Mists and mental fruitlessness

Back on the blog after an intense summer of dissertating and teaching - pleasure-writing has been far from my inclinations for a while, but it's about discipline as well as desire, and September's back-to-school vibe seems a good point to pick up again. The work-weariness has also rendered my rants progressively less coherent, to the point where I can only shake an impotent fist at the offender, guiltily acknowledging thoughts of making cathartic use of it and then consigning all blog-thoughts to the receding to-do list. And in honesty I've not much new to contribute apart from the early autumn melancholy - always more palatable with chilly morning sun-shards and moist earth-smells, but we shall have to content ourselves with mere words for now...

Feeling a little glum after a brief (and temporally dislocated) glimpse of morning slagheap The Wright Stuff this evening. Discussion topic: Why Are Women Less Funny Than Men? I don't know what they were actually saying - the snatch of slackly moidering Catherine Tate was enough for Coc to channel-hop on - but it would have depressed me. I know it would. But it set me to thinking about the impact of the questions we ask, and how they inevitably set the parameters of discussion to an extent that we don't, I think, often consider. (For 'we' read 'I', there - pronominal inclusivity won out over self-reflexivity...) I suppose this must sound like a truism, and the assumption in this particular question doesn't require razor critical insight - but I do think that for gender especially, compared to other issues of identity, there is a much more widespread acceptance of fundamental difference beyond biology. Even my own students, modern, middle-class urban Masters types, came out today with the argument that 'women are emotional, so men are more reliable in a crisis', and 'women are weaker and so get more tired than men when they have to work long hours'. Most (non-academic) engagement with gender issues starts with an assumption of fundamental, immutable difference - 'women are this, men are that'. And while I can free myself from believing in my own feminine immutability, I can't free myself from these prevalent attitudes - and I don't like it. The other day I went to pick up my student card, and on saying I'd like to keep the original photo because I liked it, I was subjected to a friendly diatribe about 'ladies' (enough in itself to piss me right off) obsession with their looks. Liking my photo didn't just apply to me individually - this was female behaviour. But who doesn't like a good picture of themselves?

There's a lot of rage here and nowhere really to channel it. I've always tried to avoid tackling anything related to gender in my classes, because I don't really know how to address it in a way that avoids descent into deeply tedious men vs. women 'debates'. I think this probably has to change - I don't know how, but need to give it some thought. I need to find the ovaries to ACT on this anger somehow. Hm. Yeah. Will get back to you on that one.

Coc just asked me if I was challenging the Wright assumption by writing a scathing piece full of witty zingers, which I would have done if a) it didn't simply indulge the debate, and b) I could.