“I have an idea that the phrase ‘weaker sex’ was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm.” ~Ogden Nash
We celebrate women here. We celebrate them every day. Some of us celebrate being them and others celebrate knowing them, or both. What I love about this quotation is that the Tops here would read it and smile. They know that the “weaker sex” thing is a con, a bait and switch, but they know full well that we will smile meekly at them and launch a full scale attack. And they … they will wait ’til they see the whites of our eyes.
For various reasons I have been thinking about what it means to be a woman and the conclusion I have come to is that it means just what we think it means. We are not to be specially treasured or set apart. We can be kind, cruel, open, secretive, childlike, filled with wisdom, petty, magnificent; in short, we are human.
I have realised that it is just as loathsome to set all women on a pedestal as it is to revile them as hideous. We are neither virgin nor whore. Like any other humans, we are at our best when we are loved, when we feel free, and when we are given space to express ourselves. But we are not special because we are women, we are special because we exist.
I have asked the girls (or women) on the blite to write about a woman whom they admire or has inspired them. Here is what they wrote:
Mindy said -
Joni Eareckson Tada is a remarkable woman whose story touched me deeply when I first read her autobiography years ago. Her life is one that portrays incredible strength and faith.
At the age of seventeen, Joni became paralysed from the neck down after a diving accident. Instead of preparing to go to college, she was fighting for her life and facing the grim reality that she had to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. For months, Joni battled
with depression and lost the will to live.
Through the support of family and friends, Joni gradually rekindled her faith and her spark for life. She began to share her experience and soon became an inspiring speaker and a best-selling author. In addition, Joni learnt to paint with her mouth and became a successful artist. She also founded the ministry ‘Joni and Friends’ that reaches out to people who are disabled and to those who care for them.
Joni’s confrontation of life challenges not only strengthened her but also enabled her to make a difference in the lives of others.
Kaki wrote:
You don’t know the woman I admire the most; she isn’t on screen, stage or in politics. She probably is retired now, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in some time. I will call her CW, as to protect her identity. CW taught a kindergarten and first grade combined class for children with special needs, which both of my daughters were fortunate to attend.
I spent many days in her classroom observing her and learning how to motivate and 
encourage learning and deal with behavior issues. We got to know each other very well over the years and confided in each other. She knew that every child has potential and she strove to find a way to unlock it. CW even ate lunch with her class so she could observe and interact with them in an informal atmosphere. She gave me encouragement when I needed it; some school administrators can be difficult.
She made going to school such a positive experience that both my girls loved school. Even though she was towards the end of her career she still was researching and finding ways to help her students. She is a kind, loving, and generous person who loved her job. CW was in her mid fifties when she taught my children; many special education teachers had burnt out by that age.
She used to tell me she was honored that we trusted her with our children. I was honored to have her teach them.
Alice said:
Sheila Hancock CBE
British actress, author, film director and panelist. She was married twice, the second time to another well known British actor, John Thaw. Both her husbands died surprisingly from esophageal cancer. She herself had breast cancer from which she made a full recovery. After his death, she wrote honestly and compassionately about her life with John Thaw, and then wrote about her struggles coming to terms with widowhood.
She is now 78 years old and looks wonderful and not plastic! Her honesty, integrity and sheer grit and determination have carried her through some very difficult situations comes through in her writing. She is a humorous, self-deprecating, thoughtful woman, still seeking new challenges. I would love to be like that at her age, and find her truly inspiring.
Em wrote,
The woman I admire most isn’t someone famous – isn’t anyone you know, although I think we all know her. She exists in slightly different forms for each of us, part of the fabric of our lives.
For me, she was my caretaker in my formative years. I hesitate to write more. I hesitate to invoke her memory here, because this is not the sort of place she would have understood. I don’t think she would approve, but still – she is so much a part of who I am and this is who I am so how can a part of her not belong here too?
This woman lived a life full of heartache and joy, adventures and quiet times. She bravely left the country of her origin with a husband and children to start again in a new and unfamiliar world, far from family and friends. She survived that husband, watched her children scatter to far corners as they grew; and when she had no more children of her own to raise, chose to help others raise theirs. There was no blood between her and these children, but she grew bonds out of love and trust that are stronger than any other thing. She was strong willed and independent, something women of her generation weren’t always expected to be. She built a community and dug down roots, where it seemed least likely they would thrive, but she was determined and so they did.
She didn’t discover the secrets of the universe or publish a work of art. She 
doesn’t live on in history books; but she does live on: in all of the hearts she touched, all of the lives she shaped, in the little pieces of me that are really little pieces of her. She is the woman we all have inside us, the woman I hope to be.
Scarlet wrote about Topsy Turvy Lousia:
An abolitionist, a feminist, and fiercely independent, Louisa May Alcott lived life on her own terms. With her family trapped in poverty for much of her life, and unusual for the 19th century world she was born into, she determined to “make a battering-ram of my head and make my way through this rough and tumble world.”
She was a teacher, a seamstress, a governess and finally, an accomplished writer. I didn’t know any of those things while I was growing up. But I knew I wanted to be like her most famous heroine, Jo. I wanted to be brave and fearless. I wanted to run races against boys and eat apples while sitting high up in a tree. I wanted to scribble in a garret with a smoking fire in front of me and a basket of kittens by my side.
More than any other book, Little Women informed my child’s mind of what a strong and spirited woman could do in this world. Today, I am enchanted by the fact that she also wrote “passionate, fiery novels” under her nom de plume, A. M. Barnard.
After the publication of Little Women, Louisa said, “…people began to think that topsy-turvy Louisa would amount to something after all.” She gave hope to topsy turvy girls everywhere, I think. Including me.
When we were chatting about this Scarlet wanted to pick about fifty-three different women and just like her, women’s names fell around me like flakes in a snowstorm. How could I pick just one?
So I will not pick one, and like the unknown soldier, I will refer to unnamed women. I had a long list of these, and it read like a grim history of women, so grim in fact that it lost half of what women are, so I am picking one event, one group of unnamed women.
In 215 BC, Roman women stormed the streets in anger at a new law that sought to prevent them from owning more than ½ an ounce of gold, wearing multicoloured dresses, and from riding in a carriage drawn by two horses. It was a law of oppression and control, and to fight the senate would take courage and organisation.
That is just what these women had and they took to the streets in a riot of colour and strength. Their husbands rebuked them (no Roman man would want to be shown up like that) and the judges must have been spitting tacks. I am highly amused by the disgust of Cato The Censor (do go and read the whole page, it is tremendous fun) whose bile you can detect in his description of the affair, ”I know not whether it reflects greater disgrace on you, tribunes, or on the consuls: on you certainly, if you have brought these women hither for the purpose of raising tribunitian seditions; on us, if we suffer laws to b
e imposed on us by a secession of women, as was done formerly by that of the common people. It was not without painful emotions of shame that I, just now, made my way into the Forum through the midst of a band of women.”
I can imagine these women, I can imagine the combination of rage, humour, passion and sheer disobedience and refusal to comply that led to the law’s being overturned. So these women, these women whose names I don’t know and all their daughters – they are who I want to remember today.
Don’t speak to us in flowery language, don’t patronise us, or think you need to protect us because we are too weak to cope, and don’t tell us how to live, or how to express ourselves. We are not the virgin woman.
Don’t call us stupid, don’t scream at us or abuse us. Don’t swear at us or hurt us just because you can. We are not the whore.
Instead, make sure we can vote in every country in the world, protect our rights to education and to health care, let us marry whom we choose, and do not support armies that attack us as part of their battle plans.
This might sound odd coming from a girl who gets spanked for sticking her tongue out or caned for swearing, but I chose him and I chose this life.
All the girls who comment here chose the men they are with because they treat us how we want to be treated and that makes us very happy indeed. And no one, no one has the right to tell us to live any other way. We are the women we want to be.
“I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
