The shame of being female: a rant.

I've recently re-read John Buchan's The Thirty Nine Steps. It's fine as a thriller (though nothing like as good as the Hitchcock film) but I was surprised by the casual racism of the narrator.

It's unrepeatable on a family blog like this, but there was stuff like a [nationality] [religion] peddler with eyes like a rattlesnake. 

Not nice at all. 

What surprised me even more was remembering that I first came across The Thirty Nine Steps when I was twelve as a set text at school.

Schools have changed since then, and now everyone is much much more careful (in the educational fiction I write I'm not even allowed to mention sausages or the word blast). Recently Natasha Devon, who used to be the British Government's mental health champion for schools, has even gone as far as to urge the headteachers of Britain's most famous girls' schools not to refer to their pupils as girls or ladies because it is patronising.

Patronising? But what's wrong with being a girl?

Mind you, Ms Devon doesn't think it a good thing to call boys boys, either.

Her objection seems to be that if you remind children of their sexes (she calls them genders, but I think sex is what she means) then you are reminding them of all the stereotypes that go with them.

Well...err...not unless you remind them of all the stereotypes that go with them, you're not. I mean, why not use the mention of children's sexes to try breaking them down, instead?


photo by Sarah Jones

Doh!

Word To Use Today: stereotype. A stereotype was originally a mould for making type for printing. The Greek stereos means solid and tupos means image, from tuptein, to strike.