Gertrude Caroline Ederle, better known as Trudy Ederle, (October 23, 1905 – November 30, 2003) was an American competitive swimmer. In 1926, she became the first woman to swim across the English Channel at the age of 19.
At the 1924 Summer Olympics, she won a gold medal as a part of the US 400-meter freestyle relay team and bronze medals for finishing third in the 100-meter and 400-meter freestyle races. She had been favored to win a gold medal in all three events and was bitterly disappointed in the outcome.
Only five men had been able to swim the English Channel before Ederle. The best time had been 16 hours, 33 minutes by an Italian-born Argentine, Enrique Tiraboschi. Ederle walked up the beach at Dover, England after 14 hours and 39 minutes. The first person to greet her was a British immigration officer who requested a passport from “the bleary-eyed, waterlogged teenager.”
“People said women couldn’t swim the Channel but I proved they could.”
One of the most famous all-female combat units (such did exist, in the aviation branch) was the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment under Major Yevdokiya Bershanskaya. “Even the maintenance personnel were all women!” The Germans dubbed this unit the “Night Witches”. They flew slow Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes on bombing missions that disrupted the German rear areas. Because the maximum speed of these craft was below the stall speed of most German fighters, they were difficult to shoot down. They were so effective that the Germans had to send special units to oppose them. It was the most highly decorated unit in the VVS (Voenny Vozdushny SIl, “Military Air Force”), and 23 of its members received the honor of being “Heroes of the Soviet Union”. Over 1,000 women served as combat aircrew in all units during the war. The most famous female fighter aces were Lieutenant Lydia Litvak (“the White Rose of Stalingrad”) (14 victories) and Lieutenant Yekaterina Budanova (12 victories), both of whom died in battle.
“We grow up being told that anger is bad. Good girls do not express their anger, good girls play nice, they accommodate, they please. It is time we start looking at anger differently. Why are we so bent on suppressing this anger when for so many, it is the only emotion left in the face of injustice? Why should young women appear compliant and docile when they are obviously being subjected to violence or inequity? Why shouldn’t anger be a legitimate drive for our politics? Change will not come because we ask for permission, change will happen because we leave no other alternative.”
— Flavia Dzodan, “Show them how to resist: Connecting girls, inspiring futures” at Tiger Beatdown (via morecoffee)
Tonight I was sitting at work and listening to several of my coworkers talking. One of them asked some of the married guys if they had asked their wife’s father’s permission to marry her. The younger guy, in his 30s, said he did not, and thought it was old-fashioned. Two…
