Saturday Quotathon: Women?

Since last week, I didn't have many quotes except by women, I thought I'd go looking for quotes about women. Let me make a suggestion: Don't go looking at Wikiquote unless you're misogynistic. The collection they have is stomach-turning.

The way women are viewed and have been viewed [by men] through the ages is more than a little sickening, at least for me. I knew there was better stuff out there, so I kept searching. Truth is, it wasn't that easy to find. I found tons and tons of quotes by women about women, but I wanted to find some things that men had to say that weren't focused on our appearances or presuming we were deceitful, or just toys for men.

I would rather trust a woman's instinct than a man's reason.
-Stanley Baldwin

Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not been able to answer... the great question that has never been answered: what does a woman want?
-Sigmund Freud

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
-Robert Heinlein

There is no occasion for women to consider themselves subordinate or inferior to men.
-Mohandas K. Gandhi

Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.
-George Carlin

The best judge of whether or not a country is going to develop is how it treats its women. If it's educating its girls, if women have equal rights, that country is going to move forward. But if women are oppressed and abused and illiterate, then they're going to fall behind.
-Barack Obama

A woman who makes you feel good about yourself is never homely. After a while, you realize she always was beautiful. You just didn't notice it at first.
-Robert Heinlein

I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
-Washington Irving

For I cannot think that GOD Almighty ever made them [women] so delicate, so glorious creatures; and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind; with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men: and all, to be only Stewards of our Houses, Cooks, and Slaves.
-Daniel Defoe

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries. At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.... The truth is that male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.
-Jimmy Carter

There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man's law, as though she were not a woman but a man.
-Henrik Ibsen

What is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing.
-Geoffrey Chaucer

I am not accustomed to the language of eulogy. I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women. But I must say, that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice.
-Abraham Lincoln

So, it isn't all bad.

Read more...

Thieving Thursday: Endangered Man

OK, I was totally going to do something on the economics writer who indulged in the real estate and toxic mortgage nonsense so that now he's in a credit nightmare (of his own doing) and mention my own loan officer, Tim Brooks, who was instrumental in steering me from same (and made sure I got a good bargain real estate-wise - really, if you're in Texas and looking for a mortgage, I couldn't recommend anyone better). But, with a bankruptcy in my past, I'm in no position to lecture anyone on finances.

Still, I was going to talk it anyway because, hey, that was my best comment and then Observations of Nerd came through with the awesomely cool uber-geeky post. Oh, this is prime stealing material.

What made it so cool? Well, first you should read it. The author over there, Christie Lynn, writes damn well and has some of the most interesting topics anywhere. Did you read it? I'll wait.

For those of you who didn't bother (shame on you), it's all about how the Y chromosome is losing genetic materials over generations, how it used to be a full up and upstanding chromosome like the rest of them, but it's lost genetic material and, since it's never matched up, it has no mechanism for recovering the lost material like the rest of our chromosomes have. There's other stuff on how long that's taken and how long we have, on why that's so and the advantages to sexual reproduction. Science stuff, deeply geeky.

But think of the science fiction possibilities here. It's a gold mine, just off this one premise. I mentioned some in the comment and I'll expand on them here.

For instance, you could explore the implications of scientists genetically recreating a rebuilt Y chromosome, a "supermale," to try to turn back the clock. Where would they get the genes, what would be the implications? You could stumble on an X-men (Y-men) opportunity limited to males with the extra genes that no one saw coming; they might combine with X genes in ways we never envisioned. Hell, I could get a dozen different stories/novels/series from that premise alone.

But wait, there's more. We could have a society that takes particular care to preserve fertile males (those with the most complete genetic material) who become rarities, with most males born incapable or with so little Y chromosome material that male children with them are unlikely to be fertile, but girls are fine. Again, fertile fertile ground from someone with my type of imagination. You can go clinical where no one trust nature to do the deed. You can go down the path where such men are treated like demigods and wooed by thousands. You can go down the path where they are passed around as studs, with no rights or consideration (which, given the far past and some of the sexual crimes going on in Africa, has a certain twisted justice). So many possibilities.

And, then, of course, we have all the female only possibilities. Genetic diversity via gene manipulation, via replicated chromosomes, via Y-chromosomes coupled with another chromosome where the result isn't true male, but not female either. There's your cloning, your using frozen sperm, you combination of female ova. Again, the opportunities are almost endless.

For a geeky writer like myself, it's almost disheartening to see how many useful and thought-provoking directions one can go with this one little biological conundrum vs. all the rocketry, orbital mechanics, and life support stuff I already know.

Damn it, should have been a biologist.

Read more...