Now lost in the mists of time, memory and gender correctness, Guardian Women, formerly known as the Women’s Page within the Guardian broadsheet, was published just once a week.
Was it on a Wednesday? or was it Thursday?
I can just remember my mother’s excitement at its inauguration in 1957. I read it faithfully throughout the 60s, the 70s, and the 80s; and it made me who I am. I’m not sure when it faded away, though I still treasure a copy of the 1994 group portrait by Sarah Raphael, now held in the National Portrait Gallery
Today I’m nostalgic for those concentrated, once a week reads, when everyone worth reading was tidily gathered in one place, and column inches of continuous intelligent articles by outstanding women journalists turned into feet and yards, and could last you hours.
From them I learned about the male gaze; the partiality of art and culture and its unconscious exclusiveness; gender first, but sexuality, ethnicity, skin colour, class and identity learning quickly followed.
But today has been a wondrous, serendipitous day. It began with Susanna Rustin’s Guardian article, published today, on Josephine Butler, a much-neglected campaigner against the Contagious Diseases Act of the 1860s (which criminalised women but never the men); portrait below from 1851.
Josephine Butler: the forgotten feminist who fought the UK police – and their genital inspections:
Rustin’s new book The History of British Feminism (published by Polity 28.06.2024) is now on the short list of my what-to-give-everybody-for-Christmas booklist.
Below is an example of Butler’s campaigning style: and handbill circulated by her in 1872 :
I had stumbled on this in my daily often irritating search through the on-line Guardian for something I’d like to read, that isn’t about sport, men, politics, money, recipes, cars or lesser journalists’ pet hates, or even pets.
And the day only got better! Underneath this ‘women’s interest’ article in ‘related stories’ I came on
‘Breasts are a serious political problem’: one woman’s quest to reclaim her chest written by Emine Saner (Guardian 15 May 2024) about Sarah Thornton’s new book Tits Up (Bluebird 28.04.2024)
Breasts are a serious political problem’: one woman’s quest to reclaim her chest:
At last! Someone who can put the should we/shouldn’t we debate about wearing bras in a grown-up setting. Had we noticed that men’s nipples are everywhere but women’s are not? I think Madonna may have done… Another fascinating read destined for the Christmas present booklist – another one for everybody…
And then my joy was completed by Radio 3’s Private Passions of 28.04.24 with Edith Hall, academic classicist from Durham University whose reflections on her own life in relation to both the music she’d chosen and the legacy and impact of classical Greece on contemporary culture and human behaviour was moving beyond words.
Listen if you can: Edith Hall – classicist and campaigner : https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001ygsw
countrymouse 