Butting Out of Britain's Fertility

Fortunately, most people in my life concur with what my physical health and practical circumstances tell me: I shouldn't reproduce. Well, nobody has ever told me I shouldn't, but nobody has told me I should. Okay, so two people did; one is my Gran who has dementia and has forgotten a great deal about me and the other was a family friend who suggested that pregnancy hormones could kick-start a significant improvement in my health (and if that's not worth a gamble, what is?). Point is, while many women in their early thirties find themselves subject to hints, warnings and occasionally national campaigns, I've got out of that.

An unwell and unhappy looking woman with
a poorly-placed grey wig and a pregnant belly.

I have feelings about this. They're complicated, but entirely survivable and it does mean that I often find myself thinking, "It's okay - they don't mean me."

On the same day we were presented with this fabulous infographic about the dangers of pregnancy to teenage girls across the globe, we saw this photograph of TV presenter Kate Garraway, who is neither pregnant nor 70 and had to be made-up to look like someone who is pregnant, 70 and particularly unwell, because in real life, our pregnant 70 year olds actually look a lot healthier than that. They're blooming, in fact. Or they don't exist. It's one of those, anyway.

The Get Britain Fertile campaign, run by a cosmetics company, seeks to highlight the fact that women become utterly grotesque as they age, lose their youthful good looks and no longer get any TV work - statistically, at 46, it's not only Kate Garraway's "fertility door" that's slamming shut. Getting pregnant can also damage your career chances, and while only 18% of TV presenters over 50 are women, absolutely none of them are pregnant.

I'm fed up with the idea that individual women have a completely free choice about whether to reproduce. I'm also fed up with the fact any of us should be judged, wholesale, for choices which are not entirely ours and aren't anyone else's business.

First off, and this may come as a great shock to commentators and anyone else who has ever pressured or disapproved of a woman about her reproductive choices, but human reproduction requires the fusion of a male and female gamete. There's no way round this - that's just how it must be done. Getting pregnant at any age is not a matter of placing a couple of gametes in close proximity and hoping for the best; even at peak fertility, a cis heterosexual couple will take an average of a year to conceive. Not that women can't get pregnant on the single occasion the condom splits - it happens, but it's rare.

Most women who want to have children want to have them with a partner (though not always a man, or a man who can be a father). Regardless of gender, this makes the decision to become a parent almost always a joint venture, depending not only on two people's mutual desires, but both parties feeling ready, able and not having other important things to do with their life at that particular moment. A woman who makes a unilateral decision to try for a baby within a relationship is abusive, potentially criminal depending on her methods and is unlikely to make a good mother. Certainly she compromises the other parties' chances of parenting to their best ability, since they weren't asked.

A single woman who wants children may be prepared to compromise on the partner issue, but her options are incredibly fraught. If she's wealthy, she can afford IVF and to make up the added expenses of being a single parent, otherwise the obvious method - having regular sex with a man or men who she's not partnered to - isn't going to work any faster, is potentially emotionally complicated for all concerned and is not at all socially acceptable. Single motherhood is still stigmatised, and someone seen to choose this status from the outset is likely to be judged as extremely selfish.

Selfish is a word that comes up a great deal when it comes to women and our made-up choices.

After all, women who have children very young are seen as selfish. They have not established themselves, they may be fresh from education without work experiences or wealth, and their relationships will be seen as fragile and untested (You can't expect a young man to have the maturity to be a parent!). There's the general perception that a woman who has children in her late teens or very early twenties is likely to be or become a single unemployed mother reliant on state help. Selfish.

Women who have children in their late thirties or forties are seen as selfish, because they're fertility is dwindling (so in other words, they're selfish for wanting something they have diminishing chances of getting). Rates of Down Syndrome increase (I mean, there's 750 babies born with Down Syndrome in the UK each year - it's practically pandemic). Then there's weird and stupid arguments like

• If you have a baby in your forties, your child may be teased because their mother looks different to some of the other younger mothers. It would be better not to have children at all, than to have children who might be teased because of their or their parents' physical appearance. 
• If you have a baby in your forties, you have more chance of becoming disabled before your child is an adult. Anyone who can't guarantee their physical capacity to play football with any potential grandchildren they may or may not have, thirty or forty years from now, should not reproduce.
• If you have a baby in your forties, you'll have been reduced to a strict lifestyle of wearing cardigans all year round, listening to classical music and visiting garden centers by the time your children are teenagers. What teenagers need is cool Belieber parents who want to swap clothes, attend the same parties and snog the same boys as they do.

Selfish, selfish, selfish. 

Even women who try for a baby at the right time (I guess the window between twenty-five and thirty-five, coincidentally, when most women have their children) can't get it right. Are you married?  Are you solvent? Can you afford to stop working? Can you afford appropriate childcare if you carry on working?  Not that (a) many mothers or parents generally have any choice whether they work while their children are small - most either can't afford to, or can't afford not to. Nor that (b) having enough money to choose will get you off the hook. Staying at home, idling about and living off your partner's sweat is tremendously selfish. It is only equaled by farming your children out to strangers or encumbered relatives while pursuing your own selfish career goals (goals such as, bringing in enough money to keep a roof over your family's head). 

Meanwhile, women who don't try to have children are selfish.  I've never really understood this.  Even if someone chooses to avoid pregnancy because they really love their white suede sofa and don't want to see it stained, they're not going to hurt anybody.  More often, people choose not to have children for very sound conscientious reasons, chiefly because in their particular circumstances their lives would be less happy if they had children.

Apparently it's selfish because, if we require care in old age, childless people will be looked after by others who they didn't personally bring into the world. It's selfish because childless people enjoy uninterrupted sleep and don't really know what love is. It's selfish because - despite the haphazard mess that is human fertility - it's somehow going against nature.

See this young woman, who is enjoying her life too much as it is (her real problem is difficulty communicating with her husband, but that's entirely glossed over). "I know I'm selfish," she writes to Mariella Frostrup (in her capacity as Worst Agony Aunt Ever) and Frostrup concurs:

I'm anxious about the absence of profundity in your decision-making. You give me no indication of the "things you love", but they appear to centre on disposable income. Deciding whether or not to have kids is, happily, your prerogative. But to treat it so lightly, to squander the extraordinary gift women alone have been given, because you're enjoying your present "lifestyle" seems a hollow victory for those aforementioned campaigners for women's dignity and rights.

I suppose that's one up from drawing a picture of a particularly ugly woman and saying, "This could be you! Somehow! If a dramatic make-up artist really went to town on you!"

Then there's folks who want children, or are ambivalent, but simply don't have the option. There's medical things - sometimes a very slight, mysterious and unseen obstacle that all the reproductive tech in the world can't fix, other times major issues like chronic illness or major injury. But there's also myriad legitimate reasons that folks who could potentially reproduce and would like to feel that that's just not possible - that to do so, would be utterly wrong.

There is no big fertility crisis in the UK just now. The population is increasing. Globally, population growth has to slow down for the quality of life of our species to continue to rise. What we need to fight for is for better sexual and reproductive health for everyone, to learn to respect one another's choices whilst also respecting the limits of personal choice and to recognise that reproduction is not something that women ever do alone.

Now go and read two much better posts: Infertility, patriarchy, profit and me or "KERCHING!" - Infertility and woman blaming, woman shaming, woman controlling. by Karen Ingala Smith and on a lighter, but not insincere not, Diane Shipley's What I think about when I think about thinking about thinking about having children.

H-A-P-P-Y

My Gran was a very unhappy and unpleasant character.  I think she suffered from untreated depression for most of her life, she had no friends to speak of, and had dramatic fallings out with, over time, almost every member of her vast family. As she became older and more infirm, she fell further in on herself, paranoid and suspicious of everyone she encountered, until she developed dementia and lost the ability to hold a grudge. Now my Gran is more cheerful than I can ever remember her being. When the nursing home took photos for a newsletter, Gran was the single smiling face amid the crowd of bewildered residents. Occasionally, Gran's old suspicious self seeps through, but only briefly, before she loses her thread.

Mum was helping Gran write a card out to Stephen and I, spelling out our names.

"I know h," she said, "as in H-A-P-P-Y."

And so somehow, we received a card addressed

To Deborahappy and Stephappy.

The card was because last Thursday, we performed the legal part of our marriage. The wedding is in July and the plan was to do the Registry Office bit very quietly indeed. We thought it was only fair to let our folks come along if they wanted, and soon enough there were eleven people there. But it was nice. It was quiet by most people's standards, and getting underway at four o'clock in the afternoon (Remember four o'clock last Thursday? It was about then that the blizzard arrived.) it wasn't a long day.

I couldn't pronounce matrimony - I didn't pronounce matrimony, so there's the possibility that legally, Stephen and I have another kind of legal contract altogether - possibly something only covered by Klingon Law. Sophie is practising her vocal skills at the moment, and gave a running commentary like a less articulate Huw Edwards (although there were times even during the Royal Wedding where "Bla bla bla bla bla." would have made perfect sense).  Both these things worked in our favour, because it all felt quite strange and giggleless silence would have made everything rather tense.

Suzi the toy poodle - the face of a very small white fluffy dog.

Later that evening, I discovered that, thanks to the considerable help of a certain gherkin fan, I won my benefits appeal.  And the next day, a tiny white poodle came into season.  This was significant because she lives with stud dogs, her owner was away and Stephen's parents had offered to take care of her if this occurred.

Dogs teach us something about hierarchy and nature. Ajax is the oldest, largest and most intelligent dog, and the one aggressive in play; he'll growl, bear his teeth, pounce and gently nip at you.  He'll bound after pigeons in the garden (but will slow right up if they don't fly away). He's very attached to us all - when Stephen and I were away and sent a postcard home, he took it for himself and wouldn't let it go - but he's not very good at doing what he's told. Yet somehow, he is at the bottom of the pack, and even Suzi, size and temperament of a rabbit, seems to have inserted herself above him; she goes first, he gets out of her way.

Ajax and I, for a sense of scale: A black fluffy dog sits on the
back of a sofa behind me (a white woman with brown hair).
He is small, but much bigger than the white dog.

Few animals are hierarchical in the same way dogs are, and people certainly aren't.  But people are the only ones who ever argue that there's any obvious natural system (smarts, strength, seniority etc.) that determines who should be in charge. They ought to observe toy poodles.

Anyway, all in all, life is treating us very well.  We're planning the wedding for the summer, we're watching the skies for the possibility that there might be a spring at some point between now and then and I'm writing lots and lots and lots (at least, by my standards, which means I'm getting on with my work, at a slow but steady pace).

32

Today I am thirty two, which is a happy number.  When I said last year was the happiest of my life, I meant it sincerely. And when I say that 2012 has been even better than that, it really has.

So much has happened this year that I'm in danger of sounding like one of those awful smug Round-Robin Christmas Letters (the family recently received one with the line "According to my calendar, I didn't do anything in September - but I expect I was simply too busy to write it down!"). But I am proud of what a full life I have now, and memories of arriving at so many birthdays with a sense of disappointment, shame and the desperate hope that next year would be better, make me want to celebrate the fact that I now enjoy my birthday and only hope that next year will be half as good as this one.

Of course, this year's not been plain sailing; my health is more stable than it used to be, but there have still been several periods when I've been stuck in bed all the time. Stephen's health has been up and down, there's been stress, serious illness and death in the extended family, and earlier in the year we lost a special family friend.  However, today is all about the good stuff.

My thirty-second year in bullet points (but no particular order):

Stephen, a beautiful white man with dark wavy
hair and glasses, behind a birthday cake with
number-shaped candles reading "30".

• Between us, Stephen, my sister and I organised a surprise party for my Dad's 60th birthday - which remained a surprise until about twenty minutes before the event. This was a massive undertaking, negotiating with my mother, organising food and drink and smuggling a gazebo in the boot of Dad's car under the pretense that the weight was just books and clothes. I also made a great deal of bunting in the early spring, not realising that, with the various events in the summer, I would have been able to buy bunting for a few quid a mile. 

• Stephen himself turned 30 in May. That was a fantastic day. 

• Stephen had his graduation in March. We traveled into the centre of London (the first time in seven years for me) and attended the graduation at the Barbican. 

• We made our first music video, which went viral and became the ukelele precursor to (and possibly the inspiration for) Gangnam Style.

(Click CC button for closed captions.)

• I entered a painting into the National Portrait Competition. That was exciting. I dragged Stephen and Mike to Shoreditch as a detour on our way to Stephen's graduation and about a month later, Mum went on a railway odyssey to pick it up again.  As expected, nothing came of it - the winner was very well deserved - but it was a very positive and interesting experience. 

• I didn't do a great deal of painting this year, but I did paint an A1 (about 600x800mm) portrait of Dad for his birthday. It's very tricky to paint on a canvas that size without an easel (I have a suitable easel, but I didn't have it with me). It's also fairly tricking to move such a painting and its frame around without a person you live with noticing. Fortunately, he's not very observant.

• I made cards and things as I always do, but my favourite artsy things this year was designing a plate for Alex. I bought Sophie a melamine plate with a lion on for Christmas and decided to look for something similar, but a bit more grown-up for Alex. I couldn't find anything I liked even slightly so with Stephen's help, I got a plate made from a design I had drawn on paper and coloured in on the computer.

• The plate was partly inspired by the fact that this year, one of us got the best diagnoses ever.  Find physical impairment emasculating? Fed up with bodily difference being considered a sign of weakness? Try Viking Disease! 

• Stephen's photography was featured in an exhibition at Guildford Cathedral. He exhibited two photographs and somehow managed to sell three.

• Another week of photos, and I will have completed a Project 365 (or 366 - I did get in a muddle and I do appear to have lost a day somehow).  You can tell the parts of the year when I was unwell, as I have taken one or two hundred momentously boring photos. 

• We also made an incredibly realistic alpaca puppet. Yes, that is a puppet. No, honestly - if you look really carefully, you can see the strings.

• The low point of the year was, after having had surgery to remove a tumour on his kidney, Stephen's uncle became very seriously ill. For several weeks, we were almost certain that he was going to die, with one crisis after another - internal bleeding, accumulating gasses and MRSA - until he finally turned a corner. And now, despite the fact he still has what amounts to an open wound on his belly, the uncle is fit as a fiddle and has been recently driving round France. Meanwhile, so much of the tissue of his kidney died that it seems very unlikely that the cancer will come back.  

• Stephen invented and constructed the PlyPi, Raspberry Pi Case which has been featured in all manner of geeky places.

• In July, Stephen and I got engaged. We've set a date for next summer and we've talked about it a lot, but to be perfectly honest, that's just about as far as we've got.

Sophie - A pale-skinned baby with dark eyes and a wide mouth
looks up and smiles. 

• Our niece Sophie was born. We went down to the New Forest to meet her, which was a huge day but a really special one. Sophie visited us in Surrey in November. She is an incredibly smiley baby, and my sister's family seem extremely happy.

• I didn't expect to be affected by the Jubilee in any way, shape or form. As it was, the Sunday of the Jubilee weekend with Stephen's Monarchist family was a very special day, I wore my tiara, we violently spatchcocked and barbequed a whole chicken and then had hysterics over the BBC coverage of the Jubilee Flotilla (this coverage was later criticised, but it was as if Brass Eye had done it, so it was great). We fell asleep at some point and woke up to see the chamber choir singing in the rain. Now that's what I call pluck. 

A Union Flag flies amid the greenery.

We ended up watching more sport over a two week period than I have in the last twenty years. I really enjoyed the Olympics, although I felt much less positive about the Paralympics.

• I entered my first novel into a competition to have it read over and assessed by a literary consultancy. It won the free read, and I got such a lovely flattering e-mail about the sample chapters that I printed it off and stuck it to the notice board. I received the report last week and it was really positive - there were weaknesses I knew about, and my reader pretty much spelled out what I needed to do. Enough time has passed that I'm quite looking forward to going back and polishing it up a bit. 

• Despite so much going on this year, my second novel is progressing at a pace, and it feels really good.  Of course I have massive wobbles in confidence, but other times, I think it is bloody good. I never felt that way about my first novel whilst writing it. I hope this is another sign of increased confidence, and not a tragic delusion.

• In the last few weeks, my forth wisdom tooth is on the move.  Yes, I'm still teething.

A very Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and a peaceful, relaxing few days to everyone else. I hope you all have an excellent 2013 - you all deserve it. And thank you, one and all, for your ongoing presence and support.

Alpacas on my Mind

A very smiley white woman holding a pink baby who
probably looks a month or so older than she is.

I dreamt about my new niece a few weeks before she was born and in that dream, she was called Victory. When she finally got here, she was named Sophie Elizabeth Taylor and just for you mass fans, she weighed eight and a half pounds! She shares a birthday with Jeff Capes, so our hope is that, one day, she will be the strongest woman in the world!  I can't stop thinking of her as Victory, so that'll probably be her stage name.

This week, Stephen, Mike and I travelled like the three magi to meet the baby. She is very thoughtful and spends her time sleeping, thinking, looking around and sucking very hard on whatever passes close enough.

We were also able to deliver nephew Alex's birthday present (here he is six, years ago, looking a lot like his sister).  Inspired by the stage production of Warhorse, which Stephen got to see, we set about making a puppet that would be so life-like and subtle in movement that it would both embody the physical essence of an animal, as well as almost human depths of emotional range.  The animal we chose was an alpaca. Alex has called his new friend Woolly. Here it is in action.

A fairly simple hand-carve love spoon in
pale wood (lime, in fact).

Being in Wales towards the end of Rosie's pregnancy, Stephen carved Sophie a beautiful love spoon. She was mightily impressed and commented, "Aaiiiee!" which may in fact be Welsh. Sophie may have been the first baby Stephen got to hold and he was both anxious and smitten.

Alex was climbing about in the background, helped me to get up onto climbing frame (well, a high platform built around a tree) and pushed me off again. He has promoted me from being Auntie Bum Bum to Agent Bum Bum.  He even provided me with a theme tune, the lyric to which goes

"Agent Bum Bum, Agent Bum Bum
Agent Bum Bum, Agent Bum Bum
Agent Bum Bum, Agent Bum Bum
Agent Bum Bum Bum."

I am so proud.  I was put in mind of a song my sister wrote for me when we were children.  The piano accompaniment was something of a Chaz & Dave homage, and the lyric went:

A blond monkey boy hangs upside down
from a rope net. 

"Deborah is a zebra, Deborah is a zebra, Deborah is a zebra and she's my sister too-oo-oo!" 

I have decided to make a cartoon strip about Agent Bum Bum and her trusty sidekick, Tinker Taylor (Alex). His favourite toy at the moment is a Super Soaker (they're not nearly as powerful as they were when we were kids and they require batteries) so whatever happens, the villain has to get wet at the end.

But first we have to make a second Alpaca - as if anything could match the first - and I have a wedding dress to make. And we've got a wedding to plan. And I have a book to finish writing and another to keep pushing on agents and publishers (the latest rejection described it as a "near miss" which was far more encouraging than perhaps it sounds).  Plus it's that time of year when I work out what I'm going to make everyone for Christmas.

Life is busy, but very good and all the better for having little Victory in it. I mean Sophie.

Femininity and Feminism: A Ramble

My niece raises her fist against the patriarchy (possibly):
an ultrasound image of a fetus around twenty weeks.

I've known for a couple of months now that, all being well, come August, I'm going to get my very first niece. In terms of baby conversations, this is fairly significant information to have so early on. When any child is born, everyone talks endlessly about the new arrival when there's really only three pieces of information available; its assigned gender, its name and its weight. The weight is only relevant if it is especially low (concern for the baby) or especially high (sympathy for the mother). I find names fascinating, genuinely, and I think the influence of a name on a child's life is underestimated.

Most people think that assigned gender is vitally important (sometimes this is described as biological sex although that's rather inaccurate). I guarantee that, from the word go, my niece will exist in a world of pink, of flowers, frills, fairies and princesses. Then if when she can makes choices for herself, she chooses pink, flowers, frills, fairies and princesses, her parents will say that she has proven folk science correct: her femininity is innate.

And you know what? That shouldn't be a problem. Who cares if my niece decides, age three, that she wants to be princess and live in a fuschia pink plastic castle with powder pink ponies pulling a rose pink carriage for her? Pink is a lovely colour. I have pink shoes! Pink is the colour of many beautiful flowers. It is the colour of some lovely sunsets. It is the colour of some people's cheeks and lips and genitals.  It is the colour of worms, which play a vital role in keeping the soil healthy and aerated.

A fabulous pair of pink canvas Mary Jane shoes.

And three years olds are no good at planning their future careers. Alex was not so unrealistic but had wanted to belong to every emergency service all at once. Age five, he has decided he wants to be a lazy troll, and sit on the sofa all day with an iPad. When asked where he would get the money to support such a lifestyle, he said, "My wife will earn money."  I guess this may be a slightly more pragmatic version of the princess fantasy.

The trouble is that other people will judge my niece if she is overcome by the Pink Spectre, just as the photo of Alex dressed up as a fairy to attend a birthday party a few years back was considered as either a source of hilarity or concern by different family members. The world in which we live regards femininity as deeply inferior.

Femininity is a very complex thing which, being a social construct, varies from culture to culture and changes over time - the expectations of femininity placed on me through my lifetime have been quite different from those placed on my mother. But some things are always the same; femininity is a set of behaviours roughly approved of in women, but it is still what makes us inferior.

Alex as a "Fairy": A 3 year old child
with short blond hair in a pink dress.
His friend was having a "Princess Party"
and he wanted to be a fairy instead.

Sexists sometimes try to defend femininity as as different but equal kind of deal. This is usually framed by the unlikely assumption at any given time, all adults are part of a heterosexual couple who have dependent young children and where the woman is, at best, some kind of essential Lieutenant to the General Chap. This is the natural state of things, and yet laws need to be passed or kept in place to force people to behave according to their nature, as the Archbishop of York outlined this week whilst clutching at straws in the defense of marriage inequality:

"...what sort of society would we have if we came to see all family relationships primarily in terms of human rights? The family is designed to meet the different needs of its different members in different ways."

It's a weirdly common argument, given that this is a watered-down version of the one which denies girls education and women basic legal rights elsewhere in the world and in our own past. At best, femininity is seen as complementing masculinity, and of tremendous value to men, whereas men and masculinity just are. The masculine role is to be and to do, to fulfill ambitions, to use talents, to strive and succeed. The feminine role is to help take care of everybody else, which is understood to be a secondary role.

Nature overcame every attempt by the world to mold me into a feminine little girl. I wasn't massively boyish, but I was made to feel it for being good at maths and science, for wanting to run around, climb trees, play football or wander off by myself, for having no interest in baby dolls and skipping games (although frankly, that may have been my ropey co-ordination - ha ha, ropey!). Tragically, almost criminally, I even shunned books by female authors.

As a child, I hated femininity. I considered it pathetic, shallow, passive, bitchy and vane. As a small child, I imagined you could choose to be a man or a woman just as you could choose to be a doctor or a firefighter, and to me, that was a no-brainer. When I realised my mistake, I simply longed to be a boy. I even had a phase of peculiar transvestism (I say peculiar; as it involved wearing a bow-tie all the time). I hated my body when, at the age of around eight or nine, it began to sprout breasts and broad hips. When trans people describe a sense of their body's betrayal on hitting puberty, I empathise. I empathise so much that as a younger woman, I imagined that trans men were girls just like me who thought a physical change would help.

But my problem didn't involve any deep identification with masculinity, it was simply a resistance to femininity as I understood it.

I was teased for doing masculine things, but I was also respected. A tomboy isn't pretty or necessarily very nice, but she is miles above her masculine counterpart; the nancy-boy, pussy or jessie. There are no shortage of fictional and historical tomboy role models; girls who invent things, fight battles or go exploring. I don't know of any children's fiction which represents a boy who likes grows his hair long and spends his time making clothes for dolls. (In fairness, I also made clothes for my dolls - neither of my Ken dolls came with suitable outfits for outsmarting the shifty-eyed Action Man - what crime-fighting duo go around in Bermuda shorts and a pink tuxedo?)

I grew up in a culture where the hatred of femininity is endemic. Newspaper columnists and women's magazines (including those predominantly read by teenagers) inform us every day about the ways that femininity makes for false friends, jealous, back-stabbing and bitchy, that as mothers we stunt the development of our sons and envy our daughters, that as that as mother-in-laws, we hold dominion over unhappy Christmases and that as wives or girlfriends we must constantly trick our lovers into the commitment that completes us but which scares and stifles them.

Many great women boast that they are unladylike, because they dare to express opinions, cut their own hair, swear when cross, enjoy sex and other normal things. Many women assert that their women friends are the exceptions to their general experience of not liking women - I've known many men whose closest friends are women, but I've never heard one say that he doesn't like blokes. On learning he was going to have a daughter, a friend of my brother-in-law lamented the complexity of girls and how they all turn weird and bitchy when they hit adolescence.

But this doesn't make it acceptable for women to be not feminine. Studies into women at work and in academia (there are new ones at Feminist Philosophers every week), as well as the way women are treated by the media and in fiction, repeatedly demonstrate the great double-bind: feminine women are taken less seriously, seen as less intelligent, less solid, less dynamic, whereas unfeminine women are disliked and mistrusted. It is an unwinnable battle; there's no magic degree of feminine presentation, no point half-way between bimbo and bull-dyke where neither your programming, nor the people around you, have any problem with your femininity or lack thereof.

And disastrously, this penetrates feminism. Some feminists also hate femininity.

Femininity is a social construct, but the nature of this construct is that things that are not one thing are the other. So there's no escaping it. If I dressed in not-at-all feminine clothes and behaved in not-at-all feminine ways, I would be living as a odd-shaped man. It is possible to subvert gender, it is possible to identify as non-binary and demand a gender-neutral pronoun, but you're merely mixing up the masculine and feminine (not that that's not radical - it is). Gender is, sociologically, linguistically, like black and white - you simply can't throw them out of the paint box.

Feminism is concerned with power and oppression, so it's entirely right that feminism discusses the matter of performing femininity - the things that many or most women feel they simply have to do in order to be acceptable, from shaving one's armpits to marriage and motherhood. But clearly, the problem lies with obligation and coercion - there's nothing inherently negative about most feminine behaviours; there's no right or wrong about armpit hair and the rights and wrongs around motherhood rest on the individuals involved. Some of the silliest discussions in feminism (and philosophy in general) arise when a person insists that her choices are a choice when someone else's choices are an illusion. Blame Marx. Or possibly Engels. One of those two, either way it was definitely a man with a beard who harped on a lot about False Consciousness.

It is wrong to play into sexist hands by declaring that things that are regarded as feminine - given that gender is all nonsense anyway - are a problem just because they're feminine. Pretty clothes are essential. Everyone should wear pretty clothes, absolutely everyone; it makes the world look nicer! Empathy, compassion, patience and the ability to listen are absolutely vital for all human relationships as well as civilised societies. Everyone should aspire to be feminine in these ways. Everyone should also seek to be courageous, resilient and honourable. Everyone should seek to understand the world, apply reason to life's problems and wear comfortable shoes (yes, they can have a heel on if you like, but your feet are so important). Everyone should aspire to be masculine in those ways.

And I think this is why a noisy minority of feminists are so bilious about trans women (and I've never come across any anti-trans rhetoric which wasn't hateful - nobody ever starts off "trans women are people too"). It's this idea that trans women may have chosen femininity, without the programming (although obviously, as children they did get programming about what femininity is - everyone learns what it is to be a boy or a girl, regardless of their pants parts, only some of us get subjected to those horrible elastic bands with the great big plastic bobbles on them that get tangled up and pull half our hair out.)

Being trans gender isn't a choice, but (apart from unpleasant physical complications), should it matter if it were? Is femininity such an abhorrent gender that it should only be endured by those it has been foisted upon since birth? As I said, feminism is concerned with discussions of power, but it is abundantly clear whether trans women are people whose gender gives them power.

Do we have to accept the diktats of yet another man with an abundance of facial hair? When Freud said, "Anatomy is destiny," he was speaking against everything that women and queer people of all stripes have since sought to overturn. Our goal is a world in which everyone can be true to themselves in how they present themselves, how they behave and to whom and how they give their love. This is what I will tell my niece, whether or not she wants to be a princess or follow her aunt's footsteps in becoming a writer-explorer ukelele-playing superhero with pink shoes. Or indeed, if it turns out that she was a nephew after all.


See also, The F-Word:  There's Nothing Radical About Transphobia. This ramble was partly provoked by a Radical Feminist Conference in London which invited only "Women born women" (their poor mothers!) on the same day as the International Day against Transphobia & Homophobia

Niblings & Siblings

An fuzzy ultrasound image of a fetus at approx. 12 weeks.

Can you tell what it is yet? No, me neither, but apparently this is a mass of tissue fast developing into a second niece or nephew, ready to depart the Mothership sometime in August.  Check out that brain symmetry! The fetus is obviously a genius.  Well, we do share about 25% of our DNA.

To be honest, it's all a bit weird for nephew Alexander. He is tremendously excited, having lobbied for a sibling over the years, but he'll be six in the summer and he is so very used to being the centre of everyone's attention. He is the only grandchild for both sets of grandparents and has many non-familial uncle and aunt figures who have no children of their own. He lives on the grounds of a boarding school full of older children who treat him as a mascot. He's expressed nothing negative about the new baby - except his fear that he or she may eat his Lego - but he's began to misbehave.

A toddler (Rosie) looking slightly anxious as she holds
a crying baby (me), circa. New Year 1981

So I made a book for Alex about what it means to be a big brother or sister, with photographs of my big sister and I and a rather romanticised account of our childhood together. I included radical gender politics such as

"The main difference between being a big brother like you or a big sister like your Mummy is that brothers and sisters wear different kinds of clothes."

illustrated with photographs of my sister in a ballgown and my sister dressed up as our male school music teacher (even Rosie can't remember what she was doing). My own phase of transvestism was far more prolonged. I wore bow-ties, all the time. Sometime I even wore a cravat.  But then what nine year old girl living in a suburban terrace doesn't experiment with that look? I think I thought I was James Bond.

A small girl (me) makes a face from
behind an older girl's shoulder.

I unearthed a great number of photographs which revealed a lot about both our relationship and the foundation of our different personalities. Rosemary is not a very serious person, but is demonstrably more sensible than I am, and is frequently posed in a sober fashion while I'm pulling a silly face or, more times than I care to admit, posing in a state of undress. I really did like to take my clothes off as a child. Well, Saville Row tailoring can so easily overheat one.

The book naturally omitted the bitter feud between my sister and I which started with a torn poster of Kylie Minogue in1989 and continued unabated for the next six or seven years. Of course, I didn't tear the poster. Why would I? She threatened to dismember my panda unless I confessed.

Illness brought about our eventual entente. In the book I wrote

"When I was almost grown up, I got sick and never got better. Your Mummy helped to look after me. She took messages to my friends and teachers at school.

"Although I couldn't walk properly, I didn't want to use a wheelchair in case people stared at me. Your Mummy encouraged me to use a wheelchair and pushed me in it so that I could go out and have fun again. If people stared at me, your Mummy stared back."

Two small girls and their father with a small canon.

Rosie came through for me, after I got sick, while my folks were still floundering. We'd squabbled throughout our teenage years up to that point, but after that point we rarely argued (the notable exception being one occasion where she made a very hurtful remark and I promptly poured a glass of water over her head). Rosie invited me to spend the weekend with her at university in Southampton and suggested I borrow a wheelchair from somewhere so that she could take me Christmas shopping. I was very nervous but reassured that I wouldn't encounter anybody I knew, or anyone I'd have to meet again. My parents continued to flounder somewhat, until they came to pick me up and the four of us went for a walk in the park together. After that they were sold that a wheelchair was not like a coffin, a symbol of lost hope, something you never got out of, once you got in.

Two teenage girls and their father with a canon on the
ramparts of a fort or castle somewhere.

Having found the above picture of us playing with a canon, I wrote on the next page

"Big brothers and sisters stand up for their little brothers and sisters. If anyone is unkind to me, your Mummy fires a canon ball at them." 

And lo and behold, as I made my way through the photos of a decade later, I found this, another of Rosie lighting an imaginary fuse.  My sister is not only prepared to fire a canon, it's something of a habit with her. So watch out.

Messing about on the river

Yesterday was a really good day, after a good few weeks of rough. It was the half-way point of the year and my Dad's birthday, and my folks were looking after Alexander whilst Rosie was off singing on the South Bank. And it was probably the hottest day of the year, at least down South. So my folks, [ex], Alex and I went for a picnic in the woods before going rowing on the River Little Ouse. It was absolutely gorgeous and a splendid time was had by all!

The river is runs roughly along some of the border between Norfolk and Suffolk, but it's kind of tucked away from everything. And we didn't see another soul that afternoon - nobody on the river, nobody on the bank. Lots of horses, waterfowl and absolute swarms of electric blue and black damson flies. Did you know that when two damson flies mate, they make the shape of a heart with their bodies? I didn't, now I do.

Alexander is talking much more than even a few months ago and making a really conscientious effort to learn new words and concepts – for ages, he was speaking, but wasn't really interested in conversation. Now, he's asking lots of questions and often whispers a word someone has said back to himself to help it sink in. And he has some long words, including a disturbing variety of car makes and models.

He was very impressed with my powerchair and said it just like a helicopter. I think this is because it has a joystick, not because it can fly (I don't like to fly it in public; people get complacent about accessibility when they know you could just fly between floors if you wanted to).

Incidentally, my sister was singing at the South Bank Centre with a group called the Celestial Sirens, who did the music for this week's and next week's Woman's Hour Drama Sacred Hearts on Radio 4 - you can still catch up listening to this over the weekend if you like.

Will blog properly really soon, I promise!

Auntie Intermission

I am sleeping a lot at the moment and working on my book when I'm awake - which isn't for very much of the day at all. So here's a brief update on Alexander, who I saw the weekend before last. As you can see, the child gets no less beautiful.

His vocabulary is very slowly building up and he can say all the numbers, though thankfully never in the right order (he's not yet three! - I keep having to say this, especially to his grandmother, who takes everything he says to heart - if she starts this now, she will be completely broken-hearted before he's ten).

He demanded to know what a Dalek was (Mum has Dalek coasters - she likes Daleks) and I explained about The Doctor and Davros and everything. "What are the buttons for?" he asked. I didn't know. What are all those lumpy bits for? I suggested sound-proofing, as the Daleks have very noisy digestive systems. He seemed happy with that and made a comment about "Windypops." which I thought was rather crude.

I also learnt that Alexander's favourite animal is a lion because it says "Roar!".

Incidentally, the instructions for the inflatable paddling pool my parents got for him included the warning "Do not place on top of sharp objects." Hmm.

Happy New Year!

I think 2008 has been characterised by Unexpected Developments. A few of these have been negative, but most not and more importantly, the positive ones have set things up for a very interesting 2009. Oh this is is just rubbish, but I'm really tired now and I can't possibly say what I want to say. Basically, 2009 promises to be one of the more interesting years of my life so far, if it goes according to plan. If it doesn't, well that's going to be interesting as well. But I am looking forward to seeing how things pan out.

It was a very good Christmas. Alexander liked his snake puzzle, although asked what kind of creature it depicted, he said, “Ssss – ssss – ssss – worm!” He has however learnt both our names and has over double the vocabulary he had in August.

But I am shattered, so after the vaguest and briefest of annual reviews you are likely to encounter, thanks for all your presence, comments and suppport during the last year and a very happy new year to you all!

The Magnificent Nephew Rides Again

At the weekend, Alexander got to ride a real horse for the first time. For some reason, the pony in question had attempted to disguise itself as a Christmas tree.

I wasn't there but I thought I should share a couple of the pictures with you. And it is a milestone. Alex has previously only ridden his rocking-horse, which is about the same size. I guess riding a horse is on one of those lists like "50 things to do before you're 3".

Apparently, Alexander is a natural. I guess he'd have to be, what with being two years old and managing to sit on the horse without support. They even managed to trot.

My name is

Alexander can now name most of his family and friends. He can cope with polysyllables; for example, there is a little boy at his childminders' who is known as Baby Luke and he can say that, no problem. His Grandad sounds very much like Gandalf but I think this may be a satirical point as opposed to mispronunciation.

But he cannot say my name. For the purposes of this post, you have to know that my off-line alias is Deborah or variations thereof. And to begin with, Alex appeared to make an asserted effort, calling me something like Dib-dab, which is close enough. I would be quite happy to be Auntie Dib-dab indefinitely.

Then one day, about six weeks ago, Alexander decided to give up and call me Bum.

When he first came out with this, his mother corrected him.

“Bum bum bum bum bum!” Alex responded.

So I thought he was just messing about. Only Rosie and I had a chat about other things, and when she said goodbye and asked Alexander to do the same, he said, very tenderly, “Bye bye, Bum.”

Then the next time we spoke, when Rosie asked him to say hello to his favourite auntie, Alexander greeted me with, “'Ello Bum!”

Which I guess at least proves consistency. Once again, Rosie corrected him.

“Bum bum bum bum bum!” he insisted.

I did ask and no, he's not calling anyone else that - it is just me. And so it continued. But then last night, there was a change. When I was talking to him on the phone and I asked if he could say my name, he cried

“Bummer!”

I'm yet to decide whether this is an improvement.

Picture This

Alexander correctly identified the subject of the latest addition to the Family Portrait Gallery (my Mum's upstairs corridor) as his Mummy and Daddy. That having been said, he has recently pointed to a picture of Sean Bean and declared it to be his Daddy. Rosie, however, responded with a complaint that I had given her grey hairs. It's supposed to be light.

Return of the Goldfish

I was very slow, then I was very busy and then I had some serious sleeping to do. Now I'm picking up again and making a tentative return to blogging and the world generally.

The busiest bit involved a trip to Southampton to visit Alexander. I was only there a few days, but they were very full days, as days tend to be in the company of a two year old.

Alex is still not saying a great deal, but he made several admiral attempts at my name. He is also adept at pointing out churches and miscellaneous Christian iconography (crucifixes etc.) with a very musical "Dong!" (the sound a church bell makes, presumably and much easier to pronounce than church

I have been monitoring Alex's verbal progress on account of the competitive auntying my friend Vic and I engage in; Vic's two-year-old nephew is using grammatical tenses and learning to count in Cantonese! However, my mother informs me that I didn't have a lot to say for myself at two either. See, I wasn't a smartie-nappy (which is like a smartie-pants, but smaller).

I got to see the school where Alex is starting nursery in a few week. I know, two years old, but now I've inspected the place I reckon it'll be a lot of fun for him. It'll only be a few mornings a week in any case.

For his birthday (which is actually this Wednesday), I made Alex a playmat, a blanket with roads and fields sewn on. This took me ages, sewing it all by hand, hours and hours and hours.

Fortunately, it didn't cost me anything, as I seemed to have a few green remnants from things like Alex's jacket plus two green tops, one of which had paint down the front and the other had an irreparable hole on the chest. I found a scrap of blue lining fabric for the river and teh roads are made of less than a remnant of black PVC that I bought ages ago because it was very cheap (although I told my sister it had come from one of [...]'s old catsuits). There are even road markings embroidered on there but you probably can't make them out.

Oh yeah and the blanket I sewed all this on? It was the accursed wheelchair blanket my mother gave me some years ago. When she noticed, I claimed it had been on my lap (serving its purpose) when I had begun to sew and it accidentally got stitched into the project.

Hopefully Alex will be able to use it for lots of different games, for toy cars, farm animals and later on, as a landscape for a Lego town (which was the favourite use for the one Mum made us as children).

Alex knew exactly what to do with it and I could only get blurred images of his zooming a toy truck around the roads. I tried to observe whether he 'drove' on the right side of the road. Even though the steering wheel of his Little Tykes car isn't attached to anything, he nevertheless steers in the correct direction every time he turns. Which I think is genius.

In other news, tomorrow marks twelve years of the Dreaded Lurgy. I am rather proud of my near indifference to this event - not quite so near that I haven't noticed, but pretty damn near.

How it should have been

When Alexander was born, I made a promise to myself not to mourn for the auntihood I might have had. Even saying that sounds melodramatic, but I have a manipulative imp and this is just the sort of thing it'll pick on when it wants me to feel sorry for myself.

Alex was born exactly ten years and one day after I acquired these limitations. I was never going to be any other kind of auntie. Before Alexander was conceived, I didn't know I was going to be any kind of auntie and whilst I had my hopes, I wouldn't have had any complaints if it wasn't to be. Alexander is a gift. And he can only be better off having me as opposed to no auntie at all.

But. This week Alex and Rosie have been staying at my folks, I've seen a lot of them both and earlier in the week I began to feel rather sad and guilty.

Alexander is the most physically active not-yet-two-year-old I have ever encountered. He can sit and play quietly or be read to, but he seems to need to spend most of his waking time hurtling about, dancing and climbing things. Fortunately he is also very good on his feet and resilient; he doesn't often fall over, but when he does he generally picks himself up and carries on without complaint. At the play park, he heads straight for the big children's climbing frame.

So there's a part of me that minds that I can't play all the games he wants to play. And I feel very guilty that I can really only cope with a few hours of his company before I am fantastically exhausted. And when fantastically exhausted, I need and desperately want to be away from him as soon as possible. Which is an awful way to feel about a small child, when they're not even playing up.

And I was thinking about this when I read (I forget where) someone lamenting the tragedy of their becoming disabled with, “I should be playing football with my grandchildren!”

The focus of loss is a personal thing - maybe this was a relative young person who had been a keen footballer - but it struck me as an interesting kind of should. Because of course, lots of grandparents can't play football with their grandchildren. Personally, I knew I was lucky to even get to know all four of my grandparents; I know people are living longer and healthier lives than they were, but still. I imagine impairment would be quite different for parents; there are some roles it must be very difficult not to be able to perform oneself, but the rest of us? We're all here to throw in whatever we've got to offer. It's all complimentary, for both parties.

Then we were visiting my Gran and I had taken a very restless Alex into the garden. I followed him to the end of the garden once and back and realising I couldn't do this a second time, I sat down in the middle of the grass and watched as he ran ahead. He took his place on the bench and waited for me, rather anxious to find I wasn't right behind him.

So I waved at him and he waved back. Then he watched me for a moment and giggled. He waved at me and I waved back. Then he ran at me, with opened arms and smiling face and at such tremendous speed that he knocked me right over. This, he thought, was very funny.

After that I found several other games that involved Alex moving about a great deal while I stayed very still. My favourite was one where I threatened to come grab him and made very slight movements as if about to pounce; Alex would run away giggling, then edge back towards me, still giggling, until some twitch of the finger sent him running again. And thus I got over myself.

It has been a lovely hectic week. I shall now enjoy the silence and catch up with my blog-reading. Oh and happy Independence Day to my American friends, hope you've all had a good one.

April Aunt Blogging

Come on, it has been a while since you've seen any gratuitous materteral blogging on here.

Yesterday, I got to see Alexander! I wasn't sure I was going to, on account of the fact that my sister's family all had rotten colds last weekend and frankly, if I hadn't got my pain sorted out, it would have been very difficult. I can't really be trusted to supervise Alex because I have no means of chasing after him; if I was really going to babysit, I'd need a giant net on a very long pole. However, at least with less pain I could pick him up if I needed to and I did manage to push him on the swing, from a sitting position on the grass (this is still a precarious practice, but I reckon the sustained giggling of a small child is worth the risk of being kicked in the head).

Another slice of luck was that the weather was so nice. I think it was warmer yesterday that it had been last August when we were in my folks' garden for his birthday party. Which is especially odd given the weather at this time last month.

Alex still doesn't say much but he has learnt to count! Up to three at least. Mum was playing a game where she was saying "One, two three, hooray!" and Alex imitated her by say "Do, do, do, yeah!" several times over and he never one uttered more or less than three dos . Does that count as counting? I reckon so.

Alexander devised an excellent variation on the game of golf, whereby merely hitting the ball with a club (both lightweight plastic) merits a cheer. This is much more exciting and uses considerably less space than the other version.

He also participated in the ancient East Anglian tradition of pushing small children about in a wheelbarrow. This originates from the time that women used to give birth out in the fields and wheel their children home sat amongst the turnips. This resulted in many turnips being mistakenly brought up as human children, with one turnip making it so far as becoming Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093. Sorry, but if I don't plump up this paragraph there will be a big gap at the end of my text.

So anyway, it was a very nice day. Alexander is a very bright and happy child who finds amusement in almost everything. Meanwhile, the more disconcerting side-effects to my new pills are already diminishing.

Sleepless in Southampton

This one is of my Dad and Alex. I didn't paint the entire thing since last Thursday, but I hadn't quite finished it then. This was a bit of a challenge. I was working from a black and white photograph so I had to guess the colours to some extent. Also, the photograph cut off the top of my Dad's head, so I had to make that bit up as well.

I managed to get to Southampton to spend Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning with Alexander. He was very affectionate; either he now knows who I am or he is very easy with his hugs and kisses. It is also now far easier to comfort him when he's grizzly; previously, this was not something I could do myself, but now a cuddle seems to do the trick.

He has a few more words, but doesn't seem terribly interested in using them; occasionally he will point to something and name it, but he can't be persuaded to do it again and if you point to something and ask him what it is, he looks at you as if you have asked a very foolish question (which I guess you have).

Alexander is, however, increasingly expressive. He uses the baby-signing pretty well, he points and waves and hands things to you. He put his milk-bottle in Roosevelt, the bear-puppet's mouth. And his favourite gesture involves him holding his hands palms up, fingers spread wide and an expression somewhere between exasperation and resignation as if to say "What the hell?"

I managed the whole thing pretty well, especially considering the two flights of stairs in my sister's house, and a pretty bad night, complete with some of the most profound hallucinations I've had in ages. Nothing scary though, only disconcerting. I am in no great shape now, but I'm basically okay.

I don't care too much for money

So the other day, Lawrence Fishburne (or somone who looked very much like him) came to my door selling investment policies. He spoke very slowly but without hesitation so that before I could get a word in, he had explained all about his policies to help people put their kids through university and other policies to provide security in retirement. Which of the two, he asked, might I be most interested in?

"Neither," I said with a smile, "Thanks all the same."

"So you've got all your finances sorted out for the rest of your life already?" he asked, clearly dubious.

Now that was pushing it. There could be lots of explanations for my disinterest which might be highly personal, whether I was surprising rich or surprisingly poor. And indeed, I didn't want to tell him my actual situation, partly because it was none of his business, but partly because he might be embarassed. He might even feel guilty for having asked had he known. He might have even offered me money, but probably not.

So I weighed up my options.

"No, but I'm relying on tax-payers like yourself to see me through."
or "No, but I don't want me kids' heads to warp with too much learnin'."
or "No, but I'm planning on dying young."
or indeed "No, but I've only got three weeks to live - do you do life insurance?"

or more positively,

"If I were to become just four pounds and thirty-six pence richer, I would have more money than sense."
or "They say there's gold in that there compost heap."
or "The Lord will provide."

or perhaps, if I really wanted to frighten him and if I could get the tone just right,

"Money is the root of all evil."

As it was, I shrugged and said, "Kind of." He nevertheless gave me his card and departed with a wink. A wink, I tell you. From Lawrence Fishburne (or somone who looked very much like him).

It is a difficulty though. Like when you're offered those Payment Protection Plans on credit cards and the like and you're thinking, "In what way could my financial situation get worse?" (Of course it could be worse, but nothing anyone would offer insurance against).

I was once accosted by particularly persistent charity-collector, one of these who is paid on commission for the number of people who sign up for a direct debit donations and who really couldn't imagine why I might not be able to afford monthly donations to a charity supporting people of my own age in circumstances not at all dissimilar to my own. And yet, I did not wish to explain all that, to say I lived on benefits and to detail my exact position; even the richest person should not have to make excuses. So eventually I declared, "I'm afraid I'm a charity case myself!" and the young man was, at long last, speechless.

Anyway, I'm off to visit Alexander, Rosie and Adrian this weekend. They have lived in Southampton for over a year, and this is the first time that I've had the opportunity to visit when I've actually felt up to going. It's just a flying visit with my folks to babysit Alex whilst R & A go to a concert and I shall be back on Sunday.

This is a picture I painted of Rosie and Alexander - my second portrait. I've almost finished one of Alex with my Dad and I must say that, despite his cuteness, the lad does have a rather boring face - no lines or wrinkles or anything!

It speaks!

Alexander has started talking. Kind of. He's started pointing at things and uttering monosyllabic nouns (not just any nouns though; roughly appropriate ones). That he thinks all birds are ducks and all vehicles are cars is demonstrative of his impressive pattern-recognition skills. After all, imagine how well developed you'd have to be before you could explain the qualities that cars and other vehicles have in common. I mean all road vehicles have wheels, but not all wheeled things are road vehicles. And they all travel on the road but so do bicycles. It is really very clever to recognise the connection, I think.

He has also taken to declaring "Done!" after each meal. Being so well brung-up, this horrified me. "You mean, he can't manage a thank you?"

In the picture he is wearing a jacket I made him in the autumn. This was an incredible feat on account of the fact that I had no pattern, no experience of making such a garment, but most crucially, I hadn't taken a single measurement of the child and just had to guess how big he was. This was a very foolish way to go about things, but I was fiddling with it when I was rather ill and by some miracle it worked.

Unfortunately, he is sporting a somewhat "Auntie made me wear it" expression in the photo...