Myra Bradwell knew who she was

In the post below, I had a little fun at the expense of Upper West Side Feminism and its conceits. The piece was just a toss-off but apparently between Maxed Out Mama and myself, Sigmund Carl and Alfred got inspired to write about a genuine, real-deal feminist who freed an unjustly imprisoned Mary Todd Lincoln. As usual w/ Siggy, this is an outstanding essay – a must read – about a woman who deserves to be remembered.

Unlike the current crop of highly self esteemed and trophied feminists, Myra Bradwell concerned herself not with poetry, sexual organs or witchcraft (why was every woman who recalls a ‘past life’ a high priestess, witch, Egyptian princess or sexual trailblazer in that past life? Didn’t anyone do laundry?)

Myra Bradwell’s husband, James, was the son of immigrants who worked his way through law school doing manual labor. Understanding the merits of real labor and adversity, he more than anyone appreciated Myra’s determination to become a lawyer. It was he who encouraged Myra to read the law. She saw her studies as a way to help her husband with his growing practice. James Bradwell saw well beyond that. In 1869, Myra passed the Bar exam with high honors and then petitioned the Illinois courts for a license. Up to that point, Myra ended her civic duties- she raised money for the Union cause and nursed Civil War soldiers. Passing her Bar exam was to be the catalyst that was to result in the beginning of the next phase of Myra Bradwell’s life.

Life was not to be so easy. The Illinois courts turned Bradwell’s request for a law license down. The court argued that that as Mrs James Bradwell, she could not legally enter into a contract. The court referred to her status as the Marital Disability.

Bradwell went on to free Mary Todd Lincoln from her son’s manipulative imprisonment, got her license to practice law. She founded the Chicago Legal News and in short order there were 25 other female lawyers in the US. And Siggy points out that she managed to storm the barriers and encourage women to pursue their callings without discussing her vagina, without whining, without drum circles, without feeling the need to bare her sagging breasts to make a political point. She was a woman in full who knew who she was, and therefore needed none of the trappings of modern feminism.

As Siggy writes: She never took her clothes off, she never put politics ahead of helping women and she never wanted attention for herself. No wonder she is rejected and forgotten by feminists today. She was everything they’ll never be.

Likely she would have been appalled to see how women currently debase themselves in their efforts to keep feminism alive beyond its usefulness. And I doubt that she would reserve her help for only the right “sorts” of women. Do go read Siggy’s marvelous essay and tribute to this unsung, unremembered woman (what a movie her life would make!).

Then go read Mama’s further thoughts on the Vagina Monologue and other feminist foibles, and follow some of her mind-boggling links.

UPDATE: Eve Ensler’s fixation has moved from her vagina to her stomach.

In the midst of a war in Iraq, in a time of escalating global terrorism, when civil liberties are disappearing as fast as the ozone layer, when one out of three women in the world will be beaten or raped in her lifetime, why write a play about my stomach?
[…]
Maybe I identify with these women because I have bought into the idea that if my stomach were flat, then I would be good, and I would be safe. I would be protected. I would be accepted, admired, important, loved. Maybe because for most of my life I have felt wrong, dirty, guilty, and bad, and my stomach is the carrier, the pouch for all that self-hatred. Maybe because my stomach has become the repository for my sorrow, my childhood scars, my unfulfilled ambition, my unexpressed rage. Like a toxic dump, it is where the explosive trajectories collide—the Judeo- Christian imperative to be good; the patriarchal mandate that women be quiet, be less; the consumer-state imperative to be better, which is based on the assumption that you are born wrong and bad, and that being better always involves spending money, lots of money. Maybe because, as the world rapidly divides into fundamentalist camps, reductive sound bites, and polarizing platitudes, an exploration of my stomach and the life therein has the potential to shatter these dangerous constraints.

Maybe a good therapist is your answer, Ms. Ensler.

I grant you that women and their unhealthy fixation on their body images (and the society that reinforces those fixations) are worth addressing…but not when you attach it to this weird globalist mindset of Enslers and suggest, as she seems to be suggesting, that if this one issue is cleared up, the rest of the world’s problems will fall into place. She worries about body images, but seems not to care that for millions of women, the burqua is the problem, not the belly.