1984
I never wanted anybody from history at my fantasy dinner party. I wanted Charlie Brooker, Johann Hari, Caitlin Moran. But after this happened – and I don’t know much about incitement laws, but as I understand it these two men were jailed because the police didn’t like something they said on the internet – I want George Orwell. I really, really want to meet George Orwell. I want to ask him how on earth he saw it coming so far in a advance while the rest of it walk blindly into it even as we live through it.
We click “like” here, there and everywhere, we swear allegiance to this and that, and much of it is way more public than we ever stop to think about. And most of the time it doesn’t matter. Until one day it does.
I have always written about the very personal. I started off quite hidden, pseudonyms, no pictures. Then slowly it grew as I grew. Here, on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, elsewehere, more and more of my life out in the public domain. I put it there. To those of us who grew up with the internet (from our teens at least) it feels perfectly normal. It started with a few photos, a few posts, but now years have passed and so much of it is still there. It was ok when it was just what I had been up to lately, but now it is so much of what I’ve been thinking, feeling and doing for years. The trouble with the internet is that it doesn’t self-destruct. Blog posts don’t fade like memories, more’s the pity.
I take hundreds of photos and they feel wasted left unpublished. But why? Do we really want this, or have we walked into it, unthinking, just because it is there? I don’t want to raise my children to believe that the value of what they create is what others, maybe even strangers, think of it. I love the way the internet enables sharing, but I am afraid of losing something fundamental, the sense that some things are just as valuable, more so even, if we keep them to ourselves. Things mean more to me when I know you chose to share them with me, not whomever is looking.
This doesn’t apply to everything for me, far from it. But I write about the very personal. I write about it alongside pictures of my growing family. And slowly I feel more and more exposed and wonder why I do that in such a public domain. Becoming a blogger was one of the best things I ever did. I learnt to write regularly, and I made some real connections, proper good friends. But increasingly I wonder why I hit publish. I keep thinking about changing my strapline, that “on marriage and motherhood” should read simply “for posterity”. Because I still love writing this thing, I do it to process my thoughts, to keep a record for myself and for my babies, but I just can’t remember any more why I put it on the internet.
I need to think about my family, about my future, both professional and personal. I just need to take some time to think about what I want to share, and with whom. So I’m going offline for a little while, at least from this more public domain. If you want to contact me in the meantime, you can email me, writesubrosa@gmail.com. That’s where I’ll be, writing sub rosa.
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How To Be a Woman
Growing up in the nineties, with a sister seven years my senior, what I remember is grunge. (I remember my mother commenting, sometime in the late nineties, how nice it was that dresses were finally coming back into fashion, that ‘pretty’ was ok again.)
Slowly but surely, fashion changed. Chunky heels gave way to stilettos, biker boots to pointy toes. Everything got tighter and shorter and – and I say this with full awareness of what a loaded term it is – sluttier. But more than that, everything got gradually but definitely more perfect-looking. Perfectly-shaped eyebrows, perfectly-coiffed, big, wavy hair, perfectly toned bodies, airbrushed faces, spray tans. Mainstream fashion was all about looking your absolute most perfectly beautiful, sexy self. No political statement. No creativity. No self-expression. No margin for error, or having slept late, or not really giving a shit.
Meanwhile (but far from unrelated of course) porn culture pervades our society. Lads mags appear. Big Brother kick-starts a new crop and then an ever faster turnover over Z-list celebrities, famous for five minutes, many of them spending at least three of those stripping off. Naked women are everywhere, in a way they absolutely were not when I was a child. Naked, perfectly-coiffed, perfectly made-up, porno-posed women. I am pushing my two-year old charge home after dropping her brother at school some time in the early noughties when she exitedly points at the front of the Daily Sport (a British tabloid newspaper specialising in celebrity news and softcore pornography), on display at her eye level, and shouts “Barbie!”
I am angry. No one else appears to be angry. (I am also young and, although not particularly impressionable, as keen as the next girl to be regarded as both beautiful and sexy. I develop a large collection of four-inch heels and live in a succession of pairs of totally impractical little black boots with stiletto heels. I spend hours getting ready to go out on a Saturday night. No grunge for me, thank you very much. And nothing wrong with that.)
Occasionally I have a conversation where the word feminist comes up and every time I feel a little bit angrier. I don’t feel like I’m suffering any of the big feminist issues – the gender pay gap, domestic abuse, female circumcision – but the rude, dismissive comments and ridiculous expectation that I look and behave in a way that is ten times more perfect than any man I encounter is enough to make me, deep down, really angry. I notice how a close-ish male friend jokingly calls me a bra-burner whenever I get serious about any issue relating to women. He thinks it’s a joke. I hope it’s just because he doesn’t really like talking about anything too serious.
I read The Bitch In The House. By the time I finish it, I am barely talking to my boyfriend, who has done absolutely nothing wrong. What annoys me most is the women who decide they are not feminists. I wonder how they can possibly feel they have that luxury. I conclude they are simply not thinking it through properly.
I get married. I decide, after thinking long and hard, to change my name. I will, however, continue to use the title Ms. I am angry about how difficult people find this. Honestly, I am angry with every woman who calls herself either Miss or Mrs. I am too angry to give a shit about their personal preference, I feel that each one of them is holding back the revolution. I feel that every one of them is holding me back.
And then I have a daughter. I am delighted to have a daughter, bot because I want a little doll but because I want a female leader. I find other women who have daughters and constantly refer to them as princesses utterly unbearable. I take deep breaths when heavily-gendered toys are gifted to my daughter and do my best to redress the balance with purchases of my own. I make gentle comments, with a smile, whenever anyone makes a stupid, sexist comment to my poor, barely-born offspring.
My ex-boss ignores my phone-calls and emails while making me redundant while I am on maternity leave, knowing I have a young baby, a self-employed husband and a mortgage to pay. I am positive she would not treat me like this if I were a man. I need the redundancy money, so I take advice and behave impeccably.
And then I am subjected, for the first time in my life, to a serious, unmistakable incidence of sexism. Even now, the women present deny that it is sexism and blame me. I am very, very angry. I wonder if feminism is dead.
But feminism is not dead. My best friend and my little sister both become student midwives and seem daily to take a greater interest in women’s issues. My online community is interested in feminism, and the big questions. And now we have Reclaiming Wife.
And then, out of nowhere, feminism is back in the news again. People are talking about rape – not making jokes about it, actually talking about it. The SlutWalks start. Hang on a minute, women are getting angry? Women are saying “no, this is not ok”? I have been waiting almost as long as I can remember for this.
And then I hear that sharp, insightful, funny Caitlin Moran, my favourite tweeter, is about to publish a book about feminism, and it’s getting loads of attention. People are interested in feminism?
I pre-order the book, pick it up from the post office on a Saturday morning and devour it in under twenty-four hours. Now, bear in mind that I have a 21-month-old daughter and have read approximately three books since she was born. The publisher has categorised it humour/feminism. “How’s the book?” my husband asks, knowing how excited I have been to read it. “Humour stroke feminism?” I reply, “It’s the best book EVER.” (He is now reading it himself and keeps waking me up as I fall asleep at night, laughing at her jokes.)
Moran has me from “big family in a council house somewhere boring” (my childhood) but she goes on to make her way through just about every topic I could happy wile away an evening discussing (read: ranting about) with a good girlfriend: menstruation, body hair, names for body parts, calling oneself a feminist, underwear, body issues, sexism, love, lap-dancing, weddings, marriage, fashion, having children (or not), role models, abortion, cosmetic surgery. And on every topic she is funny and clever and real. Moran says that we need to make feminism as exciting as rock and roll, and then she does it. I love this book.
I have now experienced some proper, life-changing sexism. However, before that happened I was already angry. I knew that stupid little throwaway comments really mattered. Moran is the one to explain it:
“In the ‘Broken Windows’ theory, if a single broken window on an empty building is ignored, and not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may break into the building, and light fires, or become squatters.
Similarly, if we live in a climate where female pubic hair is considered distasteful, or famous and powerful women are constantly pilloried for being too fat or too thin, or badly dressed, then, eventually, people start breaking into women and lighting fires in them.”
One issue Moran doesn’t cover in the book is the value our society places on childcare, which is still mostly done by women for no or very low remuneration. She doesn’t go into her own experience here (as she does on every other topic), we don’t know how she and her husband have managed as a working parents. She talks at length about how you can be a feminist and employ a cleaner (the converse of which I personally have never heard suggested) but she doesn’t utter a word about whether she employs a nanny or what childcare she uses, and how she feels about it. I thought this was a shame because whether/when to go back to work, who should look after the children, and how to feel valued in any/all of those roles as an equal member of society is surely one of the biggest current feminist issues for women with young children.
Moran doesn’t offer a lot of solutions, beyond a) laughing in the face of sexism and b) calling out sexist behaviour as incredibly rude, but I don’t think she needs to. She is doing enough but just saying “hang on a second, why are we putting up with this?”, a very simple message, which I for one think has been a long time coming.
Read it. And if you know a teenage girl, please pass her a copy too.
Welcome to the 21st century, ladies
Late last year, when setting up my new work pension scheme:
Financial advisor, filling in form: So, it’s ‘Miss Catherine Secret…’
CS: Oh, no, I’ve changed my name. I just got married.
FA: Oh, congratulations. What’s your married name then?
CS: Subrosa.
FA: Right, ‘Mrs Catherine…’
CS: Oh no, I’m a Ms actually.
FA, crossing out Mrs and writing Ms, but sounding confused: Ok…
CS: Yeah, I just don’t think my marital status is anyone’s business, really, so I use Ms.
—–
On Wednesday, when finally getting around to changing my name with a mail order company:
From: Cate Subrosa
To: Mail Order Company
Hi,
Please change my name from MISS CATHERINE SECRET to MS CATHERINE SUBROSA.
Many thanks,
Catherine
From: Mail Order Company
To: Cate Subrosa
Dear Miss Secret,
Thank you for your email.
To enable us to assist with your request, could you please provide us with the
following information, this is for security purposes:-
Forename and Surname
Full Postal Address and Telephone Number
Date Of Birth
Can you also advise the reason for your change of name.
Kind regards
Customer Care Advisor
From: Cate Subrosa
To: Mail Order Company
Hi Customer Care Advisor,
Previous name: Miss Catherine Secret
New name: Ms Catherine Subrosa
Address: xxxxx
Phone number: xxxxx
DOB: xxxxx
Reason for change: Marriage
Many thanks,
Catherine
From: Mail Order Company
To: Cate Subrosa
Dear Mrs Subrosa
We congratulate you on your recent marriage.
We have amended your details. Please allow 24 hours for our system to update.
Please be advised that a proportion of our promotional mail is pre-selected,
which may result in promotional mail going with your previous name during
the next 12 weeks.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Kind regards
Customer Care Advisor
From: Cate Subrosa
To: Mail Order Company
Hi Customer Care Advisor,
Thank you very much. Please note, however, my request of the use of the title MS.
Many thanks,
Catherine
—–
On arriving home from work this evening, I received a letter addressed to Mrs C Subrosa, from the financial advisor, who obviously decided when entering my details into his computer to ignore his own correction, or perhaps just to ignore my request, and use the title he thought most appropriate.
Now I could write a full post about why all women should call themselves Ms, because you shouldn’t be able to tell a woman’s marital status from her title any more than you can a man’s, but as Meg pointed out the other day, it doesn’t really matter what anyone (myself included) thinks you should call yourself. It matters most that others honour your wishes to be called by the title you consider most appropriate for yourself. It’s a question of respect.
But ladies, seriously, at least consider using Ms for me, will you? Because this archaic, sexist system is only going to become obsolete if we insist on changing it ourselves.
Single, married, divorced; taking your husband’s name or keeping your maiden name: your marital status is no more a prospective employer, doctor, or any other stranger’s business than that of your husband or brother.
In the words of Eve Kay,
“Miss and Mrs are marks of the old world, reminders of women’s second-class status as wives-to-be (Miss) or simply wives (Mrs). If you are a woman who doesn’t use Ms – particularly a woman under 30 who has never even thought of it – then ponder this: how do you want to present yourself to the world? Are you an appendage or an appendage-in-waiting? Don’t be branded and marked by old-world convention. Let’s kick against those fools at companies such as Atlantic Data. Let’s put two fingers up to employers and bureaucrats who want to define us by our marital status. Choose Miss and you are condemned to childish immaturity. Choose Mrs and be condemned as some guy’s chattel. Choose Ms and you become an adult woman in charge of your whole life.”
Now we just have to work out how to make sure “those fools” honour our wishes.
