- Introduction
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Technology, Knowledge, Worldviews
- Early Modern Authority
- Feedback Patterns in 19th-Century Ideologies
- The Railroad & Photography
- Competition in the Development of R&D
- Op-Ed: The Internet and Information
- Op-Ed: Photography, Editing, and the Destabilization of Truth
- Op-Ed: The Effects of Technological Immersion
- Op-Ed: Artificial Intelligence Is a New Kind of Technological Beast
- Technology, Empire, War
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Technology, Popular Culture, Gender
- Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe
- The Trial of Marion Gage
- Nando's
- Women and Magazines in the Nineteenth Century
- Cold War Propaganda and Television
- Reproductive Repression
- Op-Ed: The Theatre Experience in the Age of Streaming
- Op-Ed: Compulsory Sterilization in Women's Prisons
- Op-Ed: The Future of Meat
- Creating Lives
- The Toolbox of Invention
- A&SC Highlights
Women's Rights are Right for Me
For the most part, high school was good. My sister was both in college, and when we did talk she would tell me her stories about having a boyfriend and making cool friends. Back home, my friends and I continued to listen to the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and The Beach Boys and spent weekend afternoons at the beach. When I was a senior in high school, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I knew it was a big moment for John because he had been on Freedom Rides, he had been at the March on Washington and heard king speak, and Civil Rights was important to him. But to hear his sadness and bitterness as he talked on the phone...it helped me to understand the importance of getting equality, and that America could change, it just did not want to. One one hand, we were able to put a man on the moon the next year, which was amazing to watch and see, I mean a man on the moon! But at the same time, racial tensions were high, the Stonewall protests launched increased awareness of LGBT+ issues, and we were still at war in Vietnam. Progress was fast and slow, and seemed like a jerky ride overall.
I studied psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, which was difficult because so few of my peers were women. Luckily, I was able to befriend a couple of other women in my classes, and even today we still get together for a girl’s night once in awhile. While studying, my cousin Mark was drafted and got deployed to Vietnam, which was both frustrating and scary because I was scared he might not return from the war and I did not people to keep dying in what was looking to be a failed fight. I made my voice heard against the Vietnam War and protested on campus with fellow students to call for the end of the war. Right before junior year of college, my friends, Rachel, Claire, and Alice, my dear sister, Lydia, and I flew to New York City to participate in the Women’s Strike For Equality in 1970 with tens of thousands of other women. It was a powerful moment to walk down Fifth Avenue with my close friends and show the world that we deserved equal pay, reproductive rights, and equal treatment in society as more than just breeders and mothers to future soldiers. I was tired of not seeing women professors in my classrooms, of hearing male students talk of my work as lesser, of having my opinions and beliefs treated as lesser because I was a woman. It was especially important for me, as I was starting to consider becoming a psychiatrist, and already my mother was asking me, “How are you going to manage a family and work, let alone be a doctor? Leave working to your husband so you can be a good mother first.” For some women and men, ideas of equality for people of all races, genders, and sexual orientation would rip the fabric that held society together.