Context Is(n't) Everything

Just found this in the Draft folder. Many moons out of date, and clearly unfinished, but I actually didn't mind my own voice in it, which is rare enough that I'm going to publish it anyway.

So, that Suzanne Moore, eh? She wrote a little article in the New Statesman, and all hell has broken loose. There are accusations of Islamophobia and language policing, there is sympathy from Caitlin Moran and Frankie Boyle, and there are defensive responses from Moore herself as well as the Julies Burchill and  Bindel (two people that everyone wants on their team). There are also a lot of responses from within the blogosphere; some are thoughtful, and some, like this one, are less so.

I think we can all agree that the attempts by Burchill and Bindel are nothing more than disgusting hate speech doubling down on Moore's own exposed hatred of transsexuality. For me, though, it's the subtler support that is the most upsetting.

I don't want to pick on Stella Duffy, but her argument seems to boil down to her feeling sad that she is now scared to say "trans", even though she ought to be exempt from criticism because 20 years ago she wrote a "lovely, loving, sympathetic trans character". She seems to be proud of the fact that she, a professional LGBT-focussed writer (by which I mean LG-focussed), wrote a trans character twenty years ago. Is this like the I-have-black-friends approach? Or its lesser-know cousin, the my-best-friend-in-nursery-school-was-black? As if the longer-ago something happened, the better your claim to progressiveness is. I see where Duffy's trying to go with this, but really she's just highlighting the vast disconnect between how much insight she has into transgender issues and how much insight she thinks she has. That in itself speaks volumes, and doesn't even take into account the fact that Duffy claims to be "the only person [she] know[s]" who has written such a character. I don't even know where to start with that. Suffice to say, Duffy is not the expert that she thinks she is. And perhaps she ought to hesitate before speaking on trans issues, particularly when "speaking on trans issues" means "coming to the defence of an unapologetic transphobe".

Now, for a more nuanced take on the issue, take a look at Pissers vs Wankers: The state of left-wing feminist debate?. I'm going to throw myself into the quoted circle jerk here, and to hell with the consequences. Here's a quote from glosswitch's worryingly relevant post:

"I wouldn’t have known the word “transsexual” alone could offend. I might have used it – I probably have – in a different context. Now I won’t. But if I were called out on it, I might have thrown a strop."

I think the point about this is that although the word 'transsexual' alone is often used in a purely descriptive (although outdated) manner, one's use of it can be something of a red flag, pointing to worrying attitudes towards trans people (almost always, and not at all coincidentally, trans women).

Partly this is because of the fact that it's outdated: generally, if one has engaged with trans issues at all over the past decade, one knows that the word "transsexual" now has a much more specific meaning and isn't used as a catch-all, having been replaced (ish) by transgender. So I generally assume that if someone uses "transsexual" as a catch-all or a punchline, they haven't bothered to engage with current trans issues and debates, which can be (although isn't always) a red flag.

Secondly, Moore's use of it ("a Brazilian transsexual") is indicative of some nasty attitudes behind the flippancy. For me, using "a transsexual" is unpleasant (like calling people "gays" or "blacks"), and the word "Brazilian" simply reinforces the idea that Moore has only one stock image of transgender people, and it just happens to be the most outdated, racist one of them all (bar perhaps going with the Thai version of the same 'joke').

And the point about context is important. The word "transsexual" is innocently descriptive in certain contexts, and is wildly offensive in others. An article about gender and feminism and the beauty myth and anger is not an innocent context for a throwaway one-liner about "a Brazilian transsexual". 

In my opinion, people's ears pricked up when they caught that usage of a word that isn't always on its own offensive, but can be when used in a certain way. Those of us who have to be alert to transphobia may have picked up on those little signals, and prodded a little, and unhappily discovered the seething pit of anger and disgust and condescension that lies beneath. That, sadly, isn't uncommon. It's like hearing the word "homosexual": inoffensive in itself, but often indicative of offensive attitudes.

Context is everything, but some words create their own context, and use of them can be a handy warning that someone is about to blow your mind with their factually inaccurate, morally indefensible "opnions". They'll probably also be quick to tell you that everyone is entitled to their opinion, and that haven't you heard of free speech?

I see you

Queers and weirdos can spot me a mile away and for some I’m a safe space to gush about a secret girlfriend or the good old “I see you, you see me” homo head nod.  The speakeasy undertones of my queer existence are so badass, I love the code-switching and the acknowledgment of my existence from others like me.

An article popped up the other day and this bit jumped out at me. It's a great article - nuanced and perceptive and far-reaching - and there's a lot of it that I can relate to. Words for clothes aren't always foolproof, so I don't know if leggings are the same thing as skinny jeans (they could be jeggings, which I think are slightly different?), but I definitely get the point. Figure-hugging bottoms, whether they be skinny jeans or jeggings or 'yoga pants' or (good lord) meggings, can be a minefield to navigate gender presentation in. Luckily for me, I live in a city where people of all genders and sexualities wear the stupid things, and that's probably why it wasn't a huge deal for me when I bought my first ever pair last summer. I loved them (I have two more pairs now) although that much figure-hugging took some getting used to. Angsty little queer that I am, I can make a big deal out of anything, particularly clothing, so you know skinnies can't be that much of an issue if my main takeaway is "super comfy, great for drawing attention to amazing shoes and colour-pop socks, and I can get away with wearing them at work".

(Who ever thought I'd care about socks and how they go with my outfit? Amazing.)

Anyway. My point (I don't really have one) is the quote above. ""I see you, you see me" homo head nod." Now, I'm not a homo, but that head nod? I am all about that. Luckily for me (again) I live in a city that's full to the brim of queers of various stripes, and god, sometimes I live for that head nod. There's zero queerness in my new industry, but out and about at lunchtime and in the evenings, we're everywhere. Yesterday I shared a bench outside a coffee shop with one of them, and although we didn't even really look at each other, and not a word was said, that fleeting moment as our eyes met when I got up to go was unmistakeable.

You know that moment of fizzing connection you feel when you flirt with a stranger? Not flirting like witty repartee and flipping your hair, but flirting like an extra moment of eye contact or a slight smile across a room? Recognition. A secret, sparkling pulse of promise. It's like that, but quieter. Comfortable, and comforting. Recognition - allyship. I got you.

I love being a safe space for the secret-girlfriend-gushing, or the "so, how do you know you're ... ?" tentative push for understanding, but what I love most of all is the quiet camaraderie of the homo head nod. I got you. We're here.

Review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

I have always loved crime fiction. My cousin introduced my sister and me to Agatha Christie before any of us were 10 - we would listen to casettes of the BBC radio adaptions on long journeys - and I have never looked back. Over the years I have devoured enormous amounts of Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ruth Rendell, PD James, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, as well as scores of less prolific or well-known writers. It's not surprising to me that, despite the overwhelmingly high proportion of male to female published crime writers, particularly well-known library-stock kind of writers, my list of favourites skews heavily female. For me, crime fiction (and particularly detective fiction) is comfort reading, and I am most comfortable with women authors, which possibly has something to do with the fact that one is less likely to be constantly bombarded with low-level sexism in books written by women. At the very least, one can expect there to be more than the one or two female characters which populate a lot of crime fiction with dreary regularity: the good-hearted prostitute who witnessed the crime, the long-suffering wife of the detective, the female police officer who is young, beautiful and brilliant and might possibly end up with the protagonist. There's nothing wrong with stock characters, and female authors are hardly innocent of their use, but as a rule I feel far safer with female authors such as Val McDermid, whose lingerie-clad dead bodies are as likely to be male as they are to be female.

So although I will pick up pretty much anything and give it a go, I often feel a certain amount of trepidation when reading a male crime writer for the first time. On the other hand, I particularly love discovering a new crime writer, no matter what their gender, especially when there's a good number of volumes in their back catalogue.

That can't truly be said of Alan Bradley, author of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. To be fair, it was his first novel and it was published in 2009, so the fact that there are three more in the series is quite impressive. But it's hardly a glut which will keep me occupied for long, so I'm going to ration them out carefully and cross my fingers for more - and that should give you an idea of how much I enjoyed the book.

Bradley's detective is Flavia Sabina de Luce, an eleven-year-old girl who rattles around an enormous country house with her distant father, two superior older sisters and some charming domestic staff. She's a fantastic protagonist - quirky and precocious and rude and silly and clever. Being rather lonely at home she has an imaginative fantasy life and an unusual hobby: chemistry. She has inherited a laboratory and spends a lot of her time reading up on her subject and conducting experiments. This unusual knowledge and skill-set comes in useful in her detection. Flavia pits her wits against adults, buildings, machines and chemical compounds; she is fiercely protective of her family; when she is frustrated she addresses herself by name; she has a beloved bicycle called Gladys.

Although Flavia does have the ubiquitous older sister-who-likes-make-up-and-boys-and-is-basically-a-terrible-person, the novel is peopled with female characters who are diverse enough that this doesn't make me want to throw the book at the wall. There's the other sister, the cook, two librarians and a maid, off the top of my head. Although this makes them sound like minor domestic drudges, even those that are have a character of their own, and each has a meaningful, individual relationship with Flavia. The male characters are equally diverse and interesting. It's actually a pretty unusual book in that a huge number of characters are reasonably well-developed, male and female alike. And that's just one reason to love the novel.

It's rather old-fashioned in its plot and style, harking back to the Golden Age of detective fiction that I personally adore*. If you like Agatha Christie, there's a good chance you'll like this. If you like AA Milne's The Red House Mystery, you'll definitely like this. If you want to read about an effervescent, whip-smart girl detective, I couldn't recommend anything better. Although I normally don't worry about spoiling things, I'm not going to put any details of the plot here. I think you should read the book. The only thing I will say is that it is a crime mystery about philately. If that doesn't tempt you, you're probably irredeemable ...

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*In detective fiction terms, Golden Age refers specifically to the period of crime fiction writing which hit its peak in the interwar years. The supposed "innocence" which characterises Golden Age fiction mysteriously vanishes around 1945.

Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

So I just saw this film, without knowing much about it except that it's about misfits and stars Ezra Miller and David Bowie's 'Heroes'. That was enough for me. And honestly, if that was all that was good about it, it would have been plenty. But man, does this film have more going for it than that. (Spoilers ahead.)

This isn't a perfect film. But what is? The best compliment I can give Perks is that it is complex enough that I'm willing to give it a bit of a pass on the places where it falls down. It has more than one gay character. It has two kisses between male characters; one of the kisses is between a straight character and a gay character, and the straight character doesn't freak out or question his sexuality or respond with violence or disgust or anger. It has a suicidal character who has more than one dimension. It has sexual abuse of a boy by a woman. It has complex family relationships, full of love and casual cruelty and support and abuse. It has friendships. Real, messy friendships. And real, messy sexuality.

And on top of all that, it has Ezra Miller as Dr. Frankenfurter. I actually squeaked in the cinema. That's two of my favourite turn-ons in one delicious parcel!

One of the things I didn't like as much is the treatment of women. Although there are some beautifully nuanced portrayals in this film (Emma Watson is really, really good) and a host of good female characters, some of the details were a bit frustrating. Sam, Emma Watson's character, suffers from standard girl trouble: she used to be a slutty slut. We don't get all the details, but basically she spent 'freshman year' not studying, getting drunk at parties, and sleeping around. She suffers from cripplingly low self esteem, which results in her dating people who "treat [her] like nothing". Charlie, our hero, is the only one who loves the real her, and we know that he'll treat her right. Charlie moons after her for the entire film, selflessly helps her with her studies, evil-eyes her boyfriend and complains to people that she isn't dating him, despite the fact that he's never asked her to. I call Nice Guy-ism.

Charlie's one-time girfriend, Mary-Elizabeth, has her own girl-problems. From being a snappy, bright, independent girl, she morphs into a jealous, possessive, nagging shrew the moment she starts dating Charlie - which happens after they've kissed once and Mary-Elizabeth announces that Charlie is her boyfriend. Their relationship ends when Charlie is dared to kiss the prettiest girl in the room, and unthinkingly kisses Sam instead of Mary-Elizabeth. Patrick, Sam's step brother, tells Charlie that it would be best if he just stayed away from the group for a while, since there is "history" between Sam and Mary-Elizabeth - history that apparently involves guys liking Sam better than Mary-Elizabeth. Charlie, who has realised that one reason that he is currently fairly stable is that he has a good group of friends, suffers a rapid decline when he takes Patrick's advice and returns to being a loner.

There are other factors involved, of course, in Charlie's breakdown, but one thing this careful chronology encourages is the belief that these silly girls and their silly jealousy have contributed to Charlie's deteriorating mental health. I'd say that Charlie brings it on himself, by callously kissing one girl in front of the girl he's dating, but Patrick makes it clear that Charlie must exile himself not because his behaviour was insensitive and wrong, but because the girls are going to be unnecessarily dramatic about it.

I really don't have the energy to detail all the sexist tropes this film utilises to talk about women. For something that's otherwise so progressive in terms of gender and sexuality, it's a real disappointment. But there are other problems too.

1) I counted one person of colour who spoke during the entire film. I didn't even see any non-white people in crowd shots.

2) Everyone is thin and beautiful - not unexpected in a teen film (or, sadly, any film), but still disappointing.

3) Everyone is incredibly rich. The kids buy each other suits and typewriters for Christmas, and have free run of enormous mansions where no parents are seen. Nobody has a job, or talks of getting one. You know how ridiculously rich they all are, because nobody mentions money. There isn't even a token poor character to throw the others into relief. It's as if nobody even notices how ludicrously privileged these kids are - not the writers, directors, actors or characters. It's bizarre.

4) The bulimia joke. Early on, Sam tells Charlie that she's not a bulimic, she's a bulimist. What does that mean? "It means she believes in bulimia." She loves bulimia! That might be acceptable if the film went on to explore Sam dealing with bulimia, but it doesn't. It's never mentioned again. It's just a throwaway line, perhaps to show how quirky and cool they are, perhaps to show how screwed up Sam is. I think that's pretty screwed up in itself.

It's disappointing that the film falls down in so many ways, because in so many other ways, it is groundbreaking. The main character has dealt with death and suicide and sexual abuse by his aunt. Can we talk about how rare that is? I'm not sure I can remember another instance - in a teen film, no less - of a woman sexually abusing a little boy. Charlie's parents are appalled and disgusted and heartbroken, but there is no question that they believe him. I think, for this alone, I can forgive this film a multitude of sins.

And, on top of all this, it's a really moving film. The themes are complex and emotional and frightening, but there are moments of pure joy in the film, and moments of pure love. It's messy and grim and optimistic and terrifying. I'm no film critic, but I really enjoyed it and I think it's got some really important things to say.

I still wanted it to be better, though. One of the problems of engaging regularly with this kind of criticism is that I've been infected by more-ism. The status quo is not enough. Better than the status quo is not enough. I want more. I expect more.

Gendering Sports

Recently I have gone back to judo, a sport that I trained in until I was 17, and have only sporadically revisited since. It's been a long time, and I thought I anticipated the challenges of returning to it. I anticipated that I'd get horribly out of breath, and struggle to remember techniques, not to mention their names. I anticipated that my adult body would take longer to adapt to and recover from training than my adolescent body had. What I didn't anticipate, although I perhaps should have done, was how engaging with sport would highlight my gender.

Review: Wimbledon

Released in 2004, Wimbledon stars Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany as entrants to Wimbledon, she being young and ambitious and brilliant, he being 'old' and past-it and intending to enjoy one last Grand Slam as a wildcard entrant before retiring from professional tennis. Spoilers ahead.

I was really enjoying this film until about halfway through. There was a questionable scene at the beginning, where Peter Colt (Bettany) arrives at the Dorchester hotel and is given the wrong key, and walks in on Lizzie Bradbury (Dunst) in the shower. Instead of him being shocked and appalled and getting out of the room as fast as humanly possible, and Lizzie being angry and indignant, she smirks vampishly and displays her body unashamedly for Peter (if not, thankfully, for the camera). Peter stutters and stumbles and does his best Hugh Grant impression, hilariously getting his words mixed up so he accidentally says to her "good body" instead of "good luck": a classic error that could have happened to anyone. I know I always mix up those two words.

So far, so predictable. But that didn't make me angry, it just made me a little tired. He invades her privacy, she giggles and enjoys the attention. What made me really, truly angry was where the plot went from there.

Lizzie comes on to Peter, who can't believe his luck when she makes it clear that she'd like to have sex with him, mostly (as she also makes clear) because she believes "fooling around" on the night before a match improves her performance the next day. The two of them have sex; they have a montage; Lizzie's father/coach/owner warns Peter off Lizzie; Peter punches Lizzie's arrogant ex-lover in the face; Lizzie and Peter run away to Brighton and have lots of sex and pretend tennis and breakfast in bed. Then Peter's brother sells a photo of the couple to a newspaper, and suddenly the house is surrounded by press, and Lizzie's father arrives to shepherd her back to London. Lizzie, hiding, overhears her father's monologue to Peter about how Lizzie needs to remember her lifelong dream of winning Wimbledon, and how she's throwing it all away by falling for Peter, because actually liking someone means that her game suffers. Lizzie comes out of hiding saying "I still want it. I want to win Wimbledon. I'm sorry", and she leaves with him to return to London and training while Peter trails after them:

"You're gonna go?"
"Yeah. He's right. I'm sorry."
"Wait a second. Lizzie? Lizzie! Lizzie, this is ridiculous, you're a grown woman and you should be making your own decisions - 
"This is my decision! We can be together after the tournament."
"After the tournament - ! What does that mean, you can't just switch me on and off like a bloody lightbulb - I'll call you at the hotel."
"I'm sorry kid. When she's with you she just - can't play."

And so, back to the tennis. Peter, long assumed to be past it, has been playing surprisingly well in this tournament, and has enjoyed two shock wins to reach the third round, where he will face highly-ranked Englishman Tom Cavendish. In his first round match, he fought back from two sets down after seeing Lizzie in the crowd watching him, the day after they have first slept together. This becomes a trope for the two of them, but it only goes one way: Peter gains strength from her support, but we never see him attend Lizzie's matches - not until things have fallen apart. In this third round match, Peter is playing terribly and is on the point of losing when Cavendish injures himself, allowing Peter to capitalise on his advantage and secure his place in the semi-finals. Meanwhile Lizzie, whose matches have had a tiny amount of screen time compared to Peter's, is assumed to be a sure-thing, and has been whipping through her matches with ease. Now, however, despite assuring her father that she's focussed and that "he's out of [her] head", she is listening to Peter's match on the radio in the car on the way to her own match. After winning his match, Peter goes to watch Lizzie's, and happens to receive some top-quality counsel from his sponsor:

"Me, I hate making a decision. Like right now, I'm very very afraid. If you don't see that girl again it's gonna mess with your head, it'll screw up your confidence, on the other hand I'm terrified, I'm petrified if I tell you where that girl's camped out her father's gonna fire my ass." 
"Where's the girl camped out Ron?" 
"32 Kensington Place. First floor apartment. I made a decision."
"Me too."

Ron, who sponsors both athletes, has for reasons passing understanding chosen Peter over Lizzie. Lizzie is young and ambitious and has potential. This tournament is Peter's last hurrah: he has already announced his retirement. Professionally, the decision to help Peter win makes no sense at all for Ron. The only reason it does make sense is if Ron wants to help Peter get laid. Which it does. We cut straight from that shot into one of Peter breaking into Lizzie's house, surprising her in bed. Once again, instead of screaming blue murder and telling him to get the hell out, she looks slightly annoyed before calmly accepting the fact that Peter has just invaded her privacy yet again - not to mention committed a crime. Here's how it goes:

"Peter! What are you doing here?"
"That's an excellent question. The sad fact of the matter is, I can't seem to get through 24 hours without you."
"I've missed you, Peter, Peter Colt."
"You have?"
"But I need you to go."
"No, you need me to stay."
"Peter - "
"Lizzie.
"Peter - "
"Lizzie. People have fallen in love before, you know."
"Oh, is that what we're doing here?"

Giggling and kissing. Joke. Heavy breathing. Cut to the next morning and Peter leaving without waking Lizzie to go to his semi-final match. At Lizzie's match, things start to go wrong when a string on her racket breaks, and she is distracted by a man yelling at her and brandishing a newspaper with Peter's photo on the front and the words "Lover Boy". Lizzie loses her match. Peter wins his.

Peter does seem to care that Lizzie has lost, and accepts, however minimally, that he may not have acted in her best interests. But when they argue about it, he doesn't apologise for putting his needs ahead of hers, or for not respecting her wishes when she leaves him or when she tells him she needs him to go. Instead, the argument is a chance for us to see that Lizzie is a heartless woman who only cares about winning, and to whom "Love means nothing" (her words). The two part on bad terms, and Peter skulks tragically about the place until it's time for his final.

And who is Peter playing in the final, but Lizzie's arrogant ex-lover, wunderkind Jake Hammond who, in the tunnel, says to Peter with a shrug "I tried to warn you about her." The kid is clearly a nasty piece of work, displaying unpleasant gamesmanship and not seeming to care when he hits a ball boy in the face with his serve, something which has previously distinguished Peter from his competitors: he is a nice man, and when Hammond shows a callous lack of care about injuring a small boy, he gets angry. This doesn't improve his game, however: Peter only manages to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat after Lizzie arrives to give him a pep talk during a rain break when he is 2 sets and 5 games to 1 down. She has come to help him win after hearing his tear-jerking pre-match speech about how love - meaning Lizzie - is the only reason he is in the final at all, and how truly sorry he is for having let her down. She was about to board a flight back to America, but instead she rushes back to Wimbledon to tell Peter she loves him, and when he apologises for his behaviour, she tells him "Forget about that! This is about you. Go out there and decide who you are." She also tells him how to read Hammond's serve, allowing Peter to come back from certain defeat. When it's looking dire, right at the end, Peter once more catches Lizzie's eye in the crowd, giving him the strength to play a blinding final point to win the championship.

There's an awful lot to hate about this plot, and a large part of it is how it revolves around Peter rather than Lizzie. This is inevitable, since Peter is the protagonist - we are with him from the beginning of the film, and Lizzie is the love-interest rather than getting equal billing. On the other hand, Lizzie's tennis is so completely sidelined by Peter's that it's rather sickening. As I have said, her matches get a tiny amount of screen time compared to Peter's, and the fact that she has to be knocked out of the tournament is galling: not only does she have to lose in order to prove that it's true that she can't focus on both love and tennis, she also has to lose in order to be free to be there for Peter when he needs her. She couldn't have counselled him through his final if she was focussed on her own, could she? The bludgeoned-home message is that love is damaging to Lizzie's tennis. It is clear that having sex is helpful to her - she describes it as relaxing, and when she and Peter are just having sex before their matches, everything goes well for her. It's when the narrative shows us that they are falling for each other that Lizzie's tennis starts to suffer, whereas love only improves Peter's game. When things start to go wrong between them, however, Peter's game suffers whilst Lizzie's remains stable. Lizzie loses after they have reconciled - after Peter has broken into her house and told her that they're falling in love.

Yet more galling is Lizzie's treatment as a possession of the men in her life. Throughout the film Lizzie is controlled by her father, and although she rebels against him it's only in order to spend time with another man who wants to dominate her attention, sulking when it is refused. Peter, for his part, wants Lizzie to make her own decisions, but only if she makes the decision to stay with him rather than go with her father. Then there's Hammond, who is set up as a possessive ex-lover and, on discovering that Lizzie and Tom are sleeping together, tells her "I thought all those things they said about you were just rumours, but you really are a cheap little - " and that's when Peter punches him in the face. Lizzie, incidentally, is excited by this, telling Peter that nobody has ever fought for her honour before, and that she kinda likes it. It's telling that this is the man that Peter has to beat in the final. It's almost as if he has to prove that he's worthy of Lizzie, because of course women don't like losers. It's ok for Lizzie to lose, though, because Peter's last hurrah is far more important. And, after all, he does make it clear that, now that the important stuff is out of the way, he's ready to make Lizzie's career his priority:

"There's so much I want to say to you!"
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Oh yes you are. You're going a long, long way!"

And in the voiceover at the end, over cute montages of Peter and Lizzie playing tennis with two little blond moppets, we learn that Lizzie did win the US Open. And Wimbledon. Twice. So that's ok then. She's allowed to succeed in her career - as long as she has succeeded in love first.

Menswear Sucks

I think this a great article, thoroughly and eloquently detailing the painful double-bind of rigid gender roles, the ways they hurt people of all genders, and how this filters into sartorial choice. I have no bones to pick with the article; I simply want to expand on my own thoughts on the issue here, particularly the idea that "menswear sucks".

As a 'female-bodied' person who embraces a whole range of clothing options, I can tell you that clothing sucks in many ways. If you want to wear a men's shirt whilst sporting some major breasts, prepare for a long, dispiriting search. If you want to wear men's trousers whilst wielding some major hips: ditto. If you want to wear women's shoes whilst bearing particularly wide/long feet: ditto. If you want to wear a dress and you are particularly tall/short: well, you get the idea. The fashion industry (and this is as relevant to George at Asda as it is to Marc Jacobs) caters to one kind of body: the kind that is 'in proportion'. Sometimes it doesn't even do that. If you're of average height and thin, you're perfectly catered to. If you're above-averagely tall and thin, you're fine. If you're below-averagely short and thin, you're probably ok, but might struggle in some places. If you're fat, no matter how tall you are, you're going to struggle a lot in most places. And this doesn't even begin to engage with the radical notion that not all bodies are thin or fat in the same ways. I'm not sure how it plays out with 'male bodies' and men's clothing, as I haven't had that experience personally, but I can tell you that searching for any kind of clothing as a 'female-bodied' person is fraught with difficulties.

You might have a big rib cage and small breasts: wrong. You might have wide hips and narrow thighs: wrong. You might have a tiny frame and a large arse: wrong. None of these body shapes, as common as they are, will make for a stress-free shopping trip. You know that ubiquitous bit of advice, dress for your shape? Wear things that flatter your body? Well, if you want to do that (and not all of us do), it starts with wearing clothes that fit you. And for some people, that is nigh on impossible. I, for example, have never bought a pair of trousers that I didn't have to shorten in some way, either with a turn-up or a sharp pair of scissors. And I'm barely below the national average in height. And that's not even a major problem, unlike, say, not being able to find a shirt that fits both your chest and your stomach. My sewing skills are not to be sniffed at, but that kind of alteration is beyond me. Don't forget that we're just talking about clothes that fit, here, not clothes that you require or clothes that you like. It's a minefield, is what I'm saying.

What I want to add to Greta Christina's excellent article is this: menswear doesn't suck - or not nearly as much - if you're not a man. Regardless of the fact that a lot of menswear doesn't fit me terribly well, I can wear it and be thought of (I hope!) as cool and quirky - at least sartorially so. When I wear a men's shirt and tie combo to work, I get compliments - especially when it matches my nail polish! This despite the fact that often my breasts make a mockery of the nice straight lines of a good men's shirt and tie. The sexist assumptions which lead to the poor clothing options in the menswear departments of most highstreet shops extend past the boring clothes themselves to the people who wear them. I could wear the exact same thing as a random office guy, and despite the fact that it probably looks better on him, I would be the one attracting glances and comments, gracing magazine pages with my 'quirky' looks, being thought of as fashionable / stylish / trendy. He would just be a boring office guy in a boring office suit.

Lest you think this is just because of interest in the transgression of boundaries, the same treatment is emphatically not extended to men who borrow garments / styles from traditionally female attire. That guy would probably struggle to get or keep a job, whereas I could waltz into any office in the country dressed in a suit and tie with impunity. Sure, depending on how I did it and what I look like, I might get called a dyke or have my gender identity questioned, but that's not going to be the end of the world for me. Men who transgress into female sartorial territory are at far more risk in all sorts of ways than women who transgress into male territory.

I don't want to get into a big thing about femmephobia, transphobia and transmisogyny, although frankly each of those topics could keep me going for weeks. I'd just like to point out that, although menswear seems boring compared with womenswear, the real restriction lies not with the clothes themselves but with the people who wear them. A boring suit on a woman is not boring, whilst a boring suit on a man is. This is sexism. Yes, it's sexism that also hurts women - as Christina explains, men get boring clothes because women are expected to care about fashion and appearances and, thanks to the complementary model, men are therefore not - but this is an issue that does hurt men.

I can't help but feel that I'm not adding anything to Christina's excellent argument. I'm simply expanding on her points, and agreeing all the way, and yet I still feel somewhat defensive. I guess what I really want to do is defend the clothes themselves, particularly since I like to wear some of them. They don't suck. They don't. Society sucks. Sexism sucks. Femmephobia and transmisogyny suck. Menswear is great; we just think it sucks because we are conditioned to see men's fashion as an oxymoron, as ridiculous, as laughable and pathetic and queer. Well, this queer likes men's clothes. And the problem is not in my boring clothes. It's in your boring mind.

Review: Hope Springs

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Internet Dating Blues

This piece over at Raw Story really resonated with me. I'm sure many people who don't look like men are subjected to demands for their attention, and sulking when that attention is refused. It's not always a big deal, of course. If you have attention to spare, if you're in the mood for it, if you feel like engaging. But the problem is that you don't always have attention to spare, and you don't always feel like engaging. That's when it becomes apparent that you don't actually have a choice in these matters: if you withhold or withdraw your attention, things can get ugly fast.

Sometimes they don't even get particularly ugly, just banally irritating - like this exchange with a sweet looking fellow on OKCupid:

His profile suggested he was going to have time to kill in London and was looking to meet some new people. I thought we might get on. But then I forgot to reply to him - you know, life happened, like it does. For a start, I thought his reply, although keen, was brief enough that I shouldn't push it. Surely, I thought, if he wanted to meet up he might have said something more than that? Something encouraging, like "are you free later in the week?" or "I'd really love to check out this picnic spot!". Something which gave me something to reply to. OKCupid is not like trying to set up a job interview, you know? I'd like there to be mutual enthusiasm. It's not like I'm thinking "ok, I'm no catch on paper, but just a foot in the door: just agree to meet me and I'll blow your mind!" I'm thinking, "this guy wants to meet people, I like meeting people: let's see how it goes." I'm not doing him a favour, and he's not doing me a favour.

So time passed; I thought nothing more of it. But then I got another message from him, and not one which inspired good feelings. It sounded whiny and self-pitying. But I did feel bad about not replying, and when I checked his profile again, I discovered that he'd been the victim of a crime. He's in a strange city, he doesn't know anyone, and he's been robbed. And then this chick on the internet totally didn't reply to his message! After all, I had initiated contact with him. I owed him, right? So I responded, and prompted the charming little exchange where, somehow, I have started trying to persuade him to see me. Here's the times I'm free: pick one! I have no money. I'll pay! I'm too busy.

I didn't really do anything wrong in not responding to him. It's a dating website, right? That's how it works. But now I feel like he's doing me a favour if he agrees to meet with me. His first message back to me states that it's ok that he never heard back from me, except for how his life is a mess and his trip to London has been a fail, and now there's no time for anything good to happen ever. Now, I can see he's upset, but am I alone in also seeing this as a little manipulative? A little bit cheap? "I'm really sad and it's partly your fault. Placate me." It worked. My reply is conciliatory; rather pathetically so. I want to make things better. He is seeming to imply that meeting me would make it better, so I suggest that we meet.

It's a clever little trick, no matter how unintentional. I have apologised when there's really nothing I should be sorry for, and I've tried to fit myself to his requirements for meeting despite the fact that I'm not that desperate to meet him. I wonder now if regaining the power in this particular situation made him feel better. I really would have met up with him - I'd even have bought him a drink. But there are some little red flags going up in my mind, and they're to do with that demand for attention that Marcotte anatomises so well.

If someone doesn't respond to your attentions - be they internet dating messages, 'hello' on the tube, 'can I buy you a drink' etc - they've got reasons. You should trust them. You're not owed any response at all, and you're certainly not owed any positive response. By putting yourself out there, that's the risk you take. You might get a smile, a reply, a cup of coffee; you might not. Move on. If you make a polite request for attention, and get refused, nobody is going to think worse of you. It's when you graduate from polite requests to hammering on the metaphorical door with your fists, or resorting to underhanded methods to gain admittance that people are going to think worse of you. I don't take kindly to being manipulated into reopening contact with someone. It has made me exponentially less likely to meet this guy. Even if he'd just followed up with something like "hey, are you still up for that drink?" I would have likely replied with enthusiasm. It's the suggestion that I owe him something that has rubbed me the wrong way. My lack of response seems to be on the list of "wrongs that the world has done me". And while being a pain in the arse on a dating website is universal behaviour, treating a person as if they are an object that the world owes you is definitely gendered behaviour.

Let me be totally clear: I'm not accusing random OKCupid guy of that. I'm not labelling him a misogynist or demanding his head on a silver platter. I'm simply pointing out that there is a continuum of behaviours in which women are treated as objects on a list of things that the guy gets if he plays the game well - a good job, a nice car, a pretty wife - and that his behaviour plays into those tropes all too well. The saddest thing is that it worked on me. I played along, until I came to my senses and remembered that I don't owe anyone anything. That it's not my fault that things have gone wrong, and that I'm not merely a sweet reward in the game of life.

Anticipating Panto

For some reason, these last couple of weeks my mind has been turning frequently to panto. It's not quite like the season is almost upon us; when I actually think about it, I don't start this year for another three months. But I guess it's nearly autumn term, and once term has started the weeks will start to speed by faster and faster until before I know it, I'm heading home for five weeks of early mornings and late nights, scraping ice off the car twice a day, obsessive Neros visits, getting dreadful songs stuck in my head (and accidentally learning the dance moves), competitively climbing ladders, pulling ropes, choosing drill bits, taking all morning to construct an effect only to denounce it as not-good-enough, pulling it apart and starting again, spending fourteen hours at work followed by three hours at the pub and five hours in bed before it starts all over again in the morning.

It's my favourite time of year, despite how exhausting and all-consuming it is. Actually, it's because of those things. I love my friends there, both the new ones (cast and creative team) and the old ones, the crew who are usually there every year and who have at their core the same five of us who have met like this since we were teenagers, to live in each other's pockets for five weeks before we return to our normal lives for the rest of the year, occasionally managing to meet up for a meal or a show maybe once in between pantos. It's an odd kind of friendship in that way: we don't make much effort to see each other during the year, and normally that might suggest that we're not that close. But I don't see it that way, and I'm pretty sure my colleagues don't either. It's more that we are satisfied with the pattern of our closeness: we enjoy each other fully, to the exclusion of all other things, for a short, intense period over Christmas - and then we disperse, and move on, and remember other friends and other activities, and are content not to interact much over the interim. We even become somewhat emotionally dependant on each other - I hope not in an unhealthy way, but it's true that there is always a general atmosphere, and one person's grumpiness or sadness can affect the whole team. It's why we make sure there's always plenty of food available: hungry crew are grumpy crew! It's perhaps pretty weird, but panto is by its very nature pretty weird, and for better or worse, I have fallen for it hard in all its bizarre glory.

One of the things I am less keen on, however, is the proliferation of young girl dancers. We get a troop in from a local dance school, and they're always a mixed bag, because what group of humans isn't a mixed bag? But these are teen and pre-teen girls, aged from 4-18, and seriously, that comes with a whole heap of problems. Of course it is difficult, integrating a bunch of kids with a bunch of adults in a working environment. Of course we get issues every year, some serious (a group of girls bullying one rejected girl), some not so serious (overexcited children in the wings, giggling and getting in the way). Of course there are tensions sometimes with the older girls, who think they are too cool to be chaperoned around the building like the law requires that they are, and who want to hang around with the cast and crew, testing boundaries and stretching their new freedom. But there are genuine joys in working with kids as well. The littlest ones can be delightful - often we have a couple of brand new dancers, and watching a 4-year-old perform for the first time in front of a packed auditorium could warm the hardest of hearts. Seeing how dedicated some of the girls are to the art of dance itself is inspiring (although tempered by the sulky ambivalence of some of the others, inevitably). But the biggest joy, and naturally the biggest problem, is getting a glimpse into the lives of a group of girls in the wild, as it were.

Although the girls are deliberately kept as separate as possible from the adult staff (for legal reasons, the girls stay in their dressing rooms unless they are required on stage, at which point they are escorted to the stage where chaperones wait in each wing, watching until the girls are finished and they can be escorted back to the dressing rooms), there is inevitably a lot of crossover, and sometimes you can't avoid bearing witness to their behaviour. I'm not really talking here about the smaller girls, who generally are sweet and silly and annoying and obnoxious as young kids are. It's the slightly older girls who can be really concerning. That age seems like a long time ago now, but I definitely recognise a lot of the dynamics from my own adolescence. They are the ones who are keenest to dodge the chaperones, the ones who want to go out in between shows to buy chips instead of staying in the dressing room with the younger kids, the ones who are most obviously divided between dedicated dancers and those who are only in it because it's more fun than school. You can see the difference in rehearsals, where some are actually rehearsing, and some are skulking on the sidelines, giggling behind their hands and eyeing up the male dancers. Often the adolescent girls are the ones who most often have to be told "face forward! put some effort into it! for god's sake smile!"

And this attitude bleeds into the wings. It's not quite that cut and dried. I'm not saying the dedicated dancers are angels, either in behaviour or attitude, or that the girls who aren't quite as into the actual work are badly behaved. But I do see a lot of unprofessionalism from the dancers - unsurprisingly since they're not, y'know, professionals yet. However the difference is often between those who are aspring to professionalism (in behaviour if not actual career) and those who couldn't care less. And in some of those kids there is some seriously unpleasant behaviour.

A few years ago, I yelled at one of the girls for calling one of the other girls frigid. Both girls were thirteen. I can't even remember what I said, but I was absolutely enraged, and whilst it was totally not my place to get involved - we try to stay as separate as possible from the girls - I couldn't help myself. It was a year where the infighting amongst the girls was high: they were cruel to each other, they moved in packs where one false word seemed to mean instant expulsion, and the expelled girls would shuffle about awkwardly in the wings, red with misery and shame and frustration. One girl was so badly bullied that year that she hasn't been back since. And then I heard one girl accuse another of being frigid, and I lost it.

I wonder if I'm doing these girls a disservice by suggesting that they don't know how dangerous and damaging a word like "frigid" is? In a way, I hope that they don't. I know they've picked up from somewhere that it's an insult, that to be frigid is to be wrong in some way. I'm not naive enough to say that these girls can't know what sexuality even is yet - they are thirteen, and have probably been learning about sex in one form or another (and one form in particular) for some years. They're almost certainly old enough to have begun exploring their own sexuality, or at least to have begun thinking about it - as these girls obviously had. I'm willing to bet that while their knowledge may not be particularly honed or nuanced yet, certainly it's honed enough to know that being sexual is good and being frigid is bad. Certainly it's nuanced enough to perceive that there is no better way to bring down a peer than to go after their sexuality. I wonder if they've learnt yet that boxing other people into corners and holes only deepens their own isolation, even whilst they put themselves firmly on the side of the ones who are cool and knowledgeable and fun and sexy - the ones who are doing it right. Can any of those girls truly confide in each other? Did someone else - not the target of the hateful word, but one of the ubiquitous bystanders - overhear that and laugh along, all the while worrying that they themselves might be frigid, and knowing now even more than before that they could never tell their friends?

It's said that girls and women police gendered behaviour (in girls and women) more forcefully than men  and boys do, because they are more aware of what's at stake for the transgressors. Those girls are learning that early, too. They are learning what's acceptable, and what isn't, and who they can be honest with, and who they can't. They learnt not to say that stuff in front of me, but I doubt my little rant had any effect on their behaviour away from me. They laughed at me, as teenage girls will do, and rolled their eyes. No doubt they made judgements about my appearance, my sexuality, my life. I can't say it bothered me too much, to be sneered at by a group of thirteen-year-olds. But those thirteen-year-olds will be around seventeen now, and who knows what toxic beliefs they are carrying into adulthood? Who knows what dangerous knowledge and anti-knowledge they are taking away to university and drama school and first jobs? Who knows how many other, similarly isolated girls and women they will find, and bond with, and discover the same things over and over again with until it's fixed so deep that it can't be purged?

This is all a lot of handwringing and think of the children!-ing, I know. It's rather predictable, and very boring. But I can't help but feel its importance, as I look ahead to another year of panto, another year of cute children and awkward teenagers and all the things in between, another year of cliques and friends and excitement, of learning and policing, honing the edges, knocking each other into shape with each word, each look. The thing that I love about panto, that feeling of closeness and community, of living in  each other's pockets for a month before returning to regular life, will be if anything more intense for the younger members of that community, with all the positives and negatives that that intensity entails. Highs will be higher, lows will be lower, cliques will be cliquier and the girls who are rejected will be rejected totally, with no time to heal the wounds and allow other potential friends to come out of the woodwork to show that yes, there are other people, it's not the end of the world. I remember that very well from school, that feeling of devastation and desperation when it was my turn to be left out in the cold by a group of friends who had decided that, this week, I wasn't good enough. Next week it was ok, I was back in, and somebody else was out, or I had found somebody else to share my lunchtimes and conspiratorial looks. That freedom of time just isn't there in the condensed world of pro-panto, and for adolescent girls I imagine it's something like all the emotion and intensity of senior school packed into five weeks. Don't get me wrong, it can be a wonderful experience, and for adult me, it has been. But I don't think teenage me would have enjoyed it. And I just hope that those teenagers aren't learning all the wrong lessons.

Female-Bodied

Today I have such dreadful cramps that when I get up out of my chair, I make an involuntary sound of pain. That's pretty pathetic, right? But I'm not going to talk about how pathetic I am - not today. I'm going to talk about what my body means to me.

As a confusedly-gendered person, I spend a lot of time in conflict with my body. Sometimes I hate my breasts, which no amount of binding would disguise, even if binding wasn't so preposterously uncomfortable that I never even made it out of the house whilst sporting it. Sometimes I hate my hips, which are pretty unhappy about fitting into boy-trousers. Sometimes I hate my legs, which remain uncompromisingly short, and which ensure that I have never worn a pair of trousers that I haven't had to shorten, regardless of what gender they're intended for. And yes, sometimes I have hated my periods, hated them to the point of tears. I'm not going to claim that my hatred wasn't gender-related. In a way, how could it not be? In a culture where schoolgirls are shamed for having tampons or pads in their bags, where grown men as well as schoolboys make jokes about PMS and have gross-out competitions about period-sex, where many non-period-having humans genuinely believe that menstruation makes one "crazy", how can I be sure that my resentment of my periods was divorced from that sexist nonsense? I'm sure that it affected me on some level: one can't grow up steeped in misogyny and expect to emerge unscathed.

However, for the most part, my period-hatred was to do with the inconvenience of it all. I was never the girl who belonged in a Lil-Lets advert, dancing around joyfully with nary a rusty stain in sight. I was the girl whose periods were wilfully irregular, turning up at random with no warning seemingly just to toy with me, bringing with them days of disruption, discomfort and pain. Some of that is still true today - they're still painful and annoying, and my cycle is still anything but regular. And I'm still slightly resentful of the extra planning I have to do to accommodate them. But honestly? I actually kind of love having periods. Although I don't exactly enjoy the pain and the clock-watching, I don't hate it. I like the sense of control that I get from dealing with it, even when it's so fundamentally uncontrollable. Okay, so I can't dictate (or even predict!) when my period is going to turn up, but I can predict the kind of steps I'll need to take in order to deal with it when it does happen. And that makes me feel at peace with my body in a way that has very little to do with gender.

I hear a lot of anecdotal evidence from trans-men, trans-masculine folk and the like who hate having periods, much as they hate their breasts, because for them menstruation is incontrovertible evidence of their 'female bodies', which they often don't like to be reminded of. I have a lot of sympathy for that feeling - I have felt it myself, about many aspects of my body. On the other side of the same coin, I've also heard a lot of people describing that "female bonding" thing of having periods: it's something that all women share, and men don't understand! Actually, no. Not all women have periods, for a variety of reasons, and some men do, also for a variety of reasons. I don't really subscribe to either of these views in their entirety, although I understand the drive behind both. I hope that my acceptance of my menstruation stems from a growing empathy with the idea that no biological functions are inherently male or female, meaning that my periods are not an irrefutable sign of my womanhood. They may be an indicator that I'm capable of getting pregnant, but that's an entirely different kettle of fish.

I'm getting so sick of the essentialist language that is used to describe us. Progressives often use "female-bodied" in a well-meaning attempt to show that they know that not all people who have breasts or uteri are women, and I do appreciate the intent. But it's terribly unhelpful for all sorts of people, particularly trans and genderqueer people, who often don't want or need to alter their bodies, and would rather not be put into any particular box due to their personal choices (or lack thereof). I really don't appreciate being reduced to my biology in any case, particularly when it's just yet another stick to be used to beat my supposed gender into me. On a slight tangent, could we stop referring to male-heavy spaces as "sausage-fests"? A) it's gross, and b) it's factually incorrect, disturbingly erasing and personally insulting.

I like my periods ... they don't mean I'm a woman. I don't have a cock ... that doesn't mean I'm any less of a man. I am not female-bodied, and I never have been.

Consent

This post is personal and has no great revelations about life or love. It's not even about gender! Well, I suppose gender comes into it a bit. Sneaky little thing gets everywhere! It's about unwanted intercourse, and me, and an unpleasant episode with a partner. Please be aware it gets a bit brutal, and click past this post right now if you're not up for it. If you are, read on ...




I liked intercourse, once, but I often found it painful. Whether that's due to a physical issue or a mental one, I don't know. It was frustrating for me, of course, and some of my partners found it extremely difficult to deal with. I had a turbulent eight-month relationship with one such person, who made a good show - for the most part - of being accepting and tolerant, and generally acting as though this was reasonable behaviour on my part. He was patient and kind, taking his time with 'foreplay', as I'd told him that this was helpful for me.

Once I suggested that we focus more on the non-penetrative aspects of sex, since I found these parts pleasurable, and would be able to relax into them more if I wasn't worried about how the penetration would feel when we got to it. He wasn't terribly keen on the idea, as for him the most enjoyable part of sex was the intercourse itself, and he didn't really see the point, he told me, of sex which didn't end in intercourse. I couldn't orgasm with him - I never had - and he thought this made foreplay even more pointless. Nevertheless, he wanted to make me happy, and he genuinely wanted me to enjoy sex, so we agreed to shelve penetration for a little while and see how it went.

I was practically living with him at this point. My room on the other side of London was cold, bare and lonely, and it was much nicer to spend time with A in his cosy flat. He had to get up early in the mornings to commute to the opposite corner of London for work, so it was easy for me to go partway with him and be at college for a 9am start. We had settled quickly into a routine - mundane and domestic but cosy and comforting at the same time. We argued about the washing up, but we shopped and cooked and decorated together, and were happy. I was 19.

We 'foreplayed' for a while after that, kissing and touching and stroking and sucking. I tried to enjoy it as I'd said that I would. I tried to relax, like the books said I should. I wanted to make A happy, to let him see me enjoying myself. I wanted to enjoy myself. I started pretended to, hoping to trick myself into feeling pleasure. It didn't work on me, but it worked on A, who read in my responses only what he wanted to read, and moved to penetrate me. I was tense and confused, paralysed with shame and guilt and fear. If there was something wrong with me, this wasn't the way to fix it. What was? How could I find out? Not like this ... a problem for another time, then. I moved to accommodate him and tried to relax my muscles and my mind.

We fucked.

I moved as much as I dared, trying to tread the fine line between stillness and movement that didn't make me an inert lump of meat, but didn't hurt too much either. He pushed his face into my shoulder, kissing my collarbone, his fingers on my nipple. I closed my eyes to stop the tears. I retreated from the pain and my eyes dried, my mind emptied. I watched him from somewhere else, trying to smile at him, thinking maybe this isn't so bad. I can do this. Look how easy it is.

Lying together afterwards, damp and clammy, somewhere between relieved, resigned and resentful, I realised I had to tell him the truth about 'how it was for me'. I apologised a lot. I thanked him for trying the foreplay thing. I apologised again if I'd given him the wrong signals. I told him I hadn't enjoyed it. I asked him if he'd seen my tears. I told him it was my fault for not asking him to stop. I said sorry.

His mouth tightened then, and he pulled away, and shouted into my face that I'd made him rape me. After a while I started crying, and he held me and soothed me, murmuring into my ear and stroking my back. I quieted.

We had dinner.

Later, he cried, and held his face in his hands, and I looked at him as if he was my child, thinking I must protect him from this. 




I said at the top that gender didn't come into this one. It doesn't, really, except that as I wrote that I thought about all the ways that gender had influenced this particular incident, as well as sex more generally. Had I not been socialised as a woman, would I have been more vocal about what I wanted and didn't want, like A was? Perhaps I wouldn't have internalised so many damaging 'truths' about sex: intercourse is the only bit that matters; I should want intercourse because if I didn't I was a prude, I was broken; foreplay is something that happens before intercourse, as a warmup, and if I wanted it to last longer than it did I was selfish and immature and not doing it right; intercourse is something that I owed my partner. Perhaps if A and I had had different sex education (not just formal education but social education, a casual on-the-job learning with our peers and partners) he wouldn't have set so much store by intercourse, and nor would I, and both of us would have thought that there was value in exploring other aspects of sex. That one isn't so much about gender, but so much of it comes down to gender in the end, at a root level. A was older than I, but he probably had the same experience of being separated from 'the other' gender at school to learn about sex, to gigglingly observe condoms and bananas and cold line drawings of female anatomy. He was probably taught, as I was, that I was the possessor of untold riches and that he would get them if he only behaved in the right way, and that this was normal. He was probably taught, as I was, that if the carefully applied formula didn't work, it meant that one or other of us must be broken, and since he wasn't broken, it must be me. And he probably would have agreed with me that he needed to be protected from my brokenness. I think, in the end, he would rather not have known at all.

Best Figure

Here's something I remember from school.

When we finished our GCSEs, my friends and I had a party. Some of us were staying on for sixth form and A-levels, some of us were moving to other places for A-levels and NVQs and the like, and some of us were heading out into the grown-up world of work. (On a side note, I can't believe that it's nearly ten years later and I still haven't headed out into the grown-up world of work. Those guys overtook me years ago. They have jobs and husbands and babies. I am still living in halls. These are the things I worry about when I can't sleep at night, at the ripe old age of 25.)

Anyway, back to the party. It was because we were all going in different directions, and everything was changing and oh my God we'll never see each other again ... it was a very grown-up affair. We had party food and party games and plenty of alcopops. I'm pretty sure someone's parents had gone out for the evening, giving us a house to ourselves. One of the girls had organised a kind of awards thing in advance. There were categories, and we all voted (secretly of course) for a winner of each category. It sounds a bit like what they (you?) do in American high schools - 'most likely to graduate top of the class', 'most likely to go to prison', etc.

The only category I remember was a kind of 'open' one, I think, where we wrote down the thing that we liked most about each member of our group and submitted it to S, who was organising the whole thing. I'm not sure if there were different categories for physical quality and non-physical quality. I'm not sure whether the results were collated and the top one chosen, or whether we all saw all of them in the end. I do remember that I had a little laminated bit of paper afterwards which said Best Listener on it. It still gives me a warm glow to this day, but I guess that must have been something slightly different, because I also remember the disbelief on J's face and her disparaging laugh when she read what I'd written for her. I'd said that her best physical feature was her figure.

Now, in my defence, my intention had been pure. We were a ragtag bunch of teenagers, comprising for the most part all the flotsam that had been rejected from other, cooler groups of kids. I hope that wouldn't insult anyone in our group. I am pretty happy with that definition for myself, but maybe the others wouldn't be. To be fair, some of them were cool in the sense that they had friends outside of our group, fitted in at parties and weren't bullied by the other kids. Most of us weren't that kid. We were the other kid, the one who came to our group for refuge from normality, which had in general been pretty rotten to us. None of us sailed blithely through secondary school unscathed. J, now that I come to think of it, may have been the closest we had to a cool kid. She was brash and confident and sensual, full-bodied, loud-voiced. She was the polar opposite of me, and I thought she was absolutely marvellous. I have a photo of us together at one of our sleepovers. I'm shy, in a vastly oversized t-shirt. J is wearing nothing but a hot-pink bra.

Her scornful dismissal of my clumsy accolade made my heart hurt. I had meant, as I stumblingly tried to explain in front of our whole group of friends, that I loved how comfortable she was in her body - how unselfconscious, how carefree. I did love her figure, all the lovely rolls and curves of it, but I also loved how much she inhabited that figure. How present she was in her beautiful body. That didn't seem radical, back then.

It still upsets me to think of the way she received my words. I think she genuinely couldn't believe that I found her figure attractive. Perhaps she was only embarrassed that I'd mentioned her figure at all, thinking that maybe I was making fun, or that even if I wasn't, my comment would open her up to judgement from everyone else - that our friends would be thinking "great figure? J?" and be looking at her to see if they concurred, appraising her.

It obviously wasn't my first exposure to the ugly, complicated relationship that many women have with their bodies. If it had been, I probably would never have been driven to make that comment in the first place, because J's apparently comfortable habitation of her non-thin body would not have been radical. I wouldn't have noticed it, because it would have been normal. I might even have been comfortably inhabiting my own non-thin body. Instead I was hiding myself in vastly oversized t-shirts, and I thought J's seemingly thoughtless exhibition of her own body meant that she knew that she was beautiful, and thought nothing of having the eyes of others on her flesh. It wasn't just the bra, of course. It wasn't like she was roaming the school halls in her bikini - she wore uniform like the rest of us. But that was just it. She didn't make a big deal of what she wore or didn't wear. To my frightened mind, it was just that easy for J. She had somehow magically escaped the widely-cast net of body shame that so many of us floundered around in, and despite her decidedly non-socially-condoned curves, she was comfortable in her skin.

That was the quality that I tried to capture in my unfortunate tribute. I saw that J's body wasn't the conventionally-attractive type, and I thought she was happy with it, and I loved both her body and her happiness. I wanted her to know that I thought she was beautiful, too. But I hadn't counted on the insidious, ubiquitous nature of body shame, which can turn even the most innocent or well-meaning remark into a barb. Perhaps J's dismissive laugh was to deflect attention from something that she couldn't believe was true, and didn't want anyone else to consider. Perhaps she was simply embarrassed. Or perhaps she was secretly flattered, but didn't want to appear arrogant in front of our friends. Either way, I doubt that J has a little laminated bit of paper in an old box somewhere which says Best Figure. I kind of hope that she does, though.

Pirates! In an Adventure with Gender!

I was linked to this review of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! at the F-word from a blog round-up at the fabulous Lashings of Ginger Beer blog, which I have recently discovered and am rather in love with. I happened to see Pirates myself last week, when I was in a filthy mood and wanted something to cheer me up. I knew Hunger Games would be out for a while longer, and I thought Pirates would probably do a better job of lifting my spirits anyway. Obviously I can't speak (yet) for what Hunger Games would do for my spirits, but Pirates certainly worked for me. Here's why I'm on a different page of the same book as Laura when it comes to gender in the film.

Pirates is not a progressive film in terms of gender. There are just three female characters (plus three 'ladies' who faint at the 'Scientist of the Year' competition, when a particularly exciting exhibit reaches the 'Ladies Fainting' section of the clap-o-meter, and some scantily-clad island beauties, about whom more later). One of these is a member of Pirate Captain's crew, disguised as a man. One is Cutlass Liz, a borderline racist characterisation of a sexy Barbadian pirate. And one is Queen Victoria, who is a badass villain whose beef with pirates is that they are so old-fashioned.

Cutlass Liz doesn't get to feature in the story - she is pretty much a token character. The crew member, who is addressed as "Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate" by Pirate Captain in the opening scene, isn't exactly foregrounded either. I could have done without her love-sick swoon in the same scene, where she sighs "I'd take a jellyfish in the face for [Pirate Captain]", but at least she doesn't end up marrying him, and her crush isn't a plot point. Queen Victoria is the best female character by a mile - she is mean, single-minded and deadly. Her diminutive stature and waddling plumpness do not hinder her in the slightest in setting aside her restrictive costume and waging war on Pirate Captain.

Three women in a film is pretty poor, especially when one of them only makes one appearance in 80 minutes. I suppose it's the old excuse, "well, there just weren't any women pirates!" Aardman, you've made a great argument that there probably were female pirates, perhaps disguised as men, and you could have done much more with that than give your token the most boring motivation in the history of female characters - that she's in love with a male character. You could even have had some women scientists. But I guess that would just be too unrealistic ...

I also disliked the closing joke of the film, in which Pirate Captain's deputy makes an emotional speech about the lessons they've all learnt. Pirate Captain asks him, sotto voce, whether he's sure he isn't a woman disguised as a man, quipping "apparently there's a lot of it about!" This is just boring gender-essentialism. I suppose it isn't necessarily all bad, because Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate is never suspected of being a woman, which turns the joke back onto Pirate Captain. But this does sail dangerously close to "exceptional woman" territory, in which one woman can escape the defining characteristics of her gender to prove her worth at the expense of other women. But I'm also slightly worried by the character description for the deputy that I found in what looks like an official Tumblr for the film: 

If the Pirate Captain is the crew’s flashy but unreliable dad, the Pirate with a Scarf is their slightly put-upon mum. [...] [He is s]mart, resourceful, and perhaps just a little TOO loyal ...

Now that's definitely a "he's a girl" joke, but is it also a "he's gay" joke? Perhaps I'm reading too much into it (this accusation has been levelled at me from time to time) but those sentences together make me pretty suspicious that the deputy's "loyalty" might be crush-based.

So much for the women. What about the men of Pirates? To my mind, the film is just as hard on men as it is on women. Women are largely invisible, which is problematic. But men are very visible, and most of them are muppets. Pirates are loveable but ineffectual or swaggering macho-men; scientists are lonely unlovable nerds. The motivation of a high number of characters is to see scantily-clad women or get a girlfriend. I actually laughed at the introduction to Charles Darwin, when I thought that his journal entry documenting his discoveries and ending with "I will never get a girlfriend. I am so unhappy" was a throwaway joke, and not the basis for his entire narrative arc. Really, the film is incredibly unkind to scientists, who are without exception socially-inept, mind-numbingly boring, terminally unattractive and childishly obsessed with women. As Laura points out in her list of things Pirates taught her about women,

It's fun to perve on women. During a presentation to the Royal Society of Scientists, the inventor of a hydrogen-powered flying device points out that one of its main advantages is that it lets you look down women's tops. [...] Finally: scantily clad women exist to cheer men up. When Pirate Captain's crew are down in the dumps, he suggests setting off on an adventure to an island where the women don't wear many clothes. Lucky old Darwin ends up on this wonderful island after having his heart broken by Queen Vic - get in there son!

Now, those things are reprehensible. But what they teach us about men is just as nasty as what they teach us about women - possibly even nastier. Women do indeed often need to fulfill certain narrow criteria to be in a feature film, and that is highly problematic. However, when there are only three women in a film, at least you can argue that there might be other women in existence who aren't like that. That's not much of a recommendation, but when your cast is populated by huge numbers of grown men acting without exception like horny teenagers whose sole motivation is to impress, perv on or 'get' women, it sends an equally damaging message: that all men are like that.

It's not much of a choice. Women are mostly invisible except when they're lust-objects, whilst men are invariably "pervs". I'm not saying that Pirates isn't sexist, because it most certainly is. But it cuts both ways, and it's not only offensive to women. I agree with every word of the F-word review - except I actually rather enjoyed the film, despite its issues - but I think it's important not to frame this particular sexism (or indeed any sexism) as damaging solely to women.

Selling Stuff to Men

In a nearby communal shower room, there is a corner unit where each person who uses the shower has an individual shelf. On these shelves, gender segregation rules.

Some shelves are filled with products like these:

1) "Gingerbread" by Pink Cow: "A Very Warm Bath & Shower Gel. 1. A scent filled to the brim with bear hugs, and sweet memories. 2. Be dreamsome ... paint a unicorn in pink and lime. 3. Say hurrah for 'NO PARABENS'. (Recycle me and I may come back as a blanket)" Text on the back reads "Massage over skin whilst in the bath or shower and let the cheeky bubbles kiss your skin with softness."

2) "Body Wash" by Sanctuary Spa, Covent Garden: "Gently cleanse, invigorate and soften your skin with moisturising sesame oil, smoothing essential oils and fragrant spices"

3) "nourish Shower Therapy" by Radox: "be nice to your skin, with shea butter & ginger shower cream"

Other shelves sport bottles more like this:

1) Alpecin "Caffeine Shampoo" Hair Energizer: "Stimulates hair roots during washing. With patented skin activator - Reduces hair loss."

2) "Ice Dive Shower Gel" by Adidas: "Developed with athletes". Text on the back reads "adidas Ice Dive PRO ENERGY shower gel for men: Unique energising fragrance, enriched with marine salts, pH respect/Dermo-tested formula."

3) Dove "Men+care Body and Face Wash": FRESH AWAKE energising scent (micro moisture)

4) Dove "Men+care Body and Face Wash": CLEAN COMFORT mild formula - micro moisture technology.

There are some pretty obvious differences between the first set of products and the second set. The first set focuses on sensation: scent, kiss, softness, gently, smoothing, fragrant; the second set seems to be more about action: stimulates, activator, athletes, energising, technology. The most verbose of the first set is committed to whimsy: bear hugs, sweet memories, dreamsome, unicorn; the most verbose of the second set is dedicated to improvement: developed, energising, enriched. The first is "filled to the brim" whilst the second is "enriched". The first is quirky; the second scientific. The first espouses gentleness; the second espouses aggression.

I think we all know how products are marketed towards 'men' and 'women'. These bathroom products are fairly typical examples. What is interesting in this case is the response they provoked in me. I am used to products being marketed as "normal" and "girl version" - (see car gadgets, work tools, kids' toys*). It's easy to interpret, in many cases, that "normal" is, well, normal, and "girl version" is kinda ridiculous. The girl version of any "normal" product will often be pink or purple in colour, appeal to whimsy, lightheartedness, romance, flowers or the like. Now, there's nothing wrong with pink, purple, whimsy, lightheartedness, romance or flowers. The problem is how those differences are made to look like that - like differences - by their positioning against the "normal" version of these products. Because the "normal" version lacks these distinctions, the things that are added to make something "girl version" are additions to normal, and thus are produced as excessive, which can also be read as frivolous, trivial, decorative, etc. (See how all these words are code for "feminine"?) The point is that the normal version is basic, and the girl version is excessive. So far, so Gender Binary 101.

What's interesting about these bathroom products is how excessive the men's version looks to me. There is something laughable about those appeals to what seems to be extreme masculinity. Scientific formulas! Athletic prowess! Magic hair regrowth! And yet the appeals to what seems to be extreme femininity are no less laughable ("paint a unicorn in pink and lime" ... ?!). But I am acclimatised to extreme femininity in bathroom products. When it comes to body cleaning products, it is the "girl version" which is normal, and the men's version which is produced as excessive. Note that 3 out of 4 men's products explicitly state that they are for men, while none of the women's products mention gender. Body cleaning products are implicitly coded as feminine from the get-go, meaning that products that want to appeal to a different target market need to explicitly identify that market. Thus we get square gun-metal grey bottles and clean straight lines like this as opposed to curved shapes, flowing lines and soft images like this.

Bathroom products are not the only area where the girl-version is the norm from which boy-version deviates (see also recipe books, pregnancy books and home cleaning products). However, cooking, child-rearing and housework are things that are constructed, however wrongheadedly, as 'women's business', and so the normalising of femininity in products associated with these topics is understandable (if annoying and ridiculous). One would think of bodily hygiene, on the other hand, as being non-gendered - we all need to keep clean. But no, it has to be produced as girly, because women care about being clean (and soft and scented, of course) whereas men only wash because they absolutely have to. I'm not saying that this is true, of course - only that for some reason, advertising companies seem to think that these are the narratives they must promote in order to sell stuff to 'men' and 'women'. (What does one buy if one isn't a man or a woman ... ?) We should all be insulted by this, no matter what gender we are.

* I am aware that by providing only 'normal' and 'girl' links here, I am ignoring the 'boy' versions of the same pages. However, in all of these examples, it is remarkable how closely the 'boy' versions resemble the 'normal' versions, which is precisely my point. See my search for boys' toys, girls' toys and children's toys. In terms of the range of colours and items the non-gendered search is similar to the boys' search (although it's interesting that the 'boys' toys' search also turns up what looks like soft porn aimed at both men and women, as well as products aimed at adult men, whilst the other two searches return only 'children's' items). On the 'girls' toys' search, the range of products is smaller (mostly dolls, dolls' accessories and miniature household products like ironing boards and ovens) and there is not a single item that doesn't include the colour pink. My point is that the boys' version, whilst different from the non-gendered version, is not as different from that version as the girls' version is.