Where are all the women heroes..?
December 14, 2008
1. Angela Davis
2. Sylvia Pankhurst
3. Alexandra Kollontai
4. Rosa Luxemburg
5. Hannah Mitchell
6. Leila Khaled
7. Camille Claudel
8. Lynne Segal
9. Amrit Wilson
10. Angela Carter
12. Janet Frame
13. Debbie Harry
14. Pauline Campbell
15. Nan Goldin
16 Hazel Dooney
17. Frances Farmer
18. Nina Simone
19. Sheila Rowbotham
20. Linder
21. Hannah Hoch
22. Dorothy Parker
23. Mae West
24. Bettie Page
25. Joan Nestle
26. Alice Walker
27. Anna Chen aka Madam Miaow
28. Katy Clark MP
29. Alice Mahon
30. Wendy Savage
Looking on Dave Osler’s blog he has a top 20 regarding his heroes and they are blokes. So, I created my list of women heroes…. 30 of them. And the list is non-exhaustive.
Women who I admire, respect and I suppose, look up to. Well, chosing your heroes is subjective and kinda personal. But the women I have chosen have been defiant, strong, expressed their bold sexuality in times of sexual hypocrisy and sexist double-standards.
Women who spoke out against oppression, stood shoulder to shoulder with other women, showing support and solidarity to make lives for women better, feminism that built confidence and comradeship.
Trailblazers in their own right, witty, sensual, sexy women, who knew their own minds and intelligence. Women who made a difference, who spoke out in adversity and wanted to change the world for better. Again, it is my own personal list but many of these women are/were fighters and fighting to make the invisible visible, to be noticed and recognised. So many times there are so many good women in the background, in the shadows, acting in the carer role, massaging some man’s ego, building up his confidence and him getting the credit.
My own list represents women in all spheres of life, women who have influenced my ideas, politics and activism. The list includes women who have had a personal impact on me (and women I have known/know on a personal level). I forgot to add my good friend, Dee Dee Glass, another trailblazing feminist and socialist, this time in documentary film making, who made one of the first programmes during the early 1970s for television that exposed and highlighted domestic violence. She died in 2004 of cancer and I still really miss her.
Btw: the list is in no particular order………..
Great list. From the left, I would pitch in Myra Tanner Weiss and Clara Fraser. To spice things up, Annie Sprinkle. And you couldn’t do without Rebecca West.
Yeah, Annie Sprinkle and I also kinda like Lydia Lunch. Oh, yes, Myra Tanner Weiss. Well, the list isn’t finished.
Coo! Thanks for the endorsement, Harpy. The feeling’s well mutual.
Annie Sprinkle, though … empowering? Liberating? “Here, stranger guy, grab a speculum and flashlight and stare up my snatch coz that’s wot I yam, wot I yam, wot I yam.”
I don’t think so.
How about Rosa Parks? And Buffy? (Hey, she’s real to me.) And Aung San Suu Kyi? Tragic, intelligent, beautiful, brave.
Yeah, maybe you’re right about Annie Sprinkle.
And of course Rosa Parks and Buffy indeed…..She deffo is real..
What about me?
Sorry Annie, very remiss of me..!! Good to see you enter the discussion. You must be …um, 160 years old now …
How about Arundhati Roy, Toni Morrison, Phoolan Devi, Barbara Ehrenreich, PJ Harvey and Carol Ann Duffy – a great living poet.
Agree with Rosa Parks and Aung San Suu Kyi.
No votes for Sarah Palin or Maggie (out! out! out!) Thatcher?
Grief Sean….. Sarah Palin and Maggie….!!!! Women who defend their own class interests and shaft other women in the process…..
Opps, yeah Barbara Ehrenreich esp. her excellent bks Global Woman and Nickel and Dimed. And she was active in the feminist movement during the early 1970s as well.
And I forgot the excellent Linda Gordon as well…
Cindy Sheehan anyone?
Constance Markievicz, Bernadette Devlin, Mairéad Farrell, Dervla Murphy, Katha Pollitt, Susie Bright, Sojourner Truth, bell hooks.
I don’t know that I’d put Annie Sprinkle on my list of “heroes”, but I do think there’s much more to her than a speculum.
She’s not to everybody’s taste, but I think the world’s better since she exists.
I was just thinking of adding Bernie myself. And I’m shocked to notice I forgot a genuine hero of mine, Dubravka Ugresic.
Patti Smith, Odetta……….
Sappho, Raya Dunayevskaya, Niuta Teitelboim, Mika Etchebéhère, Siouxsie, Maria Backenecker, Théroigne de Méricourt …
Wednesday: Again, very remiss of me as I forgot both Constance Markievicz, and Mairéad Farrell.
Regards to Annie Sprinkle maybe not a hero but …well, she annoyed the hell out of Jesse Helms and I kinda had a soft spot for her cos of that… Probably still not hero material anyways. I dunno.
Yeah, Patti Smith…..
Harpymarx,
Great list. Left me wikipedian some names. How about Mother Jones, Harriet Tubman, Lucy Parsons, Assata Shakur and from my home state of Ohio Chrissy Hynde.
RR
aww, thanks. i’ve mentioned your blog and this list here: http://hazeldooney.blogspot.com/
Wow..!!
Thanks Hazel…good to see you…