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Gerda Lerner

Gerda Lerner Biography

Historian

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“By making the term "man" subsume "woman" and arrogate to itself the representation of all humanity, men have built a conceptual error of vast proportion into all of their thought. By taking the half for the whole, they have not only missed the essence of whatever they are describing, but they have disroted it in such a fashion that they cannot see it correctly. As long as men believed the earth to be flat, they could not understand its reality, its function, and its actual relationship to other bodies in the universe. As long as men believe their experiences, their viewpoint, and their ideas represent all of human experience and all of human thought, they are not only unable to define correctly in the abstract, but they are unable to describe reality accurately.”

MenMisogynyTiny Brained Males
Book:The Creation of Patriarchy
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“We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events.”

HumansMadeDifferentProblemActionPastCertainChoicesKnowledgeTeachGenerationsEventsExamplePossibilityCircumstancesDemandConsequenceClimate ChangeDetermineUndoneAnalogiesHuman ActionsFuture EventsPast GenerationsActions Have Consequences
Book:Why History Matters: Life and Thought
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“Autonomy means women defining themselves and the values by which they will live, and beginning to think of institutional arrangements which will order their environment in line with their needs.... Autonomy means moving out from a world in which one is born to marginality, to a past without meaning, and a future determined by others--into a world in which one acts and chooses, aware of a meaningful past and free to shape one's future.”

ThinkingWorldNeedsMeanPastMovingValuesOrderBornLinesEnvironmentShapesIndependenceDeterminedMeaningfulArrangementsAutonomyDefiningMoving Out
Author:Gerda Lerner
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“For boys, the family was the place from which one sprang and to which one returned for comfort and support, but the field of action was the larger world of wilderness, adventure, industry, labor, and politics. For girls, the family was to be the world, their field of action the domestic circle. He was to express himself in his work and, through it and social action, was to help transform his environment; her individual growth and choices were restricted to lead her to express herself through love, wifehood, and motherhood--through the support and nurture of others, who would act for her.”

WorldHelpingActionChoicesGirlIndividualSocialGrowthBoysSupportEnvironmentFieldsAdventureIndustryComfortLaborMotherhoodCirclesWildernessNurtureSocial Action
Author:Gerda Lerner
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“[There is a] depth and urgency of the search of Jewish and Christian women for connection to the Divine, which found expression in more than 1000 years of feminist Bible criticism and religious re-visioning.”

YearsChristianReligionFoundWomenReligiousDivineExpressionCriticismConnectionsDepthFeministUrgencyChristian Women
Book:The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy
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“Men develop ideas and systems of explanation by absorbing past knowledge and critiquing and superseding it. Women, ignorant of their own history [do] not know what women before them had thought and taught. So generation after generation, they [struggle] for insights others had already had before them, [resulting in] the constant inventing of the wheel.”

KnowsMenIdeasPastStruggleGenerationsTaughtConstantInsightIgnorantExplanationWheelsInventingAbsorbing
Author:Gerda Lerner
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“The effect on men has been very bad, too, of the omission of women's history, because men have been given the impression that they're much more important in the world than they actually are. It has fostered illusions of grandeur in every man that are unwarranted. If you can think as a man that everything great in the world and its civilization was created by men, then naturally you have to look down on women. And naturally, you have to have different aspirations for your sons and for your daughters.”

IfsThinkingMenWorldLooksHas BeensImportantDifferentGivenEffectsSonCivilizationIllusionDaughterEvery ManImpressionAspirationGrandeurOur DaughterYour DaughterYour SonOmissionIllusions Of Grandeur
Author:Gerda Lerner
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“The system of patriarchy is a historic construct; it has a beginning; it will have an end. Its time seems to have nearly run its course—it no longer serves the needs of men or women and in its inextricable linkage to militarism, hierarchy, and racism it threatens the very existence of life on earth. What will come after, what kind of structure will be the foundation for alternate forms of social organization we cannot yet know. We are living in an age of unprecedented transformation. We are in the process of becoming.”

KnowsMenLifeNeedsKindEndsSeemsRunningAgeEarthFormCoursesSocialProcessExistenceSocietyBecomingRacismMen And WomenOrganizationTransformationFoundationStructurePatriarchyThreateningConstructsHistoricHierarchyUnprecedentedMilitarismPatriarchal SocietyAnti RacistSocial OrganizationSystemic ChangeLinkagesExistence Of Life
Author:Gerda Lerner
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