fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

So, keeping in mind that I am supposed to be writing about Being Nice , I would like to acknowledge that I am a product of my upbringing and I am a Misogynist Asshat , albeit a Female one. One of my least favorite instances of manifesting this dirty little habit was when my boss insulted two female superiors to my face using some of the traditional weapons ranged against women in the workforce: 1. When they got their way they were horrible people instead of better political players What I call the Help, The Ladies Are Beating Me (Up) argument and 2. To his taste they were not feminine in the way they interacted with people What I will call the Ewww, The Ladies Are Revolting (When I Don't Fancy Them) argument So there he was, aggressively undermining my female superiors in terms of his perception of how they should behave, not because of what they had actually done. And I was showing signs of that incomprehensible reaction to superiors being Asshats that I always sh...

I was very much enjoying the civilised pace and educational inclination of my writing on travel for Frances when the politics of my country became decidedly uncivil. And while I tried, unsuccessfully, to stay on the windy side of being positive and general when I wrote about current affairs, my own opinions eventually became so strong I decided to discuss them under the topic Janine had given me, which was ‘why aren't people nice?' Janine has a philosophy of life - 'be nice' - that I respect because in her hands it is robust and has a strong emphasis on thinking outside yourself, of service. Janine is an educator of medical staff, and of the many responsibilities she has the most important is giving her students the tools to deal with the complexities of the life ahead of them in their profession. I rang Janine to let her know that I was addressing her topic next and we had a lively conversation on the techniques of being nice and the benefits and drawbacks of bei...

I ran my first impressions of Animal past the director before posting it, and his questions on three important aspects of the play inspired an early morning reply that I think should sit beside the original piece . The director asked if I had picked up the theme of absent fathers and I had to admit that while that theme would have registered with me, my opinions on the situation presented to the characters by absent fathers would not be put forward because I am not a man. I can only write what I know, and I know how social systems treat women. It is as plain as the nose on my face that the patriarchy project is just as destructive for men as for women, but I am not tempted to put forward opinions on how men mediate their own sense of identity. My only legitimate concern is how they create their identity in relation to women, and I have no problem expressing my opinion in that area. How men deal with their male role models is the remit of men, and I simply hope that they will steer aw...

I saw a theatre production last night that had a special significance for me and this blog. During the F Word Fortnight , I was engaged in a very interesting conversation about feminism and women on stage with the director of Animal as his cast was in their rehearsal period. The director was sure that Animal would be of interest to me, and happily, when I got to be in the audience, it really was. The director had told me that there was only one female character on stage, but she was not the only woman in the play, and indeed I discovered that the women in the play were numerous, active, dissenting and subverted some very interesting stereotypes. The single female and two male characters actually on stage conjured these women into life in very different and interesting ways. The character of Pongo adds his beloved and lovely mother to the population of unseen women onstage. Pongo is the every-person character, and in Kingsley Judd’s incredible hands he is the essential rage of men...

There is something very uncivil happening every day in the world, and it depends on where you are as to what part of it you watch and which part you speak up about. Today I was watching America during the wait to see what happened in Australia , because on the same day two extraordinary legislative dramas were played out in the Texas Senate and the Supreme Court. Today the Supreme Court struck down a section of the Civil Rights Bill that seeks to prevent electoral discrimination, and Wendy Davis attempted a 13 hour filibuster to block a Senate Bill restricting the operation of abortion clinics in Texas. From inside American I suspect the issues are complicated and partisan, clouded by history and political polarization, but to me it still seems surprising that legislators are still restricting the health and birth control choices women are allowed access to, and that the legislators in power think that they no longer need to check their own privilege. When those with legislative ...

INTRODUCTION From: Mr Les To: Mr Mike, Miss Claire Subject: Disruption of Access to Shared File Server Mike Mr Boss after a bit of deliberation dropped the request for this .hence it fell off the weekly meeting radar Les From: Mr Mike To: Mr Les, Miss Claire Subject: Disruption of Access to Shared File Server LOL Claire – please cancel letter. Mike From: Miss Claire To: Mr Les, Mr Mike I can’t tell you how happy I am to receive this email. I’d like to thank Mike, for always providing me with emailed drafts of many colours and holding many exotic images extracted from PDFs. I’d like to thank Les, for always putting a space before the full stop, and not after it. I’d like to thank Mr Boss, for his eternal search for medicinal honey, which lightens my day (reading about honey is pretty fun) *cries* *is led off stage* MR LES IS OFTEN A LEGEND From: Mr Les To: Miss Claire Subject: wp rev 2 letter and attachments Claire Did Mr. Boss get a copy of th...

For Frances, on the theme of travel. For readers of multi-volume stories, the characters you grow up with always have a special place in your heart. For me Granger, Weasley, Snape and Potter were the much loved companions of my twenties, both in books and on screen, and I felt I was setting a slice of my imagination in amber after watching the last movie. It was a sad thought that I would always look back now at the Twins and Dumbledore, rather than forward into the endless future with Joanne and her fabulous friends. There are other books that are solitary outcrops of emotion for me, and those emotions loop back on themselves each time I encounter the ideas that drive the book. One such book is The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, which I was handed in 2008 by a rather legendary manager of mine. Mr Les was an extraordinary man, a sailor and engineer who did Honours in feminist literature before his Engineering degree, he taught me some of the best professional hustle ar...

For Frances, on the theme of travel. I was so happy to be watching three episodes of Game of Thrones in a row to catch up with millions of people in the world, that I suspended all my knowledge of The Red Wedding while watching Episode Nine. When the classical Romantic-Comedy-style first half of the Tully and Frey Wedding turned into the Westerosi version of the Glencoe Massacre / Night of the Long Knives in the second half I reacted without restraint, gasping, covering my mouth in shock, and involuntarily saying god knows what during the starkly drawn horror of those scenes (starkly drawn with Stark blood). The writers of Game of Thrones are utterly superb; they deliver short and powerful scenes that move the politics along so tightly each episode feels like twenty minutes. The short and powerful scenes of the TV series may be sexy and visceral and shocking, but they are only the barest highlights, the main points from the novels that develop a world of characters that keep you...

For Frances, on the theme of travel. I miss London immensely, mostly for my marvelous friends and the fabulous museums. My favorite birthday in London was a guerilla birthday in the Silver Galleries of the V&A – no drinks, no food, just beautiful objects and a lot of talking amongst very intelligent people. The security guards only approached us once to ask why we were lounging in the window seats, and I made up some story about giving an impromptu lecture and waiting for some stragglers. They accepted it because my accent indicated I was a teacher and I was standing at the time with my three sixteen-year-old English friends, and all seemed legit. There are many stereotypes of Australians in London at are not flattering , but the one that we are mostly teachers is a positive one. Unfortunately for me, I was not much of a fan of theatre in London, so I never roused myself to attend a single play in the West End bar Wide Sargasso Sea in the first two months and the essential Sh...

For Frances, on the theme of travel. Voluntarily attending lectures after work is not everyone's idea of fun, I must admit. It is a learned discipline to get back into concentrating on new topics for that length of time, although I do find it is easier to relax and go along for the ride because there is no assessment riding on my recollection of the points presented. There are a few aspects of the lectures I attend that have the ability to charm me away from the TV and couch at home again and again, taking me down roads I would have otherwise never traveled. I enjoy the skill and experience of the presenters – they are people that inhabit a very different world to me, and are prepared to talk about it. I enjoy watching the audience and taking the measure of the people who share one characteristic with me – the urge to learn more. And I love the ideas presented to me in the politest of terms – new ideas, old ideas, ideas that I agree with, those that I don’t agree with. The big ...

For Frances, on the theme of travel. Travel is a wonderful thing; to live amongst others is a great source of wisdom for people of all ages. I love physical travel, but I also love intellectual travel, and one of the best ways to travel with one's intellect is to keep learning. I am a particular fan of learning something that is not in your area of expertise, which is why I am so dedicated in attending lectures given to increase the public understanding of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. I grew up alongside a STEM man, I have been lucky enough to have amazing STEM women as friends and I have worked with the men and women of STEM since I was 18. As a proud social historian, I have made it my mission to understand as many STEM first principles as possible by attending lectures, engaging in discussions with friends and absorbing everything I can in the workplace. I have always found that the way that STEM practitioners think is incredibly useful to frame ideologies in m...

During the fortnight of illness that resulted in my many thousands of words on feminism , my writing prompted some pretty interesting responses from people. Some readers actively engaged with the ideas I was writing about and those people I asked to write something for this blog because, you know, they hadn’t done enough by engaging with me, I wanted them to give up their spare time to write more! Other friends showed their support in a more restrained by no less appreciated manner and those people I asked to set me a topic to write on . I was given three very different topics, but all three providing me with additional inspiration to that already animating my writing. The topic I wanted to tackle first was that of ‘Travel’, suggested by Frances. Frances is a great traveler herself, and she wanted me to talk about how important it is to travel, but discuss also those who are not inclined to travel physically. I found the brief aligned well with one of the lessons I learnt in my twen...

The last week in Australian politics has been pretty instructive for any woman reading the news. No matter who you actually agree with in the perfect storm of views on women and how women in the public eye are discussed, it has become blatantly obvious that some sections of the Australian public express views on women that produce overblown opinions and startling venom in other sections of the public. What I find intriguing is that my own perfect storm of formless anger at how women are discussed is now quiet in the face of last week. My conviction in the morality of speaking up often and loudly has become overwhelming, although now there is another feeling joining it. Before last week I felt as if I had to discuss the daily misogyny of the patriarchy project, because I felt that it needed to be illuminated, so invisible was it to the people trapped in it. But in the last week I saw that everyone knows exactly what the patriarchy project is about - from the Adam Goodes story show...

Throughout the F Word Fortnight , I was lucky enough to have some wonderful people read and react to my writing. As a dubious thank you, I invited the most engaged to write their own thoughts on the same topic. This post was written by Pia Quartermaine, and I want to thank her for the time and thought she put into communicating this slice of her personal experience. “The word was at one with its meaning and was almost onomatopoeic. The smooth-hollowed, partly enclosed forms of its first three letters were as clear as a set of anatomical drawings.” Ian McEwan, Atonement Imagine if you will, that you are an African-American, socialising with a group of your fellow African-Americans, in say, the 1920s. Conversation is flowing, when one member of the group tells a joke with the n-word in it. You are deeply offended, naturally. This is a word that has been used by the dominant group, of which you are not a part, to oppress, degrade, insult and humiliate African-Americans. Or pretend t...