Women Writers

Today, reading a list of "most reads" of the year, I realised what bothered me about the list. What has been bothering me about a lot of reading that I have been doing in the media lately.

It wasn't that there weren't as many women as men (the list I was reading was relatively well balanced, plus, I kind of expect that in the same way I expect more English-writing authors to be present in these lists), but the fact that whilst men dealt with pretty much any subject, women were limited (I hesitate to say relegated) to "women's interest topics", whether they be how beauty standards are enforced by the media, how women have it more difficult, how women are mistreated or abused, how women are raped, how women are not equal in academia (well, I lie, this topic has suspiciously been picked up by many men too, many of them defending how the issue doesn't really exist), etc. Occasionally, articles on fashion (but these don't make it to the most-read lists) or on decoration or on flexible working (although, again, this is too often portrayed as a "women's interest topic"). In any case, it worries me that we see women authors as only worthy of producing content about women.

The above sentence may sound awful: what? Aren't women worth writing about? Of course they are. As much as anyone else. But when women's issues are dealt with as a side topic, instead of being dealt with as a normal topic, when women are asked to write about women but not given other assignments (such as writing about finance, or politics, or airplane tragedies, which also involve women but which for some reason are mostly reported on by men) the message being sent is this: women are only important to women, and women are not capable of doing anything else than reporting on or for women. Both of these assumptions are horribly detrimental.

Part of me wants to think that part of the reason for this occurring is that women are more interested in themselves than men are; that women write about women because men won't and because women's problems need to be made visible. However this is of little help. I want to write about women, and I want women and men to write about women. But not in exclusion. Not just because we are women and so need some different treatment. I want people to write about women because women are human. And I want both men and women to write about women because I want both women and men to write about men. I want to be able to gain insight into the world through other people's views and experiences and I don't think this is possible while we pigeonhole "women for women and people for men".

If I believed that there were no differences between men and women this wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter that only men described the world because they would do it the same way women do. But I don't believe this. I believe that men and women are different, that individuals are different and that insights into the world should be gained through both. As a woman there are things that matter to me that men don't think about as much (rape, for example, or the wage gap), but this doesn't mean that I only want women's opinions on these topics. It also doesn't mean that I want women to only talk about these topics.

I've always wanted to be a writer. This is why I've been writing ever since I can remember and why I have a blog and more notebooks than I can count full of stories and articles and reviews. I love writing. Never before did I think that I would be limited in what I might want to write about depending on my gender. And I won't be. But I will be limited in what I can publish apparently.

All I'm saying is, it's not just about numbers. It's also about content. I've never been a fan of quotas or preferential treatment for women, but until such a day when "women's interest" stories stop being "women's interest" and I stop seeing a huge bias in journalists' genders depending on the topic I suspect I won't be able to trust most media outlets.

(By the way, I love reading women's interest stories, but not because they are women's interests. Perhaps because they have a harder time getting published or perhaps because they have a harder time being heard, women who write about women's issues are not only beautiful writers but incredibly good researchers with flawless logic. I don't always agree with everything they say, but I read them because they write quality, and I will read them if they decide to write about politics or finance or economy or poverty or class mobility or anything else they want to write about because they are brilliant. And because in the end, all issues are women's issues, because we're all human.)

Private or Public Education

Note: the title of this post is intentionally misleading. By Public I mean, of course, State education.

Today I was going through different websites trying to find something to read that would take my mind off my code, and found this.

Now, I'm not going to say that Rhiannon Lucy Coslett is wrong. In fact, I think she has a point in thinking that State educated students aren't as confident (actually, I would say as entitled) as private school students in the UK (this is important for later). I do think she makes a few mistakes in certain assumptions, such as the idea that the reason for State educated people having a lower salary is lower confidence: although this could be true, I'm almost convinced that it has more to do with connections. People born into families with money usually know more people with money in different industries.

But something I find quite funny is this idea of people coming from state schools not feeling comfortable in expensive/upper class (?)/"swanky" settings.

Although the example of her friend is familiar to me, I'm not 100% sure that this is the case because the place they were going to was expensive. I am chronically insecure, and for years I would have rather waited out in the cold than go into any restaurant on my own, let alone one where I had to ask for a table. However, after several years of enduring chronically late friends (you know who you are, don't be offended if you aren't) and living on my own in a foreign country, I have had to learn, not just to wait in a restaurant on my own, but also to have food on my own, coffee on my own and (only very rarely) a drink on my own. Once you do it a few times it stops feeling uncomfortable. And quite honestly, if I have to do it, I rather it be in an expensive bar/restaurant/caf'é, where it's more comfortable and staff usually make you feel welcome even if you're on your own.

I vividly remember an occasion in which, for some reason, I told my dad that he wouldn't go into a luxury shop in an airport. He asked me why, and I don't know what I said, but it probably amounted to "you're not dressed to that standard and we don't have enough money to walk into such a place". He almost laughed at me. And of course he went into the shop, and asked about a couple of things, and then left without buying anything. Now, I suspect he only did this to teach me a lesson: part of fitting in with rich/upper class people is feigning entitlement. No one cares what you're wearing when you go into a shop as long as you are confident and act as though you can afford what's being sold. I have been able to confirm this many times after that, both through rich/upper class people that I've hung out with and through walking into places with confidence. Look like you know where you're going and, most of the time, no one will bother you.

But the thing that got to me the most about the article was that comment by a state school journalist outside the Oxford Union "this place is not meant for me". See, Coslett has interpreted this as the other journalist being uncomfortable because he didn't feel confident enough. And obviously, I can't fault her in this conclusion because I don't know this man, and I wasn't there. But here's the thing: I moved to Cambridge at the beginning of October to pursue a PhD in Biochemistry. I can unashamedly say that I love Cambridge: it's small, which makes my life easy; it's lively enough that I don't get bored; it's close to London (in case I do get bored), it's beautiful, the people I've met are great, and professionally (or academically? For me both things are the same right now) it's fantastic: people who know and care about what they're doing, good facilities, etc. However, some of the undergraduates I've met are entitled brats who think they're better than everyone else, and I still feel like this place isn't meant for me. And what I mean by this isn't that I am uncomfortable here: far from it. I fucking own this place. I am as good as anybody here, and I deserve to be here, and I'm going to make the most of it. But a place that trains its students to believe that they're better and smarter than students at other universities, a place that is so entrenched in the past that grace is still read at some formal dinners (and gowns worn!), a place that instills a sense of entitlement into its students making them believe that just because they attended that university they are automatically deserving of more than their peers, a place where class and money are still extremely important and apparent (and I feel sorry for those who think they are not: living in Cambridge comfortably is extremely expensive, not to mention the cost of formal dinners, May Balls, etc.) is not a place for me. I never used to say this (because people would say I am lying) but I come from the working class. This doesn't make me embarrassed: in fact, I got where I am because I'm as good or better than those who had a private education and connections. So when I say "this place is not for me" it isn't because I feel uncomfortable because I'm not confident. It's because I don't like dealing with other people's bullshit entitlement.

Also: I learnt to dream from my family, and my books, and my friends and my travels and myself. My education allowed those dreams to flourish, but dreaming doesn't need to be taught. That's one thing you teach yourself.

Disinterest

Let me tell you, I am uninterested.

I read the papers, and the blogs and the FB posts written by my friends; I watch the TV shows and the news and the latest films; and most of the time I am uninterested.

Yes, to be honest, even when we have a chat in the day, it's not unlikely that I'll be thinking, same old same old, what's the point of this conversation anyway? when you tell me that your day has been alright.

And maybe (probably) it's just me, but quite honestly, you don't really care how my day was either. We might find an anecdote amusing, have a laugh, but in the end even that is mediocre. No, the truth is, none of this interests me.

I am more interested in my code, in what the data I'm extracting from stem cells might be than in how your day went, and sometimes I wonder if this makes me a bad person: not caring for the fellow human. But the fact is, I do care about the fellow human.

If you (or the papers) talked to me about injustice (real injustice, not how horrible it is for 30-year-olds to have to move to the north of England because they can't afford London) I'll be there. I want to listen. I want to know what you have to say, I want to know what's happening and I want to hear proposals for solutions, I want to propose solutions myself, and I want to make them happen.

If you talk to me about books, real books, the sort that don't have an agenda and are purely story and human experience, I'll be there, I'll listen, I'll want to know the books you're talking about, I'll want to read them.

Talk to me about music, films, art, but talk to me about those done in pleasure and for pleasure. I don't care for art done with a message (any meaningful art has a message in itself, because any meaningful art is profoundly human).

And last of all: talk to me about science. Talk to me about how doing science rips one apart (trust me, it does, I don't think I've ever seen a higher concentration of stressed people as I see in a lab) and talk to me about how it's exciting and how doing science makes one happy. Talk to me about how the coffee is horrible and the talks put you to sleep, and about how that tiny difference in the numbers which no one else will notice or know about means so much to you (and this sounds idealistic, but there are people out there who love quirks in the numbers that are not significant to anyone else).

I want to open a newspaper and read about how people are suffering police brutality in what we know as "the first world". And I don't want to hear it just one day, I want to hear it every day because it is ongoing. I want to hear how we're destroying the world, how so many species of amphibians are becoming extinct every year (when was the last time that climate change made the headlines?). I want to hear about what's being done to stop world hunger, because I don't hear anyone talking about Somalia, but much less about people in Myanmar who can barely pay for meat, let alone people in countries ravaged by war. And I also want to hear about how in countries in Europe, children are going without food and homes, and without an education.

And yet, I open the newspapers and all I read about is politics.

And they dare to accuse me of being apolitical. Of being disinterested. Of being radicalised.

On gender neutral language

First, let me make this clear: in Spanish, I am not generally in favour of gender neutral language. The reason for this has to do with the structure of the language: in Spanish there are words that are "masculine" and "femenine" and the word "género", which gender is usually translated to, usually refers to this linguistic construct rather than what we refer to as gender in English (many people will argue that this is not true and that género refers to both, and I am not going to have that discussion here, just check the definition in the Diccionario de la Lengua Española from the RAE and you'll see that I'm formally correct). More than this: I do try to use collectives when I speak in Spanish (rather than the masculine plural, which is the usual voice used to refer to a group of people), but I don't feel that using the masculine plural to refer to a group of people invisibilises women at all. This is because I tend to think of language as economic and practical, and the fact that one form or another is used to generalise doesn't really affect how I think of things. Many people disagree with me, arguing that generalising using a masculine makes men the norm... Well, ok. I disagree, I think thinking men are the norm makes men the norm, but maybe I'm wrong.

Now, as to gender neutral language. In English, a language unburdened by géneros using gender neutral language is easy 99% of the time. When referring to a group of people use "they", when referring to a single person of undetermined gender use "they". This solves most of it. But I admit to having a huge problem when it comes to the use of words for, erm, sentimental partners (the erm is because I don't know how else to work this but sentimental partners sounds weird). Generally, I think that I don't have any reason to specify whether my partner is male or female. No one should care about this, and it should be up to my partner whether they want to be identified as either or neither, but until that preference is made clear, a gender neutral should be used. It's easy, many will say, just use partner! Yeah. Well, here lies my problem.

First of all, I find the word partner extremely serious. When people say partner, to me it sounds like "life partner". To me it implies a long-term commitment similar to marriage where the two people involved haven't gotten married. And I know this is a personal thing, but I don't like it. I wish there were a gender-neutral equivalent to boyfriend or girlfriend that at the same time were as casual. I don't mean that everyone who says "x is my girl/boyfriend" means that they're in a casual relationship with x, but there is a lot more room for variation. A girl/boyfriend can be someone you've been seeing a few weeks, but who isn't that serious yet, or someone you've been seeing for a couple of years, where you're perhaps not an established couple the way a married couple is but where things are quite serious. To me boy/girlfriend seems to allow for a lot more gradation.

Another point, again purely in my head, but also why I find it troubling, is that when introducing your partner to someone else, a lot of the time their gender is obvious, so saying "partner" instead of "boy/girlfriend" could be confusing (it could be a business partner, a lab partner, etc).

Now for another situation where I find so-called gender-neutral language uncomfortable: I like using the word "guys" to refer to a group of people, and a couple of people have called me out on it. Funnily enough, these people weren't annoyed by my use of the word (they weren't offended that I'd identified them as male) but rather they were pointing out that someone might be offended. Anyway. I like using the phrase "you guys", especially in written communication, to imply a plural. Since you is both singular and plural in English, I find this an easy way to make the distinction, without the negative connotations that "you people" has (I mean, "are you guys coming to the theatre later?" sounds a lot better than "are you people coming to the theatre later?" I think). Now, many people have argued that guys is becoming a gender-neutral word (more and more it's being used by girls/women to refer to groups where everyone identifies as a woman), so maybe there's my solution right there.

I don't know. On the one hand, I see the need, especially in a language like English where it's so easy to do, to use gender neutral language. It means that when putting an example, our example isn't male by default. On the other, I feel that we should maybe start considering language for what it is: a tool to communicate. It tends to simplicity and to saving words, and this leads to generalisation.

Considering above all that pigeon-holing people into different classifications (male/female, single/married, etc. etc. etc.) is part of the problem when it comes to discrimination (it is divisive and non-inclusive, even anti-inclusive, but this matter is for another blog-post), and considering how easy it is to adopt a language that is gender-neutral (of course not all discrimination is gender-based, but this is what I'm dealing with in this post), I think we should do our best to do so. Not because changing language will make people feel better, but mainly because language has, to an extent, power to change how we think and view things.