Laughing at Misogyny

 So. Allen Frantzen. Already, medievalists are responding with fantastic pieces. Peter Buchanan summarises how disheartening this is for new scholars in the field. Lavinia Collins highlights that - like most MRA rhetoric - the post fundamentally boils down gender relations to whether women are willing to offer men sex. Jeffrey Cohen has noted that in using his cachet as an academic to support his rhetoric, Frantzen is doing something that should worry all of us.

And me? Well, I'm sat here, dipping into the #femfog tweets and laughing. I'm aware that it's easier for me to do this because I'm a late medievalist. Sure, I've read Before the Closet, but my work and research isn't directly indebted to Frantzen's work. I won't run into him at conferences, or interact with him professionally.

But also, I'm laughing because 10+ years of being a feminist on the internet means that my first instinct when encountering this sort of rhetoric isn't always to jump in and debate. Sometimes, I do debate. Sometimes - depending on the situation - I get off twitter and do something about the issue. But not in this case.

There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, in certain situations, laughter and mockery are powerful tools. They aren't a substitute for rational debate, or engaged discussion. But they send a powerful message. More than just 'I don't agree with what you think and here are my reasons why,' mockery says something more than this: 'I find your opinions unworthy of academic debate.' 

Historically, the question of whether people agree or disagree would have taken place privately, quietly. This means rhetoric like Frantzen's could be excused, or diminished. Opposition could be dismissed as one person with a personal grudge. But, with such public disagreement, it's clear that this view is not widely-held, and that it's contested.

Secondly, I don't think reasoning is the right approach here because these views are too entrenched. Frantzen has had a long, distinguished career which has brought him into contact with women. He's worked alongside women. He's taught women; he's supervised women's PhDs. He's accepted women's conference papers and heard them speak. In short, he has had a long time, and many examples of women, which might counteract his views. And yet these views persist.

Finally, I want to return to this point: views like this aren't held in a vacuum. Academia is part of society, and society is structurally sexist. Which means most of us are going to come up against the misogyny in our careers in lots of horrible and awful ways. I don't have enough resources (emotional or mental) to engage with every incident of misogyny with the same vehement refusal, argument and debate.

So, alongside debate, we have mockery. And each person who contributes to the  #femfog (whether with a joke, a meme, or with condemnation) is signalling that Frantzen's rhetoric is not part of the future of the academy.

26 Ways to Celebrate International Men's Day

Today is International Men’s day and, I have to confess, I’m scheduling this post in advance. Partly because I’ll be working on academic writing today, but also because I sometimes write vaguely feminist things on the internet. Because I was involved in an open letter to my university. And, because of these two things, I’m expecting a backlash. 

To be fair, I have no means of knowing that I’ll be harassed today. But I’ve been on social media for long enough to know that International Men’s Day is only second to International Women’s Day for producing a huge, misogynistic, anti-feminist backlash. 

I could use this post to outline how frustrated I am by the way International Men’s Day is promoted and how it's appropriated by misogynists.  About which men it speaks for. About the men it leaves out. About the way it fails to distinguish individual disadvantage (something that happens to a man) and structural advantage (the power held by men as a group). And about the way that it does very little to concretely benefit actual people. 

But I won’t. Most likely, these sorts of articles will be published today. More to the point, both this article and (as ever) Rachel Moss’ post make the case more eloquently than I can. So instead, here is a list. If you’re reading this, and you really want to make men's lives better, here are 26 ways that you can actually ‘celebrate’ International Men’s Day by making a difference in someone’s life. 

This list isn’t complete – these are just the organisations (and issues) that I know of, and those that work in the UK. If there are any organisations or charities you think you should be added, or men who I've overlooked, let me know.

 

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If you're concerned about the prevalence of suicide/mental health issues in men:

1)  Donate to [or volunteer for] the Samaritans

2) Help the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) by volunteering, and get more events running across the country

3) Volunteer for Nightline (if you're a university student)

4)  Write to your MP to ask what they are doing to support men

 

If you want to help homeless men:

5) Volunteer [or fundraise] for your homeless shelter

6) Donate to Shelter

7) Donate to the Salvation Army.

 

If you care about men who are victims of domestic violence:

8) Donate to Mankind

9) Volunteer for the Mankind helpline

10) Write to your MP to ask about the provision in your area, and lobby for better provision.

11) Donate to, or volunteer for Broken Rainbows

 

If you want to support gay and/or trans men:

12) Donate to Broken Rainbows, a domestic violence support service for LGBT men

13) Donate to Mermaids, which supports young people with gender dysphoria

14) Support Stonewall

 

If you care about the well-being of ex-service staff (who are disproportionately more likely to be men)

15) Support Help for Heroes

16) Support Blesma to rehabilitate veterans

17) Donate to Combat Stress to support ex-servicemen's menatal health

 

 

If you care about the well-being of asylum seekers (who make up 3 out of 4 applications for UK asylum)

18) Support Refugee Action through giving, campaigning, or fundraising

19) Support Asylum Aid to provide legal representation for asylum seekers.

20) Support the Red Cross' work with asylum seekers (donate, volunteer, fundraise)

 

If you care about the educational attainment of boys:*

21) Fundraise for the National Literacy Trust

22)  If you're eligible, apply to be a school governor

23) Get involved in Widening Participation initiatives [if you're a university student]

 

 If you care about prisoners (who are disproportionately men)

24) Support PACT, which offers support and advice to prisoners and their families

25) Volunteer to befriend a prisoner

26) Volunteer with the Prisoner's Education Trust

 

* Although there is still a lot of discussion about what factors influence differences in boys' and girls' educational attainment, but I don't think it's ever a bad thing to improve education. (Source)

#survivephd15 - The Curious Medievalist

(Once again, I’m using this blog as a platform to do some of the discussion for the #survivephd15 course run by Dr. Inger Mewburn.)

My thesis (in all it's six-month in glory) is actually the combination of a few elements of my life that have converged: gender, popular culture, and late medieval literature. So, in short: here is what combines to make a medieval PhD (in my case).

1) I am curious about gender because the 'rules' about gender didn't make sense to me.

 I have an older brother, who was my absolute idol when I was younger. We did a lot together but we were also treated slightly differently by our parents. Tree climbing was not acceptable for me, nor was seconds at dinner.  Later, when puberty hit me like a ton of bricks, more rules became apparent. It felt as though all the rules changed overnight - how to interact with boys, how to hold yourself, what to say, how to present yourself. 

In both cases, I noticed the rules because I wasn't always good at following them. And I became increasingly curious as to why the rules were the rules, and what the point of them was.

I spent a lot of time reading, and I spent a lot of time on the internet. And when I discovered feminism, it gave a lot of these rules a name: patriarchy. But, more importantly, it also opened up my mind to all of the ways in that the 'rules' are constructed, and what purpose they might serve. As I read more and more books from varying time periods, I realised that the system had changed over time. So I now realised that the rules that I'd chafed against weren't universal, or constant over time, and that they were made in lots of different ways.

2) I am curious about popular culture because it isn't 'just a film/tv programme/magazine.'

I am a feminist. I am also a lifelong pop culture junkie. I am a pop culture junkie even though pop culture has the potential to be all sorts of other things that make me deeply uncomfortable.

I could (and can) still consume media which I know are questionable. But that lens of feminism doesn't get switched off when I watch TV or listen to music. And - and this is the key point - once that lens was on it made me realise that the 'rules' around gender weren't just made by my parents or teachers or dress codes: they were also made on my TV and at the cinema in the music I liked.

4) I am curious about the medieval period because I’m an accidental medievalist.

This element is the hardest to explain. Unlike most medievalists I know, I didn’t ‘discover’ the period through popular media. I was aware – dimly – of the period, but I didn’t have a specific interest in it.

When I went to university, I was on a very traditional, medieval-heavy course. Which included medieval romances.  And I was hooked: I loved their complexity, I loved their humour, I loved discussing them.

By the end of my second year, I wanted to do an MA. And in my MA I did a fantastic Gender and Sexuality module. It was like these three strands (gender, popular culture, late medieval period) suddenly came together perfectly. The module never felt like work; the essay wrote itself. 

Evidently, I wasn't satisfied with that one essay. Because now my two lifelong curiosities are all wrapped up with another that I only discovered in my second year of university. 

A False Dichotomy

(Photo courtesy of Zazzle.com)

A few days ago, I was eyeing some of the back-to-school stationary on zazzle. (Because I'm a proper grown up, yes.) For some reason, zazzle sells not just diaries etc, but also some other 'college essentials.' Including this t-shirt. Which irritated me more than it should have done.*

When I sat and thought a bit about this, I realised that the irritation is part of something much broader: I get very irritated at the suggestion that academia (and by extension, intellectual pursuits) are at one end of a spectrum. Woman things (this can be make-up, an interest in clothing, a liking of popular or selfies) are the other end of that spectrum. By misfortune of being academically-inclined, while also being a woman, we must choose. We must choose EITHER selfies OR books. Each choice we make takes us one step closer to the end of the spectrum, and comes at the cost of the other: the only way to read more books is to take fewer selfies.

And, of course, this irritation is partly personal. My own approach to beauty work, popular culture and self-image could occupy an entirely separate (very boring) blog post.** But I'm not annoyed by this shirt because I feel personally victimised by it. I'm annoyed by this shirt because it's an example of the dichotomy I've just described. And this toxic dichotomy matters in an academic context because it's part of the way that academic authority is constructed (and invested) in certain types of people. If you haven't already read it, Rachel Moss sparked a discussion a while back that made this clear: academic authority exists in certain types of bodies - namely suitably masculine, white, able-bodied bodies.

So when we code 'feminine' things (an interest in appearance, popular culture, style, bright colours) as in direct opposition to the 'proper' world of academia (research, seriousness, high culture) we're directly supporting the gendering of academia as [white, hetereosexual, able-bodied] male. And this matters because academia is (like most institutions) rife with inequality.***

And, ok. I get it: for those of us just coming into this game, we want acceptance. We don't know how to be academics: there are no rules. We all feel like frauds and we all want to navigate those feelings and no longer feel like impostors. And so long as academia remains coded masculine and remains male-dominated, perhaps de-emphasising the aspects of ourselves that are coded as 'woman' means we feel like we're gaining more purchase a the system which is still coded 'man'. And perhaps that's a confidence boost that can help individuals navigate a very insecurity-inducing environment. I understand that desire.

But this confidence-boost is shallow, because it isn't based on the quality of your work. What's more, these actions have no long-term material value. For example no woman is ever going to be favoured for promotion or publication purely on the basis that she's never been seen wearing eyeliner. Accepting the dichotomy won't challenge inequality, it just allows inequality to perpetuate.

I feel grateful that the new platforms and online spaces researchers inhabit are challenging this dichotomy. The state of women in the academy is widely researched and disseminated. Alongside the discussions outlined above, the growth in researchers using blogs to talk about the rest of their life alongside their research may help break down this dichotomy. One recent exciting) Sartorial Science (run by Sophie Powell and Dr. Sam Illingworth) invites researchers to submit photographs of what they're wearing alongside a description of their research are.

These individual conversations (and our own individual efforts) have to exist alongside bigger institutional change. And I'm confident that the academy (like most institutions) will become more equal in time. In the meantime, I'll get to work on designing my 'MORE BOOKS MORE SELFIES' t-shirt.

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* Not least of all because of the irony of a pseudo-intellectual shirt making a grammatical error.

**Put short, it's complex: I often wear make-up; I rarely shave my legs; I watch RuPaul's Drag Race and listen to Bach; I rarely take selfies. None of these individual things matter so much apart from one characteristic that they share: none of these preferences interfere with my research.

*** Melissa Terras' blog about the representation of academics in children's books has a good round-up of some of the disparities in gender balance across academia. I'm currently looking for more resources on other inequalities in academia.

Diploma, Person, Power.

Yesterday, Jonathan Hsy asked:

How many of you academics display credentials (diploma, award/s, etc.) in your office? I feel weird about it #academia #humility

— Jonathan Hsy (@JonathanHsy) August 18, 2015

Rather than paraphrasing the whole conversation, I'll let you read it because it's fascinating. The main strands of the conversation have been collected (along with Jonathan's summary) here. What I want to pick up on is one particular area that was mentioned by a few people: whether displaying your certificates undermines your humility. Or worse, if it's a sign of arrogance.

As a woman, I get very edgy when the term 'arrogance' is used. When applied to women, it seems to be very easily confused with any of the following, in both professional and personal contexts:

• Rebutting a point in a debate;
• Being quiet;
• Being outspoken about your opinions; 
• Failing to vocalise a dislike of your appearance; or
• Acknowledging your achievements.

Although all of these uses frustrate me every time I encounter them, it's the latter point that concerns me here. For anyone, a PhD is a huge achievement. It's challenging (both intellectually and personally); it's difficult (both financially and emotionally).

But - and there is a but - the same outcome (a completed PhD) is a different achievement to each and every person. And for those of us who are outside of the demographic in whom academic authority is invested, this achievement means something different.

As Jonathan rightly suggests, for people who don't t embody academic authority (because it's still seen as invested in certain types of people: read white men, mainly) the display of certificates is a means of displaying that authority. It's a visual rebuttal to those who might question your worth. It's also a visual reminder of the people who shaped you.

I should disclose here: I'm a second generation immigrant. Neither of my parents completed their secondary education. No one in my family had ever graduated from university before me. And then I went and got into a prestigious university, and graduated.

In my undergraduate graduation photo, I am smiling awkwardly in the way you do if you're being instructed to hold a fake roll, and turn your body and tip your head and SMILE, LOVE! But my parents? They are there, in their best clothes they bought especially for the day, grinning from ear to ear with pride. I had never seen them look like that. 

If that photo didn't make me well up every time I look at it, I would probably put it in my office. But when I look at my certificate - when I see that achievement typed out in words alongside my [foreign as hell] name - I get a faint echo of what my parents must have felt that day. I feel grateful; I feel humbled; I feel proud of myself; I feel bemused that it ever happened. 

I don't feel arrogant. I don't think many of us do.

Trailblazing Women 2015

(Isn't it just the way? Not long after I resolve to start posting on a weekly basis, things get busy and I get behind. It’s not strictly PhD-related, but I wanted to use this post to talk about a conference I’m attending soon. I should be back to PhD-relating things soon.)

The Aspire Foundation aims to create a world ‘where women and girls are empowered and authentic leaders in both the developing and developed world for the sake of equality, justice, balance and success.’ They’ve worked with over 1 million women since they were founded by Sam Collins in 2001: as part of their aim to reach even more women, they’re running a two-day Trailblazing Leadership event. Which I am absolutely honoured to have managed to secure a scholarship for.

At this point I should give a shout out to Karen, my former colleague (hi!). Without her insistent encouragement, I would never have heard of Aspire. Last year, she suggested I attend an Aspire webinar. I was starting to get cold feet about the prospect of quitting my job, moving across the country, taking on 6 years of self-funded study and then having no guarantee of security afterwards. (Can you blame me?) I think the webinar was ‘Strategic You 2015.’ The aim was to discuss what goals you had in mind for the year ahead, how to implement them and how to balance them. That webinar really helped me: by the time that hour was up, I felt this quiet, diamond-hard certainty that I was ready to take this chance.

Between then and now, I’ve learned a little more about academia. And I wasn’t comfortable with everything I learnt. Some of that diamond-hard certainty was being undercut by the feeling I’m getting (at this early stage) that academia isn’t for people like me. 

So, when I got an email about the ‘Trailblazing Leadership’ event in March, I naturally thought “that sounds great, but it isn’t for me.” I don’t think of myself as a leader. And I certainly didn’t have enough money to fund my attendance. But the more I read about the conference, the more it seemed to me that people like me are exactly the sort of people who don’t have a voice in academia. And when I heard that Aspire were offering scholarships, I felt that same diamond-hard certainty that I should at least apply.  So I sent an email. I was invited to apply. And I did.

I applied because I’ve had female mentors for most of my academic career. These people took an interest in me. They challenged me. They held me to account. My personal and intellectual development has been thanks to them. The only problem is that there seem to be fewer and fewer women available to lead, or to mentor. I’m very lucky that I like and respect my supervisors immensely, but academia doesn’t encourage a culture of mentoring outside of that supervisory relationships. If I look to my peers (fellow PhD students) we’re all competing for finite resources: funding, conference papers, jobs. And I don’t think that this intense culture of peer competition and lack of mentoring makes for happier graduate students, better researchers, or improved academics. In fact, I feel the opposite is true.

I applied because the whole thing about this PhD thing is that I’d quite like to be an academic. (I know, I know. It’s unlikely. But I could post a whole other post about my issues with that. So humour me for now.) So, I’d like to be an academic. Which means I’m effectively training for a career that favours people who aren’t like me.  Peer reviewers will assume my work is biased because I'm a woman. So, this means that when I am trying to publish and get a permanent job I'm less likely to get a permanent, full-time contract than a male. And if I do have children, I’ll be seen as less productive than my male colleagues: in fact, they’ll gain a net benefit from having kids.

 

I applied because this is all depressing and awful. But it isn’t just a broad political point. For me, it’s also intensely personal: my husband is an academic. And he’s a brilliant academic. (Again, I could write an entire post singing his praises but I’ll save that.) He’s an innovative, supportive, dedicated teacher. He’s a flexible, incisive researcher. He’s an engaging, personable presenter. All of these things mean that – as far as I’m concerned – he should have all the accolades in the world. But he should get them because of his qualities, not because of his gender. But as things stand, no matter how much we support each other, he is likely to do better because of something he can’t control.

And that’s not fair. So I applied. 
And I was accepted.

And now I’m nervous! At first, it was about what to wear (business casual? Conference wear? What are either of those things? I can’t afford to buy new clothes!! Will people know if I wear second hand stuff? What do I do??)  Luckily, Aspire have clarified that there’s no formal dress code, smart casual is fine. 

 So now I have to be nervous about the usual things. Like the fact that I’m awful at remembering names, and there are no name tags. Like the fact that when I get nervous I talk a lot. And a lot of it’s nonsense. But I’m also nervous about something specific to this conference: all these women are contributing amazing things to the world. And me? I’m contributing a potential thesis that I don’t have a research question for. What can I contribute?

I hope to find out that answer to that question at this conference. And I’d love to let you know how it goes, if you’re interested.

Photo credit.

The Dreaded Question

Right now, there is one question that I really struggle to answer. Every time someone asks, my mind goes blank. So far, I've babbled for a bit until they get bored. But I still dread the simple question

So what is your PhD actually about?

I dread this question because, at this early stage, I don't really know. I don't have an abstract, an argument or any findings whatsoever. But I can tell you what motivated me to do this project.

I am really interested in gender, and how it's taught and how it's performed. (SPOILER - I've been a femininst since before I knew what the word was.) By the time I found out what the word was and what it meant, I was an awkward teenager who felt awful because she wasn't very 'good' at being a woman. So a lot of my early self-centred feminist thought was about what being 'good' at being a woman meant. And while my horizons have broadened since then, I'm still interested in what it means to 'do' gender, for men and for women. (If this is sounding like a poorly-phrased echo of Judith Butler, that's probably because it is.)

More importantly, I'm interested in how people learn to 'do' gender - modern sources are easy to pinpoint and analyse because there are so many (film, television, school, parents, magazines, blogs, music, music videos, peers, adverts). So I wanted to know more about the sources that were available to late medieval people.

I am really interested in 'popular' culture and what 'normal' people were doing. Specifically, I'm interested in the overlap in consumption between 'high' and 'low' culture. Where we see several sources grouped together (as in household books), there are all sorts of texts thrown in there. How did people navigate them? Did they read in different modes for different texts? If similar ideas/concepts are contained in different types of texts, how does the presentation of these ideas differ? How did their response vary depending on which exact member of the household they were?

Again, this stems from my own interests today - I don't exclusively consume 'high' culture: I consume plenty of 'popular' culture too. (Although if watching RuPaul's Drag race is wrong, I don't want to be right.) 

Based on those two things, I am looking at a medieval miscellany aka. household book - Oxford Bodleian Library MS Codex Ashmole 61. It's a collection of 41 texts housed in a pretty unfancy manuscript. There aren't any illuminations, just a few choice illustrations of shields, flowers, and a grinning fish. No, seriously. The breadth and number of texts means that there is a lot of scope for reasearch. 

This brings up the second, lesser Dreaded Question: can this project contribute to scholarly knowledge? Well, yes. I think. Admittedly, a fair bit has been written about some of the texts in the MS, mainly the romances (The Erle of Tolous, Lybaeus Desconus) and the conduct texts. (How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter and How the Wise Man Taught His Son). So these aren't texts that have been totally overlooked by scholarship.

But there are two main ways that I think this PhD could contribue. Firstly, I'll be looking at some of the more studied texts in this specific context. There are quite significant varitions between some of the version in Codex Ashmole 61 and elsewhere. That'll be interesting, right? Secondly, not much work has been done on this manuscript as a whole: apart from one PhD thesis and two resulting articles from the mid nineties, I can't find anyone else who has written about this manuscript. 

So, if I were to offer you an 'elevator pitch' now, it would probably run as follows:

My PhD explores the reception and audience of Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61. By studying the contents of this household book, I hope to develop our understanding of how gender identities were formed, enforced, and negotiated in the late medieval period.