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Rep. Maxine Waters: If you shoot me, you better shoot straight

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Rep. Maxine Waters isn't backing down, despite receiving death threats for encouraging opponents of President Donald Trump's immigration policies to confront members of his Cabinet. Be Smarter. Faster. More Colorful and get the full story at http://www.usatoday.com Want even more?!

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FROM MY RESEARCH, IT ALL BEGINS WITH APHRODITE, THE ANCIENT GREEK GODDESS OF SEXUAL LOVE AND BEAUTY.  THE GREEK WORD "APHROS" MEANS "FOAM".  APHRODITE WAS BORN FROM THE WHITE FOAM PRODUCED BY THE SEVERED GENITALS OF URANUS.

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BORN AROUND 630 BCE SAPPHO WROTE "ODE TO APHRODITE." SAPPHO WAS AMONG THE CANON OF NINE LYRIC POETS MOST HIGHLY ESTEEMED BY SCHOLARS OF HELLENISTIC ALEXANDRIA.

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SAPPHO BECAME A SYMBOL OF FEMALE HOMOSEXUALITY.  SHE CAME FROM THE ISLAND OF LESBOS, HENCE THE TERM "LESBIAN."

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BUT SOME ARGUE SHE COULD HAVE BEEN A PROMISCUOUS HETEROSEXUAL WOMAN.

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ASAPIA OF MILETUS (469 BCE) IS AN EXCELLENT EXAMPLE OF AN EDUCATED WOMAN WHO IS OFTEN CREDITED AS THE 'MOTHER OF RHETORIC'. SHE IS BELIEVED TO HAVE TAUGHT RHETORIC AND HOME ECONOMICS TO SOCRATES.  SHE INFLUENCED PLATO AND CICERO.

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DURING THE RENAISSANCE,  WHILE MANY EUROPEAN EDUCATORS WOULD RESTRICT  WOMEN'S EDUCATION, OTHERS WOULD NOT.  PERHAPS THE MOST NOTABLE EXCEPTION WAS THE EDUCATION OF MARY AND ELIZABETH TUDOR. VIVES TAUGHT MARY. ROGER ASCHAM TAUGHT ELIZABETH.

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MARY AND ELIZABETH ARE SPECIAL CASES BECAUSE, AS POTENTIAL RULERS, THEY WERE GIVEN WHAT WAS ESSENTIALLY A MAN'S EDUCATION. THE EXCLUSION OF WOMEN FROM THE SCHOOLS OF THE RENAISSANCE IS ESPECIALLY STRIKING IN LIGHT OF THE HUMANISTS' ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE NEED, INDEED THE DUTY, TO EDUCATE WOMEN AS WELL AS MEN. (BELOW, "A YOUTH WITH A JUG" BY JUDITH LEYSTER, DUTCH PAINTER, 1609-1660.)

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IN 1862, VIRGINIAN MARY DULANY, FAITHFUL DAUGHTER OF THE CONFEDERACY, CONFRONTED A GROUP OF UNION CALVARY INTENT ON COMMANDEERING HER FARM'S SPARSE RESOURCES.  DESPERATE TO STAVE OFF THE CONFISCATION, SHE FALLS BACK ON THE ONLY PROTECTION LEFT TO HER: SPEECH. "MY TONGUE BEING MY ONLY WEAPON," SHE WRITES IN HER DIARY, "I DETERMINED WHEN I CAME IN CONTACT WITH THE ENEMY TO USE IT IN SERVICE OF MY BELOVED COUNTRY." (HARRISON, P. 27)

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FROM THE 1830S TO THE 1900S, A CIRCUIT OF LECTURE HALLS KNOWN AS THE "LYCEUM MOVEMENT" FLOURISHED ACROSS THE UNITED STATES.  AT ITS PEAK, UP TO A MILLION PEOPLE A WEEK REGULARLY ATTENDED TALKS IN LOCAL VENUES.  WRITERS AND PUBLIC FIGURES SUCH AS FREDERIC DOUGLASS, RALPH WALDO EMERSON, ANNA DICKINSON (PICTURED BELOW), AND MARK TWAIN SPOKE.  WOMEN AND MEN PARTICIPATED IN DEBATE, ARGUING SUCH TOPICS AS "ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF IGNORANCE" OR "SHALL WE BE JUSTIFIED IN ASSISTING IRELAND IF SHE DECLARES HERSELF INDEPENDENT?"

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FROM 1870 TO 1920, THE PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN AMONG ALL COLLEGE STUDENTS MORE THAN DOUBLED FROM 21% TO 47%.  THE POPULARITY OF BELLETRISTIC RHETORIC HELPED ADVANCE WOMEN'S EDUCATION BECAUSE OF THIS RHETORIC'S FOCUS ON TASTE AND LITERARY STYLE RATHER THAN ELOQUENCE, AN EMPHASIS THAT FIT WELL WITH THE NINETEENTH CENTURY NOTIONS OF WOMANHOOD.

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Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer.  She was the first editor of the transcendentalist journal "The Dial."  Her book Women in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.

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Elizabeth Cady Statnton (1815-1902) was an American suffragist, social activist, abolitionist,  and leading figure of the early women's rights movement.   Her "Declaration of Sentiments," presented at the Seneca Falls Convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often credited with initiating the first organized women's rights and women's suffrage movement in the United States.

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Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1851, she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who became her lifelong friend and co-worker in social reform activities, primarily in the field of women's rights. In 1852, they founded the New York Women's State Temperance Society after Anthony was prevented from speaking at a temperance conference because she was female

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Kate Chopin (1850-1904) is now considered by some scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century feminist authors of Southern or Catholic background,  Elizabeth Fox-Genovese of Emory University, wrote that "Kate was neither a feminist nor a suffragist, she said so. She was nonetheless a woman who took women extremely seriously. She never doubted women's ability to be strong." Chopin's sympathies lay with the individual in the context of his and her personal life and society.

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WOMEN PERSISTED IN GAINING HIGHER EDUCATION. BY LATE IN THE 20TH CENTURY, MUCH OF THE INCREASE IN COLLEGE ENROLLMENT WAS MADE UP OF WOMEN, WHO WOULD COMPRISE 51.4% OF COLLEGE STUDENTS BY 1980 AND 57.1% BY 2003.  MANY OF THE NEW COLLEGE COMPOSITION TEACHING POSITIONS--BOTH ADJUNCT AND TENURE-LINE--WERE ALSO BEING FILLED BY WOMEN WHO EARNED DOCTORATES AT A SHARPLY INCREASING RATE BEGINNING IN THE 1970'S.  GOLD, HOBBS, AND BERLIN NOTE, HOWEVER, THAT THROUGHOUT THE 20TH CENTURY--ACROSS THE PROFESSION OF TEACHING--WOMEN HAVE DOMINATED AT THE PRIMARY LEVEL, DEMONSTRATED A CLEAR MAJORITY AT THE SECONDARY LEVEL, AND BEEN A MINORITY AT THE COLLEGE LEVEL.

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A 2008 SURVEY OF COLLEGE COMPOSITION AND COMMUNICATION CONFERENCE MEMBERS FOUND THAT WOMEN MADE UP 60.3% OF WRITING PROGRAM DIRECTORS AND 63.8% OF COMPOSITION INSTRUCTORS.
OVERALL, SALARIES FOR WOMEN--ESPECIALLY IN COLLEGE ENGLISH AND IN THE SCHOOLS--REMAINED AT LESS THAN THOSE FOR MEN DOING THE SAME WORK.

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Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. One of her great influences was Henry David Thoreau.  In a 1917 essay, Woolf stated that her aim as a writer was to follow Thoreau by capturing "the moment, to burn always with this hard, gem-like flame."  Stein influenced members of The Lost Generation, the generation that came of age during World War I. The term was coined by Stein and popularized by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway credited the phrase to Stein, who was his mentor and patron.

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Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was an American journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert. Day initially lived a bohemian lifestyle before gaining fame as a social activist after her conversion. She later became a key figure in the Catholic Worker Movement and earned a national reputation as a political radical[2] perhaps the most famous radical in American Catholic Church history. Day's newspaper, Catholic Worker, provided coverage of strikes, explored working conditions, especially of women and blacks, and explicated papal teaching on social issues

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Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century, and was credited with bringing the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse. Carol Muske in the New York Times Book Review; wrote that Rich began as a "polite copyist of Yeats and Auden, wife and mother. She  progressed in life (and in her poems …) from young widow and disenchanted formalist, to spiritual and rhetorical convalescent, to feminist leader...and doyenne of a newly-defined female literature."

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IN 1985 HARVARD UNIVERSITY SCHOLAR BARBARA MILLER SOLOMON PUBLISHED A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORICAL STUDY OF WOMEN'S HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES THAT BECAME AN INSTANT CLASSIC. IN THE COMPANY OF EDUCATED WOMEN: A HISTORY OF WOMEN AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA.  BENEFITING FROM THE EXPANDED WORK OF SPECIALISTS IN THE NEW FIELD OF WOMEN'S STUDIES, SOLOMON SYNTHESIZED SECONDARY SOURCES AND REEXAMINED PRIMARY MATERIALS, PROCLAIMING WOMEN'S HIGHER EDUCATION "AN UNFINISHED REVOLUTION"  THAT CONTINUES TO POSE COMPLEXITIES FOR WOMEN. (EISENMANN, 1997.)

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FINALLY, I ASK YOU TURN YOUR FOCUS TO THE RHETORIC OF A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY FIRST LADY.  JENA MCGREGOR, WRITING IN THE WASHINGTON POST IN 2016, CALLED MICHELLE OBAMA'S OCTOBER SPEECH AGAINST DONALD TRUMP'S RHETORIC "AN ABSOLUTE MASTER CLASS IN RHETORIC."  MCGREGOR SUGGESTS THE FIRST LADY'S SPEECH SHOULD BE "REQUIRED VIEWING FOR EVERY LEADER."  THE FIRST LADY OFFERED HER AUDIENCE AN ELUSIVE QUALITY OF LEADERSHIP: "AUTHENTICITY."  WATCH BELOW.

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Michelle Obama's epic speech Tuesday in New Hampshire should be required viewing for every leader. Not because of its political content. Not for her strongly worded endorsement of Hillary Clinton or her scathing takedown of the Democratic nominee's "opponent" -- the First Lady refused to even say GOP nominee Donald Trump's name -- that has already been called a " defining moment in the presidential campaign."

Rather, it was for the absolute master class she offered in that elusive quality of leadership: "authenticity." It is among the most jargon-laden, vague concepts touted by leadership consultants and coaches, the subject of countless books and training seminars promising yet another elixir to effective speech-making or good leadership.

But on Thursday, Obama provided a stark reminder that this nebulous quality comes not from a book. It comes from the gut. With inclusive and personal stories, emotionally strong yet vulnerable tone and body language, and a passionate appeal rooted in her own experiences, Obama embodied the widely praised but rarely replicated feat of seeming "real" that escapes so many leaders.

Much has been said about the First Lady's skill at this. In her extraordinary July Democratic National Convention speech, Obama made moving, personal remarks, delivered in emotional terms, about what it meant for her to be a black woman raising two daughters in the White House. She previewed her aspirational, moral high-road approach to taking on Trump in her commencement speech at the City University of New York in June.
How Michelle Obama talks to voters in a way Hillary Clinton can't
Yet on Thursday, that ability, combined with the urgency of the election's final sprint, resulted in one of the most powerful speeches yet delivered -- by any candidate or any surrogate -- in this campaign. She opened with a relatable appeal, still appearing to be awed somewhat by where she is, drawing the audience in by talking to them like friends. "Let me just say, hello everyone!" Obama said in an almost girlish voice, and then "that's very sweet of you, I love you, too!" No hint of a speechwriter or a script.

Though she didn't share specifics around stories of her own (she doesn't have to -- we're all too familiar with how her body has again and again been the subject of derision), she made clear how much she can personally relate to the experiences other women have -- much as her husband did when, following the Trayvon Martin shooting, he talked about the racism he's experienced himself. "It's like that sick, sinking feeling you get when you're walking down the street minding your own business and some guy yells out vulgar words about your body. Or when you see that guy at work that stands just a little too close, stares a little too long, and makes you feel uncomfortable in your own skin."

By casting her own experience as similar to others', she made herself relatable and accessible, even if she in fact has experienced worse slights and body shaming than many women ever do. Here was the First Lady of the United States, among the most popular and influential women in America today, saying she too identifies with the feelings of women on the street. "Maybe we're afraid to be that vulnerable. Maybe we've grown accustomed to swallowing these emotions and staying quiet, because we've seen that people often won't take our word over his."

But it's not just the words she used, it's the way she used them, channeling emotion that was both intense and vulnerable at the same time. Obama's voice cracked when she spoke, seemingly shaken by raw feelings just under the surface. She slipped up, having to restart or repeat words several times, making her seem less rehearsed and appear that genuine emotion is just getting ahead of what her mouth could say. Her body language was at times literally heartfelt -- placing an outstretched hand over her heart as she made a key point. "It is cruel. It's frightening. And the truth is, it hurts. It, it, it hurts," she said Thursday, touching her chest.
Michelle Obama's speech on Donald Trump was remarkable
Perhaps most of all, she both spoke about and showcased in her delivery the passion she feels about the subject. Using highly personal, unguarded language about how she's been affected by the language Trump used in the video released last week, she said "it has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn't have predicted." And then: "I listen to all of this and I feel it so personally, and I'm sure that many of you do too, particularly the women. The shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect."

Obama has no doubt worked to carefully nurture a relatable image for herself, one of a woman who mixes high and low fashion, who can poke fun at mom dancing, who just wants to shop at Target. But she has also endured scorching criticism from the right about her body and her initiatives that offer real fuel for the fiery passion she displayed on Thursday. As Obama showed, personal stories, a natural delivery and raw emotion can help leaders get at that amorphous quality of "authenticity." But it must also come from the gut.
Read also: Kaine and Pence spent more time talking about Putin's leadership than their own Women could soon lead the world's three largest economies Like On Leadership? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes.

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Opinion | Michelle Obama's epic New Hampshire speech was a master class in speaking from the gut

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Michelle Obama's epic speech Tuesday in New Hampshire should be required viewing for every leader. Not because of its political content. Not for her strongly worded endorsement of Hillary Clinton or her scathing takedown of the Democratic nominee's "opponent" -- the First Lady refused to even say GOP nominee Donald Trump's name -- that has already been called a " defining moment in the presidential campaign."

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Crisco, Virginia.  "Reading Diverse Rhetors and Rhetorics: rewriting history, reimagining scholarship". In: Composition Studies, Fall 2014, Vol 42, Issue 2, p. 155.

Eiesenman, Linda. "Reconsidering a Classic: Assessing the History of Woemn's Higher Education a Dozen Years after Barbara Solomon." Harvard Educational Review; Cambridge. Vol 67, Iss 4, Winter, 1997. p. 689-717.

Fleckenstein, Kristie S. "The Rhetoric of Rebel Women: Civil War Diaries and Confederate Persuasion" In: South Atlantic Review. Summer, 2015, Issue 3, p. 269.

Gaines, Rondee.  "Rhetoric and a Body Impolitic: Self-Definition and Mary McLeod Bethune's Discursive Safe Space" Howard Journal of Communications, Apr-June, 2016. Vol 27, Issue 2, p. 167-181.

Halpern, Faye. "The House of My Sojourn: Rhetoric, Women, and the Question of Authority" In: Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers. June, 2012, Vol 29, Issue 2, p. 343.  University of Nebraska Press.

Murphy, James A. A Short History of Writing Instruction. New York, Routledge, 2012.

Regaigon, Dana Rossman. "Conversational Rhetoric: The Rise and Fall of a Women's Tradition, 1600-1900." In: Composition Studies, Fall, 2012, Vol. 40, Issue 2, p. 153

Woyshner, Christine A. and Hao Kuo Tai, Bonnie.  "The History of Women in Education." Harvard Educational Review, Winter, 1977.