Authors of History

Through this journey I have read and watched more feminist literature and documentaries than ever before. The more I read the more aware I become of the void of knowledge I have of female importance – current and historical. That there has been so much I didn’t know and still don’t.

My father in law loves reading and learning about world war 2. However he hates reading from the British point of view so he actively seeks out the German perspective or any other perspective. He believes that the ‘winners’ of wars get to tell the story their way and he wants to see things from the ‘real side’.

It’s an interesting point of view. The one aspect that he is completely correct about is how skewed our understanding of history is.

I remember a feminist friend of mine when I was little saying that she didn’t believe in history because it was his-story. At the time I thought she was over-reacting. (In my defence, I was young and didn’t know much history and I believed any strong statement was probably an overreaction.)

The more I learn now about influential women, the more I want to read but there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. I cannot foresee acquiring the knowledge I seek in this lifetime. But I think this is because I am trying to fill the void of female influence in history. So many powerful men! Where are the women in those stories? They can’t all just be wives and prostitutes, can they?

Imagine the power you must feel as a man, being raised to see that your gender can tear down cities, create miracles, change religions and god, win wars, abolish slavery and so much more!!! Wow! Just think of the things you can accomplish with your life! Meanwhile women get to be a nurse or a Queen who got beheaded because she didn’t give birth to a boy. Wow, what amazing prospects we have…

Like it or not, these are the subliminal messages, these are the inferences that our education and common history present. The same can be said of ‘black history month’ – it’s a month and it’s the only time where black history is represented, if at all! But the history books are not being rewritten. Movies and tv may be slowly but surely showing some diversity and positive representation but the very foundation – our history – is not.

Kate Pankhurst, from the Pankhurst legacy, has created some picture books for kids showing women who were influential. I picked them up the other day as I figured that they would be the first step towards making sure that the history my kids learn is balanced and equal. There are great books out there at the moment and I intend on collecting all of them. I already have too many books – this way I can claim good reason for adding more!

So Happy Women’s Day 2019; let’s make sure the history we create shows our influence and power.

Female Representation

Some fool, who dislikes all the female representation in Star Wars- The Last Jedi, has apparently made a cut of the movie taking out all the female characters in order to de-feminise the movie! This cut of the movie was 46mins long. They felt that this movie had a feminist agenda and thus their project proved their point. Honestly, all I can think is that means that 1hour and 50mins of the movie had women in it; strong, important, diverse, decision-making, non-romantic women as starring roles. That’s impressive.

The sad issue that this fool highlights is that this movie stands out due to the positive female representation. I’m sure we’re all aware that this is not the norm. If we struggle to represent half of our species on screen, how are we going to fully represent the diversity of it?

Growing up I used to detest most female characters portrayed in movies. In my young mind they were scared, pathetic maidens who needed rescuing or were mean competitive ‘bitches’. Most of them had to be tied to a man’s downfall or their romantic interest; promoting a mans trajectory made absolutely no sense to me. Even Princess Leia had to be in a love triangle and constantly supervised by men, despite her prominent role within the rebel alliance and obviously being capable. There were exceptions. Some my mum felt she had to explain to me, but if you have to explain why she’s not so bad, the message is too subtle! (E.g. little mermaid).

Fast forward 30 years and ‘Moana’ has been created. A strong, powerful, positive and determined young woman. Through and through. Even in her darkest and hardest moments, she never feels sorry for herself, has a tantrum or blames someone else. She inspires the male characters. If you have no reason to watch animated kids movies, do yourself a favour watch it during your next rainy Sunday. You will thank me.

There are many more examples of strong women in film now. It makes such a difference to how women are expected to behave, to their role in society and what to expect of themselves. It all comes down to representation but also the shift in society that has come about recently. The new value of women as equals.

But for every strong or representative female on screen there are hundreds of pathetic roles too. How do we change that? I read somewhere that we should write to the broadcasters and challenge them. Maybe. Simply not watching the movie or tv show doesn’t seem enough. In the social media age, the new letter is a deriding tweet or post, isn’t it? It interests me that the iconic suffragette slogan ‘deeds not words’, was a reaction to too many people saying the right thing but not doing it. Now, we all need to say the right thing with the same voice for deeds to happen and times to change.

So let’s not keep quiet anymore- if you see an objectified, sexualised, marginalised character, let’s call them out! Tweet, post or whatever, just let others know that it’s not ok! Where are the women in your movie? Why does that woman have to be naked when the man doesn’t? Highlight it so others begin to notice because this norm we have been living in is no longer good enough.

Conversely, tweet and celebrate the strong, positive, bigger-than-size-0, interesting female leads on TV and in movies! The comments and sales speak to the people who make these shows, so lets keep the trajectory going with our positive statements, which are just as strong as our complaints.

If I had the technological know-how I would make cuts of the top 10 grossing movies of all time, just to counteract that fool. I would keep all the bits with women in them and the only reason that any of my movies would be more than 30mins long is due to Black Panther.

So I guess all the morons out there who feel uncomfortable watching women on screen, who are more powerful and determined than they are, simply need to find another way to spend their time than playing with movies. And to all the morons out there making movies: unless there’s a 50% representation of women, your movie is purely a future-damaging sexist piece of data.

Representation

Representation is a reoccurring theme in my week. Being a British white female, this hadn’t been a personal issue or was even in my sphere of awareness really when growing up.

The first time I was made explicitly aware was when my first class had been selected to be on the cover photo of some educational document and the head teacher asked me to “Make sure I picked a ‘mixture’ of children”. Now to be fair this was a completely multi-cultural multi-faith mainstream London school with no ethnic majority and there was only one white British child in my class. So, honestly no matter who I picked it was going to ‘be a mixture’. It would have been significantly harder to purposefully pick a group that looked the same. But this was the first time I had selected children based on their appearance and it felt uncomfortable.

What I have learnt since about representation is that choosing that ‘mixture’ was a really important message for every child that saw that front cover. I was naive to think that these images do not have an impact and that making that decision was in some way wrong. I guess coming from my well-represented situation, I had never considered the responsibility of those behind the camera to ensure everyone has a voice and a familiar face to represent them. I found that exact publication recently and those memories flooded back of unity and harmony within a diverse community – well, as much as any group of kids anyway!

Now I live in the middle of the countryside where there is very little diversity, which I still find very unsettling. I feel the need to ensure my children remain as colour-blind as they were born. We seek out opportunities to entrench and celebrate diversity as often as we can. However, what can a non-famous white female do about representation? How do you promote equality on this sphere? Especially without making people or things tokenistic.

The actions I can take seem simplistic and small: ensuring my children see all different people within the tv shows they watch, we celebrate Diwali and Chinese New Year as well as Christmas, the books we buy have a spectrum of hero’s. We recently bought the picture book of ‘Long walk to freedom’ by Nelson Mandela to highlight the struggle faced in South Africa. Our kids loved the story and spot pictures of Nelson (first name terms now!) everywhere. There were some really amazing observations and discussions with our small children about this.

I know we don’t need to suffer or be subjugated to stand up for what is right, but how do you make people aware and intolerant of the imbalance represented without highlighting ethnicity tokenistically?

The quota system in South African sports has been a source of contention for a long time. The strongest of people refusing selection if they felt it was due to the colour of their skin, not based purely on talent. But the system is there for a very good reason. By ensuring that the best of the best who are representing the country, represent the whole country, in theory that should encourage schools and colleges to do the same. Hopefully making the representation, or ‘mixture’ as I was told, explicit leads to a more natural and implicit representation in the future.

Argentina v South Africa - The Rugby Championship

So what can I do, especially in a non-diverse community, to develop an entrenched sense of equality?

Within my work this week I was looking into Dyslexia awareness week through the British Dyslexia Association to find out what the themes are that we could celebrate this year. As I was sending out an email with my expectations for the week to my colleagues, I realised it had taken a tone of justification. As if I should be justifying why the teachers should use their time to do this.

It then occurred to me that this was also about representation. Even if it’s only for one week a year that dyslexia is highlighted and understood, the knock-on effect for children’s self-esteem and self-worth, their view of themselves as a learner and their place in the world could be immense. (So I rewrote the email and everyone is on board!)

If one week of heightened awareness could have this impact, imagine the impact of purposefully ensuring diversity in the literature they read, in the heroes we present and the way we speak about others could have!

Maybe there is more I could do and I hope the opportunity arises, but for now I will continue to purposefully promote equality in diversity in all the little ways I can.

Links

Facebook tells me that one year ago, I posted this link! Nice coincidence, really but he explains the current situation more powerfully than I can: https://m.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10154616232846939/ There is the full version on Youtube too.

Here’s a link for those of you in education: https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/

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