Faking it

Maybe it has to do with the fact that I've never had a "relationship" with a guy, a "boyfriend", but the truth is, I've never felt used for a narrative. Some girls with boyfriends will say "well, I haven't either!", and maybe they're right, I don't know. All I know is I haven't. All this comes about because of Laurie Penny's post. Apparently she's been a character in guys' lives before, a supporting actress. I kind of envy her. I've never been liked by a guy like that, for being mysterious, or weird, or cool. I've never had that luxury. She complains about it, saying something along the lines of "it's tough being a woman, showing a guy that you're not that mysterious dream pixie girl". Well, fuck you. At least you had that. I've never had a guy be fascinated by me. It's fine, I'm OK with it, but it's never happened. All the guys I know know what to expect, they know who I am. Maybe I grew up to fast? I don't think so. It's not like I'm not naïve and stupid, and I refuse to accept that other girls are more so than me. I think falling for someone who fascinates you, but then turns out to be different than what you imagined is a fact of life. It can't be helped. And it doesn't happen just to guys.

In her article, Laurie Penny writes of geeky, bookish guys with alternative tastes in music, blah blah blah. This might describe a type, sure, but to me, it's just the same exercise as describing "manic pixie dream girls" (excellent name for a band, by the way). It's also an exercise of narrative. I suspect it is important in growing up and falling in love to acknowledge that we all create narratives about people, even the ones we're closest to. I'm not sure that can be prevented.

Another thing Penny talks about is being a writer and being a woman. I have been writing for as long as I can remember. I love it. It's the one thing that I don't want to give up, except perhaps reading. And yes, writing demands time, it demands attention. Writing is the love of your life. But don't bullshit. I love writing, I do, I wouldn't give it up, but I love my friends more. Giving up writing would mean living a horrible, boring, dry, sad life but I would give it up for pretty much anyone I know. For one thing, people (lives) are worth more than words. For another, without people I would have nothing to write about. People talk to me, they make me see the world, they make me feel things, they make me happy or sad, they touch me, people are the only way I can feel that anything is important. I love writing, but I would never put it above that. 

Penny is 26. I am only 22, I don't have a clue what it is to be 26, and I can't relate. Maybe I'll read this post in four years' time and think "how the hell did I ever think that?" and be embarrassed. But what I think right now is this: I am a woman. I might lie about what I've done, but I refuse to lie about who I am. If someone asks I'll tell them I write, and if they are intimidated by it, then maybe they have a problem. I don't find it hard to say that I write. 

I guess what I'm saying is this: writing is the love of my life. I know I will sacrifice other things for its sake. And for this reason I want people to know. If you're embarrassed of who you love, of what you love, you're being a bit of a child, aren't you?

Happiness

It's Sunday morning, it's sunny, and London looks beautiful. I woke up a few hours ago, drank some water, went for a run. I think a lot when I run, it gives me the time and the freedom to concentrate just on my body and my thoughts, few things give me that freedom.

Yesterday was the best day in a while. I think I could be happy if I had a day like yesterday... I don't know, once a month? Maybe once every two weeks? It was perfect. The sun was shining, the park was wonderful, and I could write.

I spent a couple of hours sitting in the park, close to Marble Arch. The day invited to do just that. A group of dressed up teenagers, sporting bloody clothes and horns were doing... something. I should have asked, but didn't, it was fun to just watch them run around, laugh, jump on each other's shoulders... Three of them were having the sort of conversation I miss from my teenage years, they were sitting down closest to me, solving the problems of the world, seeing all the possibilities. Have I lost that? I haven't had an idealistic conversation in years, it seems. Now it's all about what is within grasp, there's no dreams anymore, no "I can do anything if I try hard enough"...

At around 2PM I wandered down Oxford Street only to come across the Pride Parade, which I'd completely forgotten about. There were people protesting against the EDL, lots of sponsored groups and most of all just people, enjoying a day out in the sun, celebrating. It was great to watch. I went around and sneaked further down Oxford Street until I got to St Christopher's Place, where, instead of my usual coffee, I had a smoothie. What's summer for if not that? Then I kept on walking down and I tried to resist, but most good days in Central London lead me to Charing Cross and the bookshops. My most hated secondhand bookshop had a copy of "Dinosaur in a Haystack" by Stephen Jay Gould for £5... regret not buying it, but hey, I only saw it after having spent plenty of cash (bought a copy of "The God of Small Things", which looks pretty excellent, and I had lunch at the Café in Foyles). There was a "buy one get one free" deal in Blackwell's, and I almost got a couple more of Wilkie Collins', but then I remembered the deal I made with myself at the start of the year not to buy new books until I'd finished the old ones...

I sat at the Café in Foyle's for quite a while, after all, it's one of my favourite places in London, however touristy it may be. The guy who sat on my table was reading Pedro Páramo in English (I wish now I'd asked him who the translation was by). He was a writer (at least, he'd written a book) and he was enamoured of South American writers. Complained that he was reading Bolaño years before he became famous, and that before "2666" he had trouble finding translations of most of his stuff. He told me he'd grown up in London, and we agreed that New York was probably one of the best cities in the world for bookshops. I enjoyed meeting him. Made me feel for the first time in a long time part of a group, a group where all the members don't know each other, but have a kinship beyond knowing each other: they read the same books and they are passionate about them. Talking to this guy made me happy, reminded me that there's wonderful people out there who I haven't even met yet, that the world is big.

The two guys sitting on the table next to us were talking movies, being incredibly pretentious but also very knowledgable. I pegged them for film studies graduates, one of them was talking about getting financed for an experimental short, while the other one was looking at him with an expression that clearly said "you sound like an idiot". Or maybe those were just my thoughts reflected. In any case, I loved listening to them. I suspect it's a thing I miss at Imperial College, people don't talk about science the way they talk about arts, and a lot of scientists don't talk about arts at all (even though a lot of them do, perhaps most of them, but it's not the same for some reason).

I wrote about five more pages (so 1500 words, not bad) and kept on the househunt (I'm currently looking for roommates for next year). Afterwards I went down and found about five books I wanted to buy, stopped myself (now I regret it, I really should have bought "What I talk about when I talk about running" by Haruki Murakami in the very least), and then just bought the one ("The God of Small Things", by Arundhati Roy). After Foyles I slowly wandered down Charing Cross. The parade was over by then, and the streets were full of people, the pubs were crowded, tourists were looking around checking maps... Only thing to do was join the throng and get some drinks to finish off the day, so after some confusion (I still get lost around London somehow) I was led to the Roundhouse to drink a couple of pints (and a Bloody Mary to finish it off).

It was a good day. In fact, it was the perfect day. Thanks to those of you who were around to make it good (you know who you are if you're reading this), either present, through text or on Facebook. I needed yesterday. I'm gonna try and make a day like that happen a couple of times a month. I need it.

Change

I've been reading Stephen Jay Gould. This man has the power to cheer me up, make me think, make me laugh, make me interested in baseball (and Hershey Bars) and, above all, he has the power to make me understand things better. I haven't read any of his purely scientific writing (he was a palaeontologist and an evolutionary biologist, a geologist and philosopher by training) but I've made an effort to collect his books of essays (I say I've made an effort because I look for them in every secondhand bookstore, painstakingly, just to make sure these wonderful places where I can spend hours on end survive the coming of the digital secondhand store), which have made me fall in love with popular science writing more than any other work.

Stephen Jay Gould had a lot to say about about evolution and adaptation, but more than anything, he had a lot to say about how we view these two processes and how we study them. He was the one to say that evolution is both a theory and a fact (possibly the only instance in science where this is true), and he regarded evolution as a "historical science". By this, he means that evolution is a process that takes place in time (this may seem obvious), and that as such it hasn't finished (this may seem less obvious) and it's not static (this last one may seem like the most obvious, but it's really not).

Today I feel like talking about evolution and adaptation, and for that I first need a few simple definitions.

Evolution: process of change in living organisms mediated by hereditary mutations.

Natural selection: the mechanism of evolution. The death before reproduction of those organisms with mutations that are prejudicial and the survival of those with mutations that don't affect them or that are beneficial. The better survival of organisms with mutations that are beneficial to them, and the fact that because they survive better they are better capable of reproducing and carrying on these traits into the next generation.

Adaptation: a by-product of natural selection, the favourable selection of traits that allow better survival in an environment leading to organisms developing structures that are useful in the environment they've evolved.

Being a biology (OK, biochemistry) student myself, I sometimes find myself thinking of things causally: "the eye evolved so organisms could see". This is a fallacy of course, but it becomes even more of a fallacy when used to try to explain every single trait as an adaptation. Contrary to popular belief, complex organisms aren't adapted to their environment, because their adaptation to their current environment is heavily limited by millions of year of evolution. If most of their evolution occurred in a different environment than the one they occupy today, then they won't be adapted. They may have some mode of adaptation, but most of their characteristics will be a product of earlier adaptations, of the path they had to take to get to where they are now, and all the circumstances that surrounded that evolution.

It is important now, that we are well into the era of molecular biology and genetics, that we are understanding the biochemical mechanisms of evolution better, not to forget this. That evolution has been occurring for over 3700 million years. That what may have been useful three million years ago may not be as useful now, but that three million years is too short a time to change something that evolved in 2997 million years. That evolution is still happening, that we (as human beings) are not an optimum, and that no other species is either (with the exception, perhaps, of some insects, my favourite being ants, that haven't changed much for several million years, a fact that is often used in arguments against the theory of evolution), that adaptation is a beautiful example (and proof) of evolution, but that not all organisms are adapted (not to mention "well" adapted).

Most biologists working nowadays accept that mutations are random, that evolution doesn't have a direction. Let's not forget that although this may be true, it is important to acknowledge that evolution is also constrained, that not all changes are possible for all organisms, that some paths have not been tread, and that other paths have been tread unsuccessfully (ask Ediacarans).

Anonymity and the internet (fairly generic title, what can you do?)

Today I was reading one of my favourite blogs (The Pervocracy) and out of curiosity I went through the policies for commenting and posting. They are extremely clear and full of common sense (if you ask me, especially the one that says: "This is my blog and ultimately I reserve the right to delete anything for any reason"), and they make me wonder if I am wrong.

I sign my blog. What I mean by this is that my blog isn't anonymous. It's linked to my personal e-mail account (probably not the best idea, but I haven't had a problem yet) and I publish most of the posts on Facebook when I publish them. Part of the reason for making my blog signed was that if I was going to publish it on Facebook, people would know anyway. The other part is more complicated, and it has to do with privacy, anonymity and comments in the internet.

For a long time I was a defender of internet anonymity. I thought (and still think) that it allows people to publish about topics that they would rather keep quiet in part of their social circle, especially at work or with their families (i.e. sex preferences, political leanings, etc.). However I have a problem with anonymity in the internet: I don't like bullies. A lot of people take "anonymity" to mean "free pass", and they are unnecessarily rude (and this is me being political, rude is often too soft a word), and they say things they wouldn't dare say under their own names. For this reason, long ago I decided that I would sign what I wrote here, and I would stand up for it, but also that I would not allow anonymous commenting (there are ways around this, but that is another matter). The problem with this, of course, lies in that if someone wants to keep their views about something discussed here anonymous, then they can't. It's two sides of the same coin: on the one hand, I believe people should stand up for what they believe in and be ready to own up to what they say. On the other hand, I believe in people's right to keep certain opinions to themselves in certain parts of their social circles.

I started to consider changing my posting policy a few weeks ago, based on the fact that it would be easier for me to delete offending comments than it would be for people to own up to everything they might want to say, and then the NSA spying scandal broke out and I came to one conclusion: few people are truly anonymous in the internet. If someone really wants to find out what you've said and where, they are going to find out. So I might as well stick to my guns and demand that people are careful about what they say, are sure they want to stand up for what they are saying and are ready to face the fact that if they post an opinion, they should be held accountable for doing that. After all, you are free to post (or not post) as you wish.

All this ties in nicely with a few thoughts I had recently about the reasons I wouldn't publish a post: embarrassment and workplace conflict. These are my thoughts: if I'm too embarrassed to tell anyone in my social circle something, then it probably doesn't belong on the web, where everyone can see it, and if I honestly believe in something and yet I can't defend that openly at work... Well, in that case I should probably be looking for a new job.

These two things are (funnily enough) contradictory: the first one says "don't publish something your not comfortable with" (so censor yourself) and the second one says "don't stay somewhere where you can't voice your opinion" (don't censor yourself). And yet... I still think both apply. So I won't be changing my posting (or commenting) policies. At least not until I can find a reliable blog host who won't share my data with the rest of the world.

Talking to myself

I'm antsy. I can't stop my brain. It keeps going and it won't let me think. I can't turn the internal dialogue off. I wake up in the mornings and it's like it's already been on for hours, I go to sleep and it's still there, in the back of my head haunting my dreams.

This is why I write. Writing makes it go away. It doesn't turn it off, it just makes it the focus, when I write exactly what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling. I'm hiding in Spanish lately. Spanish pop, my Spanish notebook and the novel that started three years ago when I was still a student in Salamanca. It helps. I don't know exactly why it helps, but it does. It's like the internal dialogue can't keep up with the language switch, like it can't switch as fast as I can.

It keeps going in my head. Tells me that I don't want to do this or that, or that I should be doing such and such and such thing instead. Drinking helps. Meeting up with people helps. Watching crap television helps. And writing helps. Reading, surprisingly, only helps if I'm really concentrated, otherwise I find myself rereading the same line over and over and over again, all the time listening to my internal dialogue instead of reading the words on the page.

Why am I here? Today I was making a recap of who I was at seventeen and who I am now. She's a stranger! I mean, she's me, but... She's so different! She thinks she's so smart. And she's happy! Like, really happy. She's naïve (even more than me!) and she's never lived on her own. She loves her parents a lot more than she knows, and getting away from them will do her good. But all that doesn't matter, after all, she's not even in her last year of school. She's deciding between biology and physics, and she's toying with the idea of studying medicine. She still hasn't written "Un cuento de Chéjov", although the Russians are starting to seem interesting. She doesn't lie.

There are similarities: I still keep the same diary she did, with pretty much the same regularity, I am still a coward, and I still can't really handle my alcohol that well. I'm still lonelyish sometimes, but I try not to show it. I still love reading, and Stephen Jay Gould and Gerald Durrell are still some of my favourites (where natural history is concerned).

So what have I learnt in the intervening five years? The answer is not much. I've realized I'm not the best person in the world, I'm not always right and I'm not that smart. I've realized I know very, very little and I've come to the conclusion that most of us don't get the chance to change the world. I've become more realistic about some things and more idealistic about others, and I know for sure now that I don't want to grow up. Ever. And I've learnt to lie.

Six series

As soon as I can, I will sit down through all six series, and watch a man whose story starts with a panic attack, a mafioso who goes to therapy, the best show I have had the chance to watch.

Recently the Writers Guild of America voted the Sopranos the best written show ever. Some have hailed it as the first of modern television shows, the one that proved that this medium could be as good or better than films. It was the first adult show I watched. For me, it was real. It was the American dream, the human drama, and my first glimpse that "right" and "wrong" can be blurry.

James Gandolfini was 38 when the Sopranos debuted. He wasn't a well known actor then, which is one of the reasons he was perfect for the role: he became Tony Soprano. It's hard for me to see a picture of him now and not think "Tony". I can't say if he was perfect for the role, after all, I hadn't seen him in anything else before, all I can say is that the Sopranos were made believable by him (and of course Edie Falco). And now James Gandolfini is dead. I don't know why the news has hit me so hard, but it was a surprise and its made me sad. Maybe because he was part of starting what has become one of my favourite entertainments: well written TV. Maybe it's just because he was a familiar face, someone I expected to be around for a few more years, popping up in the occasional movie, the occasional show.

As soon as I can, I will sit down through all six series, and watch a violent man, a man who is a leader, a man who gets what he wants, a man who has panics attacks and goes to therapy, a man with friends, a wife, children, lovers, enemies. A man who lives in New Jersey. I will sit down to watch James Gandolfini.

"She was asking for it"

This post was edited on Thursday, 20th of June, 2013.

Note: I have had a discussion about this blogpost (see the comments below) and I would like to say that my whole view is not represented in the post. Please read the aforementioned conversation in the comments below for a more complete explanation of my views and my attitude. I don't defend victim blaming, especially (though not exclusively) in the case of rape, where so many cases go unreported because victims are scared of the consequences of reporting.

Today I was reading this article on the Guardian. It reminded me of a conversation I had about guys buying girls drinks and "teases". It reminded me of all those times I've seen a girl in a club, drunk, scantily dressed, rubbing up against a guy and I've thought "what a slut". It's reminded me that I am a girl, a woman, and that I'm clearly part of the problem.

I think one big problem with feminism today is that feminists confuse the ideal (a world in which men and women are completely equal) with the factual (the world we live in now). Rape is one of the extreme cases where this confusion creates a difficult ground for discussion.

Ideally, a woman (no, a person!) should be able to walk down the street, dressed in any clothes, in whatever state of intoxication, in whatever part of a city, at whichever time of the day or night, and not have to fear attack. Ideally, rape would not happen, ever. Ideally no one would ever dream of saying "She was asking for it".

Factually, I try not to cross Hyde Park at night on my own, I try to only get very drunk when I have friends around, and I know (even if I still do it) that walking home on my own at night, especially when I'm drunk, is not the safest decision.

A few years back I had the fortune to visit the Maasai Mara, and in the group I went with there happened to be two Canadian guys. They were very happy to be coming with us, but told us they could only join us for the first two weeks, after that they had to get back to Nairobi to sort out their documents and fly back to Canada. The first night they had spent in Nairobi they'd decided to go out clubbing. Just as they arrived in the first bar two men had come in carrying guns and held them at gun point, and stolen all their documents from them. They had had not only their passports, but their driving licences, their flight tickets and their money on them. They had been left completely penniless, the only perk being that they'd booked and paid for a safari starting the next day, so they would have food and somewhere to stay for the next fifteen days.

This story has nothing to do with rape, of course, but it does have to do with blame culture. No one would say that the two Canadians were to blame for being robbed. The robbers are to blame. The people who held them at gunpoint, told them to lie down on the floor and took their documents are guilty. However, many travelers will agree with me that, to some extent, they were asking for it. Common sense should prevail when traveling: don't keep all your documents together, only carry the most necessary documents with you on a night out, make sure you have backups... In my opinion the same applies to rape. We all need to understand that a person who rapes is guilty no matter what. They have taken someone else and forced them to do something against their will, or without their consent. Morally, this is wrong, and it's wrong because it hurts someone. However, people should use common sense. As a woman, I hope that some day I can live in a world where I don't have to worry about getting drunk or about what I'm wearing. As a person with some common sense, I don't get drunk with complete strangers and I take some care as to how I appear to others. I try not to put myself in a position that makes me vulnerable.

A lot of feminists won't agree with me. They will say that saying this will only perpetuate women's enslavement, and that it will only perpetuate the blame culture. Perhaps they're right. All I know is that the next time I go out, I want to have a couple of friends with me and I don't want to walk home on my own.

The crush

Note: this is something I wrote in my phone a few weeks ago. It makes me smile every time I read it, so I thought I'd share.


I've recently come to the conclusion that I have a crush on a boy. It is strange to me because it's not like my regular crushes: usually I become crazy, obsessive and extremely annoying, and I can't stop thinking about it. This time the crush is not demanding, it's not frustrating, I'm not depressed that I'm not with the boy, nor am I extremely happy in his company. I wouldn't know how to explain what I'm feeling, except that it feels good. The only thing that is familiar about this crush is that I want to be near him, touch him.

I like this new version of me having a crash. It's less exhausting than my usual fare of falling for a guy and then making a complete fool of myself in front of him (not gonna say this hasn't happened, but it's been completely separate from the fact that I have a crush).

I don't know if he knows. I suspect he does, but I hope he doesn't. If he does, then he hasn't said anything, and that means he doesn't like me back... I don't really care. I don't need to be liked back for once. That doesn't mean I'll tell him, god no, too embarrassing. I would say too risky, but I'd be lying to myself. After all where's the risk? I guess I'm one of those people who is too scared of rejection to have a relationship. I'm slowly coming to terms with that, that I may never have a partner. If I think about it too hard it hurts, so I try not to think about it too hard.

Anyway, all I wanted to say is I have a crush on a boy. And I'm OK.

Writing

Those of you who read this blog will probably have realised by now that I really like writing. It's pure pleasure for me. What you may not know is that what I like writing is stories. To date I haven't written that many, just about enough to fill a book, but I've written enough to know this: writing is hard. It takes time, and it takes a lot of effort.

Starting a story is easy. You don't need much: usually just a character, or a situation, or how the sky looks on a certain day. The story usually comes out from there. And once the story starts, it seems to know itself, know where it's going. Stories seem to progress quite naturally to their end: in my experience, if this isn't the case, then the story will probably amount to no good. 

Some people complain about inspiration: I can't write because I'm not inspired. All I can say is sit down and write a few sentences. It might seem like nothing will come out of it at the beginning, but I find it addictive. After a few sentences I'll probably want to write a few more, and then I'll have some sort of characters, some sort of plot starting. Go on from there. Try not to think too much about the writing itself. How I write matters, words matter, the way sentences are built matters, but the story is the main thing. I can destroy the best story by writing badly, it's true, but I can never write well without a good story.

OK, let's say I have a good story going by now. It has a plot, it has characters, and when I go back to read what I've written I don't cringe too much. Now it's time to get to the closing. Ideally, I will know how the story ends, because usually stories can only end one way (if they are to be good stories). This doesn't mean that they can't have an open ending, or a hopeful ending, or a happy ending, it just means that there's a right moment when a story is done. Writing beyond that moment is useless: the story is already finished, and any more writing will be stale. But I'll say this: getting to the end isn't easy. There's a bridge to cross, and it's not easy to find. I find it very difficult to explain, but there has to be something in a story which signals the ending, and I don't always find it. I have a few started stories that I reread every so often, trying to find the path, the way that leads to their inevitable finish, but I can't. They have been rewritten a few times, they change slightly, I add a character here, or eliminate a character there. Sometimes I feel I've almost got it. And then it's gone. These stories escape me, and they're always on my mind at some level. Yes, finishing a story is the most difficult part. For me it's not so much saying goodbye to characters (I write short stories, and a lot of the characters are based to some degree on myself, so I can't really miss them), it's about finding the right ending, the one that indicates that my storytelling is done, that whatever happens next I can do no more for those characters, that they will go on to live their lives, and their lives don't need telling anymore.

Once in a while, I finish a story. I write down the last sentence and I know it's done. It's complete, it's a story. It's finished. And that's when the real work starts. I've said before "I don't think about the writing when I am writing the story". This is because you get to do it after. Once the plot is there, the characters are talking, I know who they are, what they think, how they speak, I know what happens, how the story starts and how it ends and why it ends there. Now the time has come to concentrate on the writing. I sit down, usually in the quiet of my own room (I can't do this on the tube or in a café as I do most other writing) and I reread what I've written. And I trash it. I cross out, I rewrite, I find other ways to say what I've said. I remove sentences. I even remove things that I think are beautiful, once in a while, things I think are necessary. I strip the story to the bare minimum of words. I try to simplify to the maximum, and then rebuild it. This process is hard. There are sentences I am so pleased with that I hate to let them go. But I do. Of course I do. Because part of the writing is the edit. Making sure that the story isn't just what you want to tell, but also the way you want to tell it. Some stories feel like long sentences, sweet words, slowly melting like a summer afternoon. Other stories are short, harsh, dry, violent. To the point. This is where a good friend who isn't afraid of telling you "that's crap" is very useful. Because sometimes it's hard to let go, or to see clearly. Giving your story to someone else takes a lot of courage. This person is going to cross out what they think is bad, tell you how they would have written something. They won't have any prior knowledge as to why you chose that word, or that name, or why you made that sentence shorter. It doesn't matter. If they are a good reader, they will be right, and you need to listen to them. Yes, find someone who isn't afraid to trash your story, they will be your first and best reader, and as much as they correct, they will appreciate the fact that they were the first.

And then I'm done. The last word is changed, the last sentence finished, and the story and the language become one. I save the file, because by this point I've probably typed up the story and printed it to add things and change things a few times, and I am done. If the story is good I will pick it up a few years after I wrote it. I start reading, and I won't be able to stop. Most of the time, I will read it twice, or even three times in disbelief, because the story will have become something else. No longer mine, no longer my story, but a story. I will recognize it, but I will also be unable to change it. It will stand on its own, and I will have let it go, and it will belong (if a story ever belongs to anyone but itself) to its readers, me included, but in a different way. The story has grown up.

Women in art

"Less than 5% of the artists in the Met's modern section are women, but 85% of the nudes were". This statistic is taken from a recent article in Felix about women in the (visual) arts world. The article is questioning why so few paintings by women are exhibited in art galleries around the world. I found the article really interesting, and so I set about recording the little I know about this matter.

Historically, most great painters are male. The article quotes an art historian from New York University to say what I could have told you: the reason that historically there are less great women painters is the same that accounts for less great women scientists, writers or thinkers: painting, doing science, writing and thinking weren't women's "roles". Most women weren't educated, most women weren't expected to pursue art, or literature or philosophy, and when they did, their work was often rejected or they took male names in order to publish/exhibit it (there is a possibility that our lack of evidence for female artists stems from the fact that artists that we assume to be male are actually females in "disguise", although I don't put much stock in this theory: most likely, a woman had to be very brave, very insistent, very willing to break with tradition, and very, very lucky to be able to train as an artist, if she was allowed to train she was probably allowed to exhibit). In summary, the reason there are few great women painters in history is because historically there have been very few women painters at all.

However, the statistic given above doesn't deal with women's role in art, but with women's role in modern art, where one might expect a more egalitarian distribution of paintings between the sexes. The article discusses the many explanations that have been given to try to explain the statistic above. The first one is the theory of the "male gaze". The reason there are so many female nudes in galleries worldwide is because as a society we look at the world (and by extension, we look at art) from a heterosexual male perspective, thus finding the female form especially aesthetically pleasing. This would certainly explain why there are more female nudes in galleries (and quite honestly, I am inclined to agree that the female form is more beautiful than the male form, even though this means I can't quite explain why I find men a lot more attractive), but I fail to understand why it would explain that there are less women artists. The author says that the explanation would be that women artists don't have the male point of view so they can't connect with their public in the same way as male artists. However, this argument falls flat, not because women have explored the female form (as the author argues) but for a more simple reason: if as a society we all (men and women) look at art from a heterosexual male point of view, then surely women don't lack this point of view at all, and female artists should be perfectly capable of creating from this "male gaze" way of seeing the world and resonate perfectly well with audiences. In conclusion, even though I agree with the author that the "male gaze" theory doesn't explain the statistic, I disagree on his reasons. The fact that women have painted nudes but are still less represented isn't a good argument against the male gaze (after all, the way women choose to represent themselves or others of they gender might be significantly different from the way men would), but the fact that if we accept that the "male gaze" exists for the whole of society then it must exist for women painters too is a far stronger logical argument that leads to the same conclusion: the exclusion of women artists from galleries has little to do with how they see the world. The male gaze might explain, however, why there are so many more female nudes.

I think in the previous paragraph I have hit on a central point: I am writing as though the people who appreciates art, or who have power in terms of appreciating art, are an even group composed of 50% men and 50% women. And even though access to art and to art schools has become more egalitarian during the 20th and the 21st century (in fact, according to the article, 60% of art students are currently women), it is important to say that there is a possibility that the cause of the "male gaze" effect is that the people making the decisions in the industry are male. This doesn't necessarily imply a "club", but it does imply that if there is a difference in the way men and women appreciate art, then whichever sex has the money will be the sex whose views are more represented. Of course, this is what the article finishes by arguing, that men are the ones controlling the industry and this is why we see more art by men. I don't know if this is true. I can't know if this is true. It is an explanation. However, this would mean that men and women have essentially different ways of seeing the world, or seeing art. That our appreciation of beauty, of transcendence is fundamentally different. In other words, if this is true, it means that men and women are different, and that there is no reconciliation, that I will never understand the way a man sees the world because I am a woman. I refuse to accept this, probably because I am a reader. I refuse to accept that Kipling wrote Kim for men, and that I can't understand it because I am a woman. I would much rather accept that Kipling wrote Kim for pleasure, to show other people the world as he saw it, and that if I can't understand parts of it it has more to do with the fact that Kipling grew up in India in the 19th century and understood the country better than I can ever hope to. I refuse to accept that Salman Rushdie can never understand Harry Potter, because it was written by a woman, even though he was a huge fan of the books. I refuse to accept that my father can't understand my short stories because he is a man, or that I can't understand his because I am a woman. No, I think we are all people, and we can understand each other, and that this understanding has a lot more to do with culture and upbringing than it does with sex or gender.

So what gives? As much as I hate to admit it, the feeling I get from reading the article and thinking about it is this: the reason there are more men artists than women artists is because there is a prejudice against women artists, a prejudice that is also attached to women writers and thinkers, and to a much lesser extent to women scientists, that their work is less valuable because it was done by a woman. The feeling is that it has little to do with the work itself, and that here, in the world of art, where beauty should be appreciated beyond who created it, an instance of ingrained sexism appears clear.

And yes, I hate to admit it. I hate to admit it because I have grown up thinking that I have never been discriminated against for being a girl. I hate admitting it because I like to think that the people I talk to don't have this ingrained attitude. I hate to admit it because I usually don't believe feminists when they are loud about women being hated.

I don't know what can be done about it. But I am thankful to Fred Fyles for the article. It's made me think. It's made me reconsider my views on a topic that I thought I had more or less clear views on.

The world

The river is five miles wide. It stretches through the continent, from the mountains in the east, which no man has climbed, to the great ocean in the west, which, as far as we know, has no end. It divides the continent in two. What could have been an uninterrupted desert, stretching for miles on end, red earth as far as the eye can see, rocks shaped like gods and men, and clear skies, is broken by the river. The river intrudes, the river disrupts, the river divides. North of the river and south of the river. That is what we understand.

The river has united us, it has become the centre of all our beliefs, the only hope, the only chance. We all know the river, we have all heard the story of how it came to be, we all know that it is as old as the desert and that it will remain in its place long after time ends and the rocks turn to sand, and the sky falls.

The river is powerful. It has taken many of us. Some decide to travel to the mountains where it is born, trying to find the source, but who knows where a god is born? They never return. Others follow it to its end, to the great ocean, and they lose their sanity. They return with stories of salty water and fish bigger than men. The river claims all these lives to make us understand that it is the centre, the only way to survive, the source of life. When we die we all go to the river, to be one with it.

The desert is where we live. The rocks are our home and they protect us and understand us. The desert is where we are safe. The desert is life. Every child learns to read the desert, understand it as it understands us so that we may grow old and return to the river when we die. Those claimed by the desert when they are young never get to return to the river and rest with the Ancestors. They turn into the rocks and become warnings for our children and our grandchildren, so they may never be claimed by the desert. The desert is the graveyard of the false gods. All false gods die in the desert, forgotten by men. The river can never be forgotten, and so it is the only true god.

The river and the desert are the world. The old stories say that the desert and the river are two gods, the parents of all of us. They were here before time begun and will be here after time ends.

In the library

I'm sitting at the fourth floor in the Central Library. It's a beautiful summer day outside (I know this because I just went out for coffee). I'm supposed to be working on a presentation for work: I have to give a talk about my research so far this year, and I've been working on the damn thing for the past couple of weeks. Today, I'm supposed to be doing final touches, and practicing the actual talk. And I've been procrastinating for the past hour or so.

I don't want to do this talk. I'm dreading it. Not the way one dreads an exam, or anything like that,  I just don't think I have anything to talk about. I don't want to show my colleagues what I've been doing for the past year because I don't think it's enough. This isn't to say that I haven't been working or that I don't have results. It just feels like all the results I've obtained are essentially what anyone else could have done in just a couple of months. Also, there's this idea in my head that if they want to know about it, they can just take a look at the pictures, they're pretty self explanatory, why do I have to give a talk? In any case, I don't want to work. So I'm trying to procrastinate. I turn to my fellow library dwellers for a source of inspiration. There's a couple of cute guys around, but no one I can stare at for time on end (the two cute guys are sitting at a 135º angle from where I'm facing, and I'm afraid it would be quite obvious and awkward if I just stared at them). The girl sitting right in front of me seems to have decided to take a nap on her laptop and I can barely see the top of her head. Even when she was awake she wasn't doing anything interesting. Everyone seems to be working in fact. So boring. Why do people even come here anymore?

So no inspiration from the fellow library dwellers after all. Maybe some music? Sure, but I can still work while listening to music. Not a good enough excuse to put work off. Facebook. Facebook is always a good source of procrastination content. Except when you actually want to procrastinate. Then it seems like people have forgotten about it (or they're out enjoying the good weather) and they can't be bothered to post fun stuff so I can not work.

This is my last resort. A short blogpost will buy me at least a few minutes before I have to go back to the dreaded presentation. And now it's nearly over... I wonder if my notebooks have anything interesting enough to engross me for the next twenty minutes?