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Path: utzoo!watmath!watdaisy!saquigley
From: saquigley@watdaisy.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: The power of words
Message-ID: <6449@watdaisy.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 22-Jan-84 20:10:48 EST
Article-I.D.: watdaisy.6449
Posted: Sun Jan 22 20:10:48 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Jan-84 00:24:37 EST
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 51

I read a short article in the December 83 issue of Ms Magazine that sparked
my interest, first because I started reading it with very negative feelings
against it and then liked it, then I gave it to my SO who usually reads Ms
from cover to cover and he reacted very strongly against it even after he 
had finished reading it.
It is about the feminisation of "great" litterature.  I would be curious to
see how some people react to it as I reacted very strongly both against it
then for it.  In this one page article entitled "a gift to my daughter", the
author explains how she decided to "feminise" some great sayings so as to make 
them more accessible to her daughter.  The way this author makes her point
about the importance of this is by example.  I would like to do the same thing
so I will reproduce (without permission) some parts of the article.

I am curious now as to people's reactions.  Without bothering about whether it
is morally right to change people's writings or about whether it it a waste
of time to do so, what do you think of the following examples?

"Go, seeker, if you will, throughout the land and you will find us burning in
the night...  To every woman her chance, to every woman, regardless of her
birth, her shining golden opportunity - to every woman the right to live, to
work, to be herself, and to become whatever thing her womanhood and her vision
can combine to make her - this, seeker, is the promise of America"
	Thomas Wolfe,
	You can't Gp Home Again, 1940

"Whoever would change women must change the conditions of their lives."
	Theodore Herzl, Diary, 1923

"When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to
shut her mind and close her mouth, then all Americans are in peril"
	Harry S Truman, New York Times Magazine

"You have not converted a woman, because you have silenced her"
	John Morley, On Compromise, 1874

"My political ideal is democracy.  Let every woman be respected as an individual
and no woman idolised"
	Albert Einstein,
	"Forum and Century", 1931, volume 84

"Human history begins with woman's act of disobedience which is at the same time
the beginning of her freedom and development of her reason"
	Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and religion, 1950

"Put fear out of your heart.  This nation will survive, this State will prosper,
the orderly business of life will go forward if only women can speak in whatever
way given them to utter what their hearts hold - by voice, by posted card, by
letters, or by press.  Reason never has failed women.  Only force and opression
have mades the wrecks in the world"
	William Allen White
	The Emporia gazette, 1922