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| What's the best way to get written out of history? Be a middle-aged woman | What's the best way to get written out of history? Be a middle-aged woman |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| History erases the contribution of middle-aged women. It takes a lot of time, but that’s fine, because that’s what history’s good at. “How the devil did they get away with that,” you might think, looking at a magazine cover’s lineup of the architects of the Good Friday agreement that is entirely male, and doesn’t include Mo Mowlam. “What happened to the women who actually broke this story,” you possibly wonder, surveying an all-male panel called upon to discuss the finer details of the Cambridge Analytica revelations. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the next day, but some time soon the airbrush will have come for Theresa May, Angela Merkel and Sheryl Sandberg, and we will be confused, unable to understand how Brexit meant Brexit, or the euro survived, or who taught Mark Zuckerberg how to open his mouth in the manner of a person smiling. | History erases the contribution of middle-aged women. It takes a lot of time, but that’s fine, because that’s what history’s good at. “How the devil did they get away with that,” you might think, looking at a magazine cover’s lineup of the architects of the Good Friday agreement that is entirely male, and doesn’t include Mo Mowlam. “What happened to the women who actually broke this story,” you possibly wonder, surveying an all-male panel called upon to discuss the finer details of the Cambridge Analytica revelations. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the next day, but some time soon the airbrush will have come for Theresa May, Angela Merkel and Sheryl Sandberg, and we will be confused, unable to understand how Brexit meant Brexit, or the euro survived, or who taught Mark Zuckerberg how to open his mouth in the manner of a person smiling. |
| In fact, all social movements of any importance were started by middle-aged women, and there’s a solid case-by-case reason why we have forgotten them all. The Fight the Famine Committee, after the first world war, began in the house of Catherine Courtney in Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, but that’s right on the corner of the road where Margaret Thatcher was coached in public speaking to get rid of her high, grating (cough “female”) voice and make her sound like a story tape on a Sony Walkman that was running out of batteries (this reference is aimed purely at middle-aged women). So already I can’t remember who destroyed the industrial heartlands, and who started the organisation that became Save the Children, which was run by two sisters, though unfortunately they are lost to the mists of time, because one of them had a funny name (Eglantyne Jebb) and the other one didn’t (Dorothy Buxton). | In fact, all social movements of any importance were started by middle-aged women, and there’s a solid case-by-case reason why we have forgotten them all. The Fight the Famine Committee, after the first world war, began in the house of Catherine Courtney in Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, but that’s right on the corner of the road where Margaret Thatcher was coached in public speaking to get rid of her high, grating (cough “female”) voice and make her sound like a story tape on a Sony Walkman that was running out of batteries (this reference is aimed purely at middle-aged women). So already I can’t remember who destroyed the industrial heartlands, and who started the organisation that became Save the Children, which was run by two sisters, though unfortunately they are lost to the mists of time, because one of them had a funny name (Eglantyne Jebb) and the other one didn’t (Dorothy Buxton). |
| The temperance movement was driven by women, but we let ourselves be written out of that because it gave us a bad name. The highly fruitful school of thought connecting poverty to infant mortality, and perhaps more radically still, holding infant mortality to be a bad thing, was developed by the anarcho-socialists Maud Pember Reeves and Charlotte Wilson in the early 20th century (in fact, Pember Reeves was the socialist and Wilson the anarchist but these things sound more authentically middle-aged when you mash them together). The background to their work was the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, which found poverty to be morally driven, exacerbated by do-gooders giving food and relief to poor people, which only incentivised them to be more poor. Pember Reeves and Wilson discovered, with close and what we would now call “embedded” research into the respectable poor, that the children of highly moral ones were also dying in large numbers before they reached the age of 10. You can see why this would be easier to erase than to commemorate. | The temperance movement was driven by women, but we let ourselves be written out of that because it gave us a bad name. The highly fruitful school of thought connecting poverty to infant mortality, and perhaps more radically still, holding infant mortality to be a bad thing, was developed by the anarcho-socialists Maud Pember Reeves and Charlotte Wilson in the early 20th century (in fact, Pember Reeves was the socialist and Wilson the anarchist but these things sound more authentically middle-aged when you mash them together). The background to their work was the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, which found poverty to be morally driven, exacerbated by do-gooders giving food and relief to poor people, which only incentivised them to be more poor. Pember Reeves and Wilson discovered, with close and what we would now call “embedded” research into the respectable poor, that the children of highly moral ones were also dying in large numbers before they reached the age of 10. You can see why this would be easier to erase than to commemorate. |
| The myths of Mo | The myths of Mo |
| The abolitionists Hannah More and Elisabeth Jesser Reid were forgotten because they were basically doing the same thing as William Wilberforce, and he had that pretty alliteration going on with his name. Mary Prince, a campaigner, author and former slave, got a commemorative plaque in Camden in 2007, so that’s OK. Sarah Parker Remond, another woman of colour working internationally against slavery in the 1850s, had a more famous brother, which is a near-failsafe way to get yourself written out of history. | The abolitionists Hannah More and Elisabeth Jesser Reid were forgotten because they were basically doing the same thing as William Wilberforce, and he had that pretty alliteration going on with his name. Mary Prince, a campaigner, author and former slave, got a commemorative plaque in Camden in 2007, so that’s OK. Sarah Parker Remond, another woman of colour working internationally against slavery in the 1850s, had a more famous brother, which is a near-failsafe way to get yourself written out of history. |
| Shall I use my cloak of invisibility to fight crime, or for evil? That’s the question I ask, upon turning 44. Fortunately, it won’t be remembered either way, and the world is our plaything. | Shall I use my cloak of invisibility to fight crime, or for evil? That’s the question I ask, upon turning 44. Fortunately, it won’t be remembered either way, and the world is our plaything. |
| Don’t believe the sockpuppets | Don’t believe the sockpuppets |
| The internet causes a lot of cognitive dysfunction. We all know that because we read it on the internet, but sometimes the details get lost because you see the word “dysfunction” and think: “No, this could not possibly mean me.” | The internet causes a lot of cognitive dysfunction. We all know that because we read it on the internet, but sometimes the details get lost because you see the word “dysfunction” and think: “No, this could not possibly mean me.” |
| The “epistemic bubble” is when you no longer read anything that you don’t already agree with. Nobody enters any bubble on purpose, it is just the natural consequence of getting all your news from sources – friends, relatives, colleagues – whose views chime with your own. It’s a dicey premise – that any of us agree with our colleagues, let alone our relatives – but just take it on trust. | The “epistemic bubble” is when you no longer read anything that you don’t already agree with. Nobody enters any bubble on purpose, it is just the natural consequence of getting all your news from sources – friends, relatives, colleagues – whose views chime with your own. It’s a dicey premise – that any of us agree with our colleagues, let alone our relatives – but just take it on trust. |
| The “echo chamber” is where you sometimes hear information you don’t like, but you disbelieve it on that basis. This happens to me all the time, but I am often right and the information turns out to be untrue. No algorithm has yet been found to deal with the fact that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you. | The “echo chamber” is where you sometimes hear information you don’t like, but you disbelieve it on that basis. This happens to me all the time, but I am often right and the information turns out to be untrue. No algorithm has yet been found to deal with the fact that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you. |
| Astroturfing, where a couple of troll-bots dress themselves up as a wider political movement, and sockpuppet accounts, where you create a social media profile to say the things the real you can’t, is something I’m not prepared to adopt until alternative, serviceable words are found for actual AstroTurf and actual sockpuppets. | Astroturfing, where a couple of troll-bots dress themselves up as a wider political movement, and sockpuppet accounts, where you create a social media profile to say the things the real you can’t, is something I’m not prepared to adopt until alternative, serviceable words are found for actual AstroTurf and actual sockpuppets. |
| One under-reported category is the bastard-filter, where every story you hear about your opponents leads you to believe they are complete and irredeemable bastards. I am thinking about the story alleging that Conservative canvassers were flung out of a pub in west London this week for having a meeting about how to “spin Grenfell”, but that was one of 10 bastard-filter stories that day. The Conservatives categorically deny it, but the inertia and misanthropy have set in. One day, when I work out how, I’m going to invent a bastard blocker. Only my friends, relatives and colleagues will ever see it, but that’s OK, because we will agree that we’re happier. | One under-reported category is the bastard-filter, where every story you hear about your opponents leads you to believe they are complete and irredeemable bastards. I am thinking about the story alleging that Conservative canvassers were flung out of a pub in west London this week for having a meeting about how to “spin Grenfell”, but that was one of 10 bastard-filter stories that day. The Conservatives categorically deny it, but the inertia and misanthropy have set in. One day, when I work out how, I’m going to invent a bastard blocker. Only my friends, relatives and colleagues will ever see it, but that’s OK, because we will agree that we’re happier. |
| Marx her words | Marx her words |
| This is a full but not exhaustive list of Karl Marxes, as they exist in the common consciousnethere’s the Conservatives’ Marx, who personally escorted Russians in their millions to gulags, while laughing; the economists’ Marx, who invented the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit, which may or may not be correct; and the historico-literary Marx, shifting our gaze mildly away from individual agency, towards underlying structural causes. And now, Karen Pierce, UK ambassador to the UN’s Marx, who would be turning in his grave to see the actions of Vladimir Putin, because obviously, the Russian Federation is the same as the USSR, and a kleptocratic autocracy was definitely what Marx had in mind when he wrote Das Kapital. You could rewrite all philosophy in emojis, and it couldn’t get any less sophisticated. | This is a full but not exhaustive list of Karl Marxes, as they exist in the common consciousnethere’s the Conservatives’ Marx, who personally escorted Russians in their millions to gulags, while laughing; the economists’ Marx, who invented the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit, which may or may not be correct; and the historico-literary Marx, shifting our gaze mildly away from individual agency, towards underlying structural causes. And now, Karen Pierce, UK ambassador to the UN’s Marx, who would be turning in his grave to see the actions of Vladimir Putin, because obviously, the Russian Federation is the same as the USSR, and a kleptocratic autocracy was definitely what Marx had in mind when he wrote Das Kapital. You could rewrite all philosophy in emojis, and it couldn’t get any less sophisticated. |
| Good Friday agreement | Good Friday agreement |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Women | Women |
| Mo Mowlam | Mo Mowlam |
| Poverty | Poverty |
| Social exclusion | Social exclusion |
| History books | History books |
| Social care | Social care |
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