If you’re wondering why I have been suspiciously silent over the last few weeks, rest easy. I’ve been preparing to sit my driving test by not killing people on a weekly basis.
The first person I didn’t kill was the bloke in the angry Merc behind me, who decided to respond to a downpour in London rush hour traffic by tailgating a car sporting L-plates and stalling at tricky junctions. I don’t understand the mindset of people like this. There you are, in your expensive and pointless car (because who cares about 0-60 when you’re gonna be doing 0-10 at most, and wearing out your left foot), and you think, “Hmmm, yes. I think my car could do with having a little more Fiat inserted up its nostrils.” So you start breathing down the neck of a tiny little 500 with a driver who clearly has yet to master indicators. Or the clutch. Or – worryingly – the handbrake.
It was worse with the second person I didn’t kill. That was me, by the way. It was a few weeks later, with the indicators now mastered but the elusive handbrake still outfoxing me at every turn. I turned right, as I am often instructed to do, and did NOT get rammed in the passenger side by on-coming traffic. I declared the turn a success, and exited the main road, entering the right-hand street, which had a rather steep gradient, almost hill-like in its ferocity.
At the top of the hill was a van.
We are all familiar with Van Man. He cat-calls with the firm conviction that he is somehow brightening up your day. He plays obnoxiously loud music and makes racist remarks, happy in the belief that he represents The Real England, whatever that might be. He also never – ever – gives way. Ever.
Spare a thought for the state of my pants when I saw Van Man accelerating down that hill towards me.
At my left was a car. At my right was a tiny narrow spare, then another car. Behind me was a busy main road. And in front of me was my rapidly-approaching death, in the form of a van so big it wouldn’t even see my tiny little Fiat before it squashed it like a bug. A small, white, L-plated bug.
At the very last second, when my eyes were like saucers and I was seriously regretting not having sorted that sodding will, he veered off into the tiny gap on my right. He didn’t even clip my car (although the car on the other side may not have been so lucky). By all accounts he didn’t even notice that he had nearly caused vehicular dismemberment.
“Well,” my instructor said brightly, after a horrifying and awkward pause, “shall we get on, then?”
Needless to say, I nearly burst into tears. “What the hell was that? That was like a cartoon death! I don’t want to die a cartoon death! I don’t want to be killed by a flying piano or a toilet seat, or a giant truck that doesn’t see me and runs me over!”
“Don’t worry,” my instructor soothed, looking a little rattled himself. “That sort of thing doesn’t actually happen in real life.”
That thought gave me pause. I wondered what, precisely, he thought we were doing right now. Maybe it was a rehearsal for real life? Maybe real motoring wouldn’t be like this. Maybe – and here was a horrifying possibility – it would be worse.
Like this, except white, a Fiat, and EVEN SMALLER. Photo from [email protected]
It was.
Over the next few weeks I’ve had parking spaces stolen by aggressive BMWs that more or less manhandled me out of the way, I’ve nearly been killed by drivers doing 40 in a 20mph zone down a sodding bus lane during restrictions, I’ve nearly squashed toddlers that decided to run out into the middle of the road while their parents looked on, oblivious, and – worst of all – I once nudged the rear bumper of another car. It was at less than 1mph and left no physical mark whatsoever, but I maintain that the psychological scarring will stay with me.
My conclusion is this: you would have to be absolutely mad to want to drive in London. You have nowhere to park, and everywhere there are people that view red lights as simply suggestions, bus lanes as express lanes, and children as speed bumps. If you are a woman in a small car, every large car will attempt to physically crowd you off the road, and if you are a woman in a large car, everyone will hate you because you are clearly being overly aggressive in daring to get behind the wheel of something bigger than an armchair.
And yet.
I loved that stupid little Fiat. I called it Bertie, and the moment it was named, it leaped about like an eager little puppy. I did a little dance of triumph on discovering that my turns in the road were textbook-perfect, and that parallel parking really isn’t all that bad. True, my instructor was a closet sadist who decided to make things ‘more interesting’ by making me do obscenely complicated compound manoeuvres – reversing around a corner with obstacles and a time limit springs to mind – but once you choose to view the whole thing as an elaborate obstacle course, it’s fine. And the little Fiat 500 made me feel ridiculously proud of myself every time I got behind the wheel. Look at me, I’m driving!
It’s a shame it had to end. All things must, I suppose, but it made me tear up a little bit just the same to walk around to the passenger side and get in, knowing that this would be it. The thing about driving tests is, no one tells you that you don’t get to have any more lessons after you pass.
Bye bye, Bertie. You were a smart little car and you took a lot of abuse. I’ll come visit you over the summer for my advanced driving course.
In the meantime, though, I’m going to look up Bertie’s sexy two-wheel cousin and sit my CBT.
After all, what’s the point of a driving license if you only get to drive cars? There’s a motorbike out there with my name on it.
Yes, my mum sent it to me. It has little hearts inside as well.
- Vik has now recovered from her driving ordeal, and is fully licensed to make cars go vroom. Stay tuned for Project Engine and further motorsport adventures.
Unsung Heroes: Marian Anderson
Today’s Hero is both impressive in their own right as one of the finest classical singing voices of the 20th century and also provides an example of people stepping up to do the right thing in the face of prejudice. Who is she? Marian Anderson, an American contralto who performed across Europe and the Americas throughout the middle part of the 20th century.
Marian was born in Philadelphia in 1897, the eldest of three Anderson children. Her mother had previously worked as a school teacher but was unable to do so in Philadelphia due to stricter controls on the qualifications needed by black teachers as opposed to those for white teachers. The family was active in their local Union Baptist church, and Marian’s aunt Mary encouraged her to sing with the church choir.
From age six onwards Marian began to sing at local concerts and functions, encouraged by her aunt. She had a clear talent from the start, and by her teens was earning several dollars for a performance.1 After attending high school – which was paid for by charitable donations raised by her pastor and other local community leaders – Anderson applied to the Philadelphia Music Academy, but was turned away. The reason? ‘We don’t take coloureds.’
As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.
– Marian Anderson, My Lord What A Morning
Undaunted, Anderson sought private tuition from the talented Giuseppe Boghetti.2 Boghetti was a good teacher, and Anderson would credit him with expanding her repertoire to include classical works and arias in addition to choral music. She took these skills to the New York Philharmonic, winning a voice contest there in 1925. The prize was the chance to perform in concert with them, marking the first major critical success of her career.
Despite being critically acclaimed and applauded by all who heard her, Anderson’s career struggled to take off in the United States. Much like Josephine Baker she found difficulty getting bookings due to racism, and like Baker she responded by touring heavily in a more welcoming Europe. She toured extensively through the 1930s, befriending many influential people in the music field who were impressed with her voice. Toscanini, Jean Sibelius, and Kosti Vehanen were all amongst those who worked with her or applauded her voice.
Those Lincoln Memorial crowds. All 70,000 of them.
For all her European success, there were still issues in America. In 1939 Howard University sought to have her perform at Constitution Hall. The hall was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), who denied her the chance to play there on grounds of race. This kicked off a storm with many DAR members resigning in protest, including board member Eleanor Roosevelt. This is where we get that aforementioned lovely example of people stepping up to do the right thing. Eleanor Roosevelt, along with Anderson’s manager, members of the NAACP, and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes arranged an open air concert for Marian Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The performance was a huge success, attended by over 70,000 people, and with a million or so more listening in by radio.
Four years later the DAR asked Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall. She accepted.
I forgave the DAR many years ago. You lose a lot of time hating people.
– Marian Anderson
Although she was trained for it and regularly performed operatic arias in her concerts, Anderson shied away from appearing in actual operas. She was offered positions consistently throughout her time in Europe, but felt she lacked the acting talent to accompany her voice. The exception to this was 1955’s appearance with the New York Metropolitan Opera in a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Machera. This was the first time a black singer had been counted amongst the regular cast.
The next decade was studded with achievements for Anderson, almost too many to give each one the detail they deserve here. which frankly is sign of brilliance in itself, when you have too much cool stuff to actually describe at any great length. Between 1955 and 1965, then, she:
- sang at the inaugurations of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy
- was appointed a UN delegate
- was made a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- sang at the 1963 March on Washington
- … and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
-
Oh, and she released an album of poetry, songs and spoken word pieces dedicated to her beloved pet cat Snoopy. A busy and exceedingly well spent decade.
Anderson retired from public performance in 1965 with a farewell tour that began at Constitution Hall and ended in New York’s Carnegie Hall. By the time of her death in 1993 she would accrue a list of honours and accolades quite staggering in length, including but not limited to honorary degrees from three different universities, a Grammy, a Silver Buffalo from the Boy Scouts of America, and her likeness on postage stamps and $5000 Series I Savings Bonds.
There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the make the first move – and he, in turn, waits for you.
– Marian Anderson, My Lord What A Morning
For further reading, check the following:
- Marian’s autobiography, My Lord What A Morning, which is unfortunately quite hard to get a hold of.
- Raymond Arsenault’s The Sound of Freedom which goes into much more detail on the 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert.
- Allan Keiler’s A Singer’s Journey provides an in-depth study of Anderson’s life.
- Unsung Heroes: spotlighting fascinating people we never learned about at school. Rob Mulligan also blogs at Stuttering Demagogue. Stay tuned for future Heroes, or send your own in to [email protected]!
- Which may not sound like much, but for early 20th century America it was pretty damn impressive. [↩]
- Born Joe Bogash, he had changed his name to something Italian sounding in the hopes that it would boost his opera career. It didn’t, and he returned to America in 1918 to open studios in New York City instead. [↩]
Welcome back to Rai, who kicked off our Gamer Diary back in May, and will very likely soon join Team BadRep’s About page properly as soon as we’ve got our backsides in gear…
As a new addition to BadRep I thought it’d be a good idea to introduce myself a bit more thoroughly, seeing as I intend to keep popping up. I don’t mean in the typical sense of “Hi, my name’s Rai, I’m 23 and I like…” because most of that isn’t entirely pertinent. Instead I thought I’d talk about gaming and me.
I’ve been playing computer games for well over 15 years already; I started with Wolfenstein and DOOM when I was eight years old and before that played puzzle games and other now-‘retro’ games like Space Invadersor PacMan. Over the years my tastes haven’t varied too much, merely widened to encompass other styles, such as RPG and strategy games. Admittedly, I’m still a die-hard PC gamer, but I also own an Xbox 360 for some console action and an old PSP that rarely gets used.
The games that I invariably come back to time after time almost always have some element of the supernatural, sci-fi or fantasy in them and more often than not are shooters, though I have developed a healthy interest in ‘sandbox’ style games like Assassin’s Creed or Prototype. For your delectation and amusement I’ve included a quick snap of a few of my boxed games (I have many, many more on Steam and a few Xbox 360 games elsewhere).
Why am I telling you all this? So that I can ease slowly into a conversation about gender perceptions and stereotypes in gaming from my own experiences. Now that you know I like shooting aliens and occasionally wielding swords and casting magic spells, there is one more thing you need to know about me before we continue: I could be perceived by others to be, at least ostensibly, female.
Normally, this fact is utterly irrelevant but unfortunately it becomes relevant in the context of gaming and being known as a gamer. Why is it relevant in these circumstances? Because stereotypes are rampant, and I have had more than my fair share of encounters with them.
An excellent example of this is when a very close friend of mine, who had known me for years, was watching me play an FPS game on the computer. After I’d had a good few headshots and diligently eradicated the enemy, he declared, “You’re pretty good… for a girl.” Upon seeing my best ‘I am not impressed’ look (a mix of anger and despair) he back-pedalled and said, “No, not like that… just that girls aren’t usually good at shooting things.”
Needless to say, I remained rather irked, but in the interest of peace, love and friendship we decided to move on swiftly. So the problem I am trying to illustrate here is the assumption, which is ridiculously widespread, that if one is ostensibly female then one must play a certain type of game. Similarly, if one is ostensibly male then one must play a certain other type of game. Never the twain shall meet!
In practice (and in the most polite phrasing possible) this is naught but a rather large, steamy pile of manure. However, the stereotypes remain. I admit I may be at the extreme end of the spectrum when I play games like F.E.A.R., Crysis, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and DOOM, etc, but there are plenty of female gamers who play other shooters, like the RPG shooter Mass Effect for example. Equally, there are male gamers who play things other than C.O.D. or Battlefield and instead play games that don’t involve killing anything at all.
Other than the assumption of what female gamers “don’t” play, there are also the games we “can’t” play (because, apparently, our poor female brains aren’t smart enough). Puzzle games that rely heavily on a good sense of visual-spatial awareness and understanding of basic physics, like Portal, are supposedly too ‘difficult’ for us to figure out on our own. Not so. Strategy games that involve planning and forethought and tactical awareness, like Age of Empire, Command & Conquer or Red Alert, are also apparently too complicated. Not so. Even at the level of consoles, female gamers are presumed to only play on the Wii or the DS because they are much simpler to use. Personally, I found the Wii infuriatingly simplistic and therefore quite difficult to use, as I’m used to a whole keyboard full of buttons as opposed to just two.
It isn’t necessarily the gaming communities that build and perpetuate these stereotypes either; they seem to be bleeding through from mainstream society. Although gamers are perceived to be more tolerant of difference (simply because mainstream society treats us all as different) there’s still plenty of ‘epic fail’ when it comes to gender and gaming.
So, why have I told you all this? Well, because I wanted to give some groundwork that we can build on with the Gamer Diary and see where we go. I hope to prove these stereotypes wrong and spread the word that anyone can play any type of game that they want to or enjoy. That’s what gaming is for: enjoyment. Nobody should be hampered by other people’s opinions of what they should/shouldn’t do. So I would like to build up from here and look at the changes in games and gaming culture that happen constantly as we inch closer to gender equality (and hopefully all other types of equality too!).
- Rai, at the tender age of 23, has been gaming for 15 years and writing for 10 – perfect combination! Watch this space for more Gamer Diary.
Bookworm: Caitlin Moran’s “How to be a Woman”
Let’s be clear here, I love Caitlin Moran. Her tweets make me laugh until milk comes out of my nose, often at times when I have not drunk milk. That is how magic she is. So once I found out she had written a book on feminism I almost broke land speed records on the way to the bookshop. 
Which is high praise as these days, as I usually balk at the price of books when they can be gotten for free from your local library – and indeed should be for the most part, because otherwise those fools in power will try to close them.
Torygeddon aside, I’ve recently been really happy with the “new” (over the past ten or so years; they aren’t appearing like the rash of teenage vampire novels) books about feminism – like Living Dolls by Natasha Walter. Angry books, clever books, often books by young women. But at the same time I did get a little turned off by them – they were also difficult books, thoughful, smart books that needed full your full attention and dealt with very big, very important feminist issues in very serious ways. After which you tend to feel sad, or angry and a bit frustrated.
Whilst there is certainly room and need for those books, there’s also a need for this book. Because this isn’t about the big stuff, not entirely. It’s about one woman and her journey through a very personal feminism. It’s about pants being annoyingly too small, fashion, eating too much cheese, having a crap dog, rowing with your family and the general business of living. It’s pop-feminism, and we at BadRep are all behind that – the kind of feminism that is easy to access, relevant and doesn’t require you to have digested a thesaurus or the entire works of Helene Cixous in the original french. It’s a “normal” book, and normalising feminism is something I am all for. It does cover some “serious feminist” topics – such as abortion (covered in more detail in a review by Abortion Rights over here), having children, not having children, prostitution, rape, sexism in all its many forms. But you never feel preached at, or patronised.
So, what’s it like to read? Well, it’s a bit like being in the pub with our Editor, Miranda, when she’s had a couple of ciders and is “holding forth”. Certainly as far as goes the excessive use of CAPS LOCK AND EXCLAMATION POINTS TO MAKE THINGS STAND OUT!!!1 To call it “friendly and personal” sounds a bit pat and cliched, but it is. The book takes the form of an autobiography of growing up – poor and in Wolverhampton – and dealing with the challenges of becoming a woman. It’s deeply refreshing to find some non-university educated, working class feminism. Feminism that doesn’t rely heavily on theory. Feminism that makes me laugh, and read sections out to my flatmate so we can both spew milk from our noses. It’s a book that’s easy and fun (yes, feminism can be fun!) to read, and I devoured it in a few hours.
I recommend it, naturally. But I also offer a few caveats. There were a couple of points that I didn’t like, and they came from the same place as the stuff I did like. You see, when you write informally, personally and from the heart, you also tend to be a bit less careful than you might with word use. And sloppy language is very perilous when you are criticising sexism, which is also about sloppy language, in part. The word “retarded” for example, is used a couple of times, to describe being like someone with a learning disability. This is not cool. It’s a word that we should all stop using (much like “n*gger”). There is no reclaiming this word. End of.
I also found myself getting a bit twitchy with some of her assumptions – and again, these were down to the personal, anecdotal approach. Her feminism is not exactly my feminism. I do not believe, for example, that women are quite so biologically constrained that cystitis is the reason we didn’t found empires. I found the focus in on the experience of living in a cisgender woman’s body and the assumption of “natural” consequences to this a bit disarming. But then, my teenage years were not hers. My growing pains were different.
It is a brave book. It doesn’t pull any punches, and there will be bits that you disagree with. But that’s part of the point of polemics; they stand their ground, pitbull-like, and assert a view. The ensuing debate carries them forward. And the jokes. Still cleaning milk off my t-shirt over the high-heeled shoe bit.
- “Oh GOD, guilty as charged” – Ed [↩]
Unsung Heroes: Maria Agnesi
There are many forms of awesomeness.
So far in this series we’ve seen daredevil pilots, hardworking activists, and daring wartime spies.
Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718–1799), by contrast, was a quiet type who lived most of her life in seclusion and finished her days in a convent. So what made her awesome? Well, for one thing she was a particularly prodigious polymath of skull-burstingly intense genius. There’s more than that too, but it makes a good place to start.
Born in Milan to a wealthy silk merchant who had married into nobility, Agnesi was the oldest of 21 children (gigantic families apparently being a running theme amongst the people featured in this series). She was pretty much as prodigious as child prodigies come, speaking both French and Italian by the age of five, and Latin soon after.
The stare of unadulterated genius.
Her Latin was put to the test at the age of nine, when she began doing public salons and debates, organised by her father. Agnesi prepared a lengthy speech arguing for women’s right to education, translated it into Latin, and delivered it to a gathering of local intellectuals. Most of us, I think, at age nine, would have settled for doing well on a classroom mental arithmetics test, maybe getting a gold star on a spelling quiz. But no, Agnesi was intellectually amazing, so she jumped right past those and straight to giving lectures in a foreign language on controversial topics. As you do.
Over the next few years Agnesi would continue to deliver these speeches and take part in debates – learning Greek, Hebrew, Spanish and German along the way, so that she could talk to her audience in their native languages. She ended up giving several hundred talks, and gathered around two hundred of these which were published as the Propositiones Philosophicae in 1738. For those of you keeping track at home, that makes seven languages learned, hundreds of serious debates from age nine onwards, and one weighty tome published, all by the age of 20.
He began with a fine discourse in Latin to this young girl, that it might be understood by all. She answered him well, after which they entered into a dispute, in the same language, on the origin of fountains and on the causes of the ebb and flow which is seen in some of them, similar to tides at sea. She spoke like an angel on this topic, I have never heard anything so remarkable…
– C de Brosses, Lettres Historique et Critiques sur l’Italie
Agnesi did not particularly enjoy the public life of the intellectual, however, and at age 20 asked to be allowed to join a convent. The request was denied, but she was able to semi-withdraw from the world at home, eschewing social interaction in favour of an almost convent-esque lifestyle within the family household. When she wasn’t tutoring her vast army of siblings, she devoted her time to the study of maths, particularly the fields of differential and integral calculus – still relatively new at the time, having only been formalised in European circles by Newton and Leibniz a generation or so before.
She published her mathematical work in 1748 under the title Instituzioni Analitiche ad uso della Gioventù Italiana, a mammoth two-volume tome that provided a clear and well written introduction to the mathematical concepts of the time. The work was written in Italian1 as opposed to Latin – which was the scholarly language of the time – because Agnesi wanted the work to be accessible to as many young Italians as possible, not just the educated upper classes.
I will finish the Instituzioni with a warning. The expert analyst should be industrious in trying to search for solutions to these problems and will be much more advanced by means of the techniques that are “born” during this process.
– Maria Agnesi
Following her father’s death in 1752, Agnesi was appointed Professor of Mathematics at the university of Bologna by Papal decree. She was the first woman to be appointed to the role of professor in a European university. You know you’re a shining example of sheer genius when the Pope himself decides to say “to hell with traditional gender roles, I want this person made a professor!”.
Agnesi considered the professorship to be an honourary role, and never actually set foot in the university or taught a class, though by all accounts it would actually have been a proper position had she wanted it. Instead, no longer feeling obligated to stay at home for her father, she devoted herself to theology. She became the director of the Hospice Trivulzio, working to provide for the poor and the sick. She remained there until her death, putting all of her not inconsiderable wealth into charitable works, and dying a pauper at the age of 81.
So there you have it. Seven languages, two books, the first female professor by appointment of Pope Benedict XIV, and decades of selfless charity work. That’s a pretty damn good body of evidence in favour of Agnesi being brain-blisteringly awesome.
Further Reading:
- The Contest For Knowledge: Debates Over Women’s Learning in Eighteenth-century Italy
Analytical Instructions in Four Books, the English translation of Agnesi’s two volumes on calculus and trigonometry.- The World of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mathematician of God, by Massimo Mazzotti. It’s a pretty solid account both of Agnesi’s life and the intellectual atmosphere of mid 18th-century Italy.
- Unsung Heroes: spotlighting fascinating people we never learned about at school. Rob Mulligan also blogs at Stuttering Demagogue. Stay tuned for future Heroes, or send your own in to [email protected]!
- The translation of this work into English saw the word ‘versiera’ (curve) mistaken for ‘avversiera’ (witch). As a result one of the main parts of the work, the formula for a certain curve, now lives on as the Witch of Agnesi. [↩]
Tomboy Time: Airsoft
Tomboy Time: in which our intrepid Sarah C has adventures in traditionally, normatively Boys’ Adventure Book spaces. Are the attitudes women might expect to encounter really still a problem? Today: airsofting.
Last week my friend Tom and I decided to exchange nerdy hobbies. I would take him to a Live Action Roleplay Game (more on that in another post) and he would take me to an airsoft game.
For those who haven’t indulged, Airsoft is a bit like paintball, except instead of getting splattered with paint you get hit with little plastic pellets (pictured) that are fired really quite fast (I spent the next week or so covered in little red welts and looked like I had lazy measles). The aim is for “realism”, so the guns used are of a similar weight and style to actual military weapons. Finally, if this were not enough excitement for one evening, you can use flares that you throw onto the ground near your opponent. These explode with bright light and a loud bang.
Obviously this is very cool, and equally obviously, it’s a rather boy-heavy activity. Looking for pictures for this post, I put “airsoft” into Google images and the only pictures of women I found were of a pretty blonde lady (titled “booth babe” sadly) at an airsoft gun show. When we arrived at the abandoned shopping centre (I told you it was cool) there were only two women – myself and my friend Kate.
The “safe room” in which we got ready started to fill up with men, most of whom seemed to know each other and started the kind of cameradarie rituals that made me start to reconsider whether this was really a good idea. I have an abiding memory from my childhood of trying to play street football or cricket with the boys who lived on my road and having balls deliberately thrown at my face until I went home, red-faced and in frustrated tears, to parachute My Little Ponies from my bedroom window, imagining my former teammates as the target of my plastic equine revenge. Thus, my brain started to fill with concerns about deliberate assault aimed at exclusion.
Once we’d got our kit and got briefed, we went into the combat area. The group was split into two teams and we spent the evening playing a series of “wargames” like Capture the Flag and similar scenarios with breaks for energy drinks, chocolate bars and hot dogs.
Over the course of the night I started to get a feel for the space and for how the games were played – there are a series of rules on safety and on recognising fellow teammates (a challenge when it’s dark and you’re wearing black). I needn’t have worried about the gender-exclusion problem. Once in the field, with facemask, guns and black camo gear on, the fact that I was a girl stopped being important – or even especially noticeable. Instead the fact that I was a “fae ninja” (not my words, but they kept me grinning for days) who could run really fast and sneak with the best of them meant that I was as challenging an opponent as the next really fast, really sneaky person.
I had an amazing time.
Heart racing, running through darkened corridors, finding cover, rolling out of the way of explosives and even taking command a couple of times.
A memorable moment was drawing out and picking off a few of the opposing team in a corridor, then hiding in a pitch black room, back pressed against the wall as their torchbeams sliced just past me. Slowly, dreadfully slowly, they hesitantly pushed the door open and entered the space where they believed many shooters lay in wait. And I opened fire. It was a battle that I eventually lost, being horribly outnumbered – but that resulted in a handshake from the other side for giving good game.
Much credit goes to the people running First and Only Airsoft, who made absolutely no concession or acknowledgment of our gender. I felt welcomed and looked after, was given a good briefing on the kit, and felt sure and safe in using the guns. At no point was I talked down to, or treated as in any way different from anyone else who was there to have fun.
Which we did. Bucketloads.
I’ve just read a book on cars. It’s called The Girls’ Car Handbook: Everything You Need to Know about Life on the Road. It was pink, and had a purple convertible on the cover.
On the surface of it, I am this book’s target audience. I passed my test recently (send plaudits and flowers to the usual address), and was immediately filled with the urge to run out and buy a car. Not a simple, sensible car that can lug my marshalling gear from racetrack to racetrack, or even a smart, neat little city runabout to get me to meetings on time. 
No, I wanted a swooping, curving, monstrously beautiful beast of an Alfa 4C. It’s not even out yet. They’re only making a handful of them, and they’ve probably all already been sold. I wouldn’t be able to afford the deposit, let alone the monthly repayments, let alone the insurance, let alone keeping it fed and watered on UK oil prices. It’s not a car, it’s petrolhead pornography.
Couple the above unnatural lust with a penchant for heels and pearls, and surely I would jump for joy at a book with a back cover featuring a girl in a miniskirt and thigh-high purple boots bending over a car? Why, add a tasteful hair accessory or two and it could even be me!
Anyway, the pertinent point is that I did indeed read it (albeit borrowed from the library rather than sending my hard-earned cash to the pink publisher). Not just little bits. The whole damn thing, cover to cover. And I hate to say it, but I think the writer has been stitched up.
I’ve read Maria McCarthy’s columns in the Telegraph, and went in, despite the cover, expecting much the same: sensible journalism with an eye to problems faced by female drivers. It’s… not that. It’s actually rather like – and when I say ‘like’, I mean ‘this is what I reckon happened’ – someone took McCarthy’s manuscript, looked at the proposed cover, and said, “this should have more ‘girlie’ things in it.” And then picked up the editing pen and wrote in said girlie things, whether they made sense or not.
For example, McCarthy opens her chapter on car insurance thus:
Sorting out car insurance can be a bewildering experience for many of us.
Except she doesn’t. What actually opens the chapter, in full, is:
As far as disagreeable but necessary obligations go, sorting out your car insurance is right up there with filling in tax returns, going for gynaecological check-ups or visiting dreary in-laws. But as with all these experiences, the best approach is just to grit your teeth, remind yourself that it’ll be over soon and plan a nice treat for afterwards.
Sorting out car insurance can be a bewildering experience for many of us.
Yes, that’s right. It reads like someone went back in and added in an additional, wholly unnecessary introductory paragraph. It doesn’t stop there. On choosing a new garage:
It’s a bit like trying out a new hairdresser – you’d probably go in for a trim or maybe a few highlights first and check out the way the hairdresser worked before asking to have your waist-length chestnut hair transformed into a blonde urchin cut.
On using car magazines to research a car before buying:
Unlike Autotrader, which feels like something your dad might read, What Car? is an attractive glossy that’s easy to flick through when you’re having your highlights done.
On washing your car:
If you want to experience the Middle England lifestyle to the full then you’ll hand-wash your car every Sunday morning. If you want to live out your boyfriend’s fantasy then you’ll do it wearing your bikini while he watches, nursing a cold beer.
And this from a writer who recently wrote about the benefit of PassPlus courses for older female drivers returning to the road after a separation or bereavement.
Or is it? Because the thing is, I’m not convinced the above extracts of pink vomit are actually McCarthy at all. Maybe, at a stretch, it’s McCarthy under duress; McCarthy with a metaphorical editorial gun to her head to make the book more appealing to young women browsing in Waterstones. Certainly the ridiculous inserts drop off mid-way through the book, and by the time you’re on Chapter 8 (presumably having shelled out the £7.99) with a car in your driveway and insurance to secure, they’re largely gone.
The question is, why on earth are they there in the first place? The book is screamingly successful, rated 10,102 in Amazon (which is pretty impressive for a specialist manual). Once you get past the purple passages it’s also – whisper it – really rather good. It has typical labour rates in major cities in the UK. It has suggested insurers if you want to be added to someone else’ insurance and still rack up a no-claims. It has helpful suggestions on how to avoid being ripped off when buying a used car. All of these things are useful for any novice, and I was making notes whilst reading. No wonder it has garnered such glowing reviews!
And yet… click on the Amazon page. Go on, I’ll wait. Click on it and scroll down to Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought, and tell me that at first glance you didn’t think they were showing you little girls’ toys. The Pink Car Wash Kit. The Pink Fluffy Furry Dice. The Pink Toolbox.
I have a strong feeling that if Maria McCarthy is ever presented with any of these items and told to change a tyre, the pink wrench from the pink toolbox will disintegrate the first time it is used. The pink car wash kit will be useless in actually washing a car, unless used when wearing a bikini, and the pink fluffy furry dice will distract her from safely driving her lovely new Alfa 4C and she will plough it into the back of a horsebox on the M4, whereupon everyone passing will tut and say under his breath, “bloody lady drivers.”
There's just no excuse.
Game of Thrones: Redux
Ten weeks ago we saw Ed Stark and pals being grim and gritty for the start of HBO’s Game of Thrones series, adapted from the George R. R. Martin fantasy novels. Now the series is over, so it’s time to look back and see how it fared over the course of its run. Please note, there will almost certainly be spoilers ahead, so don’t carry on if you’ve yet to watch it all.
In my initial review of the first episode I said that the female characters were a bit weak, and didn’t get much screen time. But, like their counterparts in the books, there was a good chance we’d get to see them develop into a pretty well-rounded bunch of characters. Let’s take a look at a few of them to see how HBO did.
Danaerys Targaryen
Danaerys (Emilia Clarke) was one of the more problematic characters in the first episode. She’s presented as a mostly passive tool for her brother’s plans of conquest, and pushed into a forced marriage with a disturbingly non-consensual first night. By the finale episode things have… sort of improved? She has definitely developed as a character, becoming a leader in her own right and banishing any notions that she might be passive or weak (“I do not have a gentle heart,” she declares).
She’s stood up to her brother, dealt out harsh justice, and worked to improve people’s lives by attempting to make the Dothraki end their practise of raping prisoners from their raids. Oh, and she’s got her own dragons, the first to be seen in a long, long time. On the other hand, the presentation of the dragons highlights one of the remaining issues in how she’s depicted. Rather than striding into the fire untouched and walking out resplendent, a reborn queen with her dragons behind her, she’s found the next day, curled up and naked, providing the episode’s HBO nipple quota. It’s also possibly the first use of a strategically placed dragon in mainstream TV.
The other issue with Danaerys is that her entire relationship with Khal Drogo just feels more than a little Stockholm Syndrome-y. The show never really addresses that first night, or the other occasions where we see her having sex against her will. Instead, she just learns to love him, and most of his respect for her seems to come solely from the fact she’s carrying his child. It’s not ideal.
Continuing the theme of arranged marriages…
Cersei Lannister
Evil, incestuous, and an arch-schemer, Cersei (Lena Headey) was presented initially as almost a caricature of the Ice Queen archetype. Ten episodes on, and she’s still evil, still incestuous, and still manipulative. But she’s also a lot more human and almost sympathetic. We’re given a genuinely revealing conversation between her and King Robert (Mark Addy), in which we glimpse a young woman who was married for political reasons to a king who was in love with a dead woman. We see how, raised for almost exactly this purpose, she tried to make it work, and how their flaws destroyed them and bought them to the sad state they’re in now. It makes her something a little more interesting than just evil for evil’s sake.
Sansa Stark
The last character linked by an arranged marriage is the young Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner). She’s perhaps the one we’ve seen the least progress out of. Raised from birth to meet the expectations of what a noble lady should be, and to someday marry a prince and have lots of little noble children, she’s got a lot of conditioning to overcome.
By the end of the series she’s still the most passive of the characters, still being used in other peoples’ schemes instead of forming her own. But she has at least seen that the dream she was sold was a false one, and that Joffrey is not a good king to marry, or even a remotely decent person. We get a brief glimpse of some steel in her as she talks back to him and moves to throw him off the castle wall. It’s not much, and she’s punished for it, but it gives us a hint that she might eventually get to be as cool as her sister.
Sansa: “I’m supposed to marry Prince Joffrey. I love him, and I’m meant to be his Queen and have his babies!”
Arya: “Seven hells!”
Which leads us to…
Arya Stark
Ah yes, Sansa’s sister. Standing alongside Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister as one of the best cast characters in a well cast show, Maisie Williams’s Arya is the polar opposite of her big sister. Sword-wielding, cat-chasing and adventurous, Arya actively rebels against the rules for what a noble’s daughter ought to be. On the one hand, this makes her incredibly badass. On the other hand it’s notable that she only gets away with things and survives because people mistake her for a boy. It highlights just how tight the gender roles are in the Seven Kingdoms, that even her father – a remarkably open minded man for the setting – can’t conceive of a life for her that doesn’t involve marrying a lord and having lots of offspring.
Where Arya is allowed to practise her sword fighting only as a father’s indulgence for his wilful child, and told she’ll never be a knight, her brother Bran continues to train in archery back at Winterfell. Arya is the more skilled of the two (shown in the very first episode, as she makes a shot Bran can’t), but as a girl it’s inconceivable that she could live that life, just as it’s impossible for Bran not to.
And lastly, amongst our main characters…
Catelyn Stark
She’s quite possibly the best of the bunch, in a quiet and determined way. She’s not got Danaerys’s flair or Cersei’s scheming prowess, but she gets things done and will not be stopped. It’s Catelyn (Michelle Fairley) who comforts her son after Ed’s death, not the other way round. It’s she who sums up what needs to be done: “We get the girls back. Then we kill them all.” It’s she who walks into a not-entirely-friendly castle keep alone to make the deal that’ll get their army across a major river. It’s nice to see an older female character on this show who knows what needs doing and gets it done.
On the other hand, there’s an issue with the repercussions of some of what she gets done. Her capture of Tyrion sparks a lot of drama, sees people killed and injured, and is one of the contributing factors to the war that breaks out. The whole treatment of it smacks a little too much of “flighty women do not think their actions through, and men must pick up the pieces.” It’s a key part of the plot in the books though, so that’s on Martin as much as it is on HBO.
There’s half a dozen secondary characters worth discussing as well (Shae, the Wildling woman, Sansa’s nursemaid, Catelyn’s sister), but not nearly enough room to discuss them. Damn you GoT for being so sprawling. Overall though, there are still definite issues, and there’s always the obligatory HBO nipples in each episode, but the characters are improving and will hopefully continue to do so if they stick to the course of the books. Roll on Spring 2012 and Season 2.
All images copyright HBO, taken from A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Lunchtime Links (also shameless self-promo)
Down tools, for it is Friday. Come frolic with us through the ELYSIAN FIELDS OF THE INTERNET.
illustration by Julia Scheele
- You might remember a bit ago when our Hodge went to the London Zine Symposium? Well, brace yourself, ’cause now the rest of our arty types are following suit. On July 24th (a month today) Markgraf and Miranda are off to New Cross Turn Left: a Comics and Art Garden Party! Organised by illustrators Julia Scheele, Ellen Lindner and Howard Hardiman, this is gonna rock. You should come too. Especially if you’re a fan of Markgraf’s art for this site, or the concept of losing your Feminist Awkward Balloon. We are very friendly and (mostly) do not bite, so do come say hi.
- In other news, Em Carroll’s website is finally up, too! We’ve been waiting for it. Not in a creepy way. Just enthusiastically. Draw This Dress, which we’ve linked before, continues to be awesome. Vera Brosgol, the other half of DTD, is also very cool.
- AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: Pablo K of the Disorder of Things blog talks Race, Gender, Nation and Game of Thrones. It’s very good.
- Comics Alliance present The New Harley Quinn Costume… Adapted for a Male Superhero. With attendant illuminating paragraph which made us nod into our tea mugs. The DC Reboot Fashion Roundtable is also entertaining…. y’know, we really need to do some roundtable posts here at BR Towers. That’d be pretty cool. Assuming we could all quieten down long enough to hear each other speak, anyway. :D
- What Tami Said/Racialicious: Who Is The Black Zooey Deschanel? Really, really thought-provoking piece on race and the stereotypes we inhabit, on the screen and off. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a non-white Manic Pixie Dream Girl, particularly in a live-action format. Except within anime?
