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Via The Hairpin on the book ‘Are Women People?’

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Brilliant! Via Matt Cheney’s post at The Mumpsimus, which links to Lilli Loofbourow’s post at The Hairpin on the book ARE WOMEN PEOPLE? by Alice Duer Miller comes, eventually, this poem:

 

Women (With rather insincere apologies to Mr. Rudyard Kipling.)

I went to ask my government
if they would set me free,
They gave a pardoned crook a vote,
but hadn’t one for me;

The men about me laughed and frowned
and said: “Go home, because
We really can’t be bothered
when we’re busy making laws.”

Oh, it’s women this, and women that and women have no sense,
But it’s pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense,
It comes to the expense, my dears, it comes to the expense,
It’s pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense.

I went into a factory
to earn my daily bread:
Men said: “The home is woman’s sphere.”
“I have no home,” I said.

But when the men all marched to war,
they cried to wife and maid,
“Oh, never mind about the home,
but save the export trade.”

For it’s women this and women that, and home’s the place for you,
But it’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do,
There’s outside work to do, my dears, there’s outside work to do,
It’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do.

We are not really senseless,
and we are not angels, too,
But very human beings,
human just as much as you.

It’s hard upon occasions
to be forceful and sublime
When you’re treated as incompetents
three-quarters of the time.

But it’s women this and women that, and woman’s like a hen,
But it’s do the country’s work alone, when war takes off the men,

And it’s women this and women that and everything you please,
But woman is observant, and be sure that woman sees.

I’ll pretend you didn’t say that

Filed in feminist Comments Off

Man. I was gonna say something about the whole PW thing — particularly with reference to my suspicion it comes down not to ‘we r excluding women’ to ‘we r using a definition of ‘good’ that aligns with our definition of ‘masculine”, & so on. Or, as Jim Hines suggests, a result of a kind of blindness to our own blindnesses. And heck, it’s been ages since I said anything to really earn my feminist stripes. On the blogosphere, that is. And why is that, I hear you cry? Well, I’ve been busy in a dozen directions at once. The world has tried to divide-and-conquer me. But eventually the world tries just one well-placed kick too many & it wakes a girl up.

I’m back, baby.

Not sure I’d go so far as to girl-cott male authors, like Kathy Lette recommends. Because, y’know, none of us is free until all of us are free. And taking it out on male authors seems … well, against the spirit of the thing.

BUT anyhow, the damn internet took so damn long to load, who can remember what in hell my finely-tuned arguments really comprised of? Smarter people than I have already covered off the topic. I guess I’ll go kick some cans for a while.

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