She Said

I didn't realise, when I borrowed She Said, by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, that my reading it would coincide with Harvey Weinstein's rape retrial (though he will remain in jail on other charges, no matter what the result). One of the reasons for the retrial is the contention that the judge improperly allowed what's called 'propensity evidence,' in other words, evidence from other women, not plaintiffs in the case, to give evidence that Weinstein had acted in a similar way with them -- to show that he had a pattern of predatory behaviour. In a way, this cuts to the very heart of the Me Too movement, which relies on women sharing their testimony to provide a weight of corroboration that eventually becomes irrefutable.

Kantor and Twohey, the New York Times journalists who broke the Weinstein story, had to dig behind numerous non-disclosure agreements, which acted to silence many individual women and hide the truth of Weinstein's history of sexual assaults. It wasn't until a couple of brave women came forward to bear witness, facing down the threat of legal action, on-line vilification, and personal intimidation, that Weinstein was toppled.

She Said also covers the story of Christine Blasey Ford, who revealed that Supreme Court hopeful Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in high school, and subsequently suffered the full weight of the above consequences. Kantor and Twohey end the book on a note of hope, with a gathering of the women involved in the Weinstein case comparing their experiences and bonding together; but I can't help feeling that the backlash is in full swing. In Australia, the preferred silencing tactic is defamation laws, and anyone who has followed the case of Bruce Lehman and Brittany Higgins must feel disheartened. The full weight of patriarchy still comes crashing down on any woman who dares to challenge toxic male behaviour, and with serial sex offender Trump in the White House, things are not looking any brighter.
 

Finding Nevo

 

I read most of Finding Nevo in a school library last week between sessions, then polished it off in another sitting after borrowing it from my local library. Nevo Zisin's memoir makes an interesting companion piece to Yves Rees' All About Yves, both for the similarities and the differences between their experiences. Both live in Melbourne, both struggled with gender identity and ended up seeing themselves as 'transmasc,' but emphatically not as 'men trapped in a woman's body,' though both recognised they might have to say that was the case in order to get the gender-affirming treatment they needed.

However, Rees is an academic, and able to articulate with precision their own confusion. Zisin is less intellectual in approach (and significantly younger), which lends their account a raw immediacy. There are a couple of sections near the end which are particularly moving, where Nevo imagines attending a party with all the versions of their younger self and is able to reassure and comfort them all. Zisin also differs from Rees in holding a strong and confident Jewish identity and community.

I'm learning more and more about the trans experience, principally that it's much more complex than I'd assumed. At one point Zisin says, after beginning to pass as male, 'I went from one gender box into another, but this one had more space.' It's distressing that both male and female gender boxes are experienced as being so rigid, neither can comfortably accommodate someone feeling uncomfortable or alien in their own body. Who made these bloody rules anyway?

All About Yves

Yves Rees' memoir, All About Yves, is subtitled Notes from a Transition, and it's a fascinating and often moving account of a search for identity. Yves' story is very relatable; they are a Melbourne person, they hang out on the north side of the river, work at La Trobe University, and went through the gruelling Covid lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. I was very impressed by the nuances of their journey, and the pressures from all sides to conform to gender stereotypes -- including transgender stereotypes! Yves describes a crucial assessment from a psychologist during which they felt obliged to downplay the fact that they were not particularly 'tomboyish' as a child, playing with Barbies and dressing up in sparkles, because in order to be judged as 'properly' trans, the conventional narrative is that one is supposed to reject all things from the assigned gender as early as possible.

Yves has tried on various identities -- straight, lesbian, transmasc, non-binary -- before settling on simply 'trans.' I loved the way they describe trans as resisting all the boxes, not necessarily on the way to a particular destination, but forever travelling. It was interesting to read about their struggle with feminism, having worked as a feminist historian, and then wrestling with what it meant to reject the identity of 'woman' in that context (fortunately it is possible to be a feminist without being a woman).

All About Yves is a nuanced, thoughtful and engaging account of one person's story -- a story that's not over yet. It gave me a lot to think about.
 

About A Girl

I wasn't really aware of Georgie Stone's story -- despite her starring on Neighbours, and being featured on Australian Story and Four Corners. But I'm so glad I picked up this memoir by Georgie's indefatigable mother. Rebekah Robertson, herself a staunch trans ally and activist. Reading an account like About A Girl, you're left shaking your head at the confected panic stirred up by conservatives. Georgie has known she was a girl since she was two and a half; all she's ever wanted is to be able to get on with her life, as an actor, musician and school student. And yet she and her family were forced to fight every step of the way for the treatment she needed to live in a body that was profoundly alien to her deepest sense of self.

Who the hell does it hurt for an individual to choose how they want to express their own gender or sexuality? And yet the word 'choose' is also misleading, as it doesn't feel like a 'choice' but an undeniable inner reality. Georgie has always maintained that her identity was a private affair; she didn't come out at high school for years, though she had to live with the threat of exposure, bullying and abuse every day. The obnoxious lobbying around the same-sex marriage vote was also incredibly damaging to kids like Georgie, and recently (this book was published in 2018), while awareness of trans people has grown, so has the vitriol aimed at their very existence. I've been deeply disappointed at the anti-trans stance taken by JK Rowling, for example. Earlier this year, the story of Nex Benedict, a non-binary teenager who was beaten up in a school bathroom in the US and died the next day, brought me to tears.

And yet even as I type these words, an episode of All In the Mind has just come on the radio, discussing 'gender euphoria' -- the utter joy experienced by trans people finally living as their true selves. As Georgie Stone reminds us, there are good stories out there and we have to hang onto them.
 

Gender Queer

I went to the Athenaeum Library intending to restrict myself to borrowing two books. Needless to say I came away with four... Gender Queer was one of them. I was aware of Maia Kobabe's 2022 graphic memoir vaguely as one of the most banned books in America, and there are some elements of this book that might be a bit 'graphic' for younger readers, but honestly, most teens will see much more explicit content than this on the internet every day.

Gender Queer is a detailed, honest and moving account of Maia's journey through questioning eir gender identity and sexuality (Kobabe uses Spivak pronouns, e, em and eir, which I wasn't aware of before, but which I quite like). It was super easy to read -- I almost finished it on the tram on the way home -- funny, engaging and very relatable. It really makes plain that every person's experience is different and nuanced, and it underscores the ridiculously arbitrary nature of the boxes we put ourselves into. (As an old school eighties feminist, I probably incline more towards the ideal of removing the boxes, rather than creating more and more of them, but that seems to be the way society is moving.) Maia doesn't feel comfortable identifying as a woman, but also doesn't see emself as a man -- ey are looking for gender balance, are attracted to androgyny, and are delighted when people aren't sure if ey are male or female.

I really enjoyed Gender Queer. I don't think it's anything to be afraid of, and I certainly don't support it being banned anywhere. I found it a helpful, enlightening and fascinating story, clearly and simply told. More power to you, Maia.
 

Consent Laid Bare

Hot off the presses, Consent Laid Bare feels so timely after a horrific couple of weeks that saw five women in ten days murdered by a male partner or ex-partner. But let's be honest, these statistics are always horrific, and they never seem to go down. It's six years since a dear friend of mine was murdered by her boyfriend, which sends every nerve jangling when I hear about another domestic violence incident -- and it feels like my nerves are jangled every single week, sometimes every day.

But to be clear, Chanel Contos' campaign (I always find myself calling her Chantal, apologies Chanel) is not against DV as such, but rather against sexual assault, and particularly that murky area of what she calls 'entitled, opportunistic rape,' where a male uses social pressure or emotional manipulation or an unspoken discomfort to pressure a woman into sex. I found out some shocking truths about the sex lives of the young by reading this book -- God, I'm so thankful that I didn't come of age in the time of social media and camera phones -- but it's equally shocking how little has changed in the last couple of generations. Some of Contos' arguments are Feminism 101; it's hard to believe that we still have to argue this stuff! But of course to Contos' peers, this is all fresh information, because those battles still haven't been won.

Two metaphors I loved: that being a woman in the world is like being a cyclist on the road. Technically you're subject to the same rules as cars, but if something goes wrong, the damage will fall much harder on the cyclist, and everyone will tell you, well, you should have been more careful, because in reality, the roads we ride on favour the cars (ie the men). Second, Contos caught herself cooing over a cute dog she met in the street, and reflected that the way some men regard hot women in public is much the same as they way she might greet a puppy -- she feels free to give them unsolicited compliments, even to touch them without permission, because as far as she's concerned, they exist just to brighten up her day. Hmm! I might think twice before I pounce on the next sweet puppy I see out and about...

Consent Laid Bare is an accessible, fierce and energetic call to arms -- or at least a call to awareness. The final chapter is addressed specifically to men, young and old, asking them to regard the women they encounter as fellow humans. It seems such a small thing to expect, and yet still, here we are. Consent Laid Bare is not explicitly aimed at young adults, but wow, they should definitely read it.
 

There's A Good Girl

 

I had a feeling I'd read Marianne Grabrucker's There's A Good Girl before and parts of it were definitely familiar, but it must have been thirty years ago, and having had two daughters in the interim, it certainly bore a revist. Subtitled Gender Stereotypes in the First Three Years of Life: A Diary, this memoir really covers about two years of Grabrucker's daughter's life, from the time she starts speaking until she starts pre-school and Grabrucker returns to full time work after Anneli turns three.

Although the diary was mostly written in 1983/4, and some observations have dated, it's horrifying to see how many still feel relevant forty years later. Perhaps Anneli's grandmothers might not be so keen to encourage her to play with dolls (or perhaps they would!), and perhaps the mothers of the little boys that Anneli plays with might not stress so hard the need for boys to not cry; and parents of both sexes might be less relaxed about the violence that the little boys mete out on the girls, and might not insist that the children have to 'work out their squabbles for themselves.'

In daily entries, Grabrucker observes and records the hundred little nudges that small children experience, pushing them toward inflexible gender roles: the advertising billboards that show naked women and powerful men; the fathers who fix things around the house; the urge to dress up little girls and tell them how pretty they look; the little boys who get away with snatching toys and how the girls are told to 'hold on more tightly next time.' Even for progressive, feminist German parents in the 1980s, who are convinced that they're bringing up boys and girls the same, and who are well aware of stereotypes, time and again they fall into the trap.

This is a slim book but it packs a punch far more powerful than its size suggests. Well worth reading, or re-reading, even now.

Lessons in Chemistry

 

I'd seen a lot of rave reviews of Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, so my expectations were high when I finally seized it from the reservations shelf at the library. Even one of my friends, a bio-medicine academic, told me that she loved it and thought it was all too accurate.

Well, I liked it but I didn't fall in love -- this book's message is far from subtle and it ticks every single box of male discrimination, pig-headedness, harassment and abuse. I take my hat off to Garmus for managing to write a comedy about sexual discrimination (the book is pretty funny) -- no mean feat! But as I read, I found myself wincing at its obviousness in parts. Once I decided to treat it as a fairy tale, I relaxed and enjoyed it much more. It also seemed to be inspired somewhat by the story of Julia Child, as our heroine ends up hosting an improbably successful cooking show in the early days of television. There were some wildly unlikely plot turns, some people adore the character of the super-intelligent dog, and I must admit I did enjoy the idea of a TV cook becoming a feminist inspiration and a huge success because she takes women's intelligence seriously.

I think I'll give it three stars out of five -- maybe the sciencey flavour of the story just didn't push my buttons!

Delusions of Gender

 

Huzzah, a science book that's fun to read as well as being knowledgeable and scholarly! I enjoyed this book so much. Cordelia Fine smashes through all those pop-psych books like Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, and Why Men Can't Find Butter in the Fridge and Women Can't Mend Taps, or whatever they're called (I must confess here that in a weak moment I may have picked up a couple of these titles from the library book sale to amuse myself...)

Anyway, Fine completely dismantles the so-called 'science' behind the claims that men's and women's brains are fundamentally different, demonstrating that any observable differences in behaviour are much more likely to be a product of social and environmental factors than genetic 'hard-wiring' (which isn't even a thing).

I do worry, a lot, that even in the last couple of decades, the gender boxes seem to be becoming more and more rigid, especially for kids and even babies. I had no desire to dress my girls in pink and frills (they did have a couple of princess dresses). I didn't go out of my way to raise them in a gender-neutral way (something Fine believes is basically impossible anyway, as even tiny children swim in a soup of culturally mandated assumptions and expectations). I now have one quite girly girl, who has to show me how to put on makeup properly, and one who hasn't worn a skirt since Grade 2. They both have friends who are trans and non-binary, which is of course completely fine; but I do feel it's a shame that society seems not to offer a wider, more elastic range of ways of being male and female in the world. I look back at myself when I was eleven or twelve -- not pretty, bookish, not interested in fashion or pop music or celebrities or handbags -- and I wonder if that girl was growing up today, if she might not start to question whether she was really meant to be a woman? I don't know, I don't know.

Anyway, Delusions of Gender is a terrific read and I'm going to scour my shelves for any stray books about Why Men like Guns and Women Like Knitting and I'm going to throw them in the BIN.

Fair Play

This was SUCH an interesting book! I borrowed it from the library after someone mentioned it on Twitter -- it's about the division of domestic labour, essentially, and a technique for splitting it with your partner that will (hopefully) lead to efficiency, more time, less resentment and shared responsibility for the physical and mental load of running a household.

Eve Rodsky sets up Fair Play as a game. She divides household and family work into 100 tasks in four suits: Home (meals, laundry, cleaning etc), Out (school liaison, cars, bills, travel etc), Caregiving (pets, bedtime routine, homework, medical appointments etc) and Magic (gestures of love, fun, holidays, magical beings). Some of these tasks are further designated as Daily Grind, things that have to be done, usually at a certain time, or the place falls apart (like meals, laundry, transport, grocery shopping).

The holder of any particular card, say Laundry, takes full responsibility for Conception, Planning and Execution of that card -- so not just, can you put a load of washing on, love? But noticing that the basket is full, sorting the wash, loading the machine, hanging it out, bringing it in, sorting and folding and putting away, noticing that we're almost out of detergent and adding it to the shopping list, making sure that X's school shirt gets washed by Monday and Y's socks get soaked before soccer day.

Of course the first thing I did was sit down and work out who holds which cards in our house. We only play 60 cards out of Rodsky's hundred, and I added in an extra one (transport of my parents). Eleven of those are shared (a big no-no in Rodsky's system), I hold 29 and M holds 21. Apparently, lucky me, couples report feeling equity when the husband holds... wait for it... 21 cards!! And I do feel that our split is fairly equitable.

But one thing that did leap out at me is that I hold the vast majority of Daily Grinds. So, the not negotiable, non-deferrable, daily tedium like cooking and washing and getting kids off to school falls largely to me. On the other hand, M has more control over when he chooses to play his cards, like Lawn & Plants, Home Maintenance, Cash & Bills. This helped me to clarify why I still sometimes feel hard-done-by even when we've both spent a weekend working hard -- I have less choice and control about what I do and when. People gotta get fed...

Anyway, there's a lot more to it and I doubt that I'll actually change up anything much, but it was certainly food for thought and conversation. Well worth reading.

The End of Orange?

We went to Smiggle yesterday, and all the orange product was shunted away into a corner, and it was 60% off. Call me suspicious, but my first thought was, I hope they're not phasing out orange...

My second thought was, oh, good, we can stock up on some cheap orange stuff for someone in our house whose favourite colour is orange.

IF it's true, and Smiggle are planning to stock orange product no more, then I'm sad. The orange range, adorned with lions (and sometimes robots) was relatively gender-neutral, bright and cheery. Removing the orange product entrenches the stark gender division in the rest of the store, with pink/purple/pale blue on the girly side, and stark black and green on the boys' side (just in case you're a girl who likes green, the green range has been coded "not for girls" by the inclusion of tough skull-and-crossbone motifs, soccer balls, and boys playing guitars).

Why are there no yellow or red ranges in Smiggle? Too hard to code as "male" or "female"? Why not put animals on them, or fruit, or balloons?

I'm sure Smiggle would say (IF it's true) that the orange range probably sold less than the traditional "girly" colours. Maybe it was seen as too boyish for most girls, and too girly for most boys. But its removal just takes away another option for those kids who aren't that interested in stark gender signals -- and kids, like mine, who just like orange.

Girls' Stuff, Boys' Stuff *UPDATED*

We are looking at buying a bike for our soon-to-be ten year old daughter. This is the kind of option we have to choose between -- a dark, hard, 'masculine' boys' bike, or a prettified, frou-frou, pink and purple, flowery 'girls' bike. There seems to be no middle ground, no bicycle choice for a girl who might not like pink and 'girly.'

Even a dozen years ago, when my first daughter was born, things weren't this bad. Every damn thing seems to be genderfied these days. There's nothing neutral: bathers, building blocks, bicycles, guitars, are all aggressively gender-coded. I realise this is hardly an original observation but I feel increasingly exasperated every time I step into a shop. What kind of a gender panic is gripping our society, when every children's purchase has to be unambiguously labelled 'for males' or 'for females' only?

The last straw was when Evie saw a top she really wanted -- a black, long-sleeved top with a Tardis on the front. And it was in a box, labelled BOYS TOP. Not 'Child's Top' or just 'Size 12 Top.'

BOYS TOP. There were no GIRLS tops.

Fortunately Evie didn't care. She wears that top just about every day. Don't they know that girls love Dr Who, too?

*UPDATE*

Evie informs me that there are also gendered toy crossbow/bow and arrows available! Boys get a green and black 'Zombie Attack' nerf crossbow, to wipe out all those apocalyptic zombies and save the world. But girls get a pink-and-purple 'Rebelle' (nicely feminine) 'Heartbreaker' (!!) bow and arrow, so they can… break hearts? Play Cupid? Seriously, I am speechless.