. Both men and women gravitate to certain culturally oriented powers in order to function in ways that will enable them some control in their daily lives. Both are able to be destructive as well as constructive.

It took most of my life so far for God to pull me up from the sticky mire of female subjugation. In the mire of gender, racial and social subjugation the subjugated rarely recognizes or can relate to personal power. It’s all about getting up from under, gaining what is restricted and proving you are deserving of equal opportunities. It’s a different worldview.

Now that I have been on the more level ground of Biblical equality for a while, I’ve been seeing a different view of women. What strikes me is the amazing power that some women have become skilled in. In the past I viewed men as the primary power holders, mainly positional, both good and bad. But even in the midst of less than equal relationships many women have discovered how to effectively control others, even those in positions considered of superior power. Thus these women can gain what they wish without having to acknowledge any responsibility.

On the plus side is that women really have always been capable of being positive influencers even those culturally subjugated. Women are far more powerful human beings than many people realize. What I find sad is that when a woman reaches out to do great things, there is applause, but no or little help. Most women have to climb the mountains on their own ingenuity, while men get a brotherhood of assistance.

Teri King