Editor’s Notes
One afternoon in March of 1962 I broke away from my typewriter and sat down in front of the television set. For the next three hours I told myself, I’ll watch television as if I’m a woman. How can you do that? Some would say. Well, a writer’s imagination allows him to do that, otherwise how could writers produce different characters in a novel or a play? Until then I had watched television as a red-blooded male, ignoring all the messages aimed at women. About three hours after I had made this decision, I switched off the television in a state of fury. I was thoroughly insulted. In that era of television, women were treated like pretty imbeciles who gratefully were in receipt of omnipotent male wisdom. The universal narrative in the sitcoms, as outrageous as they were, were fulsomely complemented by the advertising. The message of the latter was clear: you are not only ugly baby, but you stink too. So buy, buy, buy … what we have to sell. Your only way to being accepted by your lord and master.
The sitcom narrative has flip-flopped. Now it’s the males who are stupid. Surely, behind the camera there is a woman who pulls on his pants, tucks in his shirt, and ties his shoelaces. But when it comes to advertising the message is just the same: you’re ugly baby, and you stink. So while simple minded women may take some satisfaction from the bumbling male on the screen, she still doesn’t make the mark as a woman without paying through the nose for paint and powder, Talk about abuse of women!
You can’t call this man’s inhumanity to women because leading the pack of predators against the dignity of women are women. And what kind of role models do young women have when those who gain the most publicity are pseudo strippers, drug addicts, and the otherwise mentally injured?
These samples of human tragedy are not my women. The media should leave them alone.
My women are like the ones who took on Hitler during World War II. The cold war obscured the heroic response of the people of the Soviet Union against the Nazi invasion of 1941. Thanks to American and Canadian military historians some of the courage and brilliance exhibited by the defenders are being presented in the light of day. Hitler had convinced himself that he was attacking subhuman Slavs. Instead he discovered he had moved against a superior enemy, more than one million of whom were women, and most of the latter were teenagers.
K.J. Cottom, has written and translated. a collection of books on women in the frontline against the Nazis. When I began reading-in I told her that her books should be on the required reading list of every women’s study course in every university. She said the women who commanded the curriculum said that they didn’t want them because it had to do about war. But they’re wrong. The story is about how women, teenagers, rose to a mortal challenge and displayed unmatched heroism, intelligence, imagination against seemingly impossible odds. The war was the background; the ability of women to excel is the story.
In honour of women of whatever age, and in honour of International Women’s Day, we dedicate this issue.
Looking forward
Carl Dow
Editor and Publisher
True North Perspective
______