Due to the Summer break from University I am back in the office full-time to earn some extra cash. I have been back on full time wages now for 2 weeks yet am as skint as I was before. I think this boils down to my 'spend what I have' approach to money. It may not be 'wise' within our society to not have some money stored away but what I have taken from all of this is that money really does not mean a great deal to me - something I have always suspected - because I adjust my lifestyle accordingly. I admit that my increased revenue has allowed me to indulge what I enjoy most: reading, cooking, drinking great wine and entertaining friends at my home but, to be honest I could have done this on my part-time wages. The only thing that has really changed for me since I upped my working day to 8.5 hours of officedom is the fact that I am bored, tired and frustrated. There are two positive things to have come out of all of this though: the first being that it has validated my decision to exchange a meaningless job for full-time education and the second: the office is so quiet right now that I am able to take the time to read and research various topics that arouse intrigue.
The main source of reading and research has been linked to my increasing interest in existentialism. Today, though, my fingers do not tap the keyboard as a means of regaling you with my web based meanderings but, instead, my observations and subsequent fear of what it seems I am letting myself in for by daring to be both female and a ‘thinker’. I’ll induct you into my anxieties via an anecdote: several weeks ago I was out with some friends I have made through University; all involved in philosophy, society and culture in some capacity. All male. We had a splendid day eating, drinking and talking; I was in amazing company both academically and socially speaking. However, a closer friend of mine in the group, whom I suspect views himself as superior to me based on both intellect and gender, raised the topic of female students getting better grades from male lectures based on them ‘having a cunt’ and that ‘not having a cunt’ means men have to work so much harder. I looked around the group and discovered that my friend was not alone in this and that it appeared to be a common idea within the realms of academia and the student lecturer dynamic where gender is concerned. Now, to see this from both sides would be for me to suggest that my friends aren’t sexist; they are stating a fact based on evidence and in fact the sexism lies with the lecturer who compliments a student with an A in pursuit of a blow job by way of thanks. However, this anecdote is one of many in a line of hours of conversations in pubs that have been undercut with notions of a gender divide. The divide being horizontally with women being the bottom half. So now not only am I pre-occupied with the meaning of our existence, I also have to consider it terms of being a female, being Other. Whether I like it or not. To ignore it is to allow prejudice to prevail. It fucks me off that I am having to direct my thinking and writing towards questions of gender – questions not only do I now feel the need to answer but that I wish were never raised in the first place.
Compensation for being a chick that thinks, unsurprisingly – as I am talking existentialism and feminism - is Simone De Beauvoir, or: Sartre’s missus. A woman amongst a mass of men, snubbed or antagonised by Camus who, it seemed, left any rational thought or humanist convictions at the door when faced with a pair of tits. I admit that it does concern me to read that she referred to herself as the midwife of Sartre’s ideas, suggesting that her part in her work was little more than in it’s presentation. He bought the food; she just scurried into the kitchen and stuck it on a plate, perhaps. But, she also said: ‘one is not born a woman, one becomes one’. I view this as a reminder of the responsibility women have to not adhere to this notion of us being 'Other'- assuming the word 'woman' in this context does in fact mean 'Other' - we are born and it is out responsibility to choose where to go from there. With this in mind, I have considered the idea that sexist behaviour in men arises from them viewing women as ‘Other’ as a result of women conforming to stereotypes that facilitate this idea of gender differences; perhaps the responsibility of equality lies with 'us' and not 'them'. Of course, such stereotypes have been helped along by the media, it’s not original to blame the big bad media for something yet within this media saturated society it has a part to play, and a big one at that. It seems that to be ‘equal' women need to be like men which itself suggests that the blueprint of how a human should be is male. The notion here is that women become equal to men by ignoring all that is unequal about them (I'm sure Nietzsche is creeping in here). What I am interested in, then, is how to not equalize but neutralize gender within contemporary Western society. This seems a difficult notion to contemplate even amongst the most unique minds I have encountered; speaking of my male peers, I find it rather bizarre that with such abstract thoughts about our very existence they sign up to created concepts such as gender division.
I have emailed a female lecturer regarding my thoughts on this and have asked her what it is like to be a female in a male saturated profession, specifically, academia. I will post any insight she provides.
