Essays on Women's Issues

by G.L. Horton

G.L. Horton's newest essays are now being posted on her stageblog.

Abortions Safer than Delivery
I believe that in terms of the woman's health, all abortions are safer than delivery, statistically. Removal of a developed fetus is no more dangerous than removal of a benign cyst or tumor.

Abortion Wars II?
If Bush gets a 2nd anti-abortion justice into the Supreme Court, maybe this play will get drafted into Abortion Wars II. I'm happy to donate it to anyone who wants to use it for ammunition.

Favorite Modern Playwright Poll
The dramatists@yahoogroups.com wrote: Enter your vote today! Who is your favorite modern playwright? And GLH asks: Whose brilliant idea was it to publish a list of nominees without a single woman on it?

Boston 2006 Theatre Season Bare of Women
Have women decided to be silent and let men choose our stories, speak for us, cast and direct us, critique us? Have we forgotten so soon?

When Play Contest Winners Are Mostly Men—or Women
Some women as well as most men are convinced that male characters and themes and "issues" are more dramatic, important, better. It only takes one person who dislikes plays about or by women on each round of readers to screen out all but a few females by the final round. The report on Women In Theatre from NYC a year ago...

Brute Impact of Motherhood on Artistic POV
There are far fewer parents in the theatre than in the general population. Plays that emerge from this process often present the older generation satirically or two-dimensionally, and are harshly judgmental toward the parent's failings...

Art Forms Not For Women...
SW writes: "What would you consider the art forms where women are not permitted to practice?" GLH replies: Noh, epic poetry, bagpipes.... In Classical Greek and Elizabethan theatre, acting and playwrighting. Seriously, most cultures have assigned certain arts to each gender...

Writing & Motherhood
Anonymous writes: "I am thinking of having one child, but I keep postponing. I have heard writers say that you cannot write at all for the first year of motherhood." GLH replies: Some can, some can't. Alice Walker says have only one, however. More is more than mortal flesh can cope with and do art, too. Then as a playwright you are in a better position than a novelist...

Lesbians Invisible?
CG asks: "Do you really think that lesbians have been invisible in the culture for thousands of years because we are too lazy/ ignorant/ disinterested /uninteresting/ untalented to be produced???" GLH replies: Do you distinguish between art that has overtly lesbian subject matter and art by lesbian artists?...

Concerning Miller's Crucible
Miller makes preadolescent Abigail a temptress ... This indeed has a "universal" quality-- it's like blaming Helen for the Trojan War, Eve for the Fall-- and so it passed unremarked at the premiere. The fifties were big on blaming women for social ills and male angst.

Media Mishigas
Don't forget history: some 20 years ago the women writers at the New York Times banded together and vociferously pointed out the gross male bias there -- for instance, that 70% of book readers and 55% of book writers are female, yet the Times reviewed 2-3 books by men for every one by a woman, and less than 10% of their regular book reviewers (and none of the theatre critics) were female...

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