An Alphabet of Feminism #12: L is for Lady
L
LADY
‘My lady’, as her friends called her, sincerely desired to be a genuine lady, and was so at heart, but had yet to learn that money cannot buy refinement of nature, that rank does not always confer nobility, and that true breeding makes itself felt in spite of external drawbacks.
Louisa May Alcott, Good Wives (1869)
She’s A Lady.
Funny Etymology Submission #billion: lady sprung from the Old English hlaefdige (I dunno, I didn’t do Old English), a compound of hlaf (‘loaf’) and dig (‘to knead’). So a lady is literally ‘she who kneads loaves’.
I guess you can kind of see where it went from there, since its original (now obsolete) meaning is as ‘the female head of the household’; i.e., the one what does the cooking, with the ambiguity that still runs through many households where Mum’s In Charge, but Dad’s Earning. Thus, in its second meaning (also Old English), it becomes ‘A woman who rules over subjects‘, now only used in ‘poetical’ or ‘rhetorical’ senses. But in extended Middle English usage, it’s refined to ‘A woman who is the object of a man’s devotion; a mistress, lady-love’.
That’s No Lady, That’s My Wife.
Here we enter the troubled seas of courtly love, that pretty part of medieval culture peopled by sighing knights sitting under rose-bushes. Supposedly ‘invented’ by Eleanor of Aquitaine, at her court in Poitiers, it was brought to England with her marriage to Henry II in 1152.
Fra Angelico, Madonna of Humility, c.1430
The basic idea was an almost iconoclastic worship of your lady-love, whose favours you sought through brave deeds, refined behaviour and that sort of thing. The highest ‘favour’ was the fantastically ambiguous ‘naked embrace’ (although you might well sleep with an unsheathed sword between you), and your ‘lady-love’ didn’t have to be a viable option – she could be married, generically unavailable, or just someone you’d never met but heard lots about down the alehouse. She was a spur to bravery, swordplay and courtliness, not, like, your girlfriend.
Lay Lady Lay.
But courtly love was emphatically not a concept that elevated hoi polloi: your lady would be a lady in the fourth sense of the word (‘a woman of superior social position’) and quite possibly also in the specific extended sense of the second, ‘the female corresponding to lord’ (Lord and Lady Godiva).
In contrast, peasants ‘are impelled to acts of love in the natural way like a horse or a mule’, in the words of Andreas Capellanus, who quite literally wrote the rule book for courtly love. Capellanus advises his readers to steer clear of the ‘game’ of love where the lower classes are involved, and, if overcome with lust, to ‘find a suitable spot [and] not delay in taking what you seek, gaining it by rough embraces’1 .
And such attitudes are never far from this most ‘pretty’ of love-traditions – a lyric in the Carmina Burana (c.1230) tells what happens when, despite ‘long service’, the lady still denies her knight ‘the final and best stage’:
She rampages with her sharp nails, tears my hair, forcefully repels my violence. She coils herself and entwines her knees to prevent the door of her maidenhead from being unbarred. But at last my campaign makes progress; […] I tighten by embraces our entwined bodies, I pin her arms, I implant hard kisses. In this way Venus’ palace is unbarred.
The ambiguous power-structure at the heart of being someone’s lady could hardly be clearer.
All this said, if you were Specially Virtuous, courtly love was the ideal forum for worshipping a very specific lady – the word’s third sense, ‘Our Lady’, the Virgin Mary. Ah, Mary. Everybody loves Mary, and throughout the middle ages, she picked up honorific titles like a big bit of blue velcro: ‘Our Lady’, ‘Our Blessed Lady’, ‘Our Lady of Sorrows’, ‘the Queen of Heaven’, ‘the Blessed Virgin’ you name it. She even had a special colour-code – white (sometimes red) and blue. Pre-Prussian Blue (discovered in 1704), blues were the most expensive painting pigments, so someone decided MARY SHALL WEAR ONLY BLUE, WE LOVE HER SO.
Nevertheless, Mary has an evil analogue: post-Reformation, there are plenty of references to the ‘Lady of Rome’ or the ‘Lady of Babylon’, an abusive term for the Catholic church in reference to the ‘scarlet woman’ of the Apocalypse. The dichotomy continues outside religion: see also lady‘s more worldly senses: lady of easy virtue, lady of the town, etc.
The Lady Is A Tramp.
In modern usage, lady‘s social standing is ‘loosely defined but not very high’; often, it is ‘merely a courteous synonym for woman‘, giving a strange social gloss to cisgendered biological fact. It was around 1861 (just before Good Wives) that it got its more specific sense as ‘a woman whose manners, habits and sentiments are those characteristic of the higher ranks of society’.
This could be interpreted as Alcott uses it, or, if you are Walt Disney, as exactly what it says: think Lady and the Tramp (1955), one of many poor boy – rich girl tales. The title plays on Sinatra’s song ‘The Lady Is A Tramp‘, which is repeated in strangely sexualised form in the film about the Tramp himself (you could never have a female tramp). The same idea returns in feline form in The Aristocats (1970), where again Society wins but appropriates some of the gritty male spark from the other side of the tracks. For polite desecration only, please.
So a lady can stand for certain upper-class ‘manners, habits and sentiments’ that are in opposition to those of a simple man or woman. From courtly love to the leash and collar set, the feminized force of sophistication calms, restrains, and decorates.
NEXT TIME: we’ll be halfway through! But not before Hodge takes a little Christmas break. We return in 2011, with M for Marriage.
- …all translations are P.G. Walsh’s: it’s too early in the morning to read blogposts in Medieval Latin. [↩]
Big Dog
“I suppose I might open the trick door now, and seek the monster of my own volition, sword in hand and ready. Then, if I slay him, I might return for you, and free you.”
The girl wept. Through her tears she said, with a knife for a voice: “If you are a man, you will do it.”
“Oh no, lady. Only if I am your notion of a man.”
– The Hero at the Gates, Tanith Lee
Conan felt at ease in the office.
Following on from Sarah C’s blogpost yesterday, I wanted to ask: who decides what it is to “be a man”? And why is the answer vital to improving things for women?
This is not just about Alpha Males, but our entire definition of masculinity (and therefore what we’re telling boys and men they should aim to be). We can talk about being a responsible adult, but how is that different from ‘manly’?
We haven’t moved on very much from celebrating men as muscle-bound warriors, from equating manliness with physical strength. Nerds are not manly. Thin, ‘weak’ guys are not manly. The efficient office worker is not ‘manly’. The patient father is not praised with “What a man!” Anyone with the wrong body shape can never qualify.
Manliness also requires independence: you’re not a successful man if you live in your Mother’s basement, but men who own motorbikes or fast cars are sexy. It goes beyond this, though. You’re not manly if you’re ruled primarily by tender emotions, or “under the thumb” of a woman, or –
Sorry, I just can’t keep this up. It’s such utter, utter bullshit. The short answer seems to be: you’re not a man unless you control your own destiny. If others are in charge of you, or you submit to them, then they are above you on the Manliness Scale.
And we wonder why the entire planet is in danger.
It’s as though the capability to fight and take – and therefore provide – is still the only measure of what makes a man. Male aggression is not popular in modern society (outside of sports, boardrooms and the army) but Sarah C referred to some websites yesterday which celebrate a particularly horrible version of poisonous alpha male tropes. Their vision consists of controlling your women (multiple), being in command, being admired for being powerful, and taking it easy while your slaves do the work because you’re the big man.
It’s pretty strange to see that this still exists in an allegedly modern country. These men seem to think they can be less powerless in life if they take imagined power from women around them. A big part of it lies in succeeding specifically because you have lowered a woman’s power from a perceived higher place. Femininity is seen as making men weak, and women are assumed to be always less powerful (making any example of them EVER overruling the alpha an unacceptable demonstration of the alpha’s weakness.)
So why is this commanding behaviour not only acceptable, respected, sought-after, but the definition of masculine prowess?
Some sources believe it’s because fighting is the one thing you can’t fake. It’s also the action which overrules all others: it doesn’t matter how deserving, wise or honourable you are, someone with a bigger gun can take it all away. So maybe it’s about security, and therefore defence of loved ones, rather than the more pessimistic approach of valuing someone primarily for their ability to attack.
What’s interesting is that this Conan image comes more from the media and movies than reality. A quick poll of some female friends found that they mainly think “manly” means having Values, Character, Responsibility… behaviours which suggest you are not just a boy in adult clothes. The change is from a child to an adult, not to being more male than before.
But the images and lessons boys receive from TV and cinema simply cannot equate maturity with manliness unless the man can also kick the ass of everyone onscreen. And be totally 100% heterosexual, of course. (In the same poll, one woman said she’d think less of a man if he wasn’t physically stronger than her, so it’s not all one-sided.) Even here, ‘feminine’ qualities are seen as taking away from a man’s masculinity. And since ‘feminine’ is deemed inseparable from a woman’s perfect role of being a (usually married) mother, that means men are deemed less manly if they show any nurturing behaviour towards kids, are emotionally sensitive, etc etc oh god this is depressing.
Ultimately, masculinity is bound up with individual heroism instead of having to rely on others, and that’s a dangerous place to be.
It’s a sad trend for feminism that men are judged on what they do, and women are judged on how they look, but the male side of that is not as enabling as it appears. The target for masculinity has to include muscle, mastery and money. A man’s worth (as a “successful” male and especially as relationship material) is very closely linked to his money. Not just the prestige of the job, but how far up the status ladder of it he is. Success and potential future success are what are really being measured, in whatever field. And it IS about wealth; that’s why status symbols work. They represent the money, and therefore the power, or his capability and drive to get power.
Who are the male role models on TV? Bling-laden hard men rappers surrounded by girls, secret agents who win every fight, footballers and movie stars. All of whom are alpha males who get the girls and status (and money). Individual parents might offer better role models linked to how to be manly, but “society” doesn’t. Even the “lad’s mags” of the 1990s like FHM and Loaded aren’t connecting with what men feel is right for their lives.
Despite all this, the problem is nothing compared to what women face when society tells them what it thinks ‘feminine’ is. That still must include sexual issues in a way that ‘masculine’ doesn’t, as well as passivity/submission. And for all the harm that men feeling unneeded may bring, reclaiming feminism from its Bad Rep is a more urgent issue – but it’s not unrelated. We need ways for men to behave better towards women without feeling less masculine. The strict mandate to never appear as ‘weak’ as a woman is a foundation of male violence.
The message needs to change. We need to be saying that a man is valued if he behaves well, with compassion and thought and honour. The only medium that counts in bringing messages like this to the public is television, and that’s why pop culture is so crucial. Less ‘lone white male avenger’ shows, more balanced, nuanced depictions of heroism. We won’t get it from retail advertisers (who want you to believe you need money, items and to be having constant fun or you are a failure). We need it to come from pop culture, and to reach children and young adults in ways which seem natural and obvious.
There is hope. As well as the attitudes of real individuals in the surveys I mentioned earlier, some websites and magazines are also looking at the problem. One very interesting example is The Good Men Project, which launched recently. They seem to be asking precisely the same question I have: what’s the difference between “being a man” and “being a GOOD man”? And why is there such a huge potential difference at all? (Also: high-five to that site for genuinely exploring how to get comfortable with masculinity in a way which benefits the individual and society, and so far not setting up feminism as any kind of block to that.)1
While men are told that compromising, accepting help or having anything in common with a woman makes them weak, everyone needs this harmful definition of masculinity to change.
“The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough.”
– Germaine Greer
- Ed’s Tiny Note, Added In 2013: It would seem The Good Men Project has since made quite the effort to distance itself from feminists, and has had more of its fair share of problematic moments. But at the point this post was written, none of that had gone down. [↩]
Alpha Malaise
I keep hearing the word “alpha” and it keeps making me retch, so I’ve decided to crack my knuckles and take a punch. I am fed up of the way it is applied to humans. Specifically men. Specifically as a “good thing” for men to be and for straight women (more on a queer point of view later) to want to have in their partners.
Underlying it all is the idea that being an alpha male is a good idea (for men) and that having alpha males is a good idea for society. I disagree.
So let’s look at some definitions to get the balls rolling. I’m using wiki and an A level in Biology here, so Actual Scientists please have your white lab coats and clipboards at the ready to score me on this one. The David Attenborough lexicon would have “alpha male” as a perfectly acceptable term for the dominant male in a group of pack animals (note that not all alphas found in nature are de facto male, and often you will find an “alpha pair” as the sole breeders in a group). This usually resembles a social set of multiple females and their young, sometimes including juvenile males. Social dynamics vary from species to species but generally the defining trait of the “alpha male” is that he is the only sexually active male in the group – all the females mate with him alone and he will chase off or kill other males who approach.
Problem solving - if you are a male red deer
So far, so Darwin. By constantly battling to be top dog, the male maintains his status as physically fit to father offspring and consequently he’s the best genetic offering for the females. Now, let’s step away from the forest and into the urban jungle to look at human animals.
Why do we like to apply this term to men?
Superficially, it’s all very easy, obvious and media-friendly to ascribe animal behaviours and terminology to people for a handy reference point. The list is vast and serves as shorthand for personalities. “Alpha male” carries with it all those connotations that we like to think of as traditionally masculine – aggression, sexual dominance, high status. However, like all metaphors it can be carried too far to be rendered meaningless, and this is absolutely the case with “alpha males”.
The parallels between humans and animals only go so far. We don’t live in a forest. We don’t hunt our food using our own hands and teeth. We don’t compete for space, food or shelter in the same way that animals do. We don’t live like animals, so why are we aspiring to their structures? Our society is complicated and challenging, and yes, there is competition, but the idea that we are basing all our actions on base instinct inherited from our ancestors, and that this is a good way to live is absurd, and frankly, oversimplistic.
Problem solving if you are a business man
Worse still than caveman antics, the term has become something for men to aspire to without really thinking of the consequences of persuading 50% of the population to butt heads and massacre every other man in sight. There are hundreds of websites dedicated to becoming an alpha male. Some are quite tame and offer encouragement in leadership and confidence – good things for any person, but some are just plain nasty. Problems abound, including that contention that “feminine” traits are weak – read bad – and “masculine” traits are strong – read good.
Let’s get this straight from the get-go. I hate the use of the word “alpha male”. Whenever I hear it, my brain automatically erases those two words and replaces them with “wanker” or “desperately insecure”. I think it’s a terrible metaphor both for masculinity and for relationships between (straight) men and (straight) women, and the more we can question it the sooner we can throw it into the bin and come up with something a little bit better. So on to the questioning.
What are the implications of having “alpha males” in our society? First, it creates a hierarchy in which the men who can bag the most women are the best. Being an alpha is about being the manliest of men, and that means not being “feminine” or “gay” – both are of course bad things to be.
The inclusion of alphas in our society immediately makes it a sexist one – no room for the gay, the bi or the queer. No room for anything other than manly-men and womanly-women. And it places us all in an “us versus them” scenario with prospective partners.
Sexual conquest is all. This sets up a contest for male dominance which requires female (and other male) submission. In order to “win” the female must “lose” – as must the other men trying to get her. Women are a prize or a target. Other men are competition. Hardly the basis for a co-operative or productive society. This kind of scenario is clearly seen in the seduction community / pick up artist style of thinking which aims to reduce a woman’s confidence (often picking targets with low self esteem in the first place).
This is the power of the playschool bully and it’s high time that they grew up.
What we are looking at here is in fact a zero sum power exchange in which no one wins. Rather than both parties coming out of it feeling postive or ready to build something for the future, one of them is tricked and the other knows they have played a trick. It might be smug and satisfying to con someone into bed, but I don’t think that kind of underhanded behaviour is a worthwhile measure of a man.
Being an alpha male, or trying to be one, is bad for men. There are a few ways in which this works. The first is the manipulative gameplayer outlined above. That’s a common (and deeply unpleasant) way of living, but if all you want is sex, then it might make someone a terrible person but it might not make them feel bad about themselves. The other ways probably will. For one thing, if masculinity and self worth all about how attractive men are to women, then there’s a problem. This is a game that we women have been playing for a long time (being attractive to men, that is) and it’s not a lot of fun, so I don’t really advise it.
Looking good, feeling yourself? Image from Flickr via dallasmuslworship
Look at the chap here, for example – he’s quite hard not to look at. You want to be an alpha? You want to attract the most ladies? Well, this is what you need to look like then – a torso you could play the xylophone on, and frankly who cares about your personality? Not sure about those pants though, baby. Here, let me help you with those.
A world in which we encourage men to become alphas is one in which we are telling them that their appearance and sexual attractiveness is their only important feature.
The other reality of the alpha male is a lonely and isolated existence, in which other men are to be rejected for fear they take away “your” women, and women themselves are only of use for the notch they can put in your bedpost. The nature of being an alpha is to be uncollaborative and unyielding, thereby contributing towards “strong and silent” archetypes that have coloured our view of maleness for many years, resulting in an idealised brooding male.
Being around an alpha male is also bad for women. It means being one of many “conquests” instead of someone special. It means always worrying about being played or being tricked.
It means that your partner just wants you for sex and possibly just to display their own ability to have sex with you. It means being valued for your ability to make them look good rather than because they enjoy your company or even, heaven forbid, like you. And in order to maintain this status quo they will constantly have to put you down in order to feel big, hard and clever. Ladies – this one is a keeper.
Having alpha males at all is bad for a proper, grown-up society. The alpha male condition reduces the wonderful variety of men in our midst into nothing more than adrenaline pumped, testosterone fuelled, muscle bound animals. Suitable only to fight each other and die for the glory of impregnation. It replaces personality with a set of operational parameters. And frankly, I want better for the men in my life and the men in the world.
And so should you.
All I want for Christmas is…
It’s the Festive Season, so we are putting up tinsel on the collective BadRep Christmas tree and trying not to speculate too deeply on the reason why we lug a lot of greenery into the house during winter time (it’s not pagan, it’s traditional. Honest). We are also shopping for gifts. I like presents. I like selecting the right ones for my nearest and dearest so they know that I love them, and that I’ve spent at least some part of my life thinking about what would be most appropriate to give them. Hopefully they’ve done the same thing too, and we shall all be happy. However, the process of actually getting those gifts is fraught with danger and turmoil of the gendered kind. Because at this time of the year, more so than perhaps any other, we see the division along the pink and blue lines where people are encouraged to think of Gifts For Him and Gifts For Her. A quick trawl through the websites of some of the UK’s most popular Christmas stores shows this wave of sexual stereotyping crashing on the shores of our present-buying choices.
There are desperately predictable pickings over at Our Favourite Chemist, “feminine” monstrosities at the shop now sadly departed from the high street – although with this sort of blatant sexism, perhaps good riddance? These include the despressing Christmas staple of “girl” versions of items once considered gender neutral but now given the familiar make-over of normal is for men, pink is for women. Even the world of silly gadgets is not immune to this disease – pink, fluffy, heart covered, plushie, watered down and washed up doo-dads of every Barbie-filled nightmare haunt the screen.
Because otherwise women wouldn't know they were allowed to play computer games.
I’ve selected the girly items to avoid over-linking, but the ones for men are just as bad, though less eye-gougingly pastel. Department stores like Debenhams and Selfridges dole out the standard patter of perfume, chocolates, underwear, jewellery, handbags and ungents. (Expensive) stuff to eat and (expensive) stuff to wear. That’s what women want, clearly.
Now before anyone begins with the “But I am a woman and I like flowers/scent/bags/this maribou feather hat and gloves combo”. Yes. That is fine. Good. Carry on. There is nothing wrong with individuals liking things that are traditionally ascribed to their gender. Wearing pink does not make you a Bad Feminist (TM). But there is a whole heap wrong with assuming that someone must like those things because they are a woman. And that is just what is happening on the High Street right now. Millions of people are walking around choosing gifts sold to them under these headlines.
These are tropes so ingrained that it seems almost part of our social furniture. Girls get X and Boys get Y. Even at this time of goodwill to all, we seem unable to shake the idea that gender is biologically constructed and that our chromosomes deliver different desires so that shopping arcade Santas can conveniently wrap it all up in cis-tastic cerise and cyan. I appreciate that it is useful for businesses to be able to categorise gifts into different areas for ease of shopping, but this gendered nonsense has to stop. Not only is it reductive and ridiculous, it also makes the present less special, less unique to that supposedly unique person in your life because it’s just the same as what half of the population is supposed to want. Fortunately, for all of you frantic shoppers out there who unlike me probably have a family larger than four (yup, it’s just me, my parents and my brother) there is a solution. You could do what the biggest Christmas retailer has done and just browse by category. That’s right, Amazon, in a stroke of genius, have divided their goods up according to the type of item. Not For Girls or For Boys but, you know, For People. Who like things.
So I’ll be buying from them this year. And I suggest you do too.
An Alphabet of Feminism #11: K is for Knickerbocker
K
KNICKERBOCKER
“I should say that a walking suit in which one could not walk, and a winter suit which exposes the throat, head, and feet to cold and damp, was rather a failure,” said Dr. Alec [who had his own ideas about what his niece should be wearing.]
“Alec, if it is a Bloomer, I shall protest. I’ve been expecting it, but I know I cannot bear to see that pretty child sacrificed to your wild ideas of health. Tell me it isn’t a Bloomer!” and Mrs. Clara clasped her hands imploringly.
Louisa May Alcott, Eight Cousins (1875)
Nope, a knickerbocker. This is a strange word, with an uncertain trajectory from immigration to ladies’ unmentionables, and its progress will here be followed with a suitably bifurcated approach: one leg underwear and one leg outerwear. We meet in the middle.
Work it. A Bloomer from the 1850s.
The word’s first appearance is in capitalised form: Knickerbocker is the name given to ‘a descendent of the original Dutch settlers of the New Netherlands in America; hence, a New Yorker’ – the New ‘Netherlands’ becoming, of course, New ‘York’ after the English got their grubby hands on it.
The everyday appearance of the term must be attributed to Washington Irving’s 1848 History of New York, purported to have been written by one ‘Diedrich Knickerbocker’. A long chain, this name was appropriated from Irving’s pal Herman of the same name, who was in turn descended from Harmen Jansen Knickerbocker (c.1650-1720), one of the original Dutch settlers, who supposedly invented the name. Awesome.
But where are the unmentionables?
It’s Over.
These appear in the second sense of the word, a development on the first, from 1859, where it is pluralised to knickerbockers – ‘Loose-fitting breeches, gathered in at the knee; also extended to the whole costume worn with this’. Irving is once again lurking around, because this usage is said to refer to George Cruikshank’s illustrations of the same opus. Knickerbockers wear knickerbockers. Duh.
These ‘loose-fitting breeches gathered at the knee’ became, in another life, standard wear for little boys, whose breeching (the graduation to trousers) consequently became a coming-of-age moment. Short trousers, of course, facilitated easy, boisterous movement, and in Eight Cousins, quoted above, the incorrigibly fashionable Aunt Clara resents her little niece, Rose, wearing such loose-fitting bifurcated garments: ‘Dress her in that boyish way and she will act like a boy. I do hate all these inventions of strong-minded women!’
So Knickerbockers were not simply a New York trend: they were part of sartorial gender differentiation. Little girls wear restrictive petticoats to keep them ladylike; those boys who have graduated from their baby-skirts wear garments that allow them to be as boyish as necessary. It is no coincidence that, in their modern incarnation, knickerbockers are kept firmly in the domain of sportswear.
Bloomin’ ‘Eck
Cartoon from Punch, 1895.
The ‘Bloomers’ Aunt Clara has such a horror of were the pet project of another Knickerbocker. In the 1850s, Miss Amelia Bloomer, from Cortland County, New York, began a crusade to popularise the ‘Bloomer suit’, not her own invention, but eventually synonymous with her name. This was an Eastern-inspired way to wear your skirt: shorter with the aid of modest, wide-legged trousers that tapered at the knee. Modesty preserved; movement uninhibited. Job done.
But despite enthusiasm from several quarters, Miss Bloomer’s overall success was limited and bloomers themselves roundly mocked in most quarters for being just too weird. In 1859, she dropped her project altogether because of the arrival of a fresh sartorial development, immediately fashionable, sexually appealing and simple – something that, she felt, did the job of fusing modesty, comfort and practicality just as well. And the name of this marvel? The crinoline.
Underneath the Bridge.
The devoted may remember that this strange hooped structure, by virtue of moving independently of its owner, facilitated the easy movement of the legs underneath. Obviously you could not sally around bareback underneath (as you had mostly done before), and thus the ubiquity of pantalettes (elongated drawers). And here comes the bifurcated garment – not yet knickers, for they are still too long to qualify for a diminutive – relegated to underwear.
These pantalettes were not simply loose cotton trousers like the bloomer (although they could be), but frequently two separate garments, one for each leg; their intent was not to cover one’s proverbial shame, but rather to keep the legs out of sight (and rather toasty too). Thus, they frequently bifurcated at the rumpal regions rather than the legs themselves, in which form they remained until the turn of the century.
Daisy, Daisy…
It was the strange innovation of the bicycle that, for the first time since Amelia Bloomer, re-addressed the question of external female knickerbockers, for simple safety purposes. Though the haterz still hated, there was something about this new mode of transport that (literally) mobilised a whole generation of women, storming these shocking garments through to respectability on a bicycle. It may come as small surprise to learn that these sartorial liberators came swingin’ back into fashion in the 1960s, epitomised by Yves St. Laurent’s velvet knickerbocker suit, and extending to gender-neutral clothing, and jeans for both sexes.
Meanwhile, bloomers were beating a retreat up the leg as Mary Quant advanced a new weapon: the ‘mini-skirt’. For the first time, stockings and the bifurcated undergarments worn with them were conflated, and suddenly there was a need for practical brief coverings (with a name to match) to avoid flashing in the streets and, presumably, to protect the designer tights that went over them. Knickers had arrived. The decline of stockings as status quo prompted some to herald a new ‘sexless woman’ (A Good Thing), although this may also have resulted from a vogue for pre-pubescent figures combined with ambiguous schoolgirl traditions: puffed sleeves, pinafores, Mary-Janes and little boy-shorts. A strange sort of liberation, perhaps.
NEXT WEEK: L is for Lady
We Came Here Together
When you look at the names here, remember these people. Cry for those who we have lost, and let your anger out for a society that would allow them to die.
– Remembering Our Dead site
Markgraf and I are running late.
My iPhone’s GPS has lied to us, and now we’re puffing our way along Brighton seafront in characteristically frenetic fashion, looking for a rather uncharacteristic venue: a Methodist church. “We’ve never been to church together!” I pant.
“I know, right? It’s an adventure,” says Markgraf. “If we actually find it on time. Or I might just implode into the sea,” he adds, staring again at the fruitless map, “instead.”
“Mmm. Maybe it’s this next left?”
*
We were there, in a roundabout way, because of Twitter.
A month previously, I’d logged in and seen something Markgraf had RT’d. The original tweet went something like ‘Will be observing Transgender Day of Remembrance‘, adding that ‘many feminist friends just seem to be ignoring it.‘
I made the decision then not to be one of those feminists, and shunted myself Googlewards to find out more. I read the roll of names1. An angry, sad light went on in my head that day. I texted Markgraf half an hour later.
I saw your RT and googled around. Educated self a bit. Reading the stories. It’s heartbreaking. If anything like that ever happened to you I don’t know what I’d f***ing do. So, um. There’s an event in Brighton. I think I’m going to go.
The response-beep came five minutes later.
Yes. Let’s go. Let’s both of us go. And write an article on it.
So that was the plan.
A London event was added later, but we stuck with Brighton. There is a hella good tea shop there, after all. So Markgraf and I got on a train and went on a kind of pilgrimage.
*
I don’t want to make TDOR all about me (in fact, go and read Markgraf’s post instead). This post is a marker for my own experience of the event, but I hope it’ll make more people, particularly cis people like myself, consider observing TDOR, or at least think about the prejudice trans*2 people face all over the world and what they can do to help. There’re positive posts out there about TDOR – as a more high-profile cis-authored example, Anton Vowl had a good rant the other day, or there’s the F Word post here – but I’ve yet to see the news really talk about it. How many ‘allies’ show up to actual events? Would I be on this trip myself if I hadn’t witnessed what transphobia looks like via Markgraf? I’d like to think I might, but I suspect I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention before a personal friend was affected.
Many of the cisgender people I saw at TDOR had some connection to a trans* person themselves – they were a friend or relative. I don’t want to over-generalise, but at the same time this seems to be the spur that makes a cis person bother to go to an event like TDOR – they’ve watched their loved one experience prejudice and discrimination. Perhaps they’ve yelled at the hooligan hassling their partner. Perhaps they’ve read their friend’s blog and realised that things they take for granted – using a public loo, say – can be cause for fear of abuse. These are all good reasons to care. But everyone should care, whether they’ve met someone with a direct experience or not. Hard to achieve when people have to work so hard to find any mainstream media about real trans* experiences at all. There are barely any characters on TV, no bestsellers. The ones we do see are often negatively stereotyped.
In my experience transphobia is never mentioned as an issue or a problem in most educational settings. In any education young people may get in those settings about diversity, it is very much the silent T.
Back to the seafront.
*
Markgraf and I are running late, but – as it happens – so’s the vigil. We slink breathlessly into the church, where the Clare Project drop-in is based, and mooch awkwardly in the porch under a sudden cloud of shyness. But we’re welcomed. There are lone figures, twosomes like us, groups, couples and families. All in all, about 30 or 40 of us.
And, while “knowing someone” just shouldn’t be the only way a cis person comes to identify and comprehend transphobia, at the same time, knowing someone obviously does makes it personal. As we read the causes of death, I picture Markgraf and his partner, and what they are like together; playfighting on my sofa, sharing an umbrella, decorating their home. I think of these people I’ve never met, with their own lives and loves, quirks and habits, all of them brutally, senselessly murdered, and I can’t hold back tears for the names on this long, long list.
There’s a current of horrified energy coursing silently through the room with the names, with these murders. Beheadings, burnings, shootings; it’s relentless. Some attendees are old hands. Some are realising in front of me how heavily the dice are stacked against them. I am watching people, many of them very young, realise that a great many people in the world at large would shrug if they were murdered. Afterwards, as people clutch plastic cups of tea and began to talk again, one attendee murmurs to me, “You know, I go to Pride, I go on protests. I go out for causes. And I really feel that other people – they need to be here. It’s time for them to come out for us.” Later, she passes an email address on to Markgraf, who has mentioned that the town where he lives has nothing like the Clare Project, with a promise of support.
I’m never quite sure what to do with myself in churches. But there’s a paper tree in the little anteroom near the church doors, with detachable paper leaves. There’s a pencil on the little altar and an invitation to write your own prayers, or thoughts. I just write:
T.D.O.R.
WE CAME HERE TOGETHER
Read Markgraf’s post about TDOR here.
- The list we actually read out on the day was far longer. [↩]
- I’m using the asterisk here to include anyone with a trans – transgender, transsexual, whoever. I’m using it as a catch-all inclusive term for those with a non-binary gender identity, regardless of status in transition or not, what or where. [↩]
We Need Allies: A Day in Transgender Remembrance
I attended the International Transgender Day of Remembrance event in Brighton with my best friend on the 21st of November. I went with the full intent to write about it, and then spent the entire afternoon afterwards in my shellshocked, harrowed-out daze, wondering what the hell to say.
There are a couple of things I’d like to get out of the way first. Firstly, some readers may be aware, others aren’t – I’m transgendered. I’m a guy with non-factory-standard genitals. So there’s that.
Secondly, I have some privileges of my own that I want to lay down. I’m white, I’m able-bodied, I don’t have any disabilities or illnesses that anyone can see, I’m middle-class and I have a house. I do my best to work around these in how I treat people and the world around me, but I know that sometimes, they’re going to cause me to fuck up a bit. So there’s that, too.
Oh – one other thing I have: I have passing privilege, sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes. Which is great, but also a thing to consider, because then I get to have male privilege, too.
We got to the venue for the remembrance service, and I was nervous. I’ve never really been to any specifically trans-inclusive spaces – let alone a church! – and didn’t know what to expect. I was surprised! It was very welcoming, very inclusive and friendly, and the service was well thought-out. I felt as though I was on friendly territory. Which was nice.
Now: the service. What happened was, after a vigil for the loss of a member of the Brighton trans*1 community, the list of victims between 2009 and 2010 was read out. Name, age, date of death – and manner in which they were killed.
If this sounds horrifying and harrowing, let me tell you: it is absolutely nothing compared to the experience. It was so horrible. It was so hard to read, so numbingly dreadful and so damn depressing that I just burst into tears after reading my first victim’s name. She was stabbed up and abandoned in a dump. I thought, is this really the world I’m transitioning in today? Is this the reception I’m to expect from the public? Is this a true reflection of how transgender people are perceived?
There were photographs of some of the victims, too. Now, here I’m brought back to passing privilege. There is an insidious, embarrassing, totally inaccurate and highly offensive supposition in the media (that appears to have been slowly, very slowly, dying out since the 1970s) that all trans* people are trans women who don’t pass. These victims were not they. The victims whose pictures I saw were women with passing privilege. These were not the cruel media’s “favourite” sort of transgendered victim; the pantomime parody that’s miles and miles away from real trans* people and does more to inspire mockery in the public rather than righteous anger on their behalf.
This realisation served to remind me how bloody vulnerable trans* people are in the face of a society that can’t or won’t understand them. These people were the members of our community who had that enviable passing privilege that’s meant to help one lead a “normal” life (for whatever definition of “normal” you prefer). I know that when I don’t have passing privilege, I feel intensely isolated; like some inexplicable, unintelligible Other that will never be able to, say, use a public bathroom without coming under suspicion and scrutiny. The transgender experience is, whatever your level of passing privilege, a very isolating one.
There are support groups, but they’re few and far between, lost in a tide of support groups for lesbian, gay and bisexual people who also have their own unfair share of discrimination and isolation. I know I have trouble finding anything outside of London, which is where I’m not. I know it’s often quite hard to find other trans guys within accessible transgender communities (we’re outnumbered by the ladies 10 to 1 in Britain! Isn’t that interesting?) if we can work up courage enough to go at all. Many of us can’t find support in our family – quite the opposite, sometimes – and coming out to social groups often ensures the sloughing of manifestly unhelpful acquaintances.
It’s lonely. We need allies. We need allies that are close to us, and we need allies that are further away in the media and government. I mused upon this as I moistened my best friend’s shoulder at the service, and then mused upon it further as we nerded out over different sorts of tea later. I did some extra musing when I emerged, resplendent, from the bathroom and announced excitedly to her that I’d been read as male there, and she was gleeful and pleased for me. We need people like this in our lives. My friend is cisgendered and she understands. She makes the effort to understand and to support and include. She does this, and in doing so, she’s one member of the majority that will encourage others to do the same.
So, hurrah for allies. Thank god for allies within the LGBTQI community that go against the distressing trend of leaving off the “T” from the acronym, or argue with those that would claim trans women who like women to not be “real lesbians”. Thank god for allies within the feminist community who don’t agree with Germaine Greer or Julie Bindel’s frankly disgusting attitudes towards transgendered people. But perhaps most of all, I’m thankful for cisgendered allies who love and care for their trans* friends and make the effort to spread tolerance, support and understanding within the majority.
You can read my friend’s companion post on TDOR here
- I’m using the term “trans*” to specifically include anyone with a trans – transgender, transsexual, whoever. I’m using it as a catch-all inclusive term for those with a non-binary gender identity, regardless of status in transition or not, what or where. [↩]
Feminist Self-Defence
Here’s an item to add to the list of Awesome Things BadRep Found at Ladyfest Ten … a “feminist self-defence” class I attended.
Arriving at Studio La Danza on Holloway Road, walking up the stairs past brightly coloured adverts for poledancing and LGBT ballroom dancing classes, in the mirror-walled second floor studio I met our smiling instructors, Sian and Lydia, two students from Goldsmiths College.
We moved chairs into a circle for a quick discussion about the class, and what feminist self-defence actually is, while Sian handed round flyers such as ‘Your Voice Is A Weapon: How To Use It,’ and a cartoon diagram mercilessly depicting the weak, soft, vulnerable parts on any attacker.
Lydia and Sian had learned the techniques they were going to teach us when their student feminist society arranged for an instructor from Sweden to stage a practical demonstration at Goldsmiths. Feminist self-defence is an idea that has especially taken off in Sweden, the home of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the VPK feminist socialist political party, who are calling for feminist self-defence to be taught to girls in schools.
Sian watches while Lydia holds a boxing pad for class participant, Suzie.
Feminist self-defence, we were told, is a DIY grassroots movement of gender activists teaching simple self-defence techniques, “specifically tailored towards experiences of violence against women, trans and queer people.” We weren’t going to find competition-winning martial arts or ‘complicated Houdini style escapes’ here; this was about simplicity and practicality, using your natural reflexes to quickly get away, and maybe giving your attacker an injury or two to remember you by.
The most important part of this movement, and why I’d come along to the class, was that there would be no victim-blaming here. The Ladyfest programme asked ‘Are you sick of being told not to walk on your own at night? Tired of hearing that it’s our fault if we get attacked if we’re alone and it’s dark?’ Having had several self-defence instructors who repeated the same tired old bullshit of “Well, I shouldn’t say this really but it’s their own fault if they get attacked out on their own, I know you girls like to look pretty, but…” and having also been sexually harassed at classes, this class was a refreshingly new experience for me.
For once, there was the acknowledgement that the burden should not be on women to protect themselves from rape, that this is not how things should be. One student remembered the time she’d been heartened to see in her inbox, instead of that cheery chain e-mail of the type we often receive, ‘Women: how to protect yourself from rape! (Forward this to all your girlfriends!)’, the variation ‘Rape Prevention Tips for Men’.
We started the practical part of the class by talking about personal space. How close does someone have to get for us to feel uncomfortable? “We’re so polite in this country,” said Lydia. “We don’t complain.” We discussed how the size of our personal space decreases when we’re in a crowded area, on the train or at a gig, but what was emphasised was that although its size can change, we’re still entitled to our own space, and entitled to tell people to get out of it. Lydia and Sian pretended to be confident commuters bumping into us, while we walked around looking shy, and then we switched roles. Less of a ‘This Is How You Must Act In Order Not To Be Attacked’ than a lesson in where our personal boundaries lay, and a funny icebreaker for the class when we were allowed to ‘get revenge’ and barge into our instructors.
Something that especially impressed me was that our instructors acknowledged how practising for assault can be upsetting – that people might have traumatically experienced the situations that were being described. Participation in the physical aspect of the class was not compulsory, they told us – if we felt upset we could go away and come back again and no-one would judge us, and every part of the class was explained to us before we took part.
The instructors were even respectful of each other’s boundaries, and yet the atmosphere in the class was much more lighthearted and pleasant than many self-defence classes that I have attended – “May I strangle you, Lydia?” “Yes you may, Sian,” they laughed. There were horrible people and horrible situations out there, but we had the power to do something about it, and learning these techniques was going to be fun, too.
We practised shouting – useful for throwing an attacker off balance, alerting others who might help, and also something that can make your strikes stronger and help you to focus, in the manner of the Japanese Kiai. Here, Lydia did a pretty scary impression of her Swedish instructor shouting “Nej!!” – I’m surprised no-one came upstairs to see what was happening! – but we used the English, “No!” and practised hitting boxing pads. Our instructors again emphasised how polite we are as women or minorities in this culture, how we’re afraid of causing a fuss, and how getting past that fear can be one of the best things we can ‘unlearn’ to keep ourselves safe.
We were afraid to shout at first, but as our inhibitions dropped we became louder and louder. We shouted not once, but twice, and when we struck, we struck twice, because we were told, if possible, “do it twice,” as that way there’s more chance of getting a result. If shouting for help, Sian advised us not just to ask but to ask specific people – “Hey, you in the red bobble hat, this man won’t take his hand off my leg, please alert the bus driver!” works because picking on individuals is better than asking a crowd, where everyone might assume that someone else will help you.
As an attacker is likely to be physically stronger than their victim (unless the attacker is feeling a tad suicidal), we were told not to wrestle, not to use ‘might against might,’ but to find weak spots. We looked at the diagrams we’d been shown and practised using the strong parts of our bodies, the heels of our hands, our fists, our feet, against the vulnerable parts of an attacker’s, their shins, their solar plexus, their throat. This wasn’t karate, this wasn’t the Marquess of Queensbury rules, this was fighting dirty, and fighting for your right to go about your life unharmed.
Sian and Lydia explained that we weren’t just practising for that shadowy figure that jumps out of the bushes, we were also practising close-quarters techniques, where you might not have the space to deliver that awesome roundhouse kick you saw on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because sexual assault is much more likely to come from people we know (friends, acquaintances, dates) than from strangers, and can happen just as easily in your house, on your sofa, as in a dark alley somewhere. This is where a lot of the anti-rape advice given by many self-defence instructors falls down! It’s no good saying ‘don’t walk alone at night’ when it could be your date who attacks you.
My one criticism of this class would be that they could have explained a little more about the specific experiences of queer and transgender people, as these were mentioned on the programme, but as a one-hour starter class it was full of great, general advice for people from all walks of life on how to avoid sexual or violent assault from a stronger attacker.
The class overran, there had been so much to say, but as we all quickly cleared out of the studio to get to the next Ladyfest event we left our email addresses with Lydia. The nature of feminist self-defence, as a DIY movement, is that one takes what one has learned and passes it on. Lydia and Sian’s instructor had done so, and now the two of them were passing it on as well. They told us that they wanted to prepare another class in London, and would contact us with details. I handed round flyers for BadRep, having already mentioned I’d be writing about the class, and it was decided that our readers should contact Lydia and Sian if they were interested in another London-based class, or if interested in resources for starting their own classes elsewhere in the country. You can e-mail us at [email protected] if you’re interested, and we’ll put you in touch.
Meanwhile, here’s a little further reading…
- The F Word showcases a free, downloadable pamphlet by Isy, aimed at women and girls, which features some practical self-defence tips and diagrams.
- Pervocracy breaks down some typical ‘anti-rape’ tips – The Best Friend Test (note: this blog, if not this particular post, may well be NSFW for you).
- A report from the Metropolitan Police on rape statistics in London, including stranger rape vs. aquiantance rape, in PDF format.
RJ at RiotNrrd comics lays into a particularly awful self-defence instructor. Used with permission - www.riotnrrdcomics.com.
Found Feminism: Ciara – “Like a Boy”
So, this is number one in an (hopefully) ongoing series of images, videos, photos, comics, posters or excerpts – anything really, which shows feminist ideas at work in the everyday world. What I want to do with this series is to show that as well as all the things that can make us angry, upset or just plain mystified, there are also lots of instances where people are positively engaging with feminism by coming into contact with it in their daily lives and as part of their normal routine.
My offering for today is a music video that stood out from the usual in that it’s a hip hop video that does not contain women in bikinis. Quite the reverse, it explores a subject rather dear to my heart – the different societal rules and roles for men and women. The lyrics are here, if you want to sing along. Oh, and there is some awesome dancing in it too, with women doing moves more usually associated with their male counterparts.
Looking forward to receiving your own contributions – and thoughts on the subject. Please email us with them – [email protected] with the title “found feminism”.