feminish

A 21st century re-write of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas:

Four Fivers

A donation to Stop the War - in Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan or Iraq, you ask of me: “every little helps”.

A fiver, you say, would do the trick, ‘make a difference’ even, to help your campaign against the bombs and death, the devastation, rape and torture.

Here’s a fiver, spend it freely, however you will, I reply - But I’ll first be giving out another three:

The first I’ll be giving to fund women’s studies at universities, so 21st Century lasses can learn about wars and politics and international relations - not only the war-messes that have been made and continue to be made by men, against women, but about different answers to the problems those war-messes set out to solve.

[Seventy years ago Woolf gave her First Guinea to prevent war to women’s colleges]

The second can fund campaigns to get more women into politics, banks, industry and the army. We now know women debate differently about war and peace on the floor of the Commons; they act against cultures of sexualised aggression in banks, they’re more effective and level-headed as CEO’s, and - I warrant - they rape the war enemy less.

[That’ll change the ‘odour - or shall we call it ‘atmosphere’?-” of public life, as Woolf said when she laid down her Second Guinea for the advancement of women in ‘the professions’]

The third fiver can go to fund feminist activists and writers, online and in print. We’ll discover that we’re not all Melanie Phillipses or Ann Coulters. How many leader-writers on British papers are women? How many political editors? Or regular, run-of-the-mill news journalists, for that matter? That’s a fiver for the f-word, for feministing and for Women in Black.

Not because Woolf was wrong to give her Third Guinea to the anti-war campaign which asked her for one in the first place, but because she was right to say women should make use of “Typewriters and duplicators … these cheap and so far unforbidden instruments” and so “rid yourself of the pressure of boards, policies and editors.” Then it’s possible to “speak your own mind, in your own words, at your own time, at your own length, at your own bidding.”

“Since we [women] are different,” she said, “our help must be different… we can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.”

That’s why I’m giving a third fiver for feminist bloggers - before my fourth for Stop The War.

[Photos courtesy of ebr1 on Flickr]

Three Guineas is Virginia Woolf’s most controversial and polemical feminist work, written in 1936/7, to the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and the muscle-flexing of fascists in Italy and Germany. It takes the form of a letter replying to a request (from a grey-haired old English barrister) for a guinea (21 shillings - about £1.05 in new money) towards a Society for the Justice, Equality and Liberty of all men and women. A donation, he claims, would help to prevent war.

By all means take your guinea, says Woolf (delighting in the fact it’s one she’s earned herself). But first she will give one guinea for women’s colleges and a second for the advancement of women in ‘the professions’, her comprehensive, elaborate and well-defended argument over 190 pages being that the more women there are in positions of power (in politics, science, culture or the church) the less warmongering society will be.

For a full lowdown on Three Guineas (including synopsis, key quotes and a bibliography), see the feminish » Three Guineas Redux: all a girl needs to know

The cover pictured was designed by her sister, the artist Vanessa Bell

A 21st century re-write of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas:

Four Fivers

A donation to Stop the War - in Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan or Iraq, you ask of me: “every little helps”.

A fiver, you say, would do the trick, ‘make a difference’ even, to help your campaign against the bombs and death, the devastation, rape and torture.

Here’s a fiver, spend it freely, however you will, I reply - But I’ll first be giving out another three:

The first I’ll be giving to fund women’s studies at universities, so 21st Century lasses can learn about wars and politics and international relations - not only the war-messes that have been made and continue to be made by men, against women, but about different answers to the problems those war-messes set out to solve.

[Seventy years ago Woolf gave her First Guinea to prevent war to women’s colleges]

The second can fund campaigns to get more women into politics, banks, industry and the army. We now know women debate differently about war and peace on the floor of the Commons; they act against cultures of sexualised aggression in banks, they’re more effective and level-headed as CEO’s, and - I warrant - they rape the war enemy less.

[That’ll change the ‘odour - or shall we call it ‘atmosphere’?-” of public life, as Woolf said when she laid down her Second Guinea for the advancement of women in ‘the professions’]

The third fiver can go to fund feminist activists and writers, online and in print. We’ll discover that we’re not all Melanie Phillipses or Ann Coulters. How many leader-writers on British papers are women? How many political editors? Or regular, run-of-the-mill news journalists, for that matter? That’s a fiver for the f-word, for feministing and for Women in Black.

Not because Woolf was wrong to give her Third Guinea to the anti-war campaign which asked her for one in the first place, but because she was right to say women should make use of “Typewriters and duplicators … these cheap and so far unforbidden instruments” and so “rid yourself of the pressure of boards, policies and editors.” Then it’s possible to “speak your own mind, in your own words, at your own time, at your own length, at your own bidding.”

“Since we [women] are different,” she said, “our help must be different… we can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.”

That’s why I’m giving a third fiver for feminist bloggers - before my fourth for Stop The War.

[Photos courtesy of ebr1 on Flickr]

Three Guineas is Virginia Woolf’s most controversial and polemical feminist work, written in 1936/7, to the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and the muscle-flexing of fascists in Italy and Germany. It takes the form of a letter replying to a request (from a grey-haired old English barrister) for a guinea (21 shillings - about £1.05 in new money) towards a Society for the Justice, Equality and Liberty of all men and women. A donation, he claims, would help to prevent war.

By all means take your guinea, says Woolf (delighting in the fact it’s one she’s earned herself). But first she will give one guinea for women’s colleges and a second for the advancement of women in ‘the professions’, her comprehensive, elaborate and well-defended argument over 190 pages being that the more women there are in positions of power (in politics, science, culture or the church) the less warmongering society will be.

For a full lowdown on Three Guineas (including synopsis, key quotes and a bibliography), see the feminish » Three Guineas Redux: all a girl needs to know

The cover pictured was designed by her sister, the artist Vanessa Bell