Bloody women. They come over here and take our foreigners.

It's no secret that the only soap opera I even claim to follow is The Archers. For the uninitiated, it's an every day story of country folk, and follows the lives of farming families in the mythical rural community of Ambridge. But that's not the best bit. Oh no. It's only on for about 12 minutes a day, straight after 630 comedy, so I can listen almost every day while I clear up in the kitchen and start work before I read stories and argue the benefits of real over false teeth with the unwilling primary school children. And it's on the radio. So it takes less attention than anything tv based, and considerably less attention than these super cool Scandinavian dramas that don't allow me to simultaneously mark and do a Tesco shop.

Anyway, The Archers has a particularly strong storyline at the moment following the abusive relationship between Helen and Rob. The poor actor seems to have had to stop tweeting, so involved is the audience in his compelling performance as a controlling, manipulative, sexist ... I'm doing it now.

The script writers are taking a risk with this storyline because it is a long slow burner of a plot and they haven't rushed it. There hasn't been any easy crisis point yet where the apparently intelligent Helen has walked in on Rob faxing fivers to his ex wife or blackmailing his former boss. Ok, so Helen is the vulnerable anorexic daughter of a former feminist whose last relationship ended in the suicide of her older lover, but she had independently given birth to an ivf baby as a single mother. Her descent into victim has been well written and many of the discussion threads (yes, don't judge) seem to admire the portrayal of her.

One of the main aspects of his character that rings so true is the way he controls her under the guise of love and care, there is no physical abuse. "You're so tired, darling, sit down and put your feet up while I arrange to have your wages paid into my account / spend your grandma's inheritance / sabotage the relationship with your best friend / mother / son."  Brilliant.

Like some men, Rob seems to doubt the competence of women and negates their ability while on the surface, building up their role in another way.  Women can do this to other women too.  "But you're so good with the children darling."  "Wouldn't it be nice to be at home for a little bit longer."  This links (indirectly, but bear with me) to the Koln attacks on women at New Year.  Police officers have been accused of playing down some of the common features of the attacks and the chief of police has lost his position.

The main common features of these attacks were that men attacked these women.  That is the main point.  And I'm not a 70s style all men are potential rapists feminist.  All men don't do these kind of things. Some men do.  And some men escape a life from a terrible country and adjust to life in a European country.  And some men attack women.

The appropriate reaction is surely to question society's respect for women but not use this as a vehicle for criticising immigration policy.  Just to top it all off, Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the EDL trotted off to a Pegida rally to stir up some trouble.  Nice to see parties like that promoting cross cultural unity between our German neighbours.  "They come over here (I paraphrase) and attack our women (I quote)."

Whose women? Sorry?  Who was he talking to? Well not me, I don't think I have any women.  Don't get me wrong, I didn't really think he was talking on my behalf in the first place, I strongly believe that that man and I have never had an opinion in common, but that doesn't mean I am not offended by his failure to assume that any women could be listening to him.

Perhaps there are no racist women in the world, what a nice thought.  Oh. there are you say!  So he's just addressing the men, in the full knowledge that there is 50% of the population who apparently need protecting by their men.

Following this, the mayor of Koln, Henriette Reker suggested that women should stay at arm's length from men.  Women don't need that kind of protection, men don't need protection from themselves.  The vast majority of men do not find themself accidentally and randomly groping women on the way past.  They should not be treated with any more suspicion than a group of men who are apparently immigrants.

So thank you Rob, and Henriette and even Tommy, but I and other women don't need defending against immigrants, or men for that matter.  We need protecting from scare-mongering and the media excitement over the commodification of women's bodies that continue the myth that we are anyone's for the taking.

The scent of sexism

I know it's Christmas, but the build up has been dragging on for the past 6 months.  The increase in perfume adverts is a sure sign that the season of selling and buying has begun.

Perfume is expensive, eau de toilette, aftershave whatever you are buying.  I don't travel abroad, so if I'm lucky, I receive a bottle of perfume to last the year.  Still Calvin Klein Eternity from my mum, because that is the last one she remembers me wearing, and Coco Chanel Mademoiselle from my father in law because he was instructed to buy that for me once.  (I love that, but one of our senior managers wears a lot of it and you can tell if she's in her office or not from the smell in the corridor so I've gone off that a bit.)  My darling Dan was metrosexual before the term was first coined, he virtually invented the term male grooming and seems to get through a bottle a month.  Not Coco Chanel, that would be weird, nor any Chanel as I have never yet been able to afford to treat him to that.

It is a tiny bit strange advertising fragrance on the television, surely we buy it for the smell which currently cannot be conveyed through the visual medium, and I find it so hard to believe that we are sold an image that is more important than the smell.  All the bottles end up looking the same in the shop anyway don't they?  And whatever you spray on a tiny scrap of card smells completely different when you have accidentally put it through the washing machine the next day.

It is even tricky to talk about. How do you describe a scent?  It ends up sounding like a pretentious wine description on the shelf of a supermarket "with undertones of cinnamon and the sunshine in an early evening bower".  I always use the word "smell" when I am introducing the idea of language change in English; write down as many words as you can think of which are synonyms for smell.  Now classify them into good and bad.  Most of the bad ones have Anglo Saxon roots (stench, stink) whereas the positive associations are with words of French origin (scent, perfume) coming in after 1066 and associated with the middle classes.  Typically,we have kept all the nouns we can find in English, making it just so important to find exactly the right words and make sure than we can identify all non-native speakers.

All of which makes the concept behind many perfume companies' advertising even more completely baffling.  They are almost always inappropriately glamorous with ludicrously young couples doing stupidly attractive things.  There is a Johnny Depp one this year that may ruin many of my favourite films which suggests independence and the open road, I always imagined Johnny Depp would smell rather musty.

The collection I have tried to avoid paying any attention to this year includes a woman rapturously clutching a perfume bottle while she writhes on the floor, perhaps making love to an invisible and nicely perfumed man.  Because...why?  Buy a woman perfume and she'll put on a sex show for you?  I don't get it.  Then there's a very pretty Greek sort of goddess woman who catches some Greekish mortal men with no knickers on and gives the camera an arch kind of look, because everyone knows there is nothing more attractive to a woman than mens' cocks.  And some of these may be famous Greek gods or footballers, if it's not David Beckham then I'm struggling with names.

The worst one I've seen is another Adonis type, although he might be a little bit more Norse in his godlike status, there seem to be lots of mountains and storms in black and white behind him.  Now I wasn't watching this one too carefully, I'll be honest.  Television in general is a time for me to catch up on my emails and I frequently get requests from my husband to stop working, but the gist of it seemed to result in him returning to his changing room after a feat of extreme physical prowess and  being presented with, presumably as part of his winnings, a crowd of semi naked women.

It makes me yearn for the heroin chic of the Calvin Klein campaign of 1994 or so, with Kate Moss and a number of androgynously skinny models in black and white who were so sexy they could have been having sex with the whole crowd or themselves, or just the nearest person - I slightly forget the point of the advert but the point was they all smelt the same. Although male grooming is now seen as acceptable if not essential, as the standards are raised for men to be allowed to behave more like women, it has only seemed to raise the bar for women who still have to be that little bit more groomed than men. And smell nice.  And be so highly sexed that a bottle of perfume leaves them writhing on the floor with unfulfilled lust that you - yes you, presumably male audience, could satisfy simply by stepping into the picture. And sit around waiting until he has finished his sports just to... I have no idea... lick him clean?

Happy Christmas everyone and a fresh and pleasantly scented new year to you.  I'll be crushing up rose petals in summer to make my own scent.  Tweet me your recipes.  @housefeminist

Where is the big society when you need it?

Rex has decided he wants to collect Match Attax.  As far as I can tell these are the Panini stickers we used to collect when we were at school.  Football does not really play a big role in our house, we watch rugby but football is even slightly discouraged.  If you were to buy sufficient stickers to fill an album and did not get any swaps at all it would take you 57 weeks and £3576 to collect all the stickers - maybe - quite a lot of money anyway.  My children don't even have an album.  It was too expensive, so they are randomly swapping pretty coloured stickers for other pretty coloured stickers and commenting on the relative merits of people they have never heard of.  It's a little reminiscent of the episode of The IT Crowd where Moss and Roy are practising manliness and learn a few key phrases to join in with football conversations; "Did you see that ludicrous display last night?"

So every now and then, they all ask to spend their meagre pocket money on over priced packets of these little fragments of confetti and I grudgingly agree.  The other day they were standing at the counter, purses in hand ready to each pay individually for a £1 packet of stickers with a queue of six people behind us and I didn't have enough cash for the lacto free milk for which I was having to delve into the overdraft.  I paid by card and paid for their stickers simultaneously to try and save time.  When we got home, I asked for the money for the stickers.  "But we still have it." Rex declared, suspiciously guarding his rainbow purse in his sticky fist.
"No," I explained, "I paid for it with card so you need to give me the money."
"But that was the bank's money." he countered, quite accurately.
"Yes but for your stickers."

The rest of the details are tedious, but needless to say I had to wait for them to go to bed and sneak the money out of their purses later.

It seems to me that David Cameron is having the same trouble understanding economic policy as my 5 year old.  He doesn't seem to understand that once the money is gone, it is gone and cannot be spent twice over.

Today it has emerged in a Guardian article that David Cameron has written to his local County Council in his role as a constituency MP to ask them about all the cuts to local services.It's like a Monty Python Sketch, or Yes, Minister, or ... or Prisoner .."Who is responsible for this mess? " "You are number one."

I think he genuinely believed that there was a whole raft of people out there willing to pick up the pieces of these massive cuts to council funding, a whole set of elderly ladies who were just dying to get up off the sofa and stack books at the local libraries.  And I wonder if people who have been brought up in privileged environments have only a vague understanding of what the "simple folk" do all day. Perhaps, at David Cameron's school, food magically appeared, rooms were magically tidied and no one ever questioned where it all came from, it was only when Hermione reminded everyone that there were actual house elves doing all the work that any of us thought about it. Oh no wait, that was Hogwarts...and Cameron's school didn't have girls, so no wonder he never gave it any consideration.  So as a consequence it's no wonder that some MPs are convinced that there are myriad back room staff who fanny about with press releases and clean and type things and all those little jobs that don't take very long really, why would you need to actually pay someone to do them?  No doubt someone would be happy to give up a couple of hours a day to help feed the children / type up letters / organise road safety / teach a class of twenty four five year olds.  Just the little things.

That army of volunteers does not exist.  I am a volunteer, I know.  My mother-in-law couldn't retire early, she still does extra shifts if she needs to to pay the mortgage because her pension isn't going to go that far and she's worked her whole life.  Other grandparents are having to look after their grandchildren because childcare is so expensive and all mothers have to go back to work.  Anybody else with a couple of hours on their hands is usually trying to pick up a couple of extra hours of work to help make ends meet because wages are static and everything else isn't.  It is not that people are not willing, but if a job is worth doing then it is worth being paid for and these things are valuable.

Our library in the village is threatened with closure. It is an amazing place and really active, always full of people, a great resource.  Pip and Rex love borrowing sock monkeys as much as books.  There are always free activities and crafts for children.  They are really well attended but the librarian is not allowed to charge for those things, not even to cover costs.  She is allowed to charge adults for activities so she often gives up her evenings to run quizzes and other activities to raise the money, to pay for the children's activities. She doesn't even live in the village and has to drive out to open up the building so she feels she may as well be there.  This is on top of her full days at work, and when she goes / retires, they may not even appoint another qualified librarian, because that is too expensive and apparently anyone can put books on shelves.


I am no more likely to convince David Cameron of the ludicrousness of the display than I am to convince Rex that the money is not there any more but I have to keep trying to convince everyone else to remind politicians and voters to think really carefully about the value these public services provide before the big yellow taxi comes for me, because we really are not going to realise what we've got until it's gone.

Bad Grammar

Nicky Morgan wants more grammar schools.

http://schoolsweek.co.uk/grammar-school-expansion-plans-in-at-least-ten-10-new-areas/

They are called "extensions" or "annexes" or some kind of semantic rubbish but they are grammar schools.

My mum went to Grammar School, my dad didn't - he went to Secondary Modern or technical school, but he went to University and my mum didn't, because her parents didn't even think of it.  Most girls didn't and certainly not working class girls from Liverpool, maybe my dad only went because his dad had died and he had a reason to get away.

I am not suggesting that all types of education are right for everyone and shoving everyone through a system of GCSEs where there is only one level and you have to get a C or a 6 or whatever the hell it is called for anyone to give a damn or you have to get an A or an A* or a top 9 to go to the "top" universities because how else will we know if you're the right kind of person or not is wrong.  But there is something going badly wrong with our education system now.  The new examinations make sure that only the kind of person who can retain information (or learn facts) can pass the right kind of examination.  

Alan Bennett had it right a few months ago when he said

Bennett, who was educated at a grammar school in Leeds, told an audience at Cambridge University: "Private education is not fair. Those who provide it know it. Those who pay for it know it. Those who have to sacrifice in order to purchase it know it. And those who receive it know it, or should. And if their education ends without it dawning on them, then that education has been wasted.

"My objection to private education is simply put. It is not fair. And to say that nothing is fair is not an answer. Governments, even this one, exist to make the nation's circumstances more fair, but no government, whatever its complexion, has dared to tackle private education."

Private education, free schools, grammar schools.  The only kind of education system that can make sense is to make sure that we all go to the same schools, where teachers are paid the same and have the same motivation to succeed. Not to run these schools like businesses should be a given, it does not make sense to take away a more expensive teacher because he or she is more expensive.  A child who cannot achieve a grade C can still make progress and that has to have some value.  If politicians' children went to the local comprehensives then would they really allow things to go on as they are?  

Private education does not merely ensure that students receive the "best" education, and that is debatable, it ensures that they make the right connections, that they stay within their own circles  and makes sure that the rest of stay where we are as well. The child who gets in to the grammar school on some kind of scholarship still does not have those connections, unless his or her parents can make those connections work, the sailing club, the golf course, then that child is no more likely to access those higher echelons of society than the rest of us.  And what does that child have to give or lose?  Cameron humiliating himself with a pig gives important people power over him, but what he gained in return; their support, their loyalty, bound up in a secret bond of trust that the rest of us cannot access is far beyond a few newspaper headlines and Charlie Brooker jokes.  

This government are doing all they can to maintain the status quo not to change it, or even to revert to a simpler time - to me it sounds a little like feudal law and the middle ages.  

Bread, circuses and mind control

As often happens it takes a Radio 4 programme to clarify my thinking.  Dan doesn't really believe in literature, as he's arguing that his job his harder than mine, that the A levels he teaches are more intellectually rigorous than those that I teach. What's the point, in other words, of studying literature? Or Media Studies?  Or anything else I am good at.  (Actually I am beginning to doubt how good I am, but that's another story.)

One of these arguments was suggested to me as I listened to the Radio 4 afternoon drama on Friday.  I love listening and rarely get to.  However, I was on my home from work and I heard most of it in the car.  I missed the end, as usual, but I wouldn't even have heard the start had I not left work so late because I was running around sorting out trips and marking.  That's the best thing about part time, getting to work for free when I stop being paid.

The drama was The Liberty Cap. (The Liberty Cap) about an experiment using hallucinogens to treat depression and I was inspired by the objections that main character had to the treatment.  That has to be part of the point of literature of course.  Or Media Studies for that matter.  It allows us to empathise, to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, to explore an area of emotion that we have no access to under normal circumstances in a safe environment.  But what he said made perfect sense to me.

I visited the doctor's.  It doesn't happen often, not by choice.  If I am ever really ill then I try to get an emergency appointment and by the time I get one I tend to be better.  This time the doctor asked me to return.  I was concerned I might be depressed.  The doctor said I wasn't depressed, I was a teacher and my misery was a perfectly reasonable reaction to what was happening around me.

However, as this drama made me aware, depression is also a perfect reaction.  The government have introduced massive cuts in tax credits, they have reintroduced grammar schools and that is the effect.  They are ensuring the people who could do something about it - like the trade unions are too depressed to do anything about it.  It's a form of mind control.  Gone is the idea of bread and circuses; although Strictly, Bake Off and Britain's ... Factor or whatever it's called are certainly fulfilling their remit as opiate.  And the rise in the use of food banks seems to suggest that it's better to starve us all into submission that to keep us sate.  Instead there is a focus on the steel industry and teaching, both of which have dared to raise our unionised heads above the parapets. The new union legislation that the government are trying to get through parliament is trying to ensure that we have to get a mandate for half a day's action greater than the government have to make the legislation that forbids us from doing it.

So perhaps that's the best reason for keeping reading and watching.  Something has to keep me dreaming and something else has to keep me from being depressed, because I intend to keep fighting.

Leading Ladies

Patricia Arquette used her academy award acceptance speech to call for equal pay.  We all kind of agree with that don't we?  Women and men should be paid equally for doing the same jobs, or equivalent jobs?  Except looking after children and the house, that should always be done for free, by everyone, equally.  Ah.  Well because that doesn't happen, it all sort of makes sense that it doesn't happen everywhere else.

None the less Patricia Arquette was pretty brave to say that out loud.  Maybe she's got bigger balls - sorry - tits than me (that's no better is it? Especially given her personal attributes) but I'm used to the roll of the eyes when I "go off on one" and I usually have an audience of about ten, not thousands.

I love her a bit though.  Some of my favourite things involve Patricia Arquette - True Romance in my 20s and not just for Christian Slater, Medium in my 30s and now, finally CSI:Cyber, just when I thought I had seen all the CSI they bring out one with a female lead.

And Patricia Arquette is quite a lead.  She is typical of CSI leads - Mac, Grissom, Horatio, they are solitary workaholics with little family life or romantic longevity.  I keep forgetting she isn't Allison from Medium with three daughters and the wonderful Joe.  So although she is a successful boss, who has apparently sacrificed other aspects of her personal life, so have people in equivalent roles.

I love the fact that in Medium, Arquette defended her weight gain and apparent dowdiness by reasoning that a busy mother and working wife would reasonably look like her.  Love her!  Greatest defence of my now 5 year baby weight.  Until I saw a picture of the real Allison DuBois, on whom the character was based who looks like a very glamorous actor.

In Holes, she plays the strong independent school mistress who avenges her lover's death with an equally strong Sigourney Weaver as the the other adult lead.  But the character's motivation is still a fundamentally feminine one.  Are we really only capable of springing into action in defence of our lovely husbands / boyfriends / sons?  Do none of us have any feeling for the sisterhood or society in general?  I suppose that's where Riley in CSI comes in, she is fighting for justice and the American Way or truth or was that Judge Dredd?

Even the lastest Amazon Prime Series I have started watching has Rami Malek as a secret hacker vigilante (Mr. Robot), another male lead who seems to be simultaneously keen to bring down national corporations and defend the weak and feeble women in his life who keep making bad relationship choices.  In the first episode he made a bad choice with one woman providing sex and drugs, saw a female counsellor who didn't really do a good job as she was distracted by a man and embarrassed his co-worker and best friend / secret crush in front of a room of her male bosses.  (There is a link; Christian Slater is in it.)

There can't be equal pay if there are not equal roles and so at the moment Arquette has a point.  I think it's Dyer who talks about the constructionist approach.  Does the media have to change people's perceptions or does the society it reflects have to change?  "Ah, solving that question / Brings the priest and the doctor / In their long coats / Running over the fields."

 

"I'm drowning"

The start of this school year has been a year like no other.  Every July I make a solemn promise to myself to work consistently every evening in order to prepare myself for September, and every August 31st I wonder what on earth I did with my time.

I am still not sure.  I think  the children just stayed up an hour or two later, and by 10pm I was snoring on the sofa.  I didn't even manage a glass of wine, I now officially drink less in the holidays that I do in term time.

But this year we were busy.  The rules have changed.  The syllabus has changed.  We have to teach a different A level.  GCSE is now all examination.  Oh, and  we now have to move to life beyond levels.  So while we are insisting that our year 10s and 11s understand exactly which level they are doomed to achieve we are telling our year 8s and 7s that they are better than levels.  They are "Emerging" learners.  "Emerging" from what I am not yet sure.  "But what does it mean?" I ask.  "It's about a level 4a."  Oh.

When I came back to school this time we hadn't quite finished all of our schemes of work,  So I am planning day to day, in the hope that someone else in my department may finish writing their contribution before I do.  "I'm drowning!" the young teacher back from Maternity leave tells me.  "It's getting on top of me!" an experienced teacher tells me.  "I'm sinking beneath all this." our new male teacher says.  All these metaphors, can you tell we're an English department?

But at some point I am going to get observed, and my year 10s need to know what their target grades are, otherwise how will they know if they are under-achieving.
"You're targeted a level 6."  I tell one.
"But I only got a band 4 for my work!" clever little Precious in the front row says, disheartened.
"Ah, no, that's ok." I say, "That's a band 4, that's our new exam board, it's about C."
"What's a C?" she asks, her clever eyes shining with tears behind her designer glasses (clear lenses).
"That's a band 6... I mean a level 6."
"Oh... I see..." she replies, sniffing uncertainly.

I am so glad she does.  I don't think I am quite there yet.