Friday, March 25, 2022

WHISTLING WOMEN . . .

 


  Can you whistle ?  It is a skill in which i have limited ability, especially if it is "musical".  Do you know any 'whistling' sayings ? Gloria Freeland, a retired journalism professor in Kansas, writes a weekly column, Kansas Snapshots (www.kansassnapshots.com).  This week's offering, "Just Put Your Lips Together", noted several sayings about the art of  whistling  that have become commonplace in our lingo. . .  among them "Whistling past the cemetery", "whistling in the dark", "Whistle stop" towns, etc. 

  Then there is another expression, erroneously said to be Biblical in origin, whose "message" is demeaning and worse to women: "a whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor man".  That British version morphed into the equally offensive American version "a whistling woman and a crowing hen never come to a very good end".

  So, what is the deal about a 'crowing hen"?

  A  hen crows to establish her place in the pecking order to establish her dominance and territory . . . like a rooster.  In effect, to claim equality with the male. The expression, not so subtle, however, tells the female to "BE SILENT", in other words, don't 'whistle', stay 'in your second class place'.

  Have you heard this riddle, still confounding to many but hopefully fewer than not so long ago? In a surgical unit where a young man has been  brought for emergency surgery, the surgeon exclaimed "I cannot perform this operation; this is my son !" The young man is the surgeon's son but the surgeon is not the lad's father." 'How can this be ?' has stumped many who could not  fathom the reality of a woman surgeon

  Historic and contemporary manifestations of the inequality are everywhere in our society. President Jimmy Carter instituted Women's History Month as 'a national recognition of the vital role women have played throughout history" (re an online site).  

   This past week Judge Katanji Brown Jackson endured shameful questioning and behavior from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  While there have been and are  female Supreme Court Justices, the first one was Sandra Day O'Connor who was appointed by President Reagan in 1981 (!) .  Judge Jackson's  treatment was doubly scandalous, being a Black woman.  Yeah, I know that there was a LOT of partisan political posturing going on (primarily, but not exclusively by males) but as Joseph Welch asked Senator McCarthy in 1954' "Have you no sense of decency, sir?". 

      Judge Jackson is more than "qualified" to "whistle". She already belongs in the "Choir" of some outstanding  "whistlers", including just a few of the names in the news recently:  Madeleine Albright, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Maya Angelou, Billy Jean King, Mary the Mother  of Jesus, and they are joined by untold numbers of sisters who know the spirit of Helen Reddy's song "I am Woman" when she sang, "[I've] a long way to go until my brother understands."

     Satchel

   

       

2 comments:

  1. Well, you know some of those Biblical expressions, especially coming from the Old Testament could be kinda harsh. Whistling seems pretty innocence to me but maybe that's beside the point. If anything, a lifetime of working has taught me that women can be just as competent or incompetent as their male counterpart. Wish all the best.

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  2. During my years as a college professor, it was instructive and disturbing the subtle ways women were held back.
    In a lab I taught, there were four stations and twelve students. There was just enough room so only two could actually operate the equipment at a time, so one person was “odd man out.”
    On the day in question, the class had four women and in every station, the woman was the odd man out. You learn more doing than watching and such things undercut the progress of a woman.
    And when I stopped the class and asked if anyone noted anything odd about the way people were distributed, not one person noticed.
    To add insult to injury, after I pointed out what was going on, NO GROUP made a change ... until I required them to!

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