A true Definition of Feminism - Equality that Enhances the Talent Pool

A Feminist by definition is a person (no matter their gender) who believes that the limits of an individual’s reach and success in life, should be determined by that person’s ability alone. There is no limitation because of gender, skin color, religious beliefs, or ethnicity. Talents vary according to individuals and with random relations to gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual preferences, and the other traits named above. Talent in a certain enterprise is not limited to one sex category or the other.  

Abilities are not determined by gender, physical stature, or wealth. Even a DNA/genetic predisposition to a inability can be overcome with perseverance and determination. Our fates are not predetermined, but in flux and changeable with effort and perspiration.   

The psychological limitations artificially established by man at the initiation of the Industrial Revolution are made moot by the advancement of capabilities brought on by the inventions and the intellect of (wo)mankind in the intervening time period. 

If Archimedes had a long enough lever, he could lift the bias of sexism from the face of the earth. Or even a woman could do the heavy lifting with mechanical advantage in her favor.  

The division of labor, man kills food and woman cooks it, should have died when the first caveman invented the wheel, because now using a spear, a woman could kill an animal and cart it home for dinner. A male chief could then flambe it over the fire in his man cave. A woman’s lighter foot might be a talent a group of hunter’s could use to sneak closer to their prey, assuring success in the kill. 

Each individual's talent should let her or him raise to the greatest level at which she or he can succeed. Talents vary across gender lines, and are individual specific, not sex or ethnic group related. 

“A group of women that NASA called ‘human computers,’ many of them black, helped put a man on the moon. Their intellect was an essential part of America’s ability to launch rockets into space.” (https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-african-american-women-behind-nasas-rocket-launches/)

You do not even need to be able to read to learn the link, as the movie Hidden Figures documents the history of this event quite accurately. Without the help of these minds (and I purposely left out a gender specific pronoun to make my point.), NASA might not have successfully launched a “man” into space.  

A Fem Noir twist on the paradigm of Noir murder mysteries allows two women (my protagonist and her partner) to successfully inhabit the Noir genre that Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and others popularized in the 1940’s and 1950’s. The women can be as hard-boiled as Lew Archer, and Travis McGee. Women can enjoy sex and men just as Mike Hammer was chauvinistic about the women. Samantha and Catherine can be as physical Jack Reacher, and as deductive as Sherlock Holmes. 

Instead of a Fem Fatale, what is wrong with a men fatale.  

Instead of the man using the woman and moving on, in today’s world of contraception and safe sex, shouldn’t a woman have the equality of using a man, enjoying it, and moving forward without a life time commitment? Especially if he looks like a hunk and rates a "10," in the same manner as Bo Derek did for the male audience. 

We are talking equality of the sexes and increasing the pool of talent to advance society. 

Let’s modernize the genre; let’s move into the future.

Fem Noir Mysteries are here and now.

My first short story: 30 years to Life will be published in late October in an Anthology collected by the Central Jersey Chapter of Sisters in Crime. The collection celebrates 30 years of Sisters in Crime and is called, 30 Shades of Dead.

-- L.A. Preschel 

Murdering Medical Myths – no surgery has a greater mortality rate than 100%

 This post previously was printed in the newsletter of Central Jersey Sisters in Crime. Membership in the organization offers an opportunity to learn the writer's craft and to discuss an author’s writing problems with friends who write mysteries. Support your local Sisters in Crime.  

Today, I offer proof that a single surgery can have a mortality rate of over 100%.

Dr. Robert Liston’s colleagues venerated him. In 1835, he became the first Professor of Clinical Surgery at University College in London. In 1846, he performed the first surgery in Europe using ether anesthesia. Prior to that, surgical patients were put under hypnosis to reduce pain. You felt it, but you did not remember how bad the pain was - post-hypnotic suggestion. He was famous for his surgical techniques, and inventing surgical tools. He was a man of many talents.  

Germs, however, were not his concern. They were too small to register on his radar. One of his students, Dr. Joseph Lister, who graduated University College in 1846, championed antiseptic technique and carbolic acid’s use as a disinfectant. We can thank him for Listerine, fresh breath, and survivable surgery.     

At that time, people judged a surgeon’s quality by his surgical speed. No greater authority than Florence Nightingale in Notes on Nursing offered that quickness in surgery was paramount to good surgery. In theory, the surgeon went so fast, the germs could not catch up and infect the patient. Just kidding. I imagine, speed diminished the amount of time the patient suffered from acute pain. 

Dr. Liston, the Ricochet Rabbit of surgeons, worshipped speed over accuracy.    

His surgeries became classroom demonstrations for his colleagues. He was faster than the funny cars at Englishtown during the Grand National Championships.        

In this pre-Listerian age, infection was the chief cause of death. Post-operatively the patients were sent to the public ward, which was essentially a warehouse of deadly microbes. Using the New York City grading system for restaurants, the ward would not qualify for an "F" rating. 

Caregivers did not wash hands between patients, becoming the Angels of Death (transporting infection from patient to patient – like a tick carrying Lyme disease). The rotting and dying patients’ festering wounds were agar plates for fatal germs. The old patients served up the fatal infections to the arrivals via the nursing staff and physicians. The lack of antibiotics or disinfectants made the ward’s infection rate higher than the number of individual Zooplankton in the Caribbean.     

Routinely, surgeons performed operation in front of street-clothed spectators. The physicians and associated medical personnel would encircle the surgeon to see his techniques. Their proximity to the surgeon made contact inevitable - farther contamination. Neither surgeon nor spectator wore a mask, as they formed a scrum about the patient. Their huddle further diminished the dim light available to the surgeon. The operations were performed in a 19th century dungeon.    

In this environment, Dr. Robert Liston amputated a patient’s leg in two and one-half minutes. Post-op, he shipped his patient to the public ward where he died from infection. (100% mortality).

Dr. Liston moved so swiftly that he accidentally amputated three fingers from his assistance hand. The assistant was treated and ... sent to the public ward to recover. Infection killed him. (Mortality 200%).

In addition, during the surgery, Dr. Liston inadvertently slashed the waistcoat and coat tails of an elder surgeon-spectator. The gentleman’s shock and fear caused an acute myocardial infarction (a heart attack). He died immediately. (300% mortality).

The surgery set a world’s record mortality rate. Dr. Liston holds the record for speed of a surgical amputation, 28 seconds, as documented by the Guinness book of records.

By today’s standards, he was a surgical Jack the Ripper, a serial killer in the OR. Dr. Liston routinely sacrificed accuracy for speed. In another under three minutes leg amputation, Dr. Liston accidentally amputated his patient’s scrotum with the leg. Oops, but that took a lot of balls.        

Thank you for your kind attention. 

-- L.A.Preschel

references: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_Nursing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lister
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur

The Noir World has Changed.

In the beginning, (1930’s & 1940’s) there was Hammett, Chandler and Cain. In the misty unlit pre-historic noir world of the Mystery-a-sauris Rex (the King before Stephen King), there existed our Adam in Garden of mystery’s Eden, Edgar Allen Poe.

The Lords of the publishing world saw it was good and perpetuated the noir divisions of gender roles to prevent procreation of ideas about the worth of a female mind. Only a snake of a publisher would let females be more than an after thought – an undeveloped furious character with a small role signifying nothing. The world of H.C.&C. demanded insignificant women as its truth. After all, men controlled publishing and wrote the rules. Women had babies and fixed their hairdos.    

From 1950 to 1980, Mike Hammer, Travis Magee and Lew Archer had their moment. Hard drinking and cigarette-smoking male P.I.'s were the blue plate special. Their world remained dark with evil in every shadow and behind each dark door. Women need not apply for active duty in such a world. They did not have the testosterone to handle it. (The eunuchs who published those manuscripts lacked the testosterone to change the paradigm - probably because it won't not earn them a dime.) At those times, a female character was either the window dressing necessary for a sex scene, or a fem fatale - the subservient part of the evil forces trying to distract and dissuade our hero.  

The world has changed. Rosie the Riveter and the mass invasion of the work force by females changed our world. Why there are even female CEO’s now, how progressive.

By 1980, women were expected to give birth and return to their jobs after 6 to 8 weeks maternity leave and while still twenty pounds heavier than when they left. Although still not paid at the level of men, they performed the same jobs with the same level of success.

Jennifer Doudna, inventor of CRISPR Cas9 gene editing therapy, changed our health expectations forever. It is a brave new world that we tread upon.

The universe had changed. Our noir stories should reflect the world the way it is today, unless we are writing a period piece. The stories should demonstrate empowered confident women, accomplishing goals that know no gender divide or bias.

An estimated 15 to 25 percent of the police force is female today. Multiple female private investigators are listed in every yellow page book across the country. These women back down from no one. In today's news, a female police officer subdued and arrested a felon via a fistfight – using appropriate force. This is the new reality.

Michael Connelly, one of my faves as an author (long live Harry Bosch), has a new book out: The Late Show. It stars a female cop, Renée Ballard who was demoted to the night shift because she filed a sexual harassment suit against a supervisor. She has to breaks some rules to solve her case, because she knows only a woman can get the job done. You go girl. It is the new fem noir.

The noir world needs female characters, who are fully developed and not cookie cutter supporting cast members for their male counterparts. Females today are not the shrinking violets of the 1920’s. They tend to more than the stove and the babies. They tend to business, and that includes bringing home the bacon.

We need to write about women that are alive and fulfilling their dream no matter the cost. They play under the rules established by men, but man's rules do not confine or define them. They won’t let the men in their lives determine who they are or what they can do.

Samantha (Sam) Cochran, a feminist P.I., knows all the rules of the game, because you have to know the rules, to know how to break them. No rule is sacred if it gets in the way of getting her job done. Machiavelli was a wimp. Here is Sam from her second short story.  
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The NYPD made a mistake when they pinned a gold detective’s shield on my chest, but recognizing my talent was not the mistake. On my promotion, I was the best detective in homicide. Their mistake: leaving the All-Star Freakin’ Misogynist Boy’s Club unprotected from me, a TNS woman on a mission of attitude adjustment.        
The seven good ole homicide boys, of assorted ages, sat around their table in a Neanderthal man-cave, wanting me to fetch coffee and lunch, maybe polish their boots and clean their guns. As if I were Sam Spade’s secretary, my job was to keep my valueless female theories to myself, and follow their orders.
I do not play that way, ever. I am an independent woman who knows how to use a gun.      

-- L.A. Preschel

Excited about Job Offer

Today I was offered a post in the Administration. Trumped any offer I have gotten in years. Unfortunately, I had to turn it down. I do not do temp work, even for the President. You know in Washington, you are here today and gone tomorrow.

At this time in the history of the United States of America, what feminist would consider voluntarily being confined in the White House? 

L.A. Preschel

In the beginning there was a feminist with a gun.

I propose to write noir murder and other mysteries with a twist that changes the expected roles of all the players. My first story is to be published in the Sister's in Crime Central Jersey Anthology entitled: 30 Shades of Dead. If you enjoy it, please look for the first in the Sam Cochran Mysteries: Lyin' Eyes which I hope to have published before 2017 becomes 2018.

Sam thanks you and so does her Nana, as well as Baby.

- L.A. Preschel