Remember me?

So, where did I leave off?  That’s right, talking about myself, wondering if I were vain and realising that, in itself, is a form of vanity.

I suppose that realisation might be partly responsible for the radio silence, since, gosh, March. I started to wonder what I was doing on here and what purpose it served, other than validating my own opinions. At the same time, lots of people kept talking to me about the blog, about feminism, even apologising for doing ‘non feminist’ things and I realised the blog seemed to be losing its way. I wanted to explore all those grey areas of feminism, to explore how my generation of women were negotiating their place in the world. The idea was not to regurgitate the old debates or spout a hard line about the way women should be, but that’s how some people took it. ‘Feminism’ is a judgement-laden term it seems.

 But I thought it might be time to try again. Which, unavoidably, means talking about myself some more.

So what’s been happening since March?

1.     I got seriously unhappy. I felt I was drifting and didn’t really know what I wanted and seriously didn’t know how to get what I wanted.

2.     I snapped out of that and got my self a nice new job. Exciting school; more responsibility. Gulp.

3.     I formed a new 5 year plan. It involves spending a lot of money on holidays, at the same time trying to save up for a proper house and maybe, at some point, making a baby. Gulp.

4.     I got happy and full of the joys of life again.

5.     I’ve vowed to be more creative and so am working my way through the Guardian’s poetry workshop. The results are mixed.  My mum likes them though. She’s not exactly my harshest critic.

I am woman, hear me roar. Sometimes. Maybe. 

Let’s see if I can spin some comment out of that little lot.

Anxiety lies at the heart of it. Anxiety about whether I’m doing the right thing, whether I’m making the right decisions, whether I’m heading in the right direction, whether I’m making the most of my life. I do worry I’m letting myself down. Have I settled for being a teacher? Could I have a brilliant play or novel in me, if I just tried a bit harder? What is it that actually makes me LOVE being married so much? Should I have rejected that urge like so many of my friends seem to be doing? Will having a baby push me further into being a conventional woman when that's the last thing that really feels right for me? How can I stop that from happening? Shouldn’t I just get over myself and realise I’m not actually anything special?

How much of that is just a human experience do you think? How much of it is particular to women? Do more women than men feel the tug of seemingly opposing desires and priorities? Has this changed over the generations? Were our mothers and grandmothers just as anxious?

That’s a lot of questions. Does anybody have any answers?

Michael Winner, Breasts and Women's double standards

I found a curious tale of the English eccentric falling foul of the dangers of Twitter in this week’s Observer.  Victoria Coren has come to blows with the infinitely eccentric Michael Winner.  And it’s all over breasts.

 Perhaps when Michael Winner started drooling over the fullness and pertness of Ms Coren’s assets he genuinely thought that it was a harmless, private joke and when his followers  joined in, he thought it was just banter amongst friends.

Obviously, Victoria isn’t so happy about the situation.

 I felt embarrassed and sad. I can bluster my way through a comedy feud, but I'm not a stripper who confidently offers her assets for appraisal. I'm a writer, with an imperfect, private body. It was embarrassing to have a thousand people sharing public opinions about my chest.

There’s no arguing with that, is there? As Victoria points out herself, she doesn’t put her body on show for comment. Although she’s well known and obviously courts publicity, the wares she is selling are her writing and her wit and it is these things that she should be judged on.

So far, so feminist. But the whole premise of this blog is to explore the grey areas and face uncomfortable truths about modern women and modern feminism.

Dare I say it? (Of course I dare!) Many women often enjoy the objectification of their sexuality by men.  I need to be careful here, in so many ways, I’m treading on uneven ground and could easily fall flat on my face.

I’ll give you an example. A couple of weeks ago I was party to a conversation in which one woman related a comment she had heard about her friend’s bum, you know the usual crass, clichéd, slightly dirty remark. Were these women outraged? Made to feel uncomfortable?  Not at all. “I’m quite pleased with that -  I hardly ever get comments on my bum these days.” “I thought you would be -  that’s why I told you.”

Now, that sort of remark rarely pleases me: I just can’t get over feeling uncomfortable and yes, outraged. However, I also can’t help feeling a warm glow if I’m called pretty or, even on occasion, beautiful and it’s always better if it’s from a man.  

Should we be blamed for such reactions.? We live in a world where beauty, attractiveness and sexiness are key female attributes. Of course women feel a sense of achievement and satisfaction when they are complimented because they have just been validated on the terms society judges them by.  I’d be equally happy to hear comments about how clever I am (why, thank you, I do try…) but this hardly ever happens.

 We all want to be attractive, it’s natural. But surely, so do men? I asked a male friend if he ever gets  complimented and he said hardly ever; sometimes someone might say they like his tie. But people aren’t going around talking about how witty and clever he is either. I don’t really know what to make of this.

The main difference between the sexes on this issue seems to be an absence of sexual judgment in the everyday experience of men. I’d bet that nearly every woman has had some sort of unwelcome and unsolicited comment about her looks, and more specifically, about her sexuality. And it’s not just compliments. I’ve been told ‘not to bother – it’s not working’ whilst jogging past a gang of boozing men and have been told I’m a ‘stupid ugly cow’ for riding a bike. Both comments made me angry, and perhaps, to my shame, a little sad, because they chipped away at my sense of attractiveness.

I certainly have the right to go about my life without such abuse but perhaps until we can learn to treat the two imposters just the same, and stop revelling in the favorable comments, we’re giving licence to certain types of men to offer their opinions on our breasts and our bums and anything else they care to dissect for their approval or their judgment.

Because, as Victoria Coren says, it’s not always harmless banter.

How does Michael Winner treat a nervous 23-year-old waitress when he's showing off in the Ivy? What does he say about the daughters of his friends? And these critical men who rush to defend the principle of dirty personal remarks; how do they behave around girls who are more timid, less articulate, less battle-weary than I am?

 

The Chore Bore

  Chores are the single biggest bugbear of my life and my relationship. I love order and want one of those homes that is always clean and calm but I just can’t be bothered to devote the time needed to keep on top of it. My husband, whilst basically very clean indeed, is not as enamoured of order and tidiness. Cue an argument that I fear may last a lifetime. Literally.

Meg, over at reclaiming wife, does a good job of summarising the tensions as well as offering some practical ways forward.

I had intended to offer the link and leave it there, but I’ve never been one for letting the chance to air an opinion pass me by.

Meg doesn’t want to make it all about gender and to a certain point she’s right: male or female there are a hundred more interesting things to do than vacuum. There is, however, plenty of research to suggest that housework is generally not divided equally between men and women when the genders cohabit.

This research echoes my own experience. My husband claims not to notice the dust gathering, or the stains on the hob, or the crumbs on the kitchen side. I don’t believe this is because he’s trying to shirk out of his responsibilities or because he expects his good little wife to sort it all out for him; I suspect it’s because he spent the first 25 years of his life having his mother sort it all out for him and there’s a whole host of gender conditioning at work there.

Does it matter? It matters personally for me and I’ll continue to scream and shout and huff and puff until my husbands DOES notice those crumbs and it does feel like we’re sharing the chores equally. But I’m not sure that the tensions in my private relationship should be a cause for public concern. At the end of the day, I don’t feel oppressed by his reluctance to clean the bathroom.

 But then the whole premise of the movement had its roots in freeing women from the chains of the domestic sphere, enabling them to play a more fulfilling role in the public domain. I fear that the lack of balance in household chores betrays a still deeply held sentiment that women’s natural place is presiding over the home. We are allowed to go out and play at the career we choose, as long as we still have a handle on the washing up.

In which case, my giving in and cleaning the bathroom when it’s his turn takes on a whole new, political, significance.  And that’s what I’ll console myself with next time we let the limescale take over. 

Dominic Raab's raw deal

It must be tough for Dominic Raab, facing all that discrimination as a white, middle-class man.

Photo from Evening Standard website. Note the low angle shot. Makes him look all big and powerful, like a real man.

He’s the Conservative MP for Esher and Walton and apparently he believes that men get a ‘raw deal’ in our society because of ‘out of touch lefties’ fighting for women’s rights.

Oh, and apparently we should be grateful that the pay gap is now only 10%  as opposed to  17% when pay equality legislation was introduced in the 1970s. Thank you kind sir for your little scraps of kindness.

It’s the old complaint that efforts to redress gender inequality is, in fact, discriminatory towards men.  But as a teacher, I am acutely aware that equality is not about treating everybody the same, it’s about equity of outcomes. The equality and diversity agenda, that Raab seems to be have set himself against, is an attempt to ensure that disadvantaged groups have the chance to equal outcomes and life chances.

So, dear Mr Raab, please don’t feel so threatened by women’s effort to right the wrongs of a deeply patriarchal culture. It’s really not about undermining or limiting your choices in any way, merely asserting our own.

(Click onto that Evening Standard link and marvel at the ignorance of some commenters. Particularly 'conspiracy factualist'. Brace yourselves, he's something special.)

Hearts and Minds

I wasn’t going to post today. I’ve spent twelve hours in a lightless, airless institution and frankly the will to live, let alone to write, seemed to evaporate little by little with the passing of every hour. But then I came home and my husband had laid out, very neatly,  the magazines from the Sunday papers for me. So I smiled, and read and smiled some more and the cogs started turning.

The Sunday Times magazine has a regular feature called ‘Relative Values’ in which two family members talk about their differing perspectives on the relationship. This week it is a mother and daughter. 76 year old Elizabeth tells us about “ambition, maternal guilt, missed sports days and atrocious cooking.” It struck a chord with many of the issues that have cropped up on my baby blog in the first week of its life.

“I’d have gone mad if I’d stayed at home, and I think that would have been worse than not being there.”

Yes! I firmly believe that happy women make good mothers. One of my greatest fears is that becoming a parent will create a seething resentment towards my children and towards my husband because the role of motherhood will push me into a corner I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to occupy. (I reiterate that I speak from an absolutely personal perspective and by no means think that the choice to be a stay at home mum is the wrong choice.)

My husband thinks this is a load of old tosh. He can’t conceive that I might one day wake up and realise I've accidentally become a suburban housewife.* He can't conceive that I'll ever live my life in a way that isn't essentially ruled by my own desires and needs. But isn’t that what we all think? That we’re somehow special? That it won’t happen to us? That we’ll forge a new way?  That we won't get bogged down by the weight of responsibility.

The fact is, in order for that all important ‘choice’ to be meaningful, women need men on board.  Dare I say it, that even our 21st Century society is deeply patriarchal and we do, indeed, still need men to ‘grant’ us our rights and freedoms, because they are still holding the cards. We need men who will be willing to share the household chores, to share the child caring roles, and men who won’t feel a petty emasculation in doing so. We need men who are also willing to fight our cause. We need men who are brave enough to call themselves feminists. We need men who are brave enough to recognise that they are nurturers too.

Today the coalition government announced their intention to carry out the Labour pledge of flexible maternity leave. For the first time, women will be able to transfer a proportion of their maternity leave to their partner (up to six months.) This is significant legislation and a step in the right direction. But a leap in mere law is not enough. I do wonder how much a change in the details of maternity leave will actually result in a change in the details of women’s lives.

This legislation will be rendered meaningless if the partners of women are not willing to give up work to stay at home with the baby.  This is a role men are told they can’t perform as well as women. A role they are told they shouldn’t perform if they truly value their masculinity. A role they fear they will be ridiculed for fulfilling. Parental leave is not just a matter of the statute book, it's a matter of culture.

I suspect the bigger battle still lies in winning the hearts and minds of men.

* To be absolutely fair to my husband, and I think I must, he has offered, when the time should come, to give up work to share the child rearing duties, either full or part time, depending on what we agree together. In intention at least, he really is a goodun.

Power, determination and guilt

Interesting Guardian article on the first female G8 finance minister

"You draw up priorities, and you accept a lot of guilt."

But I don't WANT to accept a lot of guilt.

(Throws toys out of pram. Calms down with Saturday morning coffee.)