One minute Irene Stuber’s eyes squint and her fists clench as she expounds about male-dominated society. The next minute she’s laughing and proudly chattering about her children and grandkids. She’s comfortable enough chatting, but an urgency surrounds her; there’s unfinished business.
Stuber, 68, is in the fifth year of her Internet crusade to educate the women–and men–about overlooked contributions females have made to the world and about the injustices they face daily. Stuber, sometimes known as “Cyber Granny,” found the Internet an excellent outlet for things that had been bugging her for her whole adult life. Working from her home here, she offers a daily collection of notes, news, history and opinion at several Web sites, including Women of Achievement, Herstory and Catt’s Claws. Women of Achievement (http://imageworld.com/vsp/istuber/woa.html), which has links to the other two sites and other information of interest to women, mushroomed from Stuber’s experiences with a women’s forum on Prodigy.
“I wish I could say one morning I awoke and said, `Wow,’ ” Stuber said. “But I guess there was a point where I got mad.”
When her feminist views intersected with access to the Internet, the direction of Stuber’s life changed.
“I’ve been a feminist all my life,” Stuber said. “We didn’t always call it that, but that’s what it was. I’ve always been interested in computers–saw the first UNIVAC.”
Stuber got her first computer in 1983, and a modem allowed her to tap into Prodigy 10 years later.
“There was a women’s forum on Prodigy,” Stuber said. “Being naive at the time about being on-line, I thought it was a forum. What it turned out to be was a thing where any guy could say anything to any woman, including really nasty things.”
Stuber said she had intended her postings for other women, but they irritated the male browsers who came across them.
“I started writing notes back and forth on the forum to other women and getting flamed by the guys. It ticked me off.”
Not the sort to duck or run for cover, Stuber began posting information about women’s history and health. She knew women’s issues weren’t getting the play that traditionally male subjects received on the Internet.
“Take breast cancer,” she said. “There was more information (on the Internet) about male pattern baldness, for God’s sake.” She gradually gained a following, but at a price.
“The flaming got real bad,” Stuber said. “One guy was taking our phone numbers and addresses and recommending we be harassed. I complained to Prodigy, but they said it was free speech.
“The attacks became so personal and so nasty. Women were writing me as if they were dying of thirst for this information. Girls had no idea there were women who had done so much.”
Stuber, who was president of the Arkansas chapter of the National Organization for Women in the early 1990s and is now president of the Hot Springs chapter, dropped Prodigy and hooked up with an Internet provider.
Stuber was providing research for Women of Achievement, but distribution of the information became too much of a chore. Jennifer Gagliardi, a computer technician in San Jose, Calif., answered her call for help, setting up an automated mailing list.
“I hope to put out a CD of primarily text,” Stuber said. “I also want to start an organization to put out this kind of information in a women’s encyclopedia, but on the Internet, where it’s uncensored and free.”
Uncensored is the only way Stuber does business. She’s frank and open when she speaks too.
“Being on-line is a daily vitamin pill for my self-esteem. It’s relatively inexpensive, and it is uncensorable, no matter what (Rep.) Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) thinks he’s going to do about it. It is information women can write for women without going through a male-dominated news organization. Count the number of men in news on TV and count the number of women. There are no women, yet the world is 53 percent women.”
Stuber writes about women like Nancy Wells Briney, born in 1911. She co-founded the Fireside Theatre project, which distributed plays by mail. The Literary Guild took over the project in 1949.
And there’s Eva Crane, born in 1912. She conducted research on bees and formed a worldwide organization to exchange information about bees and beekeeping.
Stuber said rewriting women’s history through the Internet is a time-consuming effort, although she enjoys the labor.
“What you see in Women of Achievement is my information. I’m a prodigious reader, a researcher. There is very little information about women on the Internet. My information comes from books.”
Stuber said she spent most of the summer of 1995 touring the Western U.S., spending part of her time searching for information about women’s heritage.
“At the border of each state the booksellers said, `Come back again,’ ” Stuber said with a laugh. “I came back loaded with books. It’s still spread out everywhere. I have sheets of paper with notes that I transfer to the computer.”
Her push to publish women’s history caught the attention of the publishers of “24 Hours in Cyberspace” in 1996, the same team that put together “A Day in the Life of America.” About 100 photographers shot subjects on Feb. 8, 1996. Stuber was one of 300 chosen from thousands of submissions for the project.
Besides Women of Achievement and Herstory, Stuber also handles Catt’s Claws, a home page that Mother Jones has called “a feminist rant.” It’s dedicated to venting frustration more than to distributing information.
“It’s old-fashioned feminism,” Stuber said. “I pull no punches; I admit I can get a little offensive. But the idea is to get the women’s movement off its butt.”
Catt’s Claws, which took its name from Carrie Chapman Catt, an aggressive feminist, was born after NOW leaders were slow to put information on the Internet. Despite a resolution to start a home page that passed at a NOW conference in San Antonio in 1994, Stuber said, the organization dragged its heels.
“I said, `They won’t do it, so I’ll do it.’ ” Stuber said. “They made me mad. They were too lazy to learn about the Internet.”
NOW started a home page about two months after Catt’s Claws debuted in 1995.
Catt’s Claws, Stuber said, drives home the point that miscarriages of justice for women happen every day, everywhere.
“By showing the same thing’s taking place in New York, California, Arkansas, wherever, it shows there’s a pattern to the abuse of women’s rights, and the government and law enforcement do nothing about it.”
Stuber said she receives about 200 e-mail messages per day from everywhere about every topic. Women, she said, have to realize their worth and many are beginning to.
“The forces trying to take away women’s rights never rest,” Stuber said.
“Men’s organizations want to repeal the 19th Amendment (which gave women the right to vote). More than 25,000 men have signed petitions to repeal it. There are militias, right-wing reactionaries. If you distill the rhetoric, the first thing they go after is women’s rights.”
Still, Stuber doesn’t blame men directly for the situation. She blames women and society for letting it begin and continue.
“Males are very privileged people. They see their privileges evaporating. They are backed by their religions. They can beat their wives and daughters and get away with it.”
Stuber said education can help balance the sexes. “Women have always needed more education. Historically, we have been so lied to.”
Her experiences with men have, in part, fueled her drive to spread the word about women.
She married in 1948, but it didn’t last. She had two daughters and a son from 6 months old to 3 years old when she divorced.
“My ex-husband didn’t want the responsibility of a wife and three children,” Stuber said. “I had very bad feelings about my divorce. Your ex-husband is in the Bahamas on a 65-foot yacht, and you’re working three or four jobs. How does that make you feel?”
She became a journalist and worked in Cleveland and Florida and landed in the French Quarter in New Orleans, which is “no place to grow old,” Stuber said, before she moved on to Dallas.
She settled in Hot Springs in 1983 and opened a gift store. She was financially devastated when it burned and her insurance company wouldn’t pick up the tab. But that fire put out another one.
“I stopped smoking when I turned in my key” to the property owner, Stuber said. “I was sitting in the store cleaning it out and I said, `I just smoked my last cigarette after 43 years.’ “
The physical damage had been done, however. Stuber has emphysema and said she probably doesn’t have much time left.
“All of us will die, but I can see the far wall. Fortunately, working at a computer is not strenuous.
“I have three granddaughters and a grandson. I don’t want them to go through what I went through to earn a living. They’ll have it better than I did. I can’t leave them any money, but I can leave them a better world.”
