Strength and Beauty in Female Type Castings

 

Bodybuilder Relna Brewer showing her strength by ripping a phone book apart, 1938

Relna Brewer stood at 5'2 with a weight of 115 pounds, but she was very strong and sported some big muscles. At one point she was dubbed "The Strongest Woman of the World", but at the same time her feminine beauty didn't go unnoticed: In 1939 she won the Miss Venetia beauty pageant. Also she was the stunt double for Marilyn Monroe. All of this means that she wasn't fended off as the female cliché "a strong, but ugly woman". Usually that cliché has been a stop in the career and private lives of many women who have been afraid to lose out in the usual type casting of women that goes more after what's considered "beautiful" than inherent or aquired strength. However, there is no way that kind of social femininity controls might work with someone like Relna Brewer. She is both a very strong and very beautiful woman and nobody can deny it, not even today.

Relna was able to lift four people at the same time, rip telephone books, etc., etc. without losing her feminine grace. That meant that she was someone who surpassed the stereotyped women who were popular at the time. She was no "Sleeping Beauty waiting for the Prince", but an active and strong woman. Her body builder type, so to speak, wasn't the most popular one, namely the "Good Girl", who ended up a housewife and mother. This type didn't in any ways compete with the stereotyped male which was what most men wanted. 

Should women do body building? Well, should men?

 https://www.girlsgonestrong.com/blog/articles/the-original-girl-gone-strong-part-2-relna-brewer-mcrae/ 

https://thedailycrisp.com/a-therapist-tells-us-the-11-types-of-women-and-how-to-deal-with-them/ 

https://thoughtcatalog.com/luke-bennington/2015/03/10-types-of-women-who-make-the-best-wives/ 

https://liveboldandbloom.com/12/relationships/qualities-good-woman

Sportskvinden, der var en mand

 

De Olympiske Lege i Berlin 1936 bød på mange interessante, men ikke specielt Nazi-glamouriserende begivenheder samt resultater. F.eks. vandt den farvede amerikaner Jesse Owens suverænt over den tyske favorit Erich Borchmeyer. Føreren blive vred, da man henstiller til ham om at lykønske sejrherren og siger angiveligt: "Amerikanerne skulle skamme sig over, at de vinder deres medaljer med negre. Jeg giver ikke denne neger hånden." Da den tyske sportskvinde, der stiller op til højdespring for kvinder, viser sig at være jøde, skyndte man sig at udtage hende og finde en erstatning. Man glemte dog at tjekke kønnet, for denne nye deltager, Dora Ratjen, var slet ikke kvinde, men mand. Hvem - og hvor mange - vidste det, og gjaldt det også top-nazisterne? Netop det punkt hersker der stadig en vis usikkerhed om, men Nazi-Tyskland fik i hvert fald én medalje, der ikke var efter reglerne - og det handlede ikke om hudfarve eller religiøsitet, men om køn - og hun/han blev ikke engang nr. 1, men "kun" nr. 4 .... 

Skandalen blev først afsløret senere, men da fortalte flere, at "Dora" altid var meget genert, når sportskvinderne badede og skiftede tøj: ingen havde rigtig set på hende, men nogle havde dog mistænkt, at der var et eller andet suspekt ved denne atletiske højdespringer. Da hun/han blev født i 1918, havde alle været i tvivl om kønnet, også lægen, og hun/han blev derfor opdraget som pige, gik i pige-tøj, etc., så fra starten af var der egentlig ikke tale om et egentligt bedrageri, men en misforståelse. Læger, der kom ind i billedet senere, var også karrige med deres diagnose, men én sagde dog noget om, at visse deformiteter ville forhindre, at kønsorganernes ejerman, dvs. Dora, kunne blive far. Hvorom alting er, så skiftede Dora navn + køn og blev til Heinrich/Heinz. Det skete dog først efter, at hun/han i 1938 vandt i "The European Athletics Championship" med et spring på 1,67 m, hvilket var verdensrekord. Noget, der ikke huede hans/hendes højdespringskonkurrent, Dorothy Tyler-Odam, der skrev og klagede over at blive frataget verdensrekorden af en mand. Denne protest førte til en mere omfattende undersøgelse af Dora, der endte med, at "hun" blev omklassificeret som mand.

For at være ærlig undrer det mig nu også, at "Dora" blev regnet for en ægte kvinde, da "hun" helt sikkert virkede temmelig maskulin i sit ydre. Spørgsmålet er dog, om "hun" snød for at skaffe tyskerne en medalje? Mange har spurgt, og der er opstået en teori om, at "hun" blev tvunget til at forblive i den kvinde-rolle, "hun" var havnet i ved sin fødsel. Da jeg jo tror alt ondt om nazisterne, er jeg fristet til at støtte denne teori, men beviser er der ingen af .....

 

https://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/kultur/berlin-1936-mandag-den-3.-august-1936 

 

https://www.rferl.org/a/olympic-cheats-through-history/27867140.html

 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qkyvym/sex-and-gender-in-hitlers-shadow-dora-ratjen-and-the-1936-olympics 

 

https://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/tag/dora-ratjen/ 

 

Wikipedia

 

 

Jahve, the one and only god?

Presumably Jahve enthroned on a winged wheel

 

I once read that there presumably has been around 3000 gods and goddesses up till now. Actually, I'm sure there must have been even more, but most of these old religious figures have been forgotten or have been absorbed by other deities. One of the reasons for this is that faith changes over time. Once people believed in gods who, for them were as genuine, powerful, and important as Jahve became for us. We tend to laugh a little at those who worshipped these "pagan" gods and goddesses of the past, but that's not fair. To them their gods, and their myths were as true as those that go with The Bible is - or were - for Christian believers. What's interesting is that people tend to build a pantheon in most societies and to fight those who don't believe in their god/gods - that is unless they include the non-believers's deities in their own religion. One thing is for sure, all over the world religions change and develop over time ....

 

When the Jews didn't destroy the inhabitants of Canaan as they had been told to do, but stayed and even married Canaanite women they were exposed to the foreign gods that were incorporated into their pantheon. One of these foreign gods was the Canaanite El who was the consort of the mighty goddess Asherah. Actually, she seems to have had several consorts which makes it interesting that with time Jahve blended in with El: Actually, most - but not all - scholars believe that El and Jahve were - or became - one ....

Asherah

Findings indicate that when entering Canaan the Jews were polytheistic: Jahve was not the omnipotent "sky-Daddy", but was part of a Divine Counsil which ended up being absorbed by him. There are references to Jahve's presiding over a pantheon e.g. in some of The Psalms, and he is called "Elohim". Also other parts of The Old Testament have references to Jahve and his "council". One must not forget that "The Bible" came into being not in a flash, but as a lengthy process of 1000 years: Circa 1200 BC-circa 200 BC. As to Abraham and the other old patriarchs they seem to have come into existence around 721 BC when Israel fell to Assyria. Originally Jahve was connected with the exodus from Egypt, Moses and the Ten Commandments.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Council 

 

https://www.openbible.info/topics/jahve 

 

https://www.worldhistory.org/Yahweh/ 

 

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yahweh 

 

 

Askepot og hendes sko

 

Eventyrprinsesserne Askepot og Snehvide føles som søstre, der har mistet kontakten med hinanden, men som stadig har en masse til fælles. Resultatet af alle deres prøvelser med onde stedmødre og misundelige stedsøstre er i hvert fald nogenlunde det samme: de vinder den flotte prins's kærlighed og bevæger sig op ad den sociale rangstige som hans brud, hvilket har været regnet for idealet for kvinder i århundreder. Man stiger ikke i graderne ved at udrette store ting, men ved at være smuk og behagelig, så andre føler sig godt tilpas med én ....

Nej, nej, nej, sådan er det ikke: Askepot er bundet af  aftalen med den gode fe, der forvandlede hende fra undertrykt hushjælp i sin stedmors palads til en dårende dejlig skønhed, der fik chancen for at danse med den skønne prins, som alle kvinder er ude efter at erobre, da han er vejen til social fremgang - foruden at han altså er en laber fyr.
 

Det er faktisk billigt for resterne af det køretøj, som feen udstyrede Askepot med, så hun kunne komme med til ballet, hvor hun mødte prinsen. Trylleri gjorde det muligt, men trolddom har sine begrænsninger, for den virkede kun til midnat, hvor Askepot ville miste sit fine føj og den flotte karet. Surt show, må man sige, men så tabte hun heldigvis sin ene forheksede sko, og den førte prinsen ud på en større eftersøgning, der dog virker ret suspekt i mine øjne.

Ak ja, den mandlige hjerne + hukommelse er ikke altid, hvad den burde være, dvs. set fra et feminint synspunkt. Parterne forenes dog, efter at han har ledt og ledt overalt efter den skønne pige, der forsvandt så brat under ballet. Dermed forventes man at godtage forklaringen om, at de levede lykkeligt til deres dages ende, og det får én til at tænke lidt over sandhedsværdien i dette gamle eventyr: kan det være sket i virkeligheden, eller er det bare en myte? 

Ifølge den græske historiker Strabo og hans ‘Geography, Book XVII.33’ var der faktisk en kvinde, der kom ud for noget lignende. Hendes historie er senere blevet set som en forløber for det velkendte eventyr, men sandhedsværdien betvivles: var der engang en underskøn slavinde og/eller hetære ved navn Rhodopis, der fik stjålet en sko af en ørn, der tabte den ned i skødet på den ægyptiske farao, eller var der ikke??? Og blev denne farao så betaget af skoen, at han gik i gang med en eftersøgning af dens ejerinde? Ikke nok med det, men giftede han sig også med hende??????

Det er en skøn beretning om en kvindes sociale opstigen, der kommer i stand via en total mangel på egen indsats: ørnen gør arbejdet, og skoens ejerinde høster, hvor hun ikke såede ....

Prey of Book Vultures .....

 

The first book I wrote was published with a traditional, Danish publisher, Munksgaard. It was a scholarly treatise turned book about teen  magazines. I'm still proud of it as it was something new: "Ungdomsblade", 1977. Later on I published several other scholarly books with traditional, Danish publishers so I was used to this publishing system which worked fine for me. However, for some time I had been writing fiction in English and as I didn't want to try my luck with traditional publishers in either England or USA I started to look for other possibilities. In a sort of happy-go-lucky moment I decided to publish these books with AutorHouse, UK. Actually, I published four books with them in 2011. At that time I had never seen anything to worry about so I took for granted that this publishing house was a decent and trustworthy company, or put another way: They hadn't been unmasked the way they are now ....

AuthorHouse was fun - and very expensive without doing much for the payment they expected ....

After book four I stumbled upon a platform for free publishing: LULU. Here I published several ebooks, both for children and for grown-ups. This was the "dawn of the ebook" and I enjoyed publishing a lot of books, both with LULU and the Danish publishing firm SAXO like, e.g.:

 

I miss the innocence of that time as one published as one felt like, but alas, it's gone forever. Now a lot of criminal people and devious companies developed within the branch of publishing, and they seem to be waging a sort of war against writers: People posing as agents or publishers trick them into costly and fruitless projects. Recently this new kind of robbers - and that's actually  what they are - have grown a new branch: Criminals lure authors into weird schemes of turning their books into movies. Even though I'm not all that naive I fell for such a ruse because it, presumably, was instituted by a genuine film director:

It appered that The Spotlight Media Productions were considering one of my many children's books, "The Naughty Peteyboy, Sonya and The Magic Word", for a movie. I was surprised as I never had seen this book as movie material, but also I was flattered so I fell for the ruse. Someone wiser than me, Victoria Strauss, was approached too with another scheme, but she didn't fall for it:

https://twitter.com/victoriastrauss/status/1577402465531461632?s=20&t=8PkPopl74Ac4jshbURTl8w 

After reading what she wrote it dawned upon me that I had been duped. Before that I had written to the so-called "Charlie" to tell him off as I found it weird that the company didn't pay for the option of my book or sent me a contract, but it  was Victoria Strauss who made it clear to me what was going on. After some investigation I now see the scam as it is: Someone, maybe in the Phillipines, commits identity theft and poses as Charlie McDowell hoping that sooner og later his victim (me!!!!) would be flattered into sending him money for the movie they are (NOT!!!!) making over one of their books. That I would never have done, but still, I might have given him the rights of my book which is small and old ....

https://justpublishingadvice.com/author-solutions-gets-the-chop-about-time/

https://justpublishingadvice.com/vanity-book-publishing-and-self-publishing-are-not-the-same/ 

https://www.usp.ac.fj/research/research/output-and-awards/identifying-reputable-publishers/

https://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/pod/

https://twitter.com/cedar3ec/status/1569547081261682689?s=20&t=2UORxJC5Fk5_qAIie00pFA

Wikipedia

Mord og pral

Richard Cottingham blev dømt for seks kvindemord, men omtales flere steder som én, der mindst har myrdet dobbelt så mange. Selv har han på et tidspunkt sagt, at han i virkeligheden stod bag mordene på omkring 100 kvinder. Det var tydeligvis pral fra hans side, da han åbenbart opfattede sine grove forbrydelser som en bedrift. Flere af de myrdede lader til at have været deltids- eller heltids-prostituerede, hvilket jo passer meget godt med denne erhvervsgruppes større udsathed: det er, som om visse mænd tror, at sex-arbejdere udgør et tag-selv-bord for dem med mord-lyster, for det sker om og om igen, at en prostitueret bliver berøvet livet af en mand, hvad enten han er kunde eller ikke. Nogle bestemte mandlige karaktertræk træder skarpest frem i denne gruppe af mordere, hvilket burde studeres meget mere indgående, end det hidtil er sket. Det lader til, at de, der kalder sig "eksperter", viger tilbage fra denne opgave, fordi det gør for ondt at beskæftige sig med på et videnskabeligt plan. 

Maryann Carr, der arbejdede som røntgen-tekniker, blev bortført, tortureret og voldtaget i 1977, hvorpå hun blev myrdet. Denne 26-årige kvinde blev dermed berøvet et helt liv, der skulle have bestået af meget andet end en ulækker og pervers mands mishandlinger. Da hendes lig blev fundet, havde hun sin sygeplejerske-uniform på, men det, der skulle have været en ganske almindelig arbejdsdag, endte altså på en helt anden og meget, meget sørgelig måde. Det gjorde det altså også for andre, der mødte Cottingham, men et par af dem overlevede faktisk. En af dem fortalte, at han midt under torturen, hvor han bl.a. næsten havde bidt hendes ene brystvorte af sagde: "You have to take it. The other girls did, you have to take it too. You're a whore and you have to be punished." Mere sygt kan det bare ikke blive, men tankegangen er ikke speciel for denne morder, da mange andre bekender sig til lignende ideologier.

Han blev fanget flere gange, men for noget andet, nemlig butikstyveri, spiritus-kørsel og lignende "småtterier" sammenlignet med mord. At han har fået tilnavne som "The Torso Killer" og “The Times Square Ripper” virker på mig som en nedtoning af hans skyld, for disse navne indeholder ikke den fordømmelse, de burde, tværtimod. 

Det lyder vanvittigt, men det lader til, at denne massemorder på et tidspunkt i 1969 delte lejlighed med en morder-kollega, nemlig Rodney Alcala, "The Dating Game Killer", og ingen af disse to forbrydere lod til at ane, hvad den anden havde gang i. 

https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/Richard_Cottingham

 

https://listverse.com/2019/04/26/10-horrific-facts-about-the-times-square-ripper/

 

https://www.criminallyintrigued.com/blog/2019/3/3/the-torso-killer-richard-cottingham

Wikipedia

Geniet og den tabte formue

 

Der er dem, der hævder, at vi er omgivet af begravede, men glemte skatte: folk kan simpelthen ikke huske, hvor de har gjort af det, de har forsøgt at skjule for fjender af alskens art. Umiddelbart virker det grotesk, at man ikke kan huske noget så centralt, men i et stresset øjeblik, hvor man handler på instinkt, kan der formentlig ske den slags. Det gjorde det i hvert fald for én af de store hjerner: Alan Turing (1912-1954).

Han er mest kendt for at være den, der knækkede tyskernes Enigma-kode under Anden Verdenskrig, men han var meget mere og gjorde sig f.eks. beundringsværdigt inden for datalogi. Under krigen må han dog have været så forvirret, at hans super-hjerne satte ud, for - af skræk for tyskerne - omsatte han alle sine værdier til sølv-barrer, som han derpå begravede for at "holde dem sikre" ved den tyske invasion, han frygtede. Det er de formentlig stadig, da han glemte alt om, HVOR sølvet var og ikke kunne knække sin egen kode for dets placering ....

Hang forvirringen sammen med hans sociale situation som en gift bøsse? På dette tidspunkt blev den slags anset for at være kriminelt, og i 1952 blev han tvunget på en kemisk kastration, som nogen mente førte til hans tidlige død af en form for forgiftning. Andre mener til gengæld, at han begik selvmord. 

 

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Treasure