It’s different for girls

Until a couple of years ago, I would have said I was proud of the progress we had made towards equality between men and women. I thought we had come a long way. That feminism had really, truly, liberated women and made their lives better.

I think I was wrong.

It’s when you come face to face every day with young women, as I do, that you start to feel a bit shifty. That maybe for these young women, things aren’t as ticketyboo as all that.

There’s one girl in particular I have in mind. Let’s call her TicTacGirl, for TicTacs are her drug of choice in times of stress (i.e. all the time pretty much). She is 17. She is bright, she is witty, she is very sarcastic. She has everything going for her.

Is she having a lovely time, like bright, witty, sarcastic 17 year olds should be? Is she skipping around, singing happily about the wonder of it all, being a young woman in the 21st Century?

No. No she isn’t. Why is this? Well, for a start she lives in the kind of world where it’s possible to buy a little girl’s t-shirt or even a babygro like the one pictured at the top of this blog bearing the anorexic’s motto ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’.

But that’s just the start of it.

Let’s have a quick look at all the lovely things a young woman like TicTacGirl has to be grateful to feminism for. Well obviously she has the right to a career now. Well done feminism, right? Except, what if TicTacGirl wants to have a baby. Maybe even two. Or three, if she wants to feel like she’s running a zoo.
Well that’s all sorted isn’t it? She gets 12 months maternity leave, and then goes back to work. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yes, lucky old TicTacGirl.

But just a minute. If you want to know what it’s really like to have a baby in 2011, take a minute to check out Mumsnet. (Don’t worry, they may snarl a bit but they don’t bite on there, despite what you might have heard.) Have a look on the boards there, and have a look at how much fun those liberated new mums are having. Many of them are isolated, a long way from their families. Many are struggling to manage their mortgages and the cost of living on their reduced maternity pay, because the economy is set up so that we can only really afford to buy houses with two incomes.

Then when it’s time to go back to work, see how the fun ramps up then. The guilt and misery and enormous expense of sorting out childcare. The precarious and fraught business of relying on relatives and friends. (And it’s relatively easy when they’re babies. Wait till you’re trying to sort out wrapping round the school day, the school holidays, pulling in favours, making all sorts of mish-mashed arrangements. Or you have another one.) And then what about when the child is sick, what then?

Going part-time, well that’s a dandy idea. Until you try to cope with your reduced status at work, and the lower income. And not to mention everyone telling you that you are missing the best days of your child’s life when you’re at work. Read the stories of women on there crying their way through their first days back, having to leave their children screaming at nursery, and weep. (Have a look at the support they get on there too. The sisterhood lives on, on-line.)

Of course, if you are ‘lucky’ enough you can chuck in your job and stay at home with your baby. If you can stand everyone telling you what a huge mistake you’re making. How bored you’ll be. How you’re letting the side down. How staying at home isn’t a feminist thing to do.

But at least feminism has managed to free women from all that tedious domestic labour, right? That’s all equally divided, yeah? Soz TicTacGirl. On average, women spend over 2 hours and 30 minutes a day doing housework: 1 hour and 30 minutes more than men. Women spend more time caring for their children than men, and this is true even for full-time workers.

All this ‘fun’ is many years away for TicTacGirl. What about now? Well of course girls will no doubt outperform boys again in this year’s batch of GCSE and A level results. Which would seem like something to celebrate, until you remember the persistent pay gap between men and women. It’s hard to pin down exactly what that gap is – there are lots of ways to look at the data (see my link below, which has some pretty cool data to play with) – but the best estimate is that men continue to earn between 10-20% more than women. Turns out that exam results don’t really count for all that much in the end. (Some good news there TicTacGirl, eh?)

So, back to that t-shirt. This is the one I really think merits the biggest apology. That’s how far over a century of feminism has got us. Whoopy do. Bring on the Fourth Wave. We have fought and won the right to be thin! The right to be judged, still, for how much we weigh. On how pretty we are (or aren’t). And these days we have the Curse of the Facebook Tag to ensure that young women never have much of a chance to forget exactly how they are being judged on their looks. And as for sexual freedom, well we didn’t quite manage that either. Young women are still judged for the choices they make, in 2011. Freedom from guilt, freedom from expectations, are still not part of the lives of many young women. And now there is this additional pressure that we really did NOT have, twenty years ago, to be perfect. Flawless. With the help of surgery, if necessary. Young women are matching themselves up, and being matched up, to an unattainable ideal, all day long.

God I’ve barely even started on this subject. I think I’ll leave it there… for now. More of this another time.

Anyway. Soz, girls. Soz, TicTacGirl. Still only two days to results day!

Soz. Again.

Data on how housework is divided between men and women:

Some cool data here about the pay gap that you can fiddle around with to compare means/medians/ across occupations. If you like that kind of thing.

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Moronic Twittery

I am a bit of pedant. At times. I appreciate that, for the sake of my street cred, this is tantamount to admitting I own a lap dog or that I am a member of the British Letter Box Study Group*, but it’s true. It’s not grammar that makes me itchy – like most people of my generation, my grammar isn’t that great to be honest. I went to school in the 1970s when grammar was, like, for the straights, yeah? Grammar was an old-fashioned set of manacles imposed by the patriarchy and The Man. Break free! Etc. So we all sat around doing macramé all day and threading flowers in our hair and didn’t worry about the Dative and Subjunctive.
I am not too bothered about spelling or punctuation either. Some of this is self-protection. I am an English teacher, and if I got upset every time I saw a spelling mistake I would be throwing myself out of the window by lunchtime.
What I am balls-aching about, though, is when people mess around with language and use words in sloppy ways. When they twist the English language for their own ends.
English is a beautiful, rich tool. It can be used in brilliantly specific and poetic ways. There’s a dog in the garden! But is it a hound? A mutt? A pup? A mongrel? A doggy? A pooch?
But it can also be mangled and mauled. I guess we all have our pet hates, but the revoltingly apologetic expression ‘honour killing’ is one that makes me want to hurl things at the TV. There is nothing ‘honourable’ about murdering women because they aren’t following the rules of your society. Ever. I also get a bit nauseated at the term ‘date rape’, as if it’s just a jolly option at the end of an evening with someone you have just taken to Pizza Hut for a Medium Hawaiian. “So, shall we go back for a coffee, or shall we just move straight onto the rape?” Vile.
Sometimes this can be trivial and even amusing. My favourite in the classroom is the use of the passive tense to avoid responsibility.
‘Why are you late for my vitally important lesson on the possessive apostrophe?’
‘Sorry miss, SOMEBODY GOT HIT,’ comes the answer.
Isn’t that great? All responsibility for the hitting removed. The identity of the crying victim hidden. Useful old Passive Tense.
Also, here’s a tip: if you want to justify producing something completely rubbish and sub-standard, then the use of the adjective “children’s” can come in very handy. For example: have you got some cheap, nasty bits of meat you need to get rid of? Coat them in breadcrumbs, deep fry them in lard and Lo! You have a “children’s menu”. Have you written a terrible musical, with stereotyped, shallow unbelievable characters, appalling lyrics and no catchy tunes whatsoever? Well done! You have written a “children’s” musical, which parents will have to make costumes for, then sit through and even, if they can stomach it, applaud. (If they have any hands left that is. If they haven’t gnawed them off in sheer desperation during the reprise of the number called ‘Team Work!’, which finishes with the couplet:
If we stick together as a team, We can find our dream!)
The English language has been one of the worst casualties of the last week’s disorder-related shenanigans. ‘Broken Britain’, for example. Although the alliteration is kind of pleasing, I guess, we should leave that kind of overblown baloney to the kind of expats who love this country so much that they have to move to Gibraltar to express the proper depth of their affection. Those of us who live here should be ashamed of ourselves at using such empty rhetoric. The same goes for ‘moral collapse’ and ‘problem families’. This stuff makes people fearful, and panders to their prejudices. People are afraid enough as it is, and this kind of posturing makes it worse, without getting any closer to the real, complex solutions.
I am not sure that I am comfortable with the word ‘riots’ either. I don’t think that’s the right word. I was around for the riots of the early 1980s and that was, whatever way you look at it, a very different world. Some of the causes of the riots might be political but this wasn’t protest.
So, what can we call the events of last week? I think the expression ‘shopping with violence’ is pretty accurate. ‘Extreme shoplifting’ is another. Having given the events of the week considerable thought, I would suggest the following term: ‘Moronic Twittery’**.
I hope that encapsulates the lack of glamour. Try turning that into a video game. Or even a punk anthem.
You’ll never find a rhyme for it.

*actually one of these is true. Say it loud. I love post boxes and I’m proud.
** you know, like, because of Twitter being involved in organising the morons? Yeah?

Amelia Gentleman (fantastic name for a journalist that) asks ‘Is Britain Broken?’

‘Broken Britain is a term which has been used in The Sun newspaper and by the Conservative Party…’ says it all really.

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Keep Calm and Sweep On

When I started this blog, something less than a month ago, I just thought I would talk about what was on my mind that particular day and see where that took me.

And then, all of a sudden, Britain Broke while I was on holiday and it seemed a bit odd to carry on rambling on about Americans and dog poo while ignoring all this anarchy. Even if the only thing I had to say about Britain Breaking was – ‘Lordy, I’m really quite bewildered about Britain Breaking.’ Sometimes, bewilderment is the appropriate response. Most of things in life are pretty bewildering, if you think about it.

And now, seven days later, I am still a bit bewildered. I am not sure I am all that qualified to throw any light on Britain Breaking, but the BBC have Michael-flipping-Winner on to comment on the riots this morning, so that’s what I call a green light for me to say what I think.

So, here’s what I think.

Britain isn’t really broken. A little bit chipped, a bit flaking, in need of some repair – yes. Broken – no. I’m not suggesting that what happened this week wasn’t horrible, disturbing and serious. I’m just saying, it’s good to get it into perspective. Britain is pretty much the same place it was seven days ago. Despite what Britain’s Favourite Twonk Peter Hitchens said yesterday on Any Questions, Family Life hasn’t Come To An End.* This morning, fathers got up and took their kids to the park and played football with them. This afternoon, mothers will play Guess Who with their children, even though it’s an incredibly boring game. Tomorrow, fathers and mothers will go work, even though they are tired and don’t feel like it, to earn money for their families. To put food on the table, like parents always have and always will.

Because people are actually pretty predictable. The vast majority of people love their children and try to do their best for them. But – equally predictably – some people, especially men, especially young men, have always liked a ruck. Those people out enjoying a ruck this week were behaving in ways that are, basically, human. Sometimes we call this behaviour WAR, and sometimes it suits us to encourage it.

When I was a kid, we called this FOOTBALL HOOLIGANISM or BEING A CASUAL. Phil Lynott sang, ‘If the boys wanna fight you better let em.’ Elton John, of all people, even sang a song about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to control and limit the effects of this kind of behaviour – of course we should, and we must, to protect those who don’t much like a ruck – but we should maybe stop acting so surprised about it.

And, here’s another thing, about two thousand people were arrested for rioting. That’s bad, isn’t it? Yes, it’s pretty bad. But, you know, there are in fact about 2000 people in the village I live in. If you saw the headline ‘Entire population of small Oxfordshire village arrested for chucking stuff and setting fire to things’ you’d think, Oh that’s a bit surprising. And not very nice. But your world wouldn’t be rocked. Think about that great picture of the Broom Army. Think about how many more people are sweeping up the streets, trying to help. Think of how many more people mowed their lawn this weekend. Washed their car. 1000 times more? 10,000 times more? I think that’s a comforting thought. Mowing the lawn ten thousand times more popular than nicking trainers from JD Sports. That’s what I call a headline.

But that isn’t the headline. These are the headlines:

BROKEN BRITAIN! (er, not really. Britain’s mostly quite fixed actually. It’s mostly a nice place to live, with politicians who are just a bit incompetent and not actually corrupt.),

ANARCHY! (er, not really. The vast majority of people are behaving perfectly well, the vast majority of the time.)

And IT’S ALL THE FAULT OF <insert your favourite target here> The teachers, the mothers (esp the SINGLE MOTHERS, the evil man-hating witches), Thatcher, Blair, Jedward.

This stuff is tempting but it’s dangerous, because it encourages us all to think that the world is a straightforward place, subject to simple explanations and solutions. Which we all know is bull, really. But if we can blame someone, or something else then we don’t have to do anything about it ourselves. We can all just watch the telly instead.

And here’s the last thing I want to say – Let the dust settle a bit. Help those who need helping right now. Don’t rush to judgement. We have to stop SHOUTING and POINTING and start listening. Listening to other people’s ideas and views, and see if we agree with them. And then see what we can do, all of us, to make Britain better. Maybe stop shouting about yobs and chavs and hoodies and start thinking and making changes.

What I would really like, what would make me feel like we had learned something from this last seven days, would be a politician (or even Michael Winner) coming on the telly and saying, ‘I don’t know really. It’s all a bit bewildering. I am going to have a bit more of a think about it, maybe talk to a few people. It’s all very complicated, isn’t it? What do YOU think, Jeremy?’

That would make me proud to be British. Even prouder than I am, every time I look at that photo, at the top of this blog. This is a great country. It was seven days ago, and it is today.

Read Charlton Brooker’s comment (he agrees with me, basically, but he’s funnier. And has a fart gag.)

* I swear this is what he said. Still, this is the man who used to be in the Socialist Worker’s Party and is now a Tory, so I think we can safely say that anything he says can be ignored. Tomorrow he’ll probably be telling us that we should all go to the PlanetWob before it’s too late. The twonk.

Peter Hitchen’s blog is here

Russell Brand’s take on the riots (very sensible in my opinion)

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The Big Work Con

‘SO, what do you DO?’ What do I do? It’s a good question isn’t it? A perennial favourite at the dinner party. Find your pigeon hole, slot you in.

I used to quite like to say I was a barrister. It sounds properly cool and glam. Of course it isn’t, as anyone who’s ever been to court will tell you. There’s an awful lot of hanging about in stinking courts, the kind of places where the furniture is bolted to the floor. There’s also quite a bit of carrying massive piles of books around, and smoking. Oh, and heavy drinking. Basically, in this country they let anyone be a lawyer just as long as they can drink two bottles of claret, remain standing and still wing it successfully in the court room the next day without vomiting. (I was a natural.)

Right now I am a teacher. People have PLENTY to say about that, but we’ll leave that for another time.

I have had what could be described as an eclectic career, i.e. I do something for a few years, and then I get bored and I do something else. I have spent quite a bit of time over the years, thinking about work. And this is what I think: it’s a great big con. And we’ve all fallen for it. Well not all of us, clearly, but enough of us to keep capitalism going I guess.

When I was working for The Man, I was completely taken in by the whole work thing. How it was all terribly empowering, how we all MUST work, work, work and must earn money and buy stuff and that if we weren’t working then we were a burden and time spent not working was time wasted.

When I became a Stay at Home Mum <bleugh at acronym>, everyone said how terribly bored I was bound to be, how I wouldn’t have any adult conversation and I would be going mental within a fortnight.

That wasn’t quite true. This is what I found:

  1. There are adults everywhere, not just at work, and you can start conversations with people even when they aren’t paid by the same employer as you. And when you don’t have to talk about books or meetings or contracts or sandwiches or whatever it is you’re paid to talk about, you can end up talking about all sorts of things. Flowers. Why people hate rats and love foxes. Theories of music education. The terrible price of petrol and, often, the weather. These conversations are, on average, no more or less dull than those that happen at work. They just happen in different places.
  2. Loads of stuff needs doing that you don’t get paid for. You’d be amazed. In the years when no-one paid me anything at all, I have, among other things, walked dogs for old ladies with bad legs, showed new mothers how to wrap their babies up nice and tight to stop them crying, hoovered the gritty carpets of the newly bereaved, helped toddlers stick pasta onto bits of card, driven stinky old men to the hospital to get their dressings changed. I did a LOT of latching on. Changed a LOT of nappies. I have role-played Caesarian birth with teenage mothers, made endless cups of tea, baked cakes for stalls, stood in my black suit singing funeral anthems, and played many many games of ‘Pop to the Shops!’ and helped put stamps into albums. Was this work? Was this more or less important than sitting in those tedious meetings dropping Danish pastry crumbs down my suit and trying to concentrate on the agenda?
  3. Although we place no value on all this stuff-to-be-done-and-not-paid-for, it needs doing. Capitalism has messed with our collective judgement so much that we have lost sight of that. So a child-minder is doing REAL work, but a stay-at-home-mum isn’t – she’s just a burden and a scrounger. (Unless, of course, you make the decision to go back to work, at which point you’re the evil unfeminine bitch who isn’t making the sacrifices she should. And don’t tell me that I am only talking about the women, and say what about the men? Yes, good question, what about the men? I mean, tell me about it. Where are they? They’re at work of course, eating sandwiches at their desk in peace and ‘missing the train home’ to avoid the domestic chaos waiting for them for just a little longer, and who can blame them.) What would happen if we all fell for this confidence trick and went back to paid work? Who would run the pre-schools, the drop-in centres, the mother and baby groups? If all the volunteers, the unpaid helpers and the stay at home parents in the country all went on strike for one day, then we would see that just because something isn’t paid doesn’t mean it has no value.
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Beach life

For someone who bangs on all the time about how much I love the city, I am actually pretty flipping keen on the beach. Who isn’t, right? What’s not to like about the beach? Well, apart from it’s often very cold. Either that, or very windy and you end up with a lot of sand in your ears, which takes ages to pick out. And a lot of sand in your sandwiches. And in your crisps, especially if you drop them. Also, there’s no shade. Or shelter. Or anywhere to sit. And it’s very hard to walk on sand. Even harder to walk on stones.

Yeah apart from that.

The thing I like most about the beach is that it’s very democratic. All ages and social classes meet together in an almost revolutionary atmosphere of equality, fraternity, liberty, and universal chips for all.

You don’t need money to have fun on the beach. No one cares what kind of house you live in. (Unlike in a village, where what kind of house you live in is of the UTMOST importance. It tends to be the first thing anyone asks. They say, ‘SO, do you live in the VILLAGE? Oh you do, do you? WHERE in the village??’ And then they get out a sharp pencil and their Gazetteer of The Village and work out exactly where you come in the Great Chain of Village Life. (In my case – the very very bottom.)

On the beach, you don’t need to be ashamed of your address in the slums of Greater Floppington or wherever you live. You can live in a castle! Well at least you can build your own, with turrets and flags and crenellations and a moat. (I don’t normally do crenellations, to be honest. Slightly beyond my engineering capabilities. But there would be nothing to stop me, if I wanted to.)

And on the beach, you can wear what you like. You can even strut about in your pants if you want to. At least, I think that’s the rule. It’s the rule I’ve been following all my life, so now might be a good point to tell me if I have this wrong. On many beaches, you can even forego the top half altogether, as long as you ensure you apply factor 30 AT LEAST to your nipples. Or a couple of strategically placed shells.*

And on the beach, you can make your own fun. This is usually the kind of fun that really annoys capitalists, because it doesn’t cost anything. For example:

  1. Lobbing stones into the sea. Or, if you are a bit fancier, skimming stones into the sea. You can even try the second one, and then pretend you were doing the first one when your super-duper skimming stone goes PLOP first time. Not me, though. Mine just did, like, 17 skims! No, it did, really! Yeah, just before you got here. Yeah.
  2. Having a look around for the most overdressed woman on the beach. Oh look, there she is. Almost didn’t see her there, because she’s jammed in the corner of that palatial windbreak, trying to protect her hairsprayed up-do from the fresh breeze and approaching sea-fret. Let’s hope the tide doesn’t come in suddenly, because I don’t fancy her chances legging it up the dunes in those 5-inch heeled silver ‘Look-at-me!’ shoes.**
  3. Burying your favourite family member in the fresh sand. A bit like The Family tradition of burying your enemies in fresh concrete down at the docks, but slightly less fun. Better make sure it isn’t quick sand. Heh heh heh.
  4. Poking around in rock pools. Possibly the best fun to be had anywhere, any time. Especially getting something really disgusting and slimy out of there and dropping it down your mum’s back. Heh heh heh heh.
  5. Eating all day long. When you’re at home, a meal generally needs to be aligned to some sort of expected meal time, for the sake of form. If you suggest starting a new meal about half an hour after the last one was finished, people tend to look at you askance. Or else they nudge the bathroom scales at you, surreptitiously, with their foot. On the beach, though, it’s all different. Mealtimes are for losers. For landlubbers. You can have a chip sandwich with a candy-floss chaser and then have five of those deep fried doughnuts (they’re only little!) followed by an ice cream and a flake and chopped nuts. And a fudge stick. And still have room for breakfast. I’d just give it a while before you go on the Waltzer, just to be on the safe side.

99 anyone?

* NB I know I am usually a bit flippant, but this part of the blog is DEADLY serious. Sunburnt nipples are nothing to laugh about, believe me.

** those readers over a certain age might substitute this description for Germaine Greer’s uber-sisterly memorable phrase for the ‘attention-seeking’ shoes of Suzanne Moore. In *1995*! 16 years ago, God help us all.

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