I borrowed that title from writer Celeste Ng who posted it in response to the inane opinion piece by Ross Douthat in the NYT, wondering if women ruined the work place (I will not even link to it – they later shifted the titled to liberal feminism instead of “women.”)

Low energy on my end this week, so you get to look at some portraits I took of strong women, and a collection of publications (I found ready-made) that blamed women for ruining – well, everything.

It would all be laughable, if the bigotry wasn’t so scary.

Portrait of a Woman

She must be a variety.
Change so that nothing will change.
It’s easy, impossible, tough going, worth a shot.
Her eyes are, as required, deep, blue, gray,
dark merry, full of pointless tears.
She sleeps with him as if she’s first in line or the only one on earth.
She’ll bear him four children, no children, one.
Naive, but gives the best advice.
Weak, but takes on anything.
A screw loose and tough as nails.
Curls up with Jasper or Ladies’Home Journal.
Can’t figure out this bolt and builds a bridge.
Young, young as ever, still looking young.
Holds in her hand a baby sparrow with a broken wing,
her own money for some trip far away,
a meat cleaver, a compress, a glass of vodka.
Where’s she running, isn’t she exhausted.
Not a bit, a little, to death, it doesn’t matter.
She must love him, or she’s just plain stubborn.
For better, for worse, for heaven’s sake.
      

by Wislawa Szymborska translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

A short piece for music today, introduced as: “Being a woman writing music in the early 20th century was an act of feminism in itself. In the 1920s, a critic at one performances remarked with surprise that Ruth Crawford Seeger could “sling dissonances like a man”—because, you know, what could a woman possibly know about discord?”

Or music. Or anything…..