I'm Not a Slave

I briefly thought that this post could be titled "I'm Free", but a mention of slavery is, I think, much more potent.

In the past few weeks, I've read so many stories about women's rights being challenged (all over the rock), that my anger hasn't decreased, and my allergy to stupidity [note to self: write a fake definition for the word "Moronitude"] has kept spiking up, and up, and up.

It’s really frightening to see what adult bullies will do in order to threaten, belittle, hurt and harass women. It makes me angry – angry in a way that yesterday, when tweeting about some anti-choice group bullying women in the UK, I said that the moment they arrive in my district, I’ll welcome them à la Vesuvius, Pompeii edition (and I bloody mean it).

Last week, I read the fantastic article from Laurie Penny: That's enough politeness – women need to rise up in anger (if you haven’t already read it, go!). I feel like women must be done being polite because the only thing the bullies will understand is not even women yelling for their rights to be respected, it’s a rolling pin to cuff them, and our boots connecting with their… knees. Did I mention that I’m angry?

Then, today, I caught this article from Linda Grant: Twitter's tales of sexism, and it made me wish to share three stories.

The first is odd and could be funny, if it weren’t so pathetic.

1998

Whilst reading for my PhD, I was invited to present a work that was connected to my work, and I was quite excited. I was invited to a small, but respected international symposium.

Things got barmy when my research advisor, a woman, told me and a fellow PhD student to “wear skirts”. You see, it was winter, and I was frozen all the time, so the skirt recommendation is something I didn’t even consider.

Let’s face it, if it had been spring, and even though I do prefer skirts, I might have decided to go to the symposium in trousers just because the blokes weren’t given any sartorial pseudo-piece of advice.

That idea that women must be in skirts, or dresses, is ridiculous and mediaeval (and that’s an insult to the Middle Ages!).

My fellow obeyed the order/suggestion. I think she may have caught a cold for her obedience.

It’s odd, but that’s it.

1995

My very first job was for my department in college. I was to help welcome students and archive old papers.

I don’t know why, but I… No, wait! I know why. I’d seen my single mother struggle all her life and I wanted to ease things up for me a bit, so… I’d filled in their bumph with “Mrs” for title (perfectly legal where I live, thanks to a ministerial decision that was made legal back in 1972!). So, married or not, I was “Mrs” for the administration… and for the Head of our department, who happened to be the President of our University, as well.

One quiet afternoon, my colleagues (a happy collection of “Miss”) and I were working in the main room, and we’d placed boxes of papers all over the area. The Head was a great man, a man who, if there were more women in the room than men, treated them as the “ruling” gender (not a thing you see every day!); yet (you saw it coming, didn’t you?), that great man spotted me on the other side of the room, hopped over several boxes in order to come shake hands with me, Mrs XYZ. He ignored my friends, and that was a bit shocking.

I’m really not pretty, so I know there was no ambiguity in his bizarre trek to a hand-shake, but he was only acknowledging the young gal whom he thought was married, and therefore of respectable status.

That was years ago, and I’m still stunned.

Fast forward a couple of years.

I’ve found a part-time job in a small university (where I repeated the “Mrs” trick, even though I was still unmarried).

They paid us every six months (it gave their accountant a bit of time to make profit with the money given by the Education Ministry), and I learnt to balance a budget and live on rice and pasta (incidentally, nothing has changed).

One day in late May, my boss asked to see me.

I met him in the so-called staff room (picture a small broom closet with a couple of chairs, that’s how small the place was). There, he told me that the Ministry was slashing the budgets and he had to make choices. Basically, he wouldn’t be able to renew my contract.

He then proceeded to tell me that the one temp contract he’d renew was the one of a male colleague because he was a breadwinner.

I looked at him, and even though I was profoundly flabbergasted, I said: “What am I, Christmas pudding? I’m my household’s sole breadwinner.”

He had the decency to blush and flinch, but I was nonetheless jobless because a boss, who didn’t know a thing about me, had assumed that I had a husband at home who was providing for me.

Sorry, I’m alone, and if I don’t work, I can lick the wallpaper, eat the cat or throw myself into the river.

I hate being treated as if I’m working for fun. I work to pay the rent, buy food, deal with expenses and various bills, and anyone who thinks, today, that women who are working do so for fun is sorely stuck in Fantasy-land!

We must fight for equality, and I’m ready to get my rolling pin cracking…

One Pompeii coming up……………………