I had the best of plans for the letter U. I had decided early on that the perfect word for the letter U in this years’s challenge was the word Umiaq, which would give me opportunity to talk about gendered toolkits and tools, not pink hand drills, but real distinct tools that are women’s boats such as umiaq, or women’s knives such as ulus. These are both examples from languages of peoples from the circumpolar region inside the Arctic Circle. But there is also the gender of many words which I have always found intriguing that some languages have this and some do not.
But then I remembered Ursula K. Le Guin and wanted to remember her inspiring work. Surely I should talk about her groundbreaking novel about gender, The Left Hand of Darkness. Or her sensible words on aging.
Then the words unique and ubiquity kept jumping into my mind. Perhaps I could throw in a bunch of other words that deal with the iconic feminine that did not fit in elsewhere? Universal principles with unique, even idiosyncratic, examples.
Or perhaps the iconic nature of the umbilical cord but then I would probably have to talk about the placenta and I don’t want to do that. Personal phobia. Ick.
And how can I pass up an opportunity to talk about the usurious nature of many economic practices in the modern western world? It is not just about exorbitant interest rates but about women needing to take them out far more often than men due to lesser pay, hours being cut, layoffs, and having to care for multiple generations during family ill-health.
Then there is the way women are uniting in the United States to gain leadership and governance rules.
These are all worthy topics for discussion. So, if you were writing about iconic female connections to items, words, and concepts, as well as iconic women, which one of these would you tackle?
Iconic T: Titles
This morning I began thinking about hereditary titles when the British Royal family grew by one. I heard more than one talking head saying that it was so 21st Century for the line of succession to have been changed so that daughters of Kings and male heirs would inherit ahead of sons born after them. I think it is wonderful that Prince William the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have another son and that all are well. As an American I hadn’t noticed that William’s title had changed when he married. I guess a married man cannot be a prince. Or maybe it is just gracious, Kate as a non-noble can never be a princess.
But, as ever, I am totally bemused by the continuance of the whole nobility concept in the Western Society in this century.
Ascribed and Achieved
Inheritance of status versus achievement of status is probably the most basic distinction in types of status in society. Inheriting status has all the pitfalls of inheriting money. It goes to the kids, but the kids may be undeserving of the perks that wealth brings; they may be idiots just as royals can have mental illness as did King George III. Getting rid of Royalty, as did the French and Russians, does not get rid of ascribed status. Any time concentration of wealth is allowed within families, the status accorded those who are wealthy becomes ascribed for their children.
Achieved status accumulates within a person’s lifetime due to personal achievements such as education, individual wealth, heroic deeds, business or social achievements, and the like. Respect may be offered to a person with achieved status, but just because you are a CEO, or a pastor does mean that you will be accorded respect.
Some people with ascribed status also have achieved status.
Titular (Title without Authority)
Titular refers to titles that have no authority. Few lordts and ladies have any authority given to them just because they carry a title. The phrase, “in name only” describes a titular situation.
Title of Nobility Clause (U.S. Constitution)
The U.S. has a thing about not allowing nobility to ever arise in this country. The founders had quite enough of birth being the limiting factor on how an individual can succeed and move about in society.
The Title of Nobility Clause is a provision in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution. It is also called the Emoluments Clause. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were quite serious about setting up a Representative Democracy in which ascribed titles of nobility would have no place and be prohibited from developing.
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
Article I, section 10, clause 1 also called the Contract Clause of the Constitution reinforces the Title of Nobility Clause for the States. The framers were quite serious about the whole no nobility thing.
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
Titles of Gender Identity
The type of title I think about most often is that of a gender identifying title. Why the deuce is there any reason to have someone’s gender or marital status embedded within a title? Mr., Mrs., and Miss are so 19th Century, anyway they are in my view. But then I kept my given family name when I married and I tend to be an iconoclast. Ms. is okay I guess, but why is it necessary to have male and female titles. I know of no one using Mx.as has been introduced to replace both Mr. and Ms., but what is the point in that? Why use a title at all?
Maybe I am missing something, but this whole title thing seems like something out of the far past.
Iconic S: The Sabine Women
This story that is told about Rome’s founding, formulation, and populating, and has bothered me for a long time. The story is usually called The Rape of the Sabine Women. Current attempts to make the story title less horrific has it being called The Abduction of the Sabine Women. It seems that every painter from the Renaissance on into the Romantic era seems to have depicted the story in a painting; some artists painted multiple paintings of the story.
The crux of the story is that the two founders of Rome needed to solidify relations with neighboring cities and needed women for the predominantly male and military encampment if the area was to be developed according to their vision. The Sabine people were neighbors and not interested in joining forces with nascent Rome strategically or biologically via their daughters marrying the Romans. Rome had a party and invited everyone. Rome abducted the Sabine women and fought off their fathers and brothers.
The Romans promised much to the women, but less was given than promised. But families were started and the women were, so the story goes, some of the first mothers of Rome. But the Sabine fathers and brothers were still ticked off about the theft of their family members (without recompense) so they attacked Rome again. This time the women interceded as is shown in this 1799 painting where the woman in white is flanked by children. Basic translation, “Dad, Brother mine, Husband, do not harm each other for your progeny, sons, nephews, grandsons need you.” The women are then celebrated as peacemakers. The Sabines all join in with this new city of Rome and everyone lived happily ever after.
The initial reaction to this story is that the abduction is terrible. Well yes, but it is such an iconic patriarchal story. Suitors do not reach agreement with males for the women they want to have as wives and have probably begun seducing. Would it have really been any better if the trade of young women for goods, services, or alliances by the young women’s male relatives been successful? The women’s perspective on being traded or abducted does not really enter into the story. Their only message seems to be, “Think of the children.”
I am pretty sure this story has undergone conversion to mythic structure, but it still has the element of historical truth about the basic status of women as chattel in the early European States. Another implicit message is that women, once bred, will become good wives and mothers no matter how they were procured.
This is really not that big of a difference from what happened earlier and to the north in Europe. This dispersal of women at marriage is referred to as patrilocal household structure. Men stay where they are born and women travel to a husband’s village upon marriage. Evidence from Germanic settlements as culture shifted from the Neolithic to Bronze Age showed this patrilocality too. It probably was not abduction as such as artifacts and burial patterns suggest that women brought in trade goods from their home areas, and that burial customs from the women’s cultural tradition were observed. The distinction between positioning of bodies in graves according to sex seems to show that there was a great deal of differentiation between women and men’s cultural traditions.
The unique thing about the Sabine story is that there was mass movement of many women, perhaps an entire generation from their place of birth to their husband’s residence.
What I want to find out is whether there was matrilocal residence patterns in the groups in this area before this time. Such an explanatory tale might be created to justify a change from one major cultural behavior such as marriage patterns and residence.
In any case, I think the Sabine women did not have much self-determination. Of course we all know the Romans were obsessed with patriarchal behavior. We also know that women are naturally arbiters in families and communities.
Iconic R: Aretha's R-E-S-P-E-C-T
I created this image last year to pay homage to the 50th anniversary of the recording of the song, Respect, by Aretha Franklin on Valentines Day.
Otis Redding wrote the song, but Respect as Aretha interpreted it, became an anthem for women and the downtrodden. Was it the song or the woman, or both that made this song version so iconic?
To this day Aretha is amazing! Jerry Wexler produced the album. This was her first recording with Atlantic her a great deal of artistic freedom. When she played the piano accompaniment for her own vocals, it was apparently magic that inspired all the musicians working with her. Family members can sometimes do things together vocally that only people with similar “pipes” can. Aretha’s sisters, Carolyn and Erma, provided backing vocals, and inserted their own touches such as repetitions of Aretha’s nickname, “Re, Re, Re, Re” and the “sock it to me” the performed lyrics. It was a perfect alignment of everything.
I grew up sleeping with a transistor radio under my pillow. At night I could get WLS and listen to music of the day that became the iconic songs for my generation of girls soon to be women. Most songs played on the air were rather piggish overtly or subliminally, it was the era of Mad Men after all. But when we heard a woman singing with the emotion and depth of Aretha, we listened, we imprinted. We emulated the ethos of the song that captured the essence of the civil rights movement and what women wanted and were beginning to demand interpersonally. It was what men and women of all backgrounds and ethnicities wanted and needed. Just a lil’ bit.
The arrangement nailed it. Aretha’s powerful, soulful, voice and inspired piano playing, along with her sister’s embellishments to the lyrics made the song hers. R and B? Pop? Gospel? It is all there. Otis Redding wrote the song originally, but it became hers. It was anthem, drawing together, and inspiration, drawing in.
The song topped the charts during 1967’s Summer of Love, but it had a timeless quality beyond much of the music of the day that simply reflected change and novelty rather than universal human desire that was at the core of Respect.
This was a moment of change, but it was also an embodiment of all the change that had happened up to that point. Music recognized, amplified, codified and distributed social change. Music is a powerful cultural communication tool. When the time is right, a single person’s message can travel around the world.
Iconic Q: It is about Quality
Quan Yin, Quality, Quilts, Queer… or perhaps Quakers, or Quest… such a quandary as to what to write about for this A to Z Challenge for the letter Q. The later portion of the English alphabet poses a special challenge as the words that start some of the letters in the last third of the set have almost no words starting with those letters that are in common use and in these challenges the coverage gets fairly thin and predictable.
I have examined Quilts in this challenge in 2016.
And I covered the Quixotic Q in 2012.
I love Quan Yin, the female Buddha of compassion, but I just wasn’t feeling it as an entry for this challenge. I am not sure we can say she is iconic as until 1200 AD, or so, she was most often depicted as a male, and in many parts of the world still is male.
Then there was Queer for which I could also work in the word Quaker by covering the quote my mother repeated to me time and again to show me the folly of judging others. As she learned it, it went as follows,
Everyone is queer but me and thee, and sometimes I think thee is a bit queer.
The quote, “‘All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer.” is attributed to Robert Owen in 1828. He was a bit of a utopian, so I understand why Quakers and Amish are supposed to use this phrase. My mother learned it from her grandmother, who was born into an Amish family. I am quite sure that this in no way referred to sexuality, gender, or status. I could go on about this phrase and all of which it is indicative , but this does not really apply to the iconic feminine either.
Quality
But I finally decided to borrow Leanne’s word Quality (over Quantity) as she wrote on Cresting the Hill. She is doing a Zen thing for the challenge. On reading her post I immediately began thinking of the women who have inspired me and how they stressed quality in all you do as well as how quality is more important than quantity in nearly all things. Myrdene, my major professor, an anthropologist, taught qualitative methods, as quantitative methods have no real meaning as you cannot be sure you are counting the same things that others are counting.
A mother knows this. Children are not equal units. You cannot compare your first two children with your last two children. Or at least generations and places where many children were or are common in families know the birth order argument. Parents have favorites. Some children become the family scapegoats or black sheep. Male and female children are, to this day, valued differently in many cultures.
A mother also knows that food stuffs are not all equal. You cannot compare, nor add together, the processed, empty calorie items available in corner fast food markets in food deserts with the fresh produce available in farmer’s markets that feature locally produced, organic, fresh in-season vegetables and fruits.
Nothing is comparable. As we age we learn that we are truly unique within our overlapping patterns of behavior. Quality is perception. Number is … well just number. We’ve all heard the phrase, “Boys with Toys.” And we also know the “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Women tend to not think this way. Lots of men do not either, but our modern world tends to emphasize the accumulation of goods. A good life, a well-lived life, happy and healthy children who have happy lives ,and if they want, have children of their own. These are not additive. Our lives need to be analog, not digital. Degrees of meaning are shades of experience. Checked off boxes bleak and without nuance. Quality is like a texture. Communication is qualitative, while letters and sounds can be digitized, the content within communication is qualitative.
To me quality is a feminine concept. How do you see it?
Iconic N: the Nature of Nurture via Nesting
Before I get into the nature of creating a place to nurture, I want to give very basic info about the human genome. The human genome contains 30,000 genes, but genes are really allelic pairs at specific points on the strands of DNA.
Natural Nurture: “Most behaviors… likely result from multiple genes operating in tandem.”
Nurture: “…the genome has yet another kind of responsiveness—over different time frames. This includes the moment to moment of the present hour; the time an organism takes to develop into an adult; throughout an organism’s lifetime; and, finally, across evolutionary time. All these time scales impact the genome, with consequent downstream effects on behavior—and subsequently back again to the genes.”
So much depends upon… nesting.
I cannot talk about nesting without the above preamble on nature versus nurture.
Nesting, or the building of a home or sleeping place for yourself or your family or home group, is a basic behavior for most complex organisms. Something happens to our brains to make us ready for welcoming a little being into our family. Anyone who has had a child knows that your brain changes during gestation.
To see that this is true for humans, just look at the Martha Stewart empire, Real Simple, or House Beautiful magazine or website.
I first thought about nesting behavior in humans when as an undergraduate I had the opportunity to take a seminar on the Biogram with Dr. Earl W. Count (Yes, his name was really Earl Count.) in the Anthropology Department at Purdue University in the late 1970s. It was an honor to have a glimpse of what a course was like in decades prior. The rigor of thought and study expected from all students was intense and truly heralded back to a previous time when universities were repositories of knowledge and education as a business was not on the horizon.
I will never forget Professor Count talking about the broody phase where the female of the species just has to make a place to have the baby, she cannot help herself. It is a biological imperative. Humans included. I am personally convinced that our broody phase never ends. While some people refer to midlife empty nesters, I have always found the term empty nest to be a bit removed from reality. When my daughter left home after college at the local university for a year off before 4 years of graduate school I did not feel as though my nest was empty. I felt as though I had been very successful with her launch and was now presented with restructuring the nest for my husband and me. I did not feel empty. My house did not feel empty. I was ready to start the next phase of life, whatever it was.
The more I thought about this the more I realized that my reaction was a bit atypical. Either most people are not as successful in launching their children, and I admit that I was lucky, but there were bumps and hiccups and missteps. Or we are misapplying our human version of nesting behavior.
I need to share that my experience is in no way typical, and I am analytical to the nth degree. My husband and I are both eggheads who came out of pretty old-fashioned, hard working families. We had one child together who followed along 14 years after a child from his first marriage. We valued education, experience, and material things were and are not that high on our need to have or accomplish scale.
So what I’ve come up with is an incomplete list of the ways humans make nests and engage in nesting behavior over the course of their entire lives. This exists beyond the monetary structure of our society that is layered over everything as procurement.
Dwellings: Houses, apartments, farms
I believe that different people have different drives for permanence and familiarity that show up in the way travel from a home base is handled.
- Some people stay close to the home where they were born.
- Some stay in contact with that home and essentially report back from the places they venture out to explore.
- Some venture out and do not feel the need to return home.
This may well be under some genetic control. Are you a risk taker? Do you need a support group? Do have an itch to travel. Do new experiences energize you?
Decorating, comfort, privacy
I think of this as the feathered bird consideration. Some feathers are to keep birds, and dinosaurs, warm and dry. But sometimes the feathers are for display and to attracts mates or show status. Housing certainly plays that role too. We like to show that we have a certain status or ability to create surroundings that allows us to be selected as special, beautiful, clever, or healthy, or sets us apart as a nest builder.
Food and Clothing
Some people need to grow things, explore land, and forage. Familiarity with plants is a pretty basic human need. We need to eat. We need to eat to things that are not toxic. We need someone in our extended social or familial group who can tell one plant from another. Clothing can also come from the fibers of plants we eat or become familiar with through foraging and the ability to manipulated plant items gives us a much greater ability to buffer the environment through layers of protection from the environment. Finding resources in our environment may well translate foraging into bargain hunting or shopping.
Education and training
Preparing the next generation for launch is part of nesting. Humans have extended the normal learning and training period to cover decades. Most species have a specific period outside of which such behavior does not take place. We are just as able to help rear our children’s children or the children of our community as we are able to teach our children when we are in our prime reproductive years.
Our nesting behaviors show biological aspects, but we have extended and recombined these behaviors through culture. Sadness or unease with our offspring creating their own nests may simply mean that we have not transferred the skills we have learned in child-rearing and home building and which have given us positive reinforcement and satisfaction to a broader nest. Some of us may be able to extend these skills more easily than others. It may have to do with the cultural expression of how we are biologically programmed to define our home range, find food, create new tools and clothes, and the size of groups with which we are comfortable sharing information.
I find that looking at my own behavior through the largest lens possible gives me freedom to act in ways that promote my sense of well-being and interpret my life and surroundings in ways that I define as successful. How we define our comfort surroundings may not change all that much through life, but how we view comfort does extend beyond the people in our daily environment and how we create it.