Lois Bédard Dowson died December 14 2007, just shy of her 84th birthday. She was, for all her adult life, a committed revolutionary socialist in the tradition of Leon Trotsky. In the context of the Great Depression of her growing years, the rise of fascism and Stalinism in her teens, the horror of World War in her young adulthood – living a life as a revolutionary was not the easiest of choices. But Lois unlike many others, never wavered from her commitment to the left, to the working class, and to the women workers to whose future she was so…
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The impact of feminism – or songs you thought you knew
Published October 17, 2011 by Paul Kellogg
Sometimes it is hard to credit progress when it happens incrementally over decades. Watching “Mad Men” (whose long anticipated Season 5 is scheduled to begin in March, 2012) provides a jolt of noxious memories from the 1960s – the restrictions on abortion, and the casual sexism which dominated gender relations, to name just two. It provides a useful reminder that between the 1960s and today, there have been several waves of feminism which have profoundly improved modern society. Popular music provides another interesting marker of these changes. Here’s a little story about two songs which indicate the impact of several…