“Women in today’s workplace still earn less than blokes, they work harder for promotion but are often overlooked in favour of men for more senior positions, and when they retire, have far less income to retire on. If they have children, most of the childcare, or organising it, will be left up to them. They will often work in poorly paid casual or part-time positions in order to prioritise family, especially in the pre-school years. ”

— Trish Bolton, Feminism is more than a memory

THE FACTS: 

• Women’s average full-time weekly earnings - 17.2% lower than men
• Women’s average, inc. part-time and casual work - 35% lower than men
• Women’s likelihood of old age poverty - 2.5 times higher than men
• Women’s average lifetime superannuation - 50% of what men have

MY RESPONSE TO THE FACTS:

Are these figures quite appalling? Yes.  Are they unjustifiable? Certainly.  Do I feel enraged?  I simply… don’t.

As a lifelong feminist, I have always found it difficult to get worked up over the pay equity issue. Partly, it is a question of triage. If the average woman has enough money to feed and clothe and house herself and her children, then my focus will be on other issues. In the face of serious threats to women’s health and safety, for example, the question of who is getting the biggest piece of the pie becomes rather trivial to me.  Will a few more female CEO’s  or female millionaires - often lauded in the media like some kind of breakthrough for women’s rights - change the daily experience of the average woman’s life?  Make her more free? The average woman, and even the average man, will never have access to that rarified air.

Incidentlally, the pay gap is actually at its widest in that rarified air.  (Women CEOs, for example, are often earning 50% less than a male in similar positions.)  The lowest paying jobs are where you will find the smallest gap.  And yes, yes… Women are over-represented in the lowest-paid jobs.  It kind of makes that old catch-cry of “Equal Pay for Equal Work” seem rather silly when women don’t get ‘equal’ work.

And perhaps I should be more outraged about that.  Because that IS about cultural attitudes and stereotypes which inhibit a woman’s power to choose.    Of course I agree that any woman who wishes it should have equitable career rewards and opportunities for advancement but the reality of this capitalist, consumerist Western society is that the majority of all people do work that is not particularly fulfilling or financially rewarding.  The issue for me is not whether women should be getting more of the pie:  It is whether or not that pie is worth buying into at all.

Can we measure someone’s societal value by their earnings, or by the prestige of their position?  Should we?  Yes, I know we do… but should we?

What exactly is wrong with those “low-paid” jobs anyway, apart from the fact that my telly might not be as big as my next-door neighbour’s?  Would I somehow feel more important and valued if I was an accountant than I would if I was answering an accountant’s phone? Would I actually be more important, or are we really just talking emperor’s new clothes here?  Can my paycheque really define my value as a member of this society or, after a certain point, actually improve the quality of my life, not just its appearance?

I might sound facetious but I am actually serious.  Our society places a lot of emphasis on work (in that old male ‘public sphere’ anyway) as identity and it grades identities with a rather ridiculous scale.  Doctors sometimes save lives.  But garbage collectors do more to make my life livable every week.

Isn’t there the danger of actually creating another yoke around women’s necks with the pressure to be ’successful’? Isn’t this simply another double-edged sword for women, like sexual liberation, where more is expected and less is given?  (Not that I’m knocking sexual liberation, but any number of conversations with women worrying that making a phone call after sex might be overstepping the bounds tells me there is some power imbalance there.)

I would suggest that this social pressure already exists.  Over the last decade several older feminists have come out and said, “We got it wrong: You can’t do everything.  That Superwoman thing was a big mistake.” And we know what the crux of the Superwoman problem is, and it is a significant part of the problem with pay disparity:  Motherhood.

In a brief discussion on Facebook earlier today, it was pointed out to me that because of lower earnings, often women are dis-empowered in the negotiations at home about who will work and who will care for the children.  If women earn less money, they will obviously be the ones who will stay home, or do flexible, low-paid work to supplement the family income.  This does take some choice out of the equation, it’s true, but I am not by any means convinced that even with equal work and equal pay there would be equity in those negotiations anyway.

And this is where the way we value work and the way in which we assign social value really comes to the fore: Even when both (heterosexual) parents are working full time, the majority of housework and childcare falls on women.  The vast majority of all unpaid work has no (acknowledged) social value and continues to be “women’s work”.  There will most certainly never be equal pay for equal work while this division of labour remains so firmly in place.  And while perhaps some legislative action and governmental changes might improve a woman’s pay cheque, and even her social status, the price is the expectation that, if a mother, she will have two full time jobs and will often feel that both of them represent a failure.

As a single mother myself, one would think that I might sometimes wish for the support of a partner, and perhaps if I had one my finances would be less of a worry, but the feeling I most often get looking at perfectly happy relationships is relief.

“The cost in human terms of feeding him, grooming him, humouring him and financing his recreation is way out of proportion to the contribution he makes in return, even if he is a sensitive and attentive lover.”

– Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman

Equal pay for equal work?  How about just getting paid?  Yes, now I am being facetious, but if anything is to change in the experience of work for women, there needs to be a societal shift in the way all work is valued and it can’t be measured in cash.  For all the achievements of feminism made in the last century - and they are enormous, and I am exceedingly grateful for them - we still live in a society of irrational hierarchies and I’m not sure that climbing the ranks is the solution.

Women should have choices.  Affordable and accessible childcare should be a priority.  Longer and paid parental leave should be a priority.  And I am in favour of equity in the workplace and at home.  I am all in favour of women having career goals and financial goals above and beyond the necessities of life, if that is what they want.  I truly am.  I simply can’t find in myself the feminist urge to march in the street for it.

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So get those nail files out because here I am.

I’ll be writing something about International Women’s Day sometime very late tonight.  You’ll probably be in bed.

But don’t expect this return to be without interruptions - I know. You weren’t actually foolish enough to expect that! - because this Wordpress version is hopelessly outdated and I’m not even sure I remember how to fix it.  And I find this theme quite loathsome now so I’ll be fiddling around with the stylesheet sometime in the near future too.

Also, there was so much spam in my comments folder that I just did some wholesale deleting.  If something you wrote, that I never read, got lost in the fallout… Well, you probably don’t remember writing it anyway.

Love you all.  Missed you all.  And I will be dropping by your places for a visit sometime in the near future too.

Until then, here a some repostings of poems which seem somehow appropriate for International Women’s Day…

— Prenuptial –

When the time comes, I will quietly press God’s jaw
And bite at the tendons of his stiffening neck.
I am disoriented.
When the time comes, I will face East.

Bedlam is the home of women with tangled hair
And I have no hair.
This is my home.
Men wear white when they visit me;
They are bridal.
I pick flowers from the fields to earn my keep.
No. That was in another place.
I’ll tell you a story.

When I was a girl, the grass grew.
Oh, I know the grass grows still
- I am not crazy -
But then it grew in the fields I grew in
And I raced to grow faster than it,
Taller than it.
But I fell and it defeated me.

A snake entered the pit of my womb
And planted there a seed
Which grew round and downward.
My woman’s body was not built for movement
So I lay still.
This is the meaning of the story.
The teaching.

When the snake enters,
When his fangs are poised,
Do not interrupt. Lie still.
Talk to the grass for whom you raced and fell.
You belong to the grass.
This is an old, old teaching.

My bridal men stand poised with syringes
While I murmur to you.
I have another story.
When I was a girl I wore a crown.
Now I have no hair and God is coming.

199?

— You Begin –

When your soft fingers
flex against the walls
of my deep cavern,
you begin.
Or is it sooner?

When you first feel
the pulse of my hot
blood in your own veins,
is it then?
Or is it when

I feel him still
beneath me, still
enclosed by flesh,
but still.
Is it then
that you first move?

Almost you.

Or when I run
screaming
to my own mother,
blood on hands,
wanting to swim
with the bloodless girls,
already ashamed
of my blue bra?

Is that you then,
new, impatient?
Or is it when

my own fingers
flex against the wall
of her deep cavern
and further inside
I drum life patterns
into waiting rooms
and you begin.

— The Pitch –

I love men.
I love the stillness of them
Their lack of agitation
When they shake off
Their workaday
Clothes

Their ability to not
Talk, to not repeat
Their thoughts
Over and over again
Their lack
Of doubt.

Men are peaceful.
But there are times
When they need
To think beyond
Their words
Beyond

Other men’s words
Times they need
To see the
Queen trapped
In the corner
Of the chessboard

While they laugh
Albeit humourlessly
At another joke
At the Queen’s
Expense
While she shrivels

Beneath the gaze
And turns to ivory.
Women talk
But men hear
Men’s voices
Like dogs

It’s all
In the pitch,
Bitch.
When they
Are not funny
Why won’t you
Snarl at them?

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I choose truth over tact.

I choose independence over companionship.

I choose the hare over the tortoise.

I choose the mind over the body.

I choose ideas over people (whom, to be honest, I often understand - and dissect - as ideas).

I choose voice over silence.

I choose change over peace.

I choose comprehension over empathy.

I choose loss over anger.

I choose intent over action.

I choose loyalty over trust.

I choose the sky.

And winter.

Either path is both right and wrong.

I have never believed that you can have, or be, everything.

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I’m still in the in-between and looking for an apartment, which has been demoralising so far but I am remaining optimistic. However, as the post title says I do seem to have the attention span of a gnat, so those of you who see me on Facebook while my feed is silent, that is why. Facebook and gnats go well together.

Actually, I am being mentally bombarded with ideas of what to write about, but I just can’t seem to sit still. Or I can, but only while doing mindless things, like playing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on my new Wii.

Yup, with my newfound lack of poverty I have invested in an entirely luxurious useless piece of technology. And to be honest, I mostly got it so I could use Wii Fit. Mum bought one when she was here and, as limited as it is, it turned out to be exercise I actually do.

And I never exercise.

I have also invested in a fab new camera. This one…

…which absolutely rocks. Caspar picked the colour, but Lightening, if you’re reading, there is definitely one that makes me think of you.

I also bought that Eee PC that I wanted for my birthday. Well, not exactly the same one. I got the new 10″, Pearl White, instead of the 7″…

Because every inch makes a difference.

Unfortunately, I can’t make the most of it until I’ve relocated and set up a wireless account. The ISP I’m considering doesn’t service this hellhole locality. Even more unfortunately, I stupidly left it within reach of the boy. Who promptly broke 7 keys off the keyboard. (I wonder if that will be covered under the warranty?)

In other indulgent news, I have been out TWICE since selling the house.

AT NIGHT.

WITHOUT CHILD.

On those outings I discovered that I no longer have the alcohol tolerance I built up in my years of working in bars.

But more about that another day.

Love to all, from your absent friend.

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He is talking. A lot.

And very well considering.

Now is the time that I am supposed to be taking him to see a speech pathologist (which is another thing on my current to-do list) for an assessment and, because of his cleft palate, speech therapy was something that I expected to be part of our lives for quite some time. Now, I’m not so sure. The way he is going I can’t imagine that he will require anything more than a little monitoring.

To my untrained ears there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of a lisp or a nasal quality - common difficulties with a cleft - or any indication that his language skills have been affected by those first nine months of hearing difficulties before he had his surgery. (Seeing the audiologist for a checkup is another job on my list but he knows there is an aeroplane nearby before I do, so I think his hearing is better than mine.)

The clarity and intelligibility of his speech is better than some older children I know. (Of course, that could be because he’s mine so the speech pathologist gets to give her educated opinion.) His vocabulary is good too, well and truly in the triple figures and increasing every day. That, however, is somewhat sobering because occasionally I talk like Magneto Bold Too writes (I blame working in hospitality - Gordon Ramsey is not an anomaly) and on Thursday, one of those new words was “Fuck”. My friend and I managed not to laugh and I, sarcastically innocently, said, “I have no idea where he picked that up”.

And last week he brought me his Schleich (I love Schleich!) velociraptor and when he handed it to me he said, “Raptosaurus”. I thought that was genius. For him to be unsure of the exact word, but to categorise the figurine correctly and to choose an appropriate word ending…

In all seriousness, the way humans acquire language is a beautiful and amazing thing.

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I probably could have written about this sooner, before settlement, before the money was there on paper, but things had really been coming down to the knife’s edge and I - for want of a less superstitious phrase - just didn’t want to jinx it.

Now, it’s a crippling stress gone from my life, and things can finally move forward.

I sold the house to Big Sis and her B who - fabulous news! - have a little boy due in November. Cas and I remain here in Big Sis’ house which, when I find an apartment, they will renovate and rent out. In the meantime, with Big Sis gone, there is no more broadband connection, so I’m temporarily reduced to a pre-paid dialup account and won’t be online as much as I would like in order to get all my blogs running as they should.

But I will be back to full strength at some stage in the near future.

I’m still packing boxes although, barring the kitchen, I’m really now just down to the dregs. I have a few debts still to pay off, when the cheque finally clears, and I am applying for passports so that, finances permitting, Cas and I can have a brief holiday in New Zealand and he can finally meet his Grandad (my natural father). It seems like I still have a million things to do so if I sound hesitant rather than euphoric, that is why. But once I’m finally resettled, well, then I will truly feel free.

I did have a celebration though. It just so happened that one of my oldest friends was staying over on that Thursday night because she had training the next day in the city, so we went out for dinner and ate oysters and drank champagne. And then got pulled over by a booze-bus* on the way home (my first time ever) so it’s a good thing the champagne was a glass rather than a bottle!

And the very next morning, I went to the hairdressers’ for the first time in two years. (And that time, it was a present from my Mum.) This was after a month of working out my angst on my hair at home - bleaching, dyeing , hacking - so I now have a chic, shorter do and healthy, shiny hair. (I’ll put up a picture when I can, although I still haven’t even managed a photo of my new glasses from the beginning of the year yet. One of the difficulties of being a single Mum is not having anyone else to hold the camera.)

What else? Uni, you ask? How is that going? Well, it kind of went belly up. With Big Sis in her first trimester at that stage, and with her back problems (she has had spinal surgery and there are limits to what she can do), having her mind Caspar while I went to class became a problem, and then I was ill myself. So I have taken this semester off in order to find somewhere to live - somewhere which doesn’t entail a six hour round trip to get to class - and will be starting over again in the summer.

All in all, things are happening. And things are good. And I’m looking forward to beginning a new chapter very soon. The cage door has been unlocked and, soon, I will be walking out of it.

Love and hugs to all of you who’ve stuck around.

XX

*For non-Aussie readers, a “booze-bus” is what the police use to set up roadside random breath tests to check drivers’ blood alcohol levels.

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Soooo… Mum changed her flight schedule and arrived Thursday morning, which entailed a 5am drive to the airport which, living out on the peninsular, is at the opposite end of the earth. But all my work with Caspar, trying to get him excited about Oma coming on an aeroplane, paid off because he went running toward her as she emerged from customs.

After a couple of days catching up, last night I went to bed early and slept late and then we spent the day out visiting friends and family and now I am gloriously tired and not planning on writing very much more than this.

Did I say I had more important, meaning-of-life stuff to talk about?

Er… Not today.

But I do think this constitutes a Smiley Saturday post. Because I’m smiling.

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Why is it when I’m away from the blog for a while, I feel like I need to post everyday kind of news and “catch up” rather than just write about something more important or interesting to me? There are many things I’ve been thinking about lately - you know, the meaning of life and all that - but I feel like I need to ease back in. Perhaps it has something to do with connection and relating. Because most often it is those we share the mundane parts of our lives with who matter the most, and it is the people we share that with who care about our more difficult thoughts.

Isn’t it? Maybe. I really have no idea.

The problem is… I am terrible at small talk. The fact that I call it small talk is a probably a problem in itself. I don’t have any idea what to say. Nothing seems pressing enough for words and when time has lapsed, “catching up” is a strain. For me, anyway.

I have friends who can draw out the minutiae of life from the postman. Friends who remember little things and make them significant. Who make the minutiae of other people’s lives significant. It’s a social skill I admire and one I lack entirely. In some ways, this is probably due to a certain kind of selfishness or vanity or… whatever. I guess it’s that artistic arrogance I talked about once. I would probably feel worse about it if my own lack of social skill wasn’t balanced by a lack of expectation of it in others.

I’ve never minded if people don’t call me regularly or remember my birthday. Hell, I’d forget my own birthday if other people didn’t remind me. Half the time I couldn’t tell you what month it is. But everyone has their limits, I guess, and there are friends who have gone MIA when I’ve forgotten the way this social stuff works. Friends who have minded when I haven’t called.

My guess is that a blog is kind of the same. That readers are the same as friends, and some people’s ropes are longer than other’s.

Right now, in real life, I probably have some repair work to do on a couple of relationships that I do value because I have been MIA myself for a long time. There are calls to make and questions to ask. And I’m terrible at asking other people questions about their lives. Mostly, I just appear unexpectedly and assume that things will be the same. That isn’t always the case.

But I also have friends who know exactly how selfish useless I am and love me anyway so I guess it is all okay.

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We went to see The Medieval Imagination exhibition at the State Library a little while ago with a couple of friends; Brett from Airminded, and HG, who wrote that beautiful guest post for me. That meant there was somebody other than me to hold the camera and that is, I think, one of the best presents you can give a single parent.

In other news…

I haven’t been very well, hence my long absence.

I haven’t been very well, hence 1st semester uni was really screwed up. I’ll do better next time.

A girlfriend gave me her old car. Hooray for being able to grocery shopping with ease! (And see friends at the State Library). The car is sadly purple but my friend still rocks, obviously.

We’ve received some parcels for WinterWarm, which is also great, and I’ll be working on some blog posts for that this week.

There is a couple of other (possible) good news items but I don’t want to jinx them so… we’ll see.

And my Mum will be visiting soon which means I will get to have a sleep in for the first time in a year.

I’ll also be able to get to see my doctor, with Mum babysitting and me in my shiny, purple car. So hopefully health won’t be an issue for much longer.

Hugs to everyone I’ve abandoned and I will be trying to catch up with you all soon.

xx

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It wasn’t until after the bottle of wine had been drunk and her packet of cigarettes finished that she spoke, but I was content just to be there with her in the darkness. She talked to me about her marriage and her childhood and the men in her life as though I were an adult. I listened, rapt. She told me she had gone to my father’s surgery at lunch time and found him in the back room with the nurse. She told me about other affairs he’d had. After the first few times, she had forced herself to stop being suspicious: She didn’t want to live like that. She couldn’t leave because she loved my father. She told me the story of how they met and, looking more often at the blue curtain outside the car than at me, she told me what he had been like. Then. I didn’t quite believe her. And then she rounded on me, hammered questions at me. I found it hard to answer most of them. Her eyes were very bright. Maybe she was a little crazy.

“…I like my room…I don’t really like living here…I like being by myself…I like writing…I would like to live in England or in a city at least…Because there would be other things to do apart from sport…I don’t like sport, I’m no good at it…The kids don’t like you if you don’t play sport…I wish that you had let me learn the flute…I wish that I lived just with you Mum, or all by myself…”

“…I wish that Dad didn’t drink…He makes me feel embarrassed…He makes me uncomfortable…Sometimes I’m afraid Mum…I don’t like the way he hangs over me when he talks to me…I don’t like the things he says…I like being by myself…That’s what I would like the most…Just to be by myself…To be by myself…”

My mother took the wine from my hands and swallowed it all. Without it, I felt naked and the air outside seemed to grow thicker. She said, “We’re leaving,” and I thought she meant that we were going home. I wanted to now because I didn’t have the cup in my hand and everything was dangerous. I wanted to be in my room. I put my seatbelt on. She wasn’t looking at me.

“We’re leaving. I’ve got the money. I’ve got enough money to go to Melbourne and find a flat and find a job and the schools are better there. I can’t go on forgiving him for the rest of my life. Besides, I’m afraid of him too sometimes and he won’t stop drinking. We’re leaving.”

I wanted to so much. I was shivering with the idea. I wanted to scream Are we really? Are we really? and to throw my arms around her neck. But I didn’t. I was scared she would change her mind. She started the car. I didn’t know what to do with all my energy while we drove home and it seeped out in little choking noises. My mother didn’t notice.

She didn’t say anything more, not while we drove and not when we arrived home. She walked slowly up the stairs to her bedroom. The light was on. It was the only light on in the house. I rushed to my room and rushed to my alcove, pulling a box clumsily through the sliding doors of my cupboard on the way. I filled it with books. I went out to the kitchen to find more boxes and I filled them with books too. I crawled beneath my bed and gathered up all the brown paper lunchbags I had hidden under there. I gathered them up and put them in the box my rollerskates had come in. I hugged the skatebox to me tightly. My eyes were glazed and my room had taken on the unreality that rooms always do at 3:00am. The rims of my eyes were burning, itchy and pleasant. I was tired without realising it. My mind was already searching for a flat in Melbourne. What would it be like? Wonderful. The city was an ocean. I would be a fish, and I wouldn’t flounder any more in all this fresh air. I looked at my boxes, wondering if I should take them out to the car. With my skatebox still hugged to my chest, I walked out to the hall, to the family room, to the bottom of the stairs. I stood staring at the blank wall where the stairs turned left and waited for my mother. Maybe she was packing too.

After a while, I sat down. It was cold because the fire had gone out and I shivered. The grey walls of our new house glared at me, reflecting the light which came out from under the door of my room and from my mother’s room upstairs. I didn’t care that the walls were mean. I didn’t have to live here any more. I shivered again and then the light upstairs went out. I sat for a little longer and then I went back to my room. I put my lunchbags back and I put my skates back in their box. I unpacked my books and got into bed. I was glad that I had turned my electric blanket on before my mother had come in to tell me that I was going with her.

The material in this post is protected by copyright. It cannot be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the author’s express permission. © www.cerebralmum.com

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Amnesty (Part One)

It wasn’t late but it was dark. I wasn’t afraid. It was winter. The car was parked at the edge of Rotary Creek and we were hidden from the highway and the town’s light by trees and a children’s playground. For a long time now we had been sitting quite still in the front seat of the car. My mother was smoking and her window was open. I wasn’t afraid. I was thirteen. The air was mountain blue and the smoke from my mother’s cigarette floated out through the window and into it, disappearing slowly like a deep breath. The bottle was at my feet but empty now and my mother’s polystyrene cup lay beside it. The cup was empty too. My cup I still nursed in both my hands; the golden-yellow liquid in it had grown warm. My mother ashed her cigarette and turned to me. Relaxed now.

Not long before my father was due home I had gotten that suspicious, nervy feeling. I always did around that time. It made me sneaky. I acted like a spy. When he did get home, the door, instead of slamming against the door-frame and bouncing back an inch or two, glided slowly into place and startled me. I had been in my room underneath the stairs where my bookshelves were and writing and when I sprang the steady-tray that had been on my knees fell to the floor. I folded the paper I had been writing on and stuffed it into a brown paper lunchbag. I stuffed the lunchbag under my bed. Then I hurried to my door so I could close it, so I could sever my room from the brand-new Jennings house that we lived in and be by myself. I closed the door and stood waiting for the house to fade away. I heard my parents’ voices and I opened my door a crack to see what was going on. Spying. My parents were squared off in the kitchen and my father was flushed although he couldn’t have been drinking yet; he’d just got home from work. I opened the door a crack more and tried to hear.

My room and the kitchen were separated by a huge, grey family room with a slanting roof that stretched up to the second floor where my parents’ bedroom was and I couldn’t hear clearly. My father kept saying, “Nothing…” and my mother seemed to say nothing at all. Most of their words rose like heat to the ceiling or got lost in the crackle of the wood-stove which was burning furiously in the family room. Then I heard my mother clearly.

“Alex, you had no shirt on.” There was almost a laugh in her voice. Maybe they weren’t fighting after all. I couldn’t hear properly.

“You had no shirt on.” She said it again. They were fighting.

I opened the door and tried to look as if I was going to the toilet. Neither of them noticed me. I didn’t go to the toilet; I stopped where the hallway finished, where they couldn’t see me, and squatted down still trying to hear. None of it upset me though. I was just curious, fascinated by the argument the way some people are fascinated by Jack the Ripper. I still couldn’t hear anything so I went back to my room, this time closing the door behind me. I reached underneath the bed for the poem I had been writing and pulled out several brown lunchbags. I had to open five before I found the right one. I heard a few slamming noises so I turned my stereo on loud and went back to my alcove. I didn’t read my poem and I didn’t hear the music. I heard footsteps coming towards my room and then the door opened. It was my mother and I was glad.

“You’re coming with me.”

And I got up and followed her. We didn’t see my father as we walked through the kitchen where my mother grabbed the wine and the cups. I followed her through the front door.

It was only when we reached the highway that I asked my mother where we were going. She didn’t know. We were almost abreast with the entrance to Rotary Park when she decided to turn in and park the car beside the creek. I thought that we were going to drive straight into the water. She lit her first cigarette with shaking hands and there was something wonderful about it all.

[continued… Amnesty, Part 2]

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We were given questions to discuss. Did anyone talk about them? Not at all. Even when the tutor sat with us they didn’t stay on topic. It was so bloody annoying that I eventually got up and moved to another group. (Way to make friends, eh? Chalk me down as another obnoxious mature-age student.) The second group were not talking about history either, but at least they were discussing another university subject and not football.

For philosophy I have only missed one class and that tutorial is fairly quiet as well. I have to give them credit though, because Plato is pretty difficult to engage with as well as being somewhat daunting. I’m think that when we start on Nietzsche next week, they’ll have more than can relate to and more will be said.

But this brings me back to my sexism. I’ve actually spent some time talking to my female tutors and I like and respect them both but while we (okay, it’s only me) are in sexual stereotyping mode I’ll just say that there is one teaching style I like which seems to be fairly rare amongst the women: The Martinet.

I like The Martinet. He gets down to business. He knows that you’re in class for one reason and one reason only. He expects you to talk, and he expects you to do your reading. And so you do. Because if you don’t, you look like a dick.(If you can’t imagine the kind of person I mean, think of The Nazi on Grey’s Anatomy and remember me kindly because I have provided a female, though fictitious, example.)

Captain Slusher, an old teacher of mine that I’ve mentioned before, was a perfect Martinet. He came into class for the very first time, towering over us all, and gave us a lecture about his expectations; about what he would and would not tolerate, about what constituted an excuse and what did not. It’s pretty hard (for me, anyway) to dislike someone who is up front about where he stands and then applies those principles; who is hard but fair. And it has the added benefit that when you’ve done well, you know that you have done really well.

Perhaps that is a weakness on my part - wanting an external impetus - but I like to be pushed. If I can just breeze through a subject with high marks, I guess that’s okay, but I’d prefer to be stretched. I like having to earn every last percentage point.

Incidentally, I have only received one mark so far, for a 500 word answer to a weekly question for philosophy. I only wrote 350 words and I thought my answer was fairly shite. I got 95%. Don’t get me wrong: I was really chuffed (and surprised) by that and I probably did a happy dance for two days straight. It was the first mark I’d received in over a decade. Who wouldn’t be chuffed?

But I’m looking forward to getting marked harder and getting whipped into shape as expectations rise over the course of my degree. (Don’t throw that in my face if I don’t get an HD for my first history essay next week. Just let me cry.)

And I’ve been wondering… What will I be like when I start teaching? Will I be a soft touch? Or will I try out The Martinet style and have it come across as though I have some repressed, chip-on-my-shoulder issue with my womanhood. (Another pretty awful stereotype.) Because, you see, the beauty of Captain Slusher was not only that he was uncompromising in his standards; he was also bloody funny.

And I’m not. Funny, I mean. I’m too serious, too intense, too everything. And my sense of humour is obscure and personal. Whatever game face I decide to go with, it’s going to need a lot of work.

[Btw, there was an interesting review of the movie Smart People which discusses the stereotypes of academics. I might be biased, because I have a blog crush on Jake Pure Pedantry but it’s worth a read. It might even be worth watching the movie. ]

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It took me much longer to get running than expected, not because the work was hard, but because I seem to have minimal skills at coping with pressure these days. I’m working on that.

Anyway, the site is finally here. At the moment, in order to get the knitted items to us, we only have a Melbourne post box, so items will need to be sent to us. Melburnians can use the contact form on the site to organise a pick up or drop off. The delivery options will increase throughout the year though, and we’ll be doing a lot of work when Mum is here in July, organising freight sponsorship to help us with that.

Anyway…

Run on over and check it out. (You get to see what my Mum looks like!)
Spread the word if you can. (I’ll be adding a few different images you can use in your sidebars over the next couple of weeks.)
Help out with the knitting/crocheting if you can. (We’ll slowly begin to add free patterns to the site, so subscribe.)

Anyway, we’re excited!

xx cm

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