Mary Beard on Radio 4 now with Point of View about Miss World 2011

Oh, I must have the wrong etymology ... I thought it referred to a quality of sound.

It's effectively an ad feminam, since you are attacking not what was said but the manner in which it was said, which some people think is a bit off.

crumbs... I think it is possible to be strident on screen, both women and men, thinking of the Latin etymology I guess -- and I think that is quite different from hectoring which I have never remotely suggested. And for what it's worth, I've had quite a lot to say over the years on gendered adjectives..

And I do think it is possible to disagree while still understanding.. the fact that someone disagrees doesn't necessarily mean they don't understand (I think actually we all pretty well understand each other, we disagree..which is actually more healthy..no?)

You haven't really listened to any of the criticisms here Mary, if you're calling the reaction to your broadcast "strident". Which, everybody here is being too polite to point out, is a sexist way of describing women having strong opinions. Sheesh. Strident feminists is what they called us in the sixties. Things ought to have moved on.

I'd prefer you not to quote me as I don't think you've understood the criticisms we made, why they happened or why they were valid. Reducing what happened here down to a question of pseudonymity/anonymity on the internet seems to be missing the point somewhat.

I suppose this post I'm making is what you'd see as another example of supposed internet rudeness. It might be less about the internet though and more about the fact I'm Scottish and we do tend towards the blunt.

She'll be accusing us of 'hectoring' next!

Am a bit puzzled about you using the word "stridency" to describe those engaged in debate and discussion, Mary.

It's more than a little odd. Of all the words...

ps mary, if you find one of thunderbolt's posts, to the far right on the line where her name is, there is a link: "message poster". you can click this to send her a private message which she will be alerted to (without having to go on this thread to see it)

x-post Jericho

you're welcome. we all are here ;)

"stridency" - you can't hear the posters' voices, how do you know their timbre?
(yes I know it is a figure of speech - don't worry - but, ouch)

sorry, I realise that was a terrible long ramble long after the fact and I don't expect you to respond any further - once again, thank for coming on to join in the conversation yourself, I do admire it, and good night

I'm not convinced one can be strident in a written medium.

Err Vezzie, hello... thank you were being so...??.. frank.
It all seems a bit of a long time ago now.. I was (and remain) a bit amazed at the stridency of the reactions to a series of 10 minute radio talks.. which were trying to get some points I felt seriously about across to a wider audience, but couldnt possibly do more than scratch the surface. On the euro, not quite sure I follow.. but I wanted to try to remind people that some of these designs we take for granted have a history and MEAN something. The BBC didnt specify at all what I should talk about (they certainly didnt hire me to talk about Miss World), but I knew that they hoped I would reflect a bit on the classical world.. partly what I was doing in the Euro piece.

Anyway the only reason I popped up again right now was to ask Thunderboltsandlightning if I could reprint one of her comments on my blog in a book .. as it's the only way I have to get in touch with her...

Hello Mary,
You don't know me but I have been reading you for years.

Leaving aside your position on protesting Miss World I was disappointed by the discussion here.

I'm really disappointed that:

You repeatedly explained what metonymy means, as if the other posters not knowing was the problem. That was not the problem. The problem was that you picked Miss V to stand for the patriarchal institution of Miss World, which is like using Bambi in a discussion about hunt-sabbing to stand for hunting and saying, "Bambi is not the enemy". (I know others have explained this perfectly well already)

Your focus on the pseudonymity of this forum as some kind of problem. It is an unremarkable convention here (as on many internet forums). You can do the same if you want; if you choose not to, it is like going to a barbecue in a ballgown and spending the whole afternoon complaining that everyone else is under-dressed. Going on and on about how unsettling you found it, felt like a distraction technique, as if you were implying that the posters here are somehow being underhand in disagreeing with you. That felt like an unfair rhetorical device. (By the way I am sure that many of the posters on here are in a sense using a real name, as am I: in the sense that I am known to many mumsnetters in real life to be the person who posts as vezzie, although it is not on my passport. Not that it matters, as people have consistent and sincere identities on here anyway, whether or not they are known to map to their passport identities)

Talking about your newer piece about the euro, as if you were trying to distract a toddler by waving a fresh toy.

To be perfectly fair, you didn't have to come on here at all and I suppose by doing so, (and by what I knew of you already), you raised my expectations of you such that these things were disappointing.

I suppose what I find disappointing is that these things felt like deliberate dodges and obfuscations - talking about things that were not the things your interlocutors were challenging you on, and pretending they were the same things, and pretending (?) not to see the difference - were you? I don't know. Anyway it is a familiar technique, people cutting through you by "calling spades spades" when they are shovels (either deliberately, or sincerely not getting the difference), and it's disappointing.

I suppose you can't have been doing it deliberately because you didn't have to come here. But something tells me you weren't really listening, and that is sad, because it reminds me of how dismissive the broadsheet press are when they report our webchats with senior politicians and assume that the tough questions have been planted - by men? by women who aren't mothers? - I don't know, but everyone seems to think mothers don't really think. Of course they do, you of all people know that, so...?

Sorry to come to this with a diatribe so late, but I just wanted to explain how I felt, and I mean it in the nicest possible way

at outing

nice to see you

Asking around among the vaguely knowledgable, you get rather different answers! But I am not prepared to take anyone's words without asking... and that's not just a matter of caution.. it's about .. well politeness.

I'm not having a pop, by the way, you're obviously handling this responsibly.

the non copyright area of web

As far as I'm aware, people automatically own copyright of anything they put out there, wherever it is, unless they have signed it over to somebody else - e.g. MN owns copyright of anything we post here because we all ticked an 'I agree' box (probably without reading) when we signed up.

Thanks NoNameForThesePosts.
It's a very varied book this new "blog book", and I am including a range of comments that add to the discussion (and certainly not all that agree with me!).
The copyright issue here is murky. Some people claim that as comments have already been in the non copyright area of web no rules apply. But I am not prepared to publish in print form something that (however neatly put) someone might have typed out late night in fury and not want to see in old fashioned print, whether pseudonymously or not. Mary

I have no agenda here, but I saw this and just wanted to say, in case it's not clear, that I'm pretty sure Prof Beard is contacting all the posters who commented on her blog, whose views she'd like to publish. I got an email about three posts of mine about subjects that weren't at all contentious from a feminist point of view - in cast that helps explain.

@nyac/thunderboltsandlightning. Sorry, I don't think I was very clear...what I meant was that when I blogged about this thread, you put a comment on my blog ... I didnt agree with it, but it was a really cracking statement of your position. When I publish the blog in print form, it would be great to have it in the book (no identification required) ... because it IS a strong statement of your view (which some other commenters agreed with, some didnt).

There isnt much point publishing a blog if one only includes comments that are in support, It rather misses the point, I think.

So I hope you might say yes. As I said, I could give you a lot more details by email

whatever end of the age spectrum we're at we're facing the same patriarchal value that female humans only have worth as sexual objects and must be judged by standards of beauty and male sexuality - the child is in training for it, the young adult is being judged on it and having her value decided upon it and the older woman is of no value as that 'value' has supposedly passed and won't be coming back again.

it's all the same thing surely?

just a thought but a 'famous' name is in itself a persona isn't it? it's the persona under which you make your public appearances and opinions etc and presumably has some distinction from your private life much as using a pseudonym does for a person writing on the internet. as a non famous (in the wider sense of audience) name it may have less accountability and less identifying of the private life attached to it but it is not so different from the public persona of a famous person who is also known only for the face they put out there rather than their private intimate self.

just a thought.

i have just read and caught up on this whole thread having missed it the first time round. what strikes me is that it isn't really that different ages of feminist have different 'battles' or problems to tackle but that they are experiencing different faces of the same problem - or are fighting on different fronts of the same war to stick with the combat metaphor.

the objectification and non human being status of women will be manifested throughout our lifetimes in different ways - the princess culture of childhood will become the porn star sex object pressure of youth and the invisibility and worthlessness of age when our ability to conform to these models wears out. it's the problem of women being valued primarily for their appearance, being socialised to see their appearance as key to their self worth and being discouraged from finding their worth in wider more meaningful ways.

to say MW doesn't matter but the treatment of older women as worthless does is like saying.... (struggles for a decent analogy)... acorns are unconnected to oak trees or how you mix the ingredients doesn't effect the cake (clearly fails on the analogy front).

without the objectification of girls and women we wouldn't end up with the consequences we see upon the status of women who no longer fit the ideal object mould.

Oops I just outed myself there. Oh well.

I'll try and be polite. Thanks for the offer Mary, but no thank you.

I wish now I'd written into Radio 4 Feedback under my own name - and I would have said the same things. Julia Long, who is not pseudonymous also said the same things, except much more eloquently and better argued than me. I think anonymity is a bit of a red herring on this particular thread.

Everybody on this thread is using a pseudonym except you marybeard. Not sure why I'd be getting singled out in particular.

There's no need to justify using a pseudonym, it's common practice here.

But if you want to know why I in particular prefer to remain anonymous on the internet, it's because I'm a radical feminist and we are subject to serious stalking by mens rights activists and other assorted woman-haters. People who have tracked down radical feminists I know in real life, harassed them at work, harassed them through their neighbours and forced them into hiding. They also have issued rape and death threats. There can dangers in holding radical feminist views in our male supremacist society, dangers which I prefer not to have to deal with in my real life and more dangerous than people being a bit rude about you on the internet.

thunderboltsandlightning
Hi.. I am just publishing a new volume of blog, plus some comments and I very much wanted to publish your justification of using a pseudonym.. the point of the book is to highlight disagreements as well as agreement! My email is :

mb127 at cam.ac.uk

if you would get in touch, I would explain more. Mary

You're very sensible Lenin. And calm!