The Mary Beard Appreciation Society

[ArcheryAnnie]

Professor Mary Beard was one of about 130+ people who signed a letter to the Guardian this weekend, saying broadly that universities should be a place of discussion and debate, and the current habit of "no-platforming" women (it's almost always women) some students disagree with was inimical to the very purpose of education.

Out of these 130+ signatories, Mary Beard was the one the usual suspects piled on to, and she dealt with the barrage with such grace. The attacks were mostly divided between the "OMG transphobe" type" and the "very sad to see this nice old dear who didn't understand what she was signing" type, which is breathtakingly patronising when referring to one of the most brilliant academics we have. Most of the other signatories weren't attacked at all in the same way or in the same volume, although some signatories who are PoC were labelled "tokens" by the usual suspects, which is also amazingly patronising and dismissive of their choices and their expertise.

When I grow up, I want to be Professor Mary Beard. (But I would probably have to grow an extra couple of brains to do it.)

It was a piece that bent over backwards to acknowledge the conflicting positions.. And she's thinking like a rapist?

We need to capitulate, totally and completely to the whims of Trans people and their hand maidenly allies I think.

Well, fuck that!

The fact that a person watching on another thread thought it was more important that we use the pronoun of choice of a person who's stated aim is doxxing and abusing women who don't conform to their view of how women should react to them, rather than the woman who has had her and her children threatened by this person has revolted me. It should revolt people. What have we become if we're more concerned about the feelings of an abusive arse than the fear caused in their victims?

I am failing to perform feministy very well. I am too angry now to be capable of being fair and reasonable. Does this mean I have to take off my pretty top and wear a plaid shirt now?

I am always droning on to younger women like the Old Crone
Spectre at the feast that they should guard their freedoms because they were hard won but easily lost. I never dreamed they would be lost to Trojan horse........

Trojan horse. That's a very powerful image wrt this topic!

Sorry, I am jumping in, if I may?

I am interesting in this question about dresses etc. There is something I've been really struggling to articulate to myself. Now, I dress dead 'feminine'. I wear heels and dresses and so on. I can't work out why, but I will say I am pretty sure this is to some extent connected to getting over a bit of sexual abuse, which made me feel fairly conflicted about my body. Somehow, dressing like this makes me feel stronger and more confident, while dressing in jeans or less overtly feminine clothes makes me feel as if I'm hiding. I suspect it's a very simplistic and boring mental jump from 'this thing happened to me because I'm female' to 'damn it, I get to be the person who admits I'm female, and I will show it off, you don't get to make me feel femininity is weak'. To make that leap of logic, I do know I'm accepting that this thing called 'femininity' can be symbolized by the heels and the skirts and so on, and I know that's dubious in all sorts of ways. But for me, for now, I am happy with it.

I hope no one minds me saying that. It's just something I've been trying to untangle lately, in this context of gender and why people might want to look the way they do.

... and, I would say, this is one of the things that makes me feel conflicted about privilege. Because, if I am correct that I'm performing femininity in part for these reasons (and I think I am), then I look very privileged in my female identity, but that look results from something that is part of structural misogyny.

Gah. And you know I meant to type 'interested' not 'interesting' in that first post.

I'll go back to lurking.

Jeanne-I'm thinking about your post. But I thought I'd tell you that your typo made me decide that you were charmingly French.....rather disappointed now!

Sadly, not charmingly French.

JeanneDeMontbaston I think we all navigate patriarchy the best way we know how to, and for different women that means different things.

I wrote (on another thread I think) how angry I felt with a stand-up (Bethany Black) who is trans, and who was sneering on twitter at the supposed weakness and stupidity of women who read - and take the advice of - women's magazines on how to dress, present, please a man, and so on. And the reason it made me angry is that she was sneering at women who had grown up with that pressure, told how to dress, walk, present themselves, think, behave - and she had been in the fortunate position of never having been subjected to that shit aimed at her. And responding to that pressure to can be the most logical, understandable thing to do in those circs. We are damned if we do and damned if we don't, and I don't want any of us to be damned at all. So I'm not going to criticise women for wearing heels and skirts or for wearing big flannel shirts and jeans and boots. Whatever gets us by.

(I will put on nail polish this weekend as am going to a big family party where I will be judged if I don't appear vaguely groomed. My nail polish will look like a toddler applied it, all blobby, as I am very poor at this particular bit of performance!)

The whole transphobia thing is getting a bit ridiculous with claims that we should no longer talk of "female" genital mutilation and say abortion is a "women's rights" issue. And then you've got ridiculous people like Stavvers claiming lesbians who don't want to shag trans women with penises are transphobic. You couldn't make it up!

archery - yes, of course we all navigate patriarchy as best we can. I'm absolutely not denying that at all.

Oh, no, Jeanne I wasn't suggesting you were! I was (very long-windedly) saying I don't have a problem with whatever a woman chooses to wear, or how it makes her feel.

(I was trying to be supportive of your choices, and sorry if it felt I was lecturing you instead!)

No, you're fine - I got that, I was agreeing, perhaps over-emphatically, having looked back in the thread where it seemed people were worrying that some choices look like 'good' navigating and others like 'bad', when, as you say, it's really something we all just do as best we can.

Jeanne could it perhaps be because resisting patriarchy is so bloody difficult? You're already struggling to come to terms with being abused, maybe suffering the discomfort and insecurity that comes from resisting patriarchal norms would just be way too much emotionally?
When I was going through a period of depression a few months ago (I'm bipolar) I was thinking of ways to cheer myself up and the first things that sprung to mind were 1) joining a gym, and 2) getting my teeth whitened. Then I thought WTF?!?!? This is what will improve my mood? Making myself prettier? Crazy... but it's also true that feeling like I'm being a good girl, looking pretty, performing femininity correctly lifts my mood. It takes real strength and effort to be ugly, loud, smelly, fat - femininity is usually the path of least resistance.

No, I really, strongly, don't think it is that, riveting. I'm not angry with you making the suggestion, but I am bloody furious that this is the suggestion that is constantly made.

Jeanne can I ask why? I'm not disagreeing at all, just interested to know why that suggestion makes you furious.

I notice that there are scripts for abuse. You are not supposed to be confident in your femininity or sexuality post-abuse. Yes, of course, femininity and (hetero) sexuality are constructs most of us as feminists want to put giant scare-quotes around. But the fact is that mostly, we are told that damaged women ought to look a certain way and act a certain way. I'm thinking of a particularly patronizing self-help book I read, which went on about how you might not feel like doing your make-up in the morning, as if this were, like, The One True Measure of Awful. I doubt that it is coincidental that the image we're told abused women might take on, isn't that far from images of women who're not super-feminine for other reasons.

Btw, sorry, I hope this isn't off-topic. In my mind it does quite clearly relate to these debates about privilege and gender identity, but I don't know how clear that is outside my tiiiiiiiny mind.

riv, I actually cross posted with you there, though my cross post is a decent enough reply.

It makes me furious because it is people saying 'ah, you feel as if your way of displaying gender (performing it, whatever) is comfortable to you because of your lived experience. But, in fact, we know better than you do, and can tell you it is because you are weak'.

I am perfectly well aware of the criticisms of, eg., high heels as literally disempowering, and those make perfect sense to me.

I am less ok with the idea that my personal engagement with gender stereotypes gets labelled 'weak woman cannot muster up strength to attack patriarchy', when I suspect it has more to do with asserting my sexuality using the tools I have to hand, which happen (unfortunately) to be those of the patriarchy.

Jeanne totally understood, I'm sorry if I came across as patronising. Perhaps 'strong' was the wrong word to use (and FYI, I wear make up and dresses and very much perform femininity, so I'm not being sanctimonious in a "look how well I've resisted the patriarchy" kind of way at all).

Do you think maybe you're explicitly resisting this "abuse survivors should be desexualised" narrative? Fair enough if so. I absolutely agree about sexuality being, unfortunately, constrained within these very tight cultural restrictions, but asserting one's own sexuality can be very empowering.

I see what you mean about the we know better than you attitude, but countering this with relativism is difficult. To say "no one is right, every attitude towards gender is valid, all performances of gender are benign or even laudable" is a liberal position that doesn't really offer any hope of change. It's very unpleasant to be told that one's deeply held ideas are not one's own, but isn't serious criticism of those ideas an essential part of the feminist project? The challenge is not to slip into victim blaming, and telling women that they're stupid/weak for conforming to gender norms. I'm very sorry if it sounded like I was doing that.

No, you didn't come across as patronizing. It's a perfectly valid response in the individual context. My problem is that it seems to be the only response anyone ever makes, in the wider context. Make sense?

Yes, I think I am explicitly resisting that narrative. Though that sounds incredibly wanky to say so. I am probably reading to much bullshit theory atm.

I am not in the least saying what you say in the last paragraph, though. As I have said, I agree with the position that some gender performances are harmful. I gave the example of high heels.

I didn't brush up against feminist theory yesterday giggling coyly, you know.

(Mostly a joke, the last bit.)