ALTERNATIVE FACTS GEAR & Jeff Sessions May Be in Big Trouble & MORE POLITICAL MOJO FROM MOTHER JONES 3MAR17

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THIS WEEK'S TOP STORY

"I Made That Bitch Famous" A brief history of men getting credit for women's accomplishments. [READ MORE]

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"I Made That Bitch Famous" MARCH IS WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH 2017

MARCH is national Women's History Month. Women of America, be ready to protect your lady parts 'cause drumpf/trump-pence and their neanderthal supporters just might try to grab some pussy (video is restored) in celebration. Me? I still don't understand how women allow themselves to be ruled and dominated to their detriment, physically, politically, financially and    economically, socially and even religiously by men. I stand and applaud you ladies, and thank you and continue to push politicians to make equal pay for equal work the law of the land and to stop passing laws about what a woman can and can not do with her own body. Check this out from +Mother Jones .....

"I Made That Bitch Famous"

A brief history of men getting credit for women's accomplishments.

MADISON PAULYMAR/APR 2017 ISSUE

Madison Pauly is the assistant editor at Mother Jones. Reach her at mpauly@motherjones.com.

Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn, Germany, 1913. Smithsonian Institution Archives

In Donald Trump's 2011 book Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again, the president-to-be made an astonishing claim: Lady Gaga likely owed her international fame to none other than...Donald Trump. "She became a big star and maybe she became a star because I put her on the Miss Universe pageant," he wrote. "It's very possible, who knows what would have happened without it, because she caused a sensation."

The problem goes beyond Trump, of course. Women, especially women of color, are routinely denied credit for their ideas, creativity, genius, and success (not to mention they're paid less than men for full-time work). So, in honor of Women's History Month, I've put together this woefully incomplete timeline of the lowlights:

Paleolithic era

Pre-European cave paintings are attributed to male hunters up until 2013, when an anthropologist shows that hand tracings found alongside the art at 10 famous sites were likely done by women.

12th c.

"Trota of Salerno" authors a gynecology handbook, On the Sufferings of Women. For centuries, scholars falsely assume Trota was a man.

1806

At the close of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Sacagawea is paid nothing for her year and a half of work as an interpreter and guide. Her husband, a white trapper who married her after she was taken captive, receives $500.

1818

Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein anonymously. Her husband pens the preface and people assume he was behind it.

1843

Mathematician Ada Lovelace shows how Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine (a theoretical computer) could be induced to perform complex math. Her contribution, considered the first software, was dismissed by many male historians: "It is no exaggeration to say that she was a manic-­depressive with the most amazing delusions."

Ada Lovelace/Wikimedia

1840s

The Brontë sisters take male pen names. "Authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice," notes Charlotte, author of Jane Eyre. Mary Ann Evans later writes Middlemarch as George Eliot, probably to avoid "being treated as ‘just' a female writer," one expert notes.

1859

After 10 years working with engineers to design signal flares, Martha Coston is listed as "administratrix" on the patent. Her long-dead husband is listed as the inventor.

1888

Ellen Eglin sells the rights to the clothes wringer she invented to an agent. The invention brings "great financial success" to the buyer, who paid her $18. "If it was known that a negro woman patented the invention, white ladies would not buy the wringer," she explains.

1904

Elizabeth Magie creates The Landlord's Game. Player Charles Darrow later patents a modified version: Monopoly.

Jens Buettner/DPA via ZUMA

1905

Nettie Stevens publishes a paper establishing that chromosomes, not environmental factors or diet, determine the sex of an organism. The same year, E.B. Wilson, a more celebrated male colleague, independently arrives at a similar conclusion and gets most of the credit.

1908

Henrietta Leavitt, a "human computer" at the Harvard College Observatory, discovers the period-luminosity relationship (the brighter the star, the more slowly it appears to pulse). Her work is key to calculating interstellar distances, but male astronomers snag the credit—Leavitt dies in obscurity.

1917

"Fountain" (a urinal) is submitted to a New York City exhibition. Art critics later cite evidence that Marcel Duchamp's infamous piece was sent to him by a "female friend"—possibly Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven—under the pseudonym R. Mutt.

Alfred Stieglitz/Wikimedia

1938

Based on observations by her German colleague Otto Hahn, Jewish physicist Lise Meitner works out the first model of nuclear fission. Hahn publishes the work and accepts the Nobel Prize, portraying Meitner as his assistant. A new element, Meitnerium, is named in her honor—60 years later.

1939

The British government hires Joan Clarke as a codebreaker on Alan Turing's team during World War II. Years later, she is immortalized on screen by Kiera Knightly—but remembered mainly for her doomed engagement with Turing.

1946

"Government and scientific men" hold a dinner gala to celebrate the first electronic computer, the New York Times reports. None of the women responsible for programming it are invited.

1952

R&B singer Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton is the first to record "Hound Dog," a country blues tune written especially for her. Elvis Presley’s vastly more famous version is later featured by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as "the most illustrative example of the white appropriation of African-American music."

1953

James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of DNA's structure hinges on Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction studies, but she's excluded from their Nobel Prize-winning paper. "Rosy might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes," Watson notes in his memoir, The Double Helix.

Rosalind Franklin Cold Spring Laboratory Harbor Archives

1957

The Nobel Committee for Physics passes over Chien-Shiung Wu—a Manhattan Project scientist who designed an experiment that overturned the so-called parity law of physics—in favor of the two male scientists who had recruited her to work on the topic.

1961

Male NASA scientists rely on math whiz Katherine Johnson and her fellow Hidden Figures to send men into space. "Woe unto thee if they shall make thee a computer," a NASA newsletterpreached to female employees. "For the Project Engineer will take credit for whatsoever thou doth that is clever and full of glory."

1970

Forty-six female researchers sue Newsweek, alleging that male writers and editors took all the credit for their efforts.

 

1986

Margaret Keane sues ex-husband Walter Keane, claiming she created the paintings of big-eyed children and animals that made him famous. The case drags on for many years. By the time Margaret prevails, Walter is too broke to pay the award.

1993

Historian Margaret Rossiter coins the phrase "Matilda effect"(after a suffragette who claimed a woman was behind Eli Whitney's cotton gin) to refer to the undervaluing of women's contributions in science.

2006

Truman Capote's letter praising a draft of his childhood friend Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird turns up, putting to rest decades of speculation (which Capote made little attempt to dispel) that he was the true author.

2007

M.I.A. vents about male reporters crediting her ex, who contributed to a few songs on her debut album, as its mastermind: "I just find it kind of insulting that I can't have any ideas on my own because I'm a female."

2008

After know-nothing guys try to school essayist Rebecca Solnit on topics in which she happens to be an expert, she pens an essaytitled "Men Explain Things to Me." The word "mansplain" enters the lexicon.

2014

Whitney Wolfe sues Tinder, claiming a fellow exec stripped away her title because "having a young female co-founder makes the company seem like a joke." The case is settled privately.

2015

In a study of the tenure process at top economics programs, Harvard Ph.D. student Heather Sarsons finds that women aren't getting credit for papers they co-author with men.

2016

Just after Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszú shatters a world record at the Rio Olympics, NBC cuts to her volatile coach/husband in the stands. "And there's the man responsible!" a male commentator proclaims.

 

Hosszú and hubby. Hosszú: David Gray/Reuters; Husband: Dominic Ebenbichler/Reuters/Zuma

2016

Kanye West raps, "I feel like me and Taylor [Swift] might still have sex. Why? I made that bitch famous. (God damn) I made that bitch famous."

Mitt Romney Campaign Muddles Response To Lilly Ledbetter Act Question Again 18OKT12

DISREGARD mitt robme romney's and lyin' paul ryan's positions on abortion, birth control, family planning, women's health and all their other lies and deceptions. Ignoring all that, why would any woman vote for them when they are against equal pay for equal work? They are opposed to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (lyin' paul ryan voted against it in the House), showing they have absolutely no respect for women at all. From HuffPost.....
WASHINGTON -- Thursday morning brought additional confusion over what Mitt Romney would have done had the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act come to his desk while he was president.
The Republican nominee has deftly avoided answering that specific question, choosing instead to say he wouldn't repeal the law, which makes it easier for women to sue over wage discrimination. Following Tuesday night's presidential debate, top adviser Ed Gillespie said Romney had opposed the bill while it was being debated, only to walk that statement back hours later.
"I was wrong when I said last night Governor Romney opposed the Lily Ledbetter act," Gillespie's statement read. "He never weighed in on it. As President, he would not seek to repeal it."
By Thursday, however, that position too seemed to have been reversed, with an anonymous Romney aide telling CBS News that he did, indeed, oppose the Lilly Ledbetter Act in 2009.
"Gov. Romney fully supports equal pay for equal work for women and for everyone and he would in no way want to repeal or change the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act," the adviser told CBSNews.com. When asked why Romney had opposed it in 2009, the adviser said that "every bill has certain aspects to it that people might find concerning but the equal pay for equal work part was of no concern."
The Huffington Post reached out to the Romney campaign for comment. An aide said that Gillespie's second statement -- the one saying Romney had had no position on the Lilly Ledbetter Act at the time -- was the operative statement.
"This is a blind quote," the aide said of the CBS story. "Ed addressed this issue on the record yesterday. That explains our position."
It's a bit baffling that the campaign's message is so muddled on this topic. Yes, conservatives opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Act when it was passed under the belief that it was a gift to trial lawyers. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Romney's running mate, is one of the lawmakers who voted against it. But Romney has moved away from conservative doctrine on a number of fronts in the past few weeks. And whereas on several occasions he had to contradict his previous positions to do so, the fact that he hadn't taken a stance on the Lilly Ledbetter Act gave him an opportunity to say he supported it from the get-go without being accused of flip-flopping.
Instead, he's opened himself to criticism that he's too timid to weigh in on women's issues.
"I don’t know why this is so complicated. Gov. Romney still won't say whether or not he supported a law to protect that right no matter how many times he is asked. This is not that hard," President Barack Obama said at a rally in Manchester, N.H., on Thursday.
"Would you have signed the Lilly Ledbetter equal pay law? No answer," former President Bill Clinton said at a Thursday rally in Ohio. "He can't even say whether he would sign a law that is already on the books ... what he wants to do is convince the moderate voters that he is a new man without explicitly disavowing a single solitary commitment he made in the two years he said he was severely conservative Mitt Romney."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/18/mitt-romney-lilly-ledbetter_n_1980527.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

Tell Your Senators to Support the Paycheck Fairness Act: It’s Common Cents! from ACLU 20APR10

Click the header to go to the action page to send this letter to your Senators.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, even today, women who work full time still earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar men earn. The figures are even worse for women of color. African American women still only earn approximately 61 cents and Latinas only 52 cents for each dollar earned by a white male.

But it’s not just cents we’re talking about. Chronic wage discrimination can deprive a woman of between $700,000 and $2 million over her career. The effect of wage discrimination follows its victims for a lifetime.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was intended to close this pay gap. Unfortunately, due to loopholes and weak remedies in this law, the pernicious pay disparities persist. And now, due to rising unemployment rates, families need to bring home every dollar they rightfully earn – making pay equity even more necessary, not only to families’ economic security, but also to the nation's economic recovery.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, S. 182, makes several common sense changes to strengthen the Equal Pay Act -- putting in place enforcement tools needed to make real progress on pay equity.

The House of Representatives has already passed the Paycheck Fairness Act, and now, your help is needed to let the Senate know that working families cannot wait any longer. Especially in this economy, there is an urgent need to take action to ensure that women can receive equal pay for equal work by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act. It’s only common cents.

We need your help to close the wage gap for women -- take action now! Here is the letter to your Senators

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women still make only 77 cents for every dollar made by their male counterparts doing the same work. The statistics are even worse for women of color. We ask you to help stop the persistent wage gap for women and support the Paycheck Fairness Act, S. 182. In January 2009, the House of Representatives passed this bill on a bipartisan basis, and now, your action in the Senate is needed.

The vitally important Paycheck Fairness Act will put an end to loopholes and weak remedies that have made the Equal Pay Act, a 47 year-old law that was supposed to ensure equal pay for women, less effective than it should be in combating wage discrimination. The bill would require employers to demonstrate that differences in wages among employees are not based on gender. It would also strengthen outreach, education, and enforcement efforts and prohibit retaliation against workers who ask about employers' wage practices.

Due to rising unemployment rates, families need to bring home every dollar they rightfully earn -- making pay equity even more necessary, not only to families' economic security, but also to the nation's economic recovery. It's time to work together to make real progress on pay equity. I urge you to co-sponsor the Paycheck Fairness Act (S.182) and to seek its swift passage -- without weakening amendments -- as soon as possible.

I am following this issue closely and look forward to your response.