Mary Beard thinks older women should unnerve the patriarchy

[Biscuitsanddoombar]

And compares treatment of older women in the media to witch hunting in the past.

Love Mary

www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/09/mary-beard-witch-tweets-reflect-society-fear-older-women

She’s right. As you get older - have lived through bereavement, redundancies, child wrangling, recession, etc the less nonsense you are willing to take. I think anyway. Life just chips away at you and you realise more and more that you don’t have to ‘follow the rule’ and not question any more.

Mary Beard is brilliant - loved her book 'Women and Power'. DS really enjoyed her series about the Romans too.

She would be a great speaker for young women and girls.

Invite Mary into schools not ruddy Stonewalls.

I’m looking forward to seeing her programme. I think it will be fascinating. I think she’s right about how she is treated on social media too, it’s a ageism and sexism. It is so much easier to dismiss older women than appreciate the wisdom, intelligence, skills and experience they may have. It is also terrifying how women were treated, tortured and murdered as witches...and there are parallels that can be drawn in modern society including with how women are threatened, with violence and death and attacked on social media, simply for expressing an opinion.

I think this is Mary Beard's way of fighting back. There are other older women quietly finding ways of raising the issue in a subtle way. MB's at Newnham College, Cambridge which I believe is the last all-women college at Cambridge. Newnham was also the college that, despite its impeccable feminist credentials, elected Rachael Padman, born Russell Padman, as a fellow (oh, the irony) in 1996, prompting Germaine Greer's departure.

I've often wondered why Padman, who is a brilliant physicist and could have gone anywhere, chose to pursue their career at Newnham — a women's college. You would have thought, wouldn't you, that a mixed college would have been the more tactful option? Is it terribly cynical of me to imagine that becoming a fellow of the last-remaining women's college at Cambridge would be the ultimate coup to some transwomen? If Padman really respects women and women's fight for equality, wouldn't they had looked elsewhere? How can one be a physicist, someone whose work is based entirely on physical matter, and yet not accept the physical reality of one's own body? How can one be rigorously scientific in one sense, and yet in another subjugate that knowledge to feelings — feelings of being woman. Whatever feeling like a woman means. Perhaps Padman can tell me.

Anyway, hoorah for Mary Beard.

I hope Mary Beard and Jackie Weaver take over the world.

Mary's bloody brilliant and takes nobody's shit.

I want Mary Beard to be in charge of everything.

Everything.

She’s right. As you get older - have lived through bereavement, redundancies, child wrangling, recession, etc the less nonsense you are willing to take. I think anyway. Life just chips away at you and you realise more and more that you don’t have to ‘follow the rule’ and not question any more.

Spot on. I never had a problem with the patriarchy (or rather I didn't realise that I had a problem) until I was 50 and then..... BOOM. I spend my time fighting it now. I'm fast approaching 54 now: a grown up. I won't be told what to think, do or say any longer.

I've often wondered why Padman, who is a brilliant physicist and could have gone anywhere, chose to pursue their career at Newnham — a women's college. You would have thought, wouldn't you, that a mixed college would have been the more tactful option?

Interesting old article featuring Padman:

www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jul/31/health.socialcare

"I don't think that surgery is what created me. I suppose it did make me feel more female because I wasn't loaded up with two competing sets of hormones any more. But being an astronomer and physicist is my prime identity. I do get the impression that some people lose sight of the rest of their life."

She believes this attitude helped her to overcome the only crisis she has faced since changing sex. In 1996, she was invited to take up a fellowship at Newnham, one of Cambridge's three all-women colleges. Germaine Greer, who was then a fellow of the college, subsequently argued that since Padman was legally a man, her appointment contravened college statutes. After a very public airing of the debate, Padman initially became preoccupied with whether she came across as female."

So their first concern was about 'passing' instead of whether it was appropriate to accept a fellowship reserved for women.

Wow @RozWatching, can you imagine the Guardian publishing a thoughtful and honest article like that now? Such a difference since 2004. Mainly that the world has agreed to turn its collective brain off and stick its fingers in its ears. More than anything, contrasting that article with the Guardian's trans coverage now has illustrated the effect of adding T to LGB and making it a political, moral crusade and/or jolly Pride float.

@Shedbuilder

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but Newnham College isn’t women only any more...

In fact they must have welcomed so many non women in, it is causing difficulties in their paperwork.

This is their submission to the GRA consultation. I wonder if Mary knows about this?

committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/16843/pdf/

As a JCR, we would like to state firmly that comprehensive trans inclusion is necessary to ensure that Newnham adheres to its ethos. We have found that limitations in the Gender Recognition Act as it stands have confused and frustrated our ability to run as a women’s college. Rather than protecting single- sex spaces, in our experience, policies which exclude trans people, and in particular trans women, are damaging to all women.

That's the JCR, not the SCR.

@Shedbuilder

That's the JCR, not the SCR.

What does that mean? I’m afraid I have no idea if the working of the colleges. Is it a positive thing that it is jcr not scr?

As a wider point I wonder how many submissions have been made by unions and groups that claim to be speaking on behalf of their members (in support of self id) but haven’t actually asked them for their input?

@bourbonne

Wow *@RozWatching*, can you imagine the Guardian publishing a thoughtful and honest article like that now? Such a difference since 2004. Mainly that the world has agreed to turn its collective brain off and stick its fingers in its ears. More than anything, contrasting that article with the Guardian's trans coverage now has illustrated the effect of adding T to LGB and making it a political, moral crusade and/or jolly Pride float.

My thoughts exactly when reading this. I was a bit surprised to see that David Batty —survived the long knives of the Guardian woke— is still working for the Guardian.

Rather than protecting single- sex spaces, in our experience, policies which exclude trans people, and in particular trans women, are damaging to all women.

Or put another way, they think:
Rather than protecting single- sex spaces, in our experience, policies which exclude trans people, and in particular male trans people, are damaging to all women.

Why is excluding male people who want to be women damaging for 'all women'?

JCR = Junior Common Room = undergraduates (mostly young)

SCR = Senior Common Room = staff and graduate students (mostly older)

Although I don't have much hope for the SCR — they elected Padman.

Greer was absolutely right to protest and leave, it was an appalling, stupid thing for a college that was so closely associated with women's suffrage and rights to do. But I think it's becoming clear that the cleverer people are, the more easily they're persuaded to part company with reality.

Greer's The Whole Woman, published in 1999, deserves reading again: she saw how post-modernism and gender studies were already entrenched and changing everything.

good for her.

But in the article, she refers to the response she got when she appeared on Question Time in Boston, pre Brexit. An audience member expressed their concerns about immigration (in a very reasoned way) and MB was so patronising in her response, which was along the lines that there are no problems with immigration, I've read a report on the issue. She came across as insufferably condescending.

I know posters love her on here, but I don't feel it. She was hopeless chairing Front Row Late on the BBC as well.

And, in the end, if you're bothered about twitter, don't go on it. Don't make yourself out to be some kind of martyr. Sexism and ageism exist, but twitter is an all round cesspit. Just don't do it. MB just loves publicity.

I think you'll find she loves Classics more. Much more.

well she's certainly on TV enough, perhaps she should go back to what she loves then

Is Berry GC?

But why shouldn't she be on Twitter? Why should she have to avoid it to avoid the misogyny?

@Shedbuilder

I think this is Mary Beard's way of fighting back. There are other older women quietly finding ways of raising the issue in a subtle way. MB's at Newnham College, Cambridge which I believe is the last all-women college at Cambridge. Newnham was also the college that, despite its impeccable feminist credentials, elected Rachael Padman, born Russell Padman, as a fellow (oh, the irony) in 1996, prompting Germaine Greer's departure.

I've often wondered why Padman, who is a brilliant physicist and could have gone anywhere, chose to pursue their career at Newnham — a women's college. You would have thought, wouldn't you, that a mixed college would have been the more tactful option? Is it terribly cynical of me to imagine that becoming a fellow of the last-remaining women's college at Cambridge would be the ultimate coup to some transwomen? If Padman really respects women and women's fight for equality, wouldn't they had looked elsewhere? How can one be a physicist, someone whose work is based entirely on physical matter, and yet not accept the physical reality of one's own body? How can one be rigorously scientific in one sense, and yet in another subjugate that knowledge to feelings — feelings of being woman. Whatever feeling like a woman means. Perhaps Padman can tell me.

Anyway, hoorah for Mary Beard.

I gather there are physicists who adhere to modern theories about how the universe began during their working lives, but in their private lives identify as Young Earth Creationists and probably also reject evolution. It doesn't seem to be difficult for some people to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

@Childrenofthestones

Is Berry GC?

Mary Berry? I hope so.

Mary Beard has been equivocal on the subject, as you would expect, given where she works.