Saturday 19 February 2011

Mary Wollstonecraft

Who is Mary Wollstonecraft?
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth century writer and philosopher. The main theme in her writing was womens rights and they way women were treated in society. This was a controversial topic in the 1700s.

I read chapter 4 of her book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, where she seems generally critical of women. She is suggesting that women have the potential to be as strong as men, but society in it's current state won't allow that, this is partially due to the way that men treat women, and partially by the way that women accept their roles and follow the same traditional path. She follows John Locke's view that our minds at birth are 'tabula rasa', completely blank, and that it is only sense experience which can shape us. She was asserting that women were able to change their destiny.

I find her points in general reasonable and relevant even in a days society where women are considered to be equal. For example, why is it that fear and emotion in a man is seen as a weakness, whereas in a woman it can be seen as cute and endearing. Why is the phrase/rule 'ladies first' still used if women are equal.

Hollow Respect
This refers to the sort of respect that women are shown by men. When a man holds a door for a woman, is he doing it because he actually respects her, or because it's 'the done thing'? Wollstonecraft claims that the respect women were shown is similar to the respect shown to the king. It is not earnt, and people may not be sure why they hold this respect, they just do. She illustrates this by stating that ' A king is always a king, a woman is always a woman. Here she is referring to the way that women will never be more than just a woman. This is different nowadays as women are more than just a gender, they have equal job opportunities to men.

I feel this video is particularly relevant.

Mary Wollstonecraft does acknowledge that there are physical differences between men and women, but says that these differences should be overlooked until a women is in a relationship. Before then, men and women should be asexual, and therefore equal.

At the time of her writing, she said that pleasure was the main business of a womens life, and commented that whilst this was the case very little could be expected from such 'weak beings'. She disapproves with the way that women were treated like 'creatures of sensation' by the media at the time, this was largely influenced by the romantic movement which was taking place around europe in the late eighteenth century. Love was a consistent theme in music
, novels and poetry.

Educate men like women
This was an idea first made famous by Rousseau, of whom Wollstonecraft was a keen admirer. She says that the more men resemble women, the less power they will have over them. She makes it clear that she doesn't want women to have power over men, but simply over themselves.

I think that her argument is summed up nicely when she writes ' I wish to see women neither heroins or brutes; but reasonable creatures.'

Overall I like what Mary Wollstonecraft has to say. She looks at the problems that she was facing rationally and realistically without throwing blame around too hastily. Until last weeks lecture I had never even heard of her and as far as I was (naively) aware, the Suffragettes were the first people to demand change. The controversy that surrounded her for so long after her death is unfortunate and potentially prevented her from being awarded the credit that she arguably deserves.

Friday 11 February 2011

Lady Gaga. Google. The Jonas Brothers. Tickets. Justin Bieber. Free. Money. David Beckham. Cheap. Egypt. Rihanna. Car insurance.

After seeing my shameful rank in Brian's SEO league table today, I decided it was necessary to 'experiment' and see how much keywords affect my Alexa rating.
Here's a link explaining Black Hat search engine optimization.

Saturday 5 February 2011

Journalism blogs

I've been scouting the internet for other Journalism bloggers around the country and here are a few of my findings.


http://journalism.about.com/b/2011/01/18/study-seems-to-indicate-metered-newspaper-website-paywalls-can-work.htm#comment-60097 (A blog about pay walls, something which I unfortunately failed to mention in my Journalism Now presentation.)

TBC