Gillian Polack's Blog, page 73

gillpolack @ 2014-03-29T13:24:00

Today we went to the large farmers' market, where all the autumn fruit and vegies are starting to appear. I just had my first hard persimmon of the year (the soft ones are later) and we're down to the last of the stone fruit.

It was a good day for offcuts, so I bought 3 kg of very meaty Belted Galloway bones, plus coriander and onion and chilli. I'm making a broth and will turn it into hot and sour soup of a peculiarly Gillian kind, for I had lemon myrtle and fresh lemons here before I went shopping, plus different chillis.

I have half a cabbage, a bag of mushrooms, and some olives from a very ancient variety bought from a Greek Australian family who told me all about where they grow it. I have heaps of cucumber, some capsicum and just two tiny, tiny pears.

And I have two girls' annuals from the early 1960s, for Conor checked the Lifeline Bookfair out while I was browsing, and he thought I needed them. I love pre-70s Annuals. They contain so many interesting things, from standard story setup over time, to attitudes.

Now I have to buckle down and work quite hard, for I am 2000 words plus one reflection short from yesterday. When I did my schedule for the week, I didn't know I was going to get three two hour teaching modules (plus homework) - I thought I only had one. And I didn't know it was going to be quite so full a week in other respects. I'd rather have the extra classes now and finish the whole thing faster, but it does put the pressure on to catch up with myself. My next module is on Monday (at which stage I'll be halfway through), so I have until then to catch up so that I can do the Red Queen thing.

My rest-of-day, therefore, comprises hot and sour soup (which takes at least eight hours to make, using my method), one reflection, 4000 words of chapter, revise 3 chapters from the monograph and sort several problems with those chapters and do one basic bibliographical search. I also have two lovely Women's History Month posts for you. We might be nearing the end of the month, but we're going out in style, with heaps of wonderful articles from heaps of interesting people. Oh, and I'm clearing my second bit of cupboard for Pesach. (If I can clear a half a shelf a day, who knows, I may make it.)

Is anyone else doing anything interesting? Or do you have fabulous shopping to declare?

Women's History Month - guest post by Nicky Strickland

Nicky Strickland is a creative soul in love with words. If she’s not writing stories with fantastical elements, she is playing with letters and borders with calligraphy and illuminated letters. If they weren’t enough she is also back in academia studying so as to return to another love, libraries, where words and knowledge surround one all day.


What started the passion I’ve carried all my life for ancient history? Who grabbed my attention? I would read about the various gods and goddesses of ancient civilisations (and still do). Though the Romans and Greeks were the university spotlights, I remember reading about the Egyptians (Hatshepsut in particular), Sumerians, Inca and Aztec civilisations too, I’m not fussy.

A current work in progress has sent me back to the Roman Republic, in particular the lives of the Vestal Virgins. They have been challenging to find information about. Well, other than the “there were taken at six, are six novices, are six active, keep the flame alive and be buried alive if they broke their vow of chastity” information. It’s not a surprise that the Vestals who are remembered are the ones who broke rules.

My search has taken me away from the easy literature found in the junior and/or generalised sections of a library back to the realms of the academic where there are those who have taken the time to find the facts and details about these interesting women (at time of posting, primarily “Rome's Vestal Virgins: A Study of Rome's Vestal Priestesses in the Late Republic and Early Empire” by Robin Wildfang and “Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion” by Sarolta A. Takacs). I must really love this story huh?

In saying that, this story also makes me think about who writes and as importantly, who keeps the history records. It’s a common saying that history is written by the victors. Even then, how select is the group who are remembered? Were there more documents about this sacred group before Christianity became the Roman Empire’s chief religion? Would it have been sacrilegious for descriptions to be kept about these women, given the surviving histories we have are mostly by men?

Of course, this also gives me great leeway to play with the writer’s love of “What If?” - what did or did not go on in the Vestal House, especially at the time the Republic was starting to fall over. Julius Caesar was only an up and coming young man, though Sulla, the dictator at the time of my story, is warning people about him. And the Vestals do an interesting thing for young Julius, which is one of the turning points in my story. And yet, it’s hard to know for certain if my sources are right. They are as far as we know but who knows what really happened? Oh, to have access to a portal or some type of time travelling device to be an (invisible) butterfly on the wall.

gillpolack @ 2014-03-28T20:24:00

The good news is that I'm walking a bit more each week - which is just as well, because I totally need to walk more this week. And today it was walking in the rain, which was nice. So whatever the physio is doing to realign my hip is slowly working. It's causing me much pain and much grump, however, and I do not suffer much from many people right now.

I think it's somewhat amusing that the big things are dealable with, and fast-forwarding the updating of my higher ed teacher training is dealable with, and I'm getting through the monograph and a whole bunch of other things, but the usual people saying the usual things annoy me. Which totally isn't fair on them, and I have already apologised once for grumping. I just got very tired of everyone sending emails and tweets and alerts and FB notifications that told me what I should nominate/vote for.

Nominate my Margo Lanagan article for things, that's what I say! Except I don't because, as I told CSFG a) I don't expect anyone will have read it; and b) we do our own reading all year and all we need is a list to remind us, and, right now, I would like fewer notifications about works I already know about. I was in sufficient pain from my healing hip after my four hours of class and the hour of walking that it requires (with a healthy hip it would not be an hour of walking, to be honest) when I got the latest bombardment.

I will nominate things for awards, I will vote for awards. I will even attend the ceremony to cheer everyone on if it will make a difference to anyone. But I would very much appreciate if other peoples' need to tell me what I already know about what they've written or drawn or screamed out to the night didn't fill my inbox.

Unlike some, I don't have an in principle problem with people posting about awards and their eligibility. I just wish it wasn't being done to excess, which it really is, this year. I also wish people wouldn't tell me things like "Just in case you didn't notice" or "This is my favourite work."

I do notice. And I read very widely all year and look at art and watch editors and have my own opinions on your favourite work already (and have my own favourite work of yours, in all likelihood).

If people just kept the lists and recommendations to their blogs, I wouldn't have a problem at all - what someone puts on their blog is their business and I can choose or not choose to read it and that's fair to all. It's my email they're putting it in, and that means I spent times when I hurt yesterday and time when I hurt even more today wondering "Do they think we don't notice? Why isn't there a list of these things?" I offered to make one for CSFG (but not for the rest of the world, for Ditmars have a big eligibility list already, available to anyone). It turns out there is a list, which I had forgotten but that we needed special reminders of special work anyway, on top of it. And I still hurt. And I still have 2 chapters to finish tonight, and 2 reflections for today's classes and 2 thousand words (the Noah's ark of overwork). And reduced email would have been a real blessing.

I know this isn't about me. This is about the talented writers and artists and editors who need to be seen. And I'm sorry I'm so grumpy. In an hour the pain relief will work and I'll be a nicer person. My reputation will be in shards, but I'll be a nicer person.

At least I know my hip is getting better, because the pain is my body readjusting to where it should have been before, and the muscles are re-learning and re-thinking and etc. And when it's all over, I'll be able to dance again, and get around with lightness in my step.

Women's History Month - guest post by Tsana Dolichva

Tsana is currently devoting most of her energies to obtaining a PhD in astrophysics, but she is also a writer, with a smattering of short stories published (most recently in Aurealis #67). She is making up for not having to write by being a book blogger over at tsanasreads.blogspot.com. She also has a much-neglected blog about science in science fiction (tsanad.blogspot.com) because she's THAT reader.

I first encountered Emmy Noether when I was studying quantum field theory during my Masters. At first I didn’t give a second thought to the name attached to Noether’s theorem, beyond wondering how to pronounce it. I was more concerned with understanding the connection between symmetry and conservation laws that it described. I think it was in a subsequent lecture the the lecturer mentioned that Noether was female and that her full name was Emmy Noether. Of course, I had to google her. Here are some highlights of what I learnt then and since.

Even early in her studies, she was hampered by rules restricting women’s participation in classes. For a while she could only audit classes and only with express permission from each individual professor. She was ultimately allowed to graduate with a degree in mathematics, however.

After publishing some papers, her work gained the attention of David Hilbert (another famous mathematician whose work is relevant to general relativity) and Felix Klein and they invited her to join them at the University of Göttingen. Other members of the faculty there did not want a woman teaching among them. One of the reasons I remember reading somewhere was because the poor lads learning at the university might become traumatised by having a woman senior to them. And, to quote directly, "What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?" (I remember having a rather spirited argument with a friend who thought that not traumatising soldiers was a valid reason for sexist attitudes. You think you know someone…)

In many ways, Noether was lucky that her family were comfortable economically and supporting of her academics, possibly because her father had also been a mathematician. They were able to pay her room and board for the first four years she was at Göttingen, when the university refused to employ her properly. She spent those years teaching on the sly, with the lectures officially advertised as being taught by Hilbert with her officially “assisting”. It wasn’t until after the (post-WWI) German Revolution brought additional rights for women that she was allowed to apply for a tenured (and paid) position. Instead of rewarding her mathematical prowess in the normal way (i.e. with money), the relevant minister gave her a “special” position with limited rights and still no tenure. She finally got the paid position of Temporary Lecturer for Algebra a year later. She continued teaching there for almost a decade until the Third Reich fired her (among others) for being "a Marxist-leaning Jewess”. She continued teaching students from her apartment for the months before taking up a position in the US, where she died a few years later.

Honestly, one of the reasons Noether fascinated me was because she was only the second woman I learnt about who made significant contributions to modern physics before 1950 or so. (The first, of course, being Marie Curie.) It was also encouraging to read about her disregard for social conventions — because maths was far more interesting — and that she is still remembered, despite all the hardships and obstacles others inflicted on her.

And on that note, I’d like to leave you with an XKCD comic about Noether and Marie Curie: http://xkcd.com/896/

Women's History Month in Australia - some background

Given that the public side of WHM in Australia is officially past and the committee has stood down from public events, it's probably not a bad idea to write about the early history. Most of the public sites contain errors. They have lost either two years or three years of the celebration. It worries me when the event that's celebrating women's history loses some of its own history.

One thing I did on Wednesday (and a few months ago, when I saw Lulu) was to check my knowledge against the other surviving members of the first committee. This, therefore is the closest to an authoritative account anyone can give, allowing for the fallible nature of all our memories. If someone ever wants to write a full history, I have the e-files (and the latest committee has copies), Lulu Respall-Turner has the paper files (and will get them to an archive when she's done with them), and the National Library's Pandora archive has copies of most (but not all) the online materials. I'm pretty sure it's the Jesse Street Archive that has all Helen's photos.

One set of photos (by me, though often unattributed) can be found in several places. These photos of that single event have been taken to be the early launch (before the first WHM) but, in fact, they were the IWD launch of a single WHM's activities, and that particular event was two years in. This accounts for the 2002 start date and, as I said, the 2003 start date is actually the date when the new committee came in.

That is the end of the boring-section-for-resarchers.

Officially, WHM started in Australia in 2000. Our planning (and the decision to create WHM) started in 1999, outside, at a Canberra cafe. There weren't that many cafes in Canberra that had outside seating, so that was partly why it was Gus's, and it was also because Gus's had become Helen's and my default cafe for meeting, for it had better coffee than most at that point (Canberra coffee around that time was pretty bad) and if we sat outside then Helen could smoke.

I've talked in several places how Helen Leonard found us that table at Gus's and had coffee with a few of us and WHM was started. She and I were the first ones there, and Lulu Respall-Turner came about 20 minutes later. We are the three, therefore, who made the decision that "Yes, Australia would have a WHM." Veronica Wensing couldn't get to that meeting, but came on board the moment Helen got in touch with her, probably that very day. We four did the bulk of the work that first year.

Marilyn Lake (who I checked with on Wednesday, just as I checked with Veronica) agreed to be on the committee so that we would have an Australian historian involved (for I am a European historian) but didn't have any time. She was acknowledged as a committee member, though, for her name gave us gravitas. She appeared on the website that first year as a committee member and guest. Judy Harrison (Helen's partner) was unofficially involved, which included giving us advice on various things.

We were officially sponsored by the Women's Electoral Lobby, and Helen made me a member that year purely so that I could do WHM in their name.

It was a much tighter committee than this sounded: Helen recruited from her feminist friends and Lulu and Veronica and I all knew each other before we began. We still get on well. We don't see each other often, but when we see each other we just pick up where we left off. Lulu and Veronica are still very active in other work for women and disadvantaged groups. I, as most of you know, retired from that a while ago*.

That first year we didn't do much in the way of events that required bookings and rooms. Events were almost entirely online. I don't remember being involved in any live events that year, apart from meetings, but my memory is fallible. I was, however, almost wholly responsible for the online programme (my memory's not that fallible - it was challenging).

Helen and the others found us all our guests (except for the writing bods, who I persuaded) and I set up a site on Blackboard. That site was never fully archived the way the later sites were, but I suspect I have it all, in my WHM archive files. I got involved in running the Blackboard site because I was very worried about the lack of technical skills women in our various communities had, and it seemed a logical way of giving them some basic skills. It took a lot of work from my end: one guest didn't even know what a mouse was! I added it up, and that first WHM I did significantly over 30 hours a week, plus the lead-up. But it was worth it.

The second year (2001) we were more visible. This was when my publisher was our cavalry and gave us a proper web interface. Our sponsorship also shifted (either then or the year later) to the NFAW. We never had official government backing. Right from the beginning the senior parliamentary women were behind us all the way and the government pretended we didn't exist.

One thing I discovered on Wednesday is that none of the senior women (including Anne Summers and Marilyn Lake) remember the back-up women, the women like me who did the hard work, even when we talked them through their technical issues face-to-face. Dawn Casey gave me a "Haven't I see you before" look on Wednesday, but that was the closest I got to anyone remembering over 500 hours of work. This is another of the reasons I moved out of the women's movement. In our attempt to change things, we were actually reinforcing the problem of lack of recognition. Some of this is happening in SF circles right now, and I find it worrying. Public statements of what needs to happen is only the beginning of change and if those public statements dominate, then we never actually achieve the society we want.

I took a breather in order to think about this. If someone like me, who was doing some fairly intensive work in various places (during Beijing +5 I was the acting boss of CAPOW!, the umbrella body of 67 women's organisations, disestablished by a government that didn't actually want to talk to that many women's organisations at once) was not being seen, then we had a cultural problem. It meant that all the women who were even more behind the scenes were being seen even less and that we were nipping our own attempts in the bud - deep change wasn't going to happen using the then models the women's movement was working with. I still haven't resolved that problem except to look at narratives. I say 'except' when I know there is an answer in there. Stories are powerful.

it doesn't matter how much good will we have and how much we see the need to change, unless we address our own assumptions, we're going to make the same mistakes of other generations. Fiction is probably the most powerful tool for change there is. I reconfigured my fiction when I reconfigured my life and I no longer write quite the adventure fantasy I started out doing. In fact, almost no-one knows I started out writing pure genre. Except those who know me as a writer from the early 1980s, but I haven't found anyone who remembers my early work. Which is not relevant at all, and it means I'm wittering.

And my wittering (and the direction it's taking) suggests that I need to return to work. Anyhow, now you know why I celebrate WHM on this blog and what my involvement was and that it began in Australia in 1999 and ended (publicly) on Wednesday night. I was part of the beginning and I was there at the end.



PS There will be some catch-up posts later today for WHM, for my life did that 'interesting' thing again.

*My reasons from getting out were reinforced on Wednesday, when I was given a gentle chiding by someone because if I had written something for the programme there would have been something on the programme about all this. But I only know the early years, I am not on the current committee, I *did* brief the current committee, and I would have been writing that briefing up instead of doing my own work. I have only 1/3 of the deadlines today that I've had the last few weeks (today is 2 draft chapters, 2 higher ed modules, the back WHM posts, 2000 words new writing and catching up with some of my LonCon volunteer stuff - in case you're wondering what I regard as 'having more time') And all this tells you why I left: the work on WHM more and more pushed my own life (including my income needs and health needs) to one side. Very ironic, considering it was WHM. There were other reasons, but that was an important one.

gillpolack @ 2014-03-26T23:31:00

This is just to let you know that I got through my big day with aplomb (and help), but will post today's WHM guest's contribution tomorrow, for I'm just too tired to code. I'm very sorry, but everything has caught up with me. Blogging is my last act before much sleep.

What kind of everything?

1. physio - it is fixable and will not need an op; it may take a while

2. Wednesday class - lovely as ever, but today, very intense and astonishing

3. Messages - done, but not without side effects (incident in shopping centre, the details of which will never be revealed...)

4. Afternoon class achieved and deadline for my first draft of HEA application set. Next Sunday. Yep. More deadlines. Still, if this can be done and dusted, then things will be less frantic. Maybe.

5. Lovely meeting, with Taiwanese food. Perfect for a drizzly day through which I have walked muchly. (Walking in the rain is nice. Walking in the rain knowing what I have done to my hip isn't. But at least it's curable - I shall say this 3 times an hour until further notice.)

6. Reached the WHM debate in plenty of time. Discovered I was a VIP. Ended up in the firing line of the camera at question time, so friends can laugh at me being embarrassed as one of the people providing backdrop for the microphone, just as soon as the video goes live. The video is worth watching even if only for the performance of my boss's boss and Anne Summers.

I kept waiting for people to give my argument (the obvious one, about narratives and exclusion and how to change them) but no-one did. And I narrowly refrained from standing up after a line of teenagers asked questions, each beginning "I'm 17 and my question is..." I was going to say "I'm several multiples of 17 and my question is..." just because. I decided that 'just because' was not going to happen in front of cameras.

I also decided that it was simply not worthwhile pointing out publicly that the vast sums of government money that one of the "I'm 17" questioners deplored being taken out of whatever needy places and being poured into Women's History month consisted of the amounts that one year the Speaker of the Senate, abstracted from her private entertainment budget to provide tea, coffee and snacks during the launch. Maybe this money could have funded a hospital, but somehow, I doubt it. Fifteen years of volunteer effort backed by community support, NGOs and Trivium Publishing were a waste of government money. We (being the current Chair and myself) decided to take this as a compliment, after which I stopped being a VIP and caught a bus.

7. Got home safely, almost whole.

Women's History Month - guest post by Tamara Mazzei

I'm sure Tamara gave me a bio, but I can't find it. This means I get to invent one. Except that Tamara is one of my publishers (the boss at Trivium, in fact) and it might be sensible to show her some respect. She was also the person who had to sort out the typesetting for the footnotes in Illuminations. For this she is due much respect. Much, much respect.

In addition to running a publishing house and being a whiz at typesetting, when Trivium Publishing agreed to sponsor Australia's Women's History Month, a bit over a decade ago, Tamara designed Australia's webpage, she provided the site, she did all the site maintenance and she did all the hard-work stuff that went into providing live chat and discussion rooms for three years. For Australia. For no pay and only very quiet thanks. She hasn't even been to Australia...

And now you know why Tamara is one of my special guests this month. Without her, Australia might not have had a Women's History Month after that first year, when it all got serious and bigtime and I didn't have the tech skills to handle serious and bigtime. Buy her a drink next time you're in Texas: Tamara has earned it.

Louise McPhetridge Thaden
12 November 1905 – 9 November 1979


Now of course you know about Amelia Earhart because you have read articles and books. You have seen movies. And she was tragic! She died! It’s so romantic! But do you know of Louise McPhetridge Thaden? She was just as amazing, but she lived to a ripe old age, so she seems not to have caught so much attention as her friend Amelia. On her page on the National Aviation Hall of Fame web site, Louise is listed as a “Record Setter/Dare Devil.” I have a special fondness for anyone whose official Hall of Fame listing includes the words “Dare Devil” especially when that person not only happens to be from my home state, but also attended the same university I did. Let’s just say I heart Louise.

Louise was born in 1905 in Bentonville, Arkansas. After leaving the University of Arkansas, she took a job as a salesperson at the Travel Air Corporation owned by Walter Beech. She moved to San Francisco for her job, and it was there she learned to fly. She received her pilot’s license in 1927. In 1928, the same year she met and married her husband (Herbert Thaden), she set the women’s world record for altitude: 20,260 feet. In 1929, she set a new woman’s endurance record of 22 hours, 3 minutes and 12 seconds. Her next notable accomplishment that year was to pass her test for a transport license and become the fourth female transport pilot in the US. If that wasn’t enough, she won the Women’s Air Derby flying from Santa Monica, California to Cleveland, Ohio (almost 2,500 miles), making her the first woman to win a national air race. (Before going any further, read this paragraph again. She got her pilot’s license in 1927 and this paragraph only goes through 1929!

In 1930, Louise and another female pilot, Amelia Earhart, were co-founders of the Ninety-Nine Club (The Ninety Nines, Inc.), which was intended to assist the efforts of women in aviation. This organization still exists today, serving as a valuable resource for current female pilots as well as future ones. Over the next few years, Louise set a number of records including those for speed, endurance, and altitude, too many to list here, but the details are available on the many web pages dedicated to her aviation feats. (e.g., The National Aviation Hall of Fame has a good one: http://nationalaviation.org/thaden-louise/)

For Louise, the pinnacle of her flying career was her 1936 victory in the Bendix Transcontinental Speed Dash. It was only the second year women were allowed to participate in the race, and she and her co-pilot Blanch Noyes were the first women to win. In addition, they set a new East-to-West speed record, astounding many because they were flying a single engine bi-plane rather than a racing plane or a newer twin engine. Many found their win even more astounding upon learning that their radio failed and they lost contact with the ground shortly after take-off. They made most of the journey using a compass and dead-reckoning for navigation – and yet still they won! Thaden also received the Harmon trophy for being the outstanding woman pilot in 1936.

It seems her victory in the Bendix Dash was finally enough. In 1938 she announced her retirement from racing. “A family is a lot more important than a so-called career. You can have a career but what have you got when you get through?” she told the Oakland Tribune, which noted that Louise had been “flying around the country for years and letting a nurse take care of Billy and Pasty.” (sic) The paper noted that “Miss Earhart won’t like it because Miss Earhart is a decided feminist. When Mrs. Thaden wanted to resign her job with the Bureau of Air Commerce a couple of years ago, Miss Earhart said, ‘You can’t do that. It’s not fair.’ ‘To whom,’ asked Mrs. Thaden. ‘To—to women in general,’ said Miss Earhart. That was just too bad Louise Thaden told herself this morning…”

Louise did retire from competition in 1938 to spend time with her family, particularly her children, who were seven and three years old at the time. It is worth noting, however, that while Louise retired from competition, she did not retire from flying. During WWII, she returned to work in the Civil Air Patrol, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. I admit that I have wondered if the reason for her decision to retire, i.e., her family, and her openly stated views on her career, which were widely disseminated in the media, for her relative obscurity now. Perhaps not, but she was a contemporary of Amelia Earhart, and she set records, won races, and didn’t crash her plane! She was also a modern career woman who dealt with work-life issues as many of us do – a husband, small children, and a demanding job (dangerous too). Shortly after retiring, Louise wrote her memoirs: High, Wide, and Frightened, which gives a detailed accounting of the early days of aviation from a female point of view.

gillpolack @ 2014-03-25T16:52:00

There are so many forms in my life right now, and so many labels. Some of them amuse me "I'm Staff - Academic, Other" on one, and "White - Other" on another. I would say that I should just be "Other" and be done, except I am perfectly majority in a whole bunch of respects.

My gender and sexuality is so much what people expect that I myself am expected to be married and have children: I get a lot of othering over not having done this. Sometimes it's just annoying, but quite often it results in a default second class citizenship, for people don't invite singletons past a certain age to their functions, and we all apparently hate children. I seldom talk about it, for that part of my life is more private than most and opens up a great deal of hurt.

This set of labels is less amusing and is something I face regularly at dinner parties and even at meetings. The labelling marches alongside one of my sources of greatest privilege with pitying looks and "There, there, dear, we're sure you're a nice person, really. I won't call you a spinster. You would have been, in the old days."

This set of labels I challenge strongly, and wield my doctorates like a machete and blast the sneer into oblivion with piles of history. Doesn't stop the label hurting, but it keeps me safe from the person who condescends to describe me to myself in tones that clearly say "loser at life." It's interesting how many reasons they find to stay away from me, on the rare occasion I lose my temper. In these cases, I lose my temper very calmly, you'll be pleased to know, and very effectively.

I so rarely get to choose my labels. The ones others ascribe to me seldom match who I am. Sometimes they almost do, but I still appear on NSW databases as "NESB" because anyone from minority religions was automatically assumed to be non-English speaking for many years, just as Jews were not-quite-white during the rule of White Australia. I'm "Mr" for some people, because they don't have a label for "Dr" on their mailing list but they do have a default setting that translates any "Dr" typed into the "Other" category as "Mr." This is why I'm no longer a member of the National Gallery. I love their work and liked having the membership a lot, but accepting it as "Mr Polack" was uncomfortable.

I still get much mirth from those who tell me "Your English is very good for someone of the Jewish persuasion."
Once I thanked someone for the compliment and said "Yes, especially given people of the Christian persuasion have so much greater aptitude for foreign languages."
"But I was born in Australia," she said.
"So was I. And so were my parents."
"But you've got an Israeli accent," she said.
"I have a Melbourne accent."

When I am PMT (as I am now), I will either get angry, or fight nonsense with nonsense. Sometimes I will do both. Mostly I will just bite my tongue. Labels that don't ever quite fit become somewhat wearisome. It's hard to fight. It's hard to be angry for one's self-definition whenever one is faced by a form, an idiot, or an idiot form.

Accurate labels are a luxury for me, the moment I get past the male/female binary label (I do fit on the male/female binary - I'm not happy that we expect people to code themselves on this binary, but I fit on it). Mostly I find the label on any list that describes me closer than the other options available. Thus I am "Other" on the census for religion in Australia, for Australia lost its Jewish option some years ago.

Some of the labels are quite perturbing. So few of them fit. Probably I'm an alien and just visiting this particular Earth from a similar but mildly different one, where adult single women are respected even when they don't have children, and where Jews are what they call themselves (and not "of the Mosaic persuasion") and my native English speaker status is confirmed, and I'm not "other" and "other" and "other."

While I live aslant, in this particular reality, I shall continue to write stories about being other, even if most people don't notice what I'm doing. It's my way of explaining that the labels aren't the person, I suspect. The labels are never the person. Some of us are just more aware of it than (dare I say it?) others.

gillpolack @ 2014-03-25T15:11:00

Things just get busier and busier. I say this twice a year, without fail. It's when the outside world says "nothing major coming up, let's up the ante" and so I have meetings and more meetings and I have a bit of teaching and I have events and I have deadlines galore. This year I have the added study, plus a couple more deadlines than usual. And of course, this year, I have little extra things like my left leg (which may be my left hip, which I will find out tomorrow).

For those of you keeping track, I'm in my equivalent to the run up to Christmas. Except that instead of putting up decorations, I empty the pantry, bit by bit, then stock it with different food. And I have a seder instead of Christmas dinner or lunch. About the same amount of work, I suspect, but it's so much at a different time of year that nothing around me makes it easier. This year, in fact, has conspired to make it impossible for me to go to Melbourne for Passover (because my mother's 80th birthday is a week and a bit before and I can't get there twice in a month), so I need to plan my own seder again. Which I have not really begun thinking about and I ought to. (By not-really-begun, I have the haggadah at the ready, and the afikoman prize, and everything else is just not done). It's days and days and days and days and days away, I tell you! And the WHM big event is first, and so's my Mum's birthday, and so's all my deadlines, and, yes, it is indeed one of the tow times of year.

I haven't done invitations for Canberra family for my seder yet, so if anyone has a vast desire to be Canberra family, just this once, I do take hints. Also bribes. By 'bribes' I mean that Canberra family are expected to participate fully: eating, drinking, bringing food, and so on. Only dispersing gifts is optional. By 'participate fully' I do not mean do something that is against your own religion, but I might mean doing things that go against commonsense or dignity. This would be more so if it were Purim or Chanukah, but there are some silly moments during Pesach, too. (If your LJ name is yasminke, then the offer comes with accommodation.)

And that was my break. I want to finish just one more task before dinner. I don't care which, but one of the big ones.

Women's History Month - guest post by Katrin Kania

Today's guest post is from an archaeologist, Dr Katrin Kania. I want to invent loads of vile things about her, but we're currently working on the Beast together and she shares my sense of humour and it would be a certain path to doom. Her main field is textiles, and she has a lovely blog and online shop and an even lovelier cat. She will be at LonCon3 in August. Introduce yourself to her and admit that I sent you. http://owlfish is the one who introduced us, in case you were wondering.

Gillian

Textile work, so the 19th century tells us, is women's work. So our modern age tells us, too. When I was in primary school, back in the 1980s, we already had co-ed classes called "Textilarbeit und Werken" (textile crafts and crafting - this is hard to translate). The textile part was, by all, considered a girl's thing... and the title itself implies that textile crafts are not "proper" crafts. Otherwise, they could just have called it "Werken". Or "Handarbeiten". Or whatever else.

The connection between textile crafts and women is so strong in our heads that Elizabeth Barber titled her famous book about ancient textile crafts "Women's Work". I confess that irks me - a lot. Because if you look back at history and try to look past that what seems obvious, it's not just women's work, and I think we are in danger of painting a faulty picture.

If we look at the Middle Ages, there's a very strong connection between spinning and women. It's so strong that females are sometimes still called "the distaff gender". Textile work is women's work. Spinning is the symbol of the active, "good-busy" woman (though it can even be used negatively in some circumstances, as with Noe's wife - you can read more about that in the first part of Holloway, Julia Bolton, Constance S. Wright, and Joan Bechtold. Equally in God's image: women in the Middle Ages. New York [u.a.]: Lang, 1990).

Weaving women are also depicted, both on a "proper" loom as on narrow wares. Mary is often shown as one of the temple virgins, spinning or weaving.

So textile work is really a feminine thing, right? I'd say no, not really.

There is evidence for men working in textiles - the guilds coming up in later medieval times, they are predominantly male, even those for textile workers. Knitting becomes a male-dominated guild in the 17th century, when knitting gets its first heyday. There are dyers' guilds, weavers' guilds, tailors' guilds - all male-dominated.

Now... if textile crafts were an exclusively female thing, done on the side, where would those guys have learned? And how would they have gotten the idea that it was a proper, guild-worthy job?

With the textile crafts, especially with spinning, we have the same find-the-minority-gender problem that often turns up in medieval history... only the other way around, this time. There are many, many topics where we might suspect that women had a bigger, more important, more prominent role in things than we can easily prove, and historians and gender-sensitive people try to find more and sometimes overlooked evidence to get a better, more accurate picture.

With textile crafts, this is turned on its head - we see women, predominantly so, and only rarely a man is shown doing that work. But does that mean it was truly this way? Or is there just a convention of showing women, and not men? Just like there are way less pictures of women doing blacksmith work, to just pick a random example? Were spinning men something maybe not ubiquitous, but frequent enough to not raise an eyebrow? Or were they the exception, and male participation started in earnest only after the step of yarn production?

I would dearly love to answer these questions. Personally, I think that much artistic convention went into the depiction of crafts, and that if we could take a Tardis back to the Middle Ages, we might be surprised. But no matter my personal suspicion, or yours - the question of men in textile work is one that should be kept in mind, as it helps us stay wary of gender conventions, then... and maybe also now.