Misogyny, Projective Identification, and Mentalization: Psychoanalytic, Social, and Institutional Manifestations by Karyne E Messina

Author:Karyne E Messina [Messina, Karyne E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Women in Politics, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Feminism & Feminist Theory, Social Science, Movements, Political Science, Mental Health, Women's Studies, Gender Studies
ISBN: 9780429576683
Google: ENSNDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 44671997
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-03-20T11:15:30+00:00

The women fight back

In May 1927 the intrepid Grace Fryer, who had shrewdly left U.S. Radium to become a bank teller, helped the other women with their claims against the company. Her efforts also helped future generations of women. It had taken two years to find a lawyer brash enough to take on their case, who did not insist on upfront retainers, and who was equipped with a theory to counter their first obstacle: the short statute of limitations on “industrial accidents” in New Jersey, extended from five months to two years. That lawyer was Raymond H. Berry, and his tactics succeeded. Soon the press joined the team with headlines that graphically depicted the sickly and physically limited state of the women who were in court (Moore, 2017).

It is important to note that the radium girls eventually had help; some professionals came forward. Some dentists and doctors testified on their behalf, particularly Harrison Martland, an Orange County medical examiner who invented the two tests that definitively detected radium poisoning (Moore, 2017). Just as valuable at an early stage were civilly active, networked women with a strong social conscience, intellectual descendants of Jane Addams: Katherine Wiley, a founder of the national nonprofit Consumers League, who was alerted by a woman in the business-oriented New Jersey Department of Labor; Dr. Alice Hamilton, professionally trained in industrial toxicology; and a third woman, known to both and a skilled medical statistician, Frances Perkins. Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, Perkins initiated three federal investigations (Moore, 2017). In fact, Arthur Roeder of U.S. Radium blamed “women’s clubs” for all the noise (Moore, 2017). His company, of course, denied any wrongdoing and defended itself in spite of the deaths.

There also were a number of postponements and other legal irregularities that delayed proceedings in the cases against radium companies. At one point when another delay appeared to be forthcoming, one of the women’s groups that was working on making sure the court case got through the system enlisted the help of Dr. Hamilton to make sure another postponement did not occur. It was at that point that well-known journalist Walter Lippmann wrote a powerful column in The New York World (Moore, 2017). Lippmann chastised the judicial system for delaying the proceeding of dying women who only had a small amount of money to gain at the end of their lives. Perhaps he influenced public opinion, which may have led to an eventual out-of-court settlement, providing each victim with $15,000 (equivalent to more than $200,000 today) to cover past and ongoing medical costs, and a $600-per-month annuity for life. The women who filed suits against U.S. Radium accepted the offer because most had huge medical bills and several were near death. The annuities were a good gamble for the company.

When the issues were better known in 1939, a suit in Chicago was filed on behalf of the Ottawa dial painters, argued by another bold but little-known lawyer, Leonard Grossman. Radium Dial fought it on appeals all the way to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case.

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