FOCUS — #FemalePowerProject perSISTERS print honoring Marie Curie
Marie Curie, born Marya Sklowdowska in 1867, was a Polish chemist who spent her working life in France. She was extraordinarily brilliant and won two Nobel prizes, one in physics for investigations into radioactivity (she coined that term) and another in chemistry for her discovery of the elements Polonium and Radium. She worked closely with her husband, Pierre, and without his admiration, support, and acknowledgement it is unlikely that Marie would have been as publicly successful as she was. They adored each other. Their daughter, Eve, wrote a biography of her mother, and when I read the (graphic!) description of his accidental death I wept in sympathy.
Marie came of age in a part of Poland that was under oppressive Russian rule which forced Polish identity to go underground. On top of this cultural oppression, Marie was forbidden to pursue a university education because she was a woman. Because of these obstacles Marie worked 8 years as a governess to make money so her sister could get a medical degree in Paris, with the understanding that her sister would then support Marie’s education. This is what came to pass. In Paris Marie was first in chemistry in her class of 2000 students, and second in mathematics. She earned doctorates in both subjects. Because of Pierre, she never went back to live in Poland although she was passionate about justice for Poland.
Marie was a child prodigy and taught herself to read at the age of four. Her early interest in the sciences was sparked by her father’s encouragement and the display case of scientific instruments he had in his study. When Marie later was maturing as a scientist, part of her success came from her precise use of scientific gadgets to measure radiation and the mass of very small things. She had amazing powers of concentration, and I see this ability to FOCUS as her special power. The idea of concentration is also demonstrated in the work that won her that second Nobel prize—Marie single handedly processed a ton of waste ore from uranium mining (pitchblende) to create a tiny sample of pure Radium. She boiled huge cauldrons of the crushed rock in a caustic solution and then set the results out in small dishes to evaporate. She describes the beautiful sight of the hundreds of dishes glowing with radiation in the dim twilight of their decrepit laboratory.
Marie Curie’s first breakthrough was noticing something worth looking into. Antoine Henri Becquerel first noticed a peculiar property of Uranium, that it could expose photo paper. He had been studying phosphorescence, but these new rays were different because they did not depend on the material first being exposed to light—they were coming from the material itself. But, after writing six papers on the subject in 1897, he went on to other things because he thought he had found all there was to find. It was Marie’s idea to measure the electrical charge of the rays using a device that Pierre and his brother had invented. The device took great concentration and precision to operate, and few people were as patient and dedicated as Marie, who took a week to teach herself how to use the device. Measuring the strength of radiation was key to her finding that there was something more radioactive than uranium in the pitchblende ore—Polonium and Radium. Work on the nature of radioactivity was profoundly important to the development of our understanding of matter.
The Curies became enormously famous around the world but they lamented this distraction from their work. Albert Einstein said he had never met anyone who was as unaffected by fame as Marie Curie. She was also a very unusual woman for her time in other ways. She was not interested in clothes and other traditionally feminine things, although she was dedicated to her family life. I get the sense that she was workman-like about this, just as she was with her research. She was very passionate and had a scandalous affair with a married physicist after Pierre had died. She was generally not concerned about social constraints and rules. Why shouldn’t she be with a man she loves? However, she was shamed by the press and was nearly denied her second Nobel Prize because of the scandal. This episode was so painful to her family that Eve Curie couldn’t write about it in the biography. Eve said only that gossip created a scandal, and that the gossip was incorrect.
BE PROUD — #FemalePowerProject perSISTERS print honoring Megan Rapinoe
Megan Anna Rapinoe (born July 5, 1985) is an American professional soccer player who plays for and captains Reign FC in the National Women’s Soccer League. As a member of the United States women’s national soccer team, she helped the U.S. win the 2015 and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup as well as gold at the 2012 London Olympics, and finish runners-up at the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Since 2018, she co-captains her national team alongside Carli Lloyd and Alex Morgan.
Rapinoe is internationally known for her crafty style of play and her precise cross to Abby Wambach in the 122nd minute of the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup quarterfinals against Brazil, which resulted in an equalizer goal and eventual win for the Americans after a penalty shootout. During the 2012 London Olympics, she scored three goals and tallied a team-high four assists to lead the United States to a gold medal. She is the first player, male or female, to score a goal directly from a corner at the Olympic Games.
Here is the Rapinoe quote that appears behind her on this print: “If we want to be proud to be from a country like America and all the things that we hang our hats on, like diversity, equality, land of the free and home of the brave, it’s everybody’s responsibility to ensure that everyone in the country is being afforded the same rights.” In 2016, Rapinoe got a lot of attention for taking a knee during the national anthem to support Colin Kaepernick’s protest of racial injustice. She was one of the first white athletes to do so. She continues to protest during the National Anthem. “It wasn’t easy for me,” Rapinoe told Yahoo Sports about the backlash from taking a knee in 2016. “But it shouldn’t be. Whenever you’re trying to be an ally, and it’s super easy and comfortable for you, you’re not an ally.” She is an out lesbian and supporter of LGBTQ rights and other social justice issues. Before winning the 2019 World Cup, when asked, she had already refused to visit the White House because she didn’t want to be part of a platform legitimizing the injustices she sees in the current administration. “I feel like I’m a walking protest.” On International Women’s Day in 2019, all 28 members of the women’s national team filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation seeking equal pay and treatment to the members of the men’s team. Their whole performance during the world cup was equivalent to them saying, “We are worth it.”
I love this language describing her on the ussoccer.com website: “Megan Rapinoe is an irresistible force—on and off the field. Playful, inventive and out-of-the-box, she injects the U.S. WNT with the creativity and hunger she’s had since she grew up roaming the fields in Redding, CA…”
About the Image
Every image of a woman is a message—especially an image of a woman with a public job. Megan Rapinoe knows this and uses this. The whole women’s world cup team knows that part of their job is to entertain and celebrations are a deliberate part of that. I knew I had to make a print about Rapinoe when I saw the many versions of this image—her arms up, receiving and projecting power—and both the positive and negative comments attached to it (“She sure is full of herself”—is that a bad thing?). I thought, this will be easy to write about: an outspoken lesbian activist feminist athlete. But of course there is a lot to parse and it gets me thinking about many things, a few of which I have the time to mention here.
As is the way of the Web, I was led to many things as I researched Megan Rapinoe. Really, there’s too much, as always. 1. She pronounces her last name “Rah-PEE-noh.” 2. I found an article on the BBC site about how Afghan women athletes (and many woman seeking government employment) are harassed by officials and their coaches. They are asked to provide sex in return for jobs and advancement. No sex, no job, no place on the team. Slowly Afghan women are able to get attention focused on this injustice. Just think how complicated this is, and how compromising to women in power (what little power they can eek out), whether or not they had sex with the men who control their advancement. 3. Rapinoe and three of her soccer comrades have created a lifestyle brand to create non-binary clothing designs, among other unspecified things (re—inc) 4. while wearing a low-cut tuxedo jacket-with-shorts outfit (which she is wearing on the re—inc splash page but is not offered for sale there), Rapinoe flashed a nipple on live TV when she was filmed getting up from her seat on a ESPN awards broadcast. Is this a bug or a feature of non-binary fashion? Why is a nipple inappropriate?
5. And this is very interesting to me: previously the most famous photo of a female soccer player (that I could find) was a 1999 image of Brandi Chastain celebrating after kicking the winning penalty kick in that year’s Women’s World Cup. [You can see and read about it here.] She has pulled off her shirt and is kneeling, showing her sports bra—there was a big hoopla about the bra. (I bet if it had been called a tank-top instead, people would not have gotten so worked up). Her fists are in the air, her eyes are closed, her mouth open: bellowing in joy and relief. She looks amazingly strong and athletically fit. What I didn’t see mentioned is that we can see a prominent scar on Chastain’s left knee where she has obviously had surgery. Athletes pay a price for their “fitness.” (Rapinoe also has had knee surgery.) It is a beautiful image, perfectly composed. She got a lot of attention for this image. After this they made a rule that both women and men soccer players have to keep their shirts on.
I would like to highlight a few contrasts that color my interpretation of the image of Rapinoe. Chastain’s posture is unrehearsed, while Rapinoe’s has been deliberately created and repeated. Chastain is kneeling with her eyes closed and Rapinoe is standing with her eyes open. The open eyes directly acknowledge the audience, while closed eyes demonstrate an internal, more personal, event. Chastain’s image is mostly about her strong body and her joy. Rapinoe’s is perhaps more abstract than physical, and certainly more outward. It really is an acknowledgement of pride, but it also looks like an offering of pride. She seems to be saying to the crowd, “this is yours, too”. In Chastain’s posture I see strength and joy. In Rapinoe’s posture I see power and pride. Both images are humorous. Both express triumph.
Speaking of images, Rapinoe is modeling swimsuits on the Sports Illustrated website here.I’m sure a better writer than I would have much to say about what these photos mean about the male gaze and the female gaze and desire. I can tell that Rapinoe enjoys her own body. I feel like she has no shame about her carefully crafted body. It’s beautiful to see.
BE CLEAR — #FemalePowerProject perSISTERS print honoring Greta Thunberg
On 20 August 2018, after the heat waves and wildfires during Sweden’s hottest summer in 262 years, Greta Thunberg, who had just started ninth grade, decided not to attend school until the 2018 Swedish general election on 9 September. Her demands were that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement. She protested by sitting outside the Riksdag every day for three weeks during school hours with the sign “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (school strike for the climate). Her strike began attracting public attention after a Swedish climate activist with a wide social media following posted Thunberg’s photo and an English language video about her on his accounts. After the general elections, Thunberg continued to strike only on Fridays, quickly gaining worldwide attention. She inspired school students across the globe to take part in student strikes.
Adapted from Wikipedia
There are a lot of interesting things I could write about Greta Thunberg and her amazing ability to communicate and mobilize. One thing worth noting is that she “has a diagnosis” (her words)—what used to be called “Asperger’s Syndrome” and is now called “high-functioning autism spectrum disorder” (ASD). Another thing is that she was directly influenced by the strike actions of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school shooting survivors/activists in Parkland Florida. (See my works for Emma Gonzalez here and here.) This reminds me of a point Rebecca Solnit makes in her writing: how you cannot know the extended effects of your righteous actions, so you must always have hope, be active, and believe in your own power, even if you cannot know the eventual results of your actions.
Right now, though, I want mostly to amplify her own words. Please read this text of Thunberg’s speech to English MPs in April 2019 from The Guardian.
My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 16 years old. I come from Sweden. And I speak on behalf of future generations.
I know many of you don’t want to listen to us—you say we are just children. But we’re only repeating the message of the united climate science.
Many of you appear concerned that we are wasting valuable lesson time, but I assure you we will go back to school the moment you start listening to science and give us a future. Is that really too much to ask?
In the year 2030 I will be 26 years old. My little sister Beata will be 23. Just like many of your own children or grandchildren. That is a great age, we have been told. When you have all of your life ahead of you. But I am not so sure it will be that great for us.
I was fortunate to be born in a time and place where everyone told us to dream big; I could become whatever I wanted to. I could live wherever I wanted to. People like me had everything we needed and more. Things our grandparents could not even dream of. We had everything we could ever wish for and yet now we may have nothing.
Now we probably don’t even have a future any more.
Because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money. It was stolen from us every time you said that the sky was the limit, and that you only live once.
You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to. And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late. And yet we are the lucky ones. Those who will be affected the hardest are already suffering the consequences. But their voices are not heard.
Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?
Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilisation as we know it. That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50%.
And please note that these calculations are depending on inventions that have not yet been invented at scale, inventions that are supposed to clear the atmosphere of astronomical amounts of carbon dioxide.
Furthermore, these calculations do not include unforeseen tipping points and feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas escaping from rapidly thawing arctic permafrost.
Nor do these scientific calculations include already locked-in warming hidden by toxic air pollution. Nor the aspect of equity—or climate justice—clearly stated throughout the Paris agreement, which is absolutely necessary to make it work on a global scale.
We must also bear in mind that these are just calculations. Estimations. That means that these “points of no return” may occur a bit sooner or later than 2030. No one can know for sure. We can, however, be certain that they will occur approximately in these timeframes, because these calculations are not opinions or wild guesses.
These projections are backed up by scientific facts, concluded by all nations through the IPCC. Nearly every single major national scientific body around the world unreservedly supports the work and findings of the IPCC.
Did you hear what I just said? Is my English OK? Is the microphone on? Because I’m beginning to wonder.
During the last six months I have travelled around Europe for hundreds of hours in trains, electric cars and buses, repeating these life-changing words over and over again. But no one seems to be talking about it, and nothing has changed. In fact, the emissions are still rising.
When I have been travelling around to speak in different countries, I am always offered help to write about the specific climate policies in specific countries. But that is not really necessary. Because the basic problem is the same everywhere. And the basic problem is that basically nothing is being done to halt—or even slow—climate and ecological breakdown, despite all the beautiful words and promises.
The UK is, however, very special. Not only for its mind-blowing historical carbon debt, but also for its current, very creative, carbon accounting.
Since 1990 the UK has achieved a 37% reduction of its territorial CO2 emissions, according to the Global Carbon Project. And that does sound very impressive. But these numbers do not include emissions from aviation, shipping and those associated with imports and exports. If these numbers are included the reduction is around 10% since 1990—or an an average of 0.4% a year, according to Tyndall Manchester.
And the main reason for this reduction is not a consequence of climate policies, but rather a 2001 EU directive on air quality that essentially forced the UK to close down its very old and extremely dirty coal power plants and replace them with less dirty gas power stations. And switching from one disastrous energy source to a slightly less disastrous one will of course result in a lowering of emissions.
But perhaps the most dangerous misconception about the climate crisis is that we have to “lower” our emissions. Because that is far from enough. Our emissions have to stop if we are to stay below 1.5-2C of warming. The “lowering of emissions” is of course necessary but it is only the beginning of a fast process that must lead to a stop within a couple of decades, or less. And by “stop” I mean net zero—and then quickly on to negative figures. That rules out most of today’s politics.
The fact that we are speaking of “lowering” instead of “stopping” emissions is perhaps the greatest force behind the continuing business as usual. The UK’s active current support of new exploitation of fossil fuels—for example, the UK shale gas fracking industry, the expansion of its North Sea oil and gas fields, the expansion of airports as well as the planning permission for a brand new coal mine—is beyond absurd.
This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.
People always tell me and the other millions of school strikers that we should be proud of ourselves for what we have accomplished. But the only thing that we need to look at is the emission curve. And I’m sorry, but it’s still rising. That curve is the only thing we should look at.
Every time we make a decision we should ask ourselves; how will this decision affect that curve? We should no longer measure our wealth and success in the graph that shows economic growth, but in the curve that shows the emissions of greenhouse gases. We should no longer only ask: “Have we got enough money to go through with this?” but also: “Have we got enough of the carbon budget to spare to go through with this?” That should and must become the centre of our new currency.
Many people say that we don’t have any solutions to the climate crisis. And they are right. Because how could we? How do you “solve” the greatest crisis that humanity has ever faced? How do you “solve” a war? How do you “solve” going to the moon for the first time? How do you “solve” inventing new inventions?
The climate crisis is both the easiest and the hardest issue we have ever faced. The easiest because we know what we must do. We must stop the emissions of greenhouse gases. The hardest because our current economics are still totally dependent on burning fossil fuels, and thereby destroying ecosystems in order to create everlasting economic growth.
“So, exactly how do we solve that?” you ask us—the schoolchildren striking for the climate.
And we say: “No one knows for sure. But we have to stop burning fossil fuels and restore nature and many other things that we may not have quite figured out yet.”
Then you say: “That’s not an answer!”
So we say: “We have to start treating the crisis like a crisis—and act even if we don’t have all the solutions.”
“That’s still not an answer,” you say.
Then we start talking about circular economy and rewilding nature and the need for a just transition. Then you don’t understand what we are talking about.
We say that all those solutions needed are not known to anyone and therefore we must unite behind the science and find them together along the way. But you do not listen to that. Because those answers are for solving a crisis that most of you don’t even fully understand. Or don’t want to understand.
You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before. Like now. And those answers don’t exist any more. Because you did not act in time.
Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.
Sometimes we just simply have to find a way. The moment we decide to fulfil something, we can do anything. And I’m sure that the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Humans are very adaptable: we can still fix this. But the opportunity to do so will not last for long. We must start today. We have no more excuses.
We children are not sacrificing our education and our childhood for you to tell us what you consider is politically possible in the society that you have created. We have not taken to the streets for you to take selfies with us, and tell us that you really admire what we do.
We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.
I hope my microphone was on. I hope you could all hear me.
Links
Here are some resources you can use to learn more about Greta Thunberg.
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