Do Mainly Men Have Ideas Worth Spreading?

Since my friend Ruth Ann Harnisch told me about it a few years ago, I’ve thought that attending a TED conference should be on my bucket list. I LOVE big ideas and great speeches about them. So why did I decide not to go to one when the opportunity was offered to me to attend TEDWomen in Washington D.C. December 7 and 8?

I vaguely wondered if the TED folks thought the little women still needed a conference of their own because women’s ideas aren’t as big as men’s. Organizational reputation scholar and consultant CV Harquail raised the same concerns more powerfully in this post when TEDWomen was announced. Nevertheless, I filled out the forms and proposed myself as a speaker on the very big idea of what specifically it will take for women to “reshape the world,” as TEDWomen’s tagline proffers. That was rejected based on some pretty lame reasoning, in my opinion. Then, frankly, I got so busy with my own speeches and interviews after No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power was published in October that I forgot all about the conference and let the slot I’d been offered go.

This past week, the topic of TEDWomen and TED in general heated up so much in the blogosphere and on listservs I’m on that it came back into my consciousness. About that time,

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Molly Ivins Speaks Her Truth

An avid Kathleen Turner fan, Els Van Landuyt from Belgium, sent me the link to this video clip of Kathleen playing the late, great, sassy Texas journalist Molly Ivins in the one-woman show “Red Hot Patriot.” Put on your Lucchese boots, throw back a can of beer and enjoy, ya’ll.

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Wonder Woman!

I love this video artist Linda Stein made about the history and social significance of the female super heroine created by psychologist William Moulton Marston (inventor of the lie detector test, perhaps the precursor of Wonder Woman’s ability to know who was telling the truth–or who knows, maybe she could tell who was lying because she was a mom) to be the antidote to Superman, the epitome of male power over others. Wonder Woman instead never kills, she uses her power to to help, protect, stop the bad things from happening. Here’s Stein’s intro:

How does Wonder Woman do it? She is able to stop the bad guys—even convince them to reform—without ever killing! Her gender-bending strength and power is matched only by her compassion in seeking peace and justice. The question, CAN WONDER WOMAN CRA-AC-CK GENDER STEREOTYPES? is paramount as this icon and superhero confronts the sexism prevalent at the time of her creation in 1941 as well as today.

So how does Wonder Woman do it? What lessons can we learn from her today?

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Bea Arthur: How One Powered Woman Spoke Up

Actress at age 86.

She was a Tony-winning stage actress when Norman Lear saw her and tapped her for a guest role in his famous “All in the Family” series, where she played Edith Bunker’s mouthy liberal cousin Maude who was
always at odds with Edith’s conservative husband Archie. “Maude” soon became a sitcom of its own, and Arthur’s character continued taking on the significant social and political issues of the day–speaking up about all those subjects we were warned against bringing up in polite company, from sex and infidelity to politics and activism to death and depression.

It was the mid-1970’s at the height of second wave feminism, and if ever there were proof that feminists have a sense of humor, it was in Maude’s way of playing even the most serious of subjects for laughs.

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The Great Scrotum Flap

Did you read the New York Times front-page article by Julie Bosman on school librarians’ censorship of a Newberry Award-winning children’s book “The Higher Power of Lucky”?

It’s creating quite a flap as well it should. I wrote the following letter to Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz in response to her excellent column “One Word Ignites Some Librarians’ Ire.”

Re: Your great column on the great scrotum flap

Dear Connie,

Yesterday morning when I read the piece about “The Higher Power of Lucky” in the NY Times, I immediately sat down to write an op ed myself. But I could not come close to the one you wrote and I want to thank you for it. In particular, your sharing of the personal story is always the most compelling truth.

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