On Dublin and the personhood of women.

[la_marquise]

So, a long time ago, I lived and worked in Dublin (Ireland) for a couple of years. I made some good friends, did some useful academic work and rather lost my heart to the city itself, which is the perfect size for a capital, in my opinion, anyway. Phil came out for a year, too, and it was good.
Our flight back from Dublin after Worldcon didn't go until late afternoon, so we spent the morning wandering around old haunts. My old flat on Leeson St (Upper) is still there, and, I learnt from a friendly neighbour, my former landlady, who was lovely, is still alive and doing well. The neighbourhood has gone up market, though -- fewer clubs and bars and dodgy tenements, more accountants and posh flats. Then we walked on round past the Institute where I worked, and I realised something.
I was 25 when I moved to Bublin. I'd spent the summer beforehand writing my first full novel, and the job was my first academic job. I had hopes of becoming a real person, in all sorts of ways. People told 25-year-old me that it was possible, that I might well become a respected academic, a novelist, all sorts of things.
And I did, in a sense. I worked for another decade or more in academia, published a string of books and articles, taught many many great students. I wrote another novel and a bunch of stories, three of which later sold. But none of them sold then. None of them sold until the 2000s and that was partly my fault and partly down to culture.
Because two other things happened, back then, back when I moved to Ireland. Many many people, I will stress, including all of the Irish sff fans I met and most of my colleagues at the Institute, treated me like a real person. I had many good days, many good experiences (including helping to run the first two Octocons).
But then there was the colleague who slowly, continuously, determinedly undermined my scholarship solely on the grounds that they had decided I was English. (Nota Bene: I'm not English. I'm Anglo-Welsh, and yes, that's a real thing.) There was the senior academic who attacked me in public at a seminar not on any detailed of my work but on my inherent unfitness to do that work to begin with, because, well, Insufficiently Celtic.
Now, I get it completely about how important it is for cultures that have been colonised and derided to own their own history and lore. I come from one of those myself, in part. But this person did not do this to my male, fully English colleague, only me. Because I am female, and female is not quite the same as person. And women are the soft underbelly of the perceived antagonist.
I already knew that when it came to writing, women weren't quite people in the eyes of many. I'd been in two writers' groups where this was made perfectly clear. (Not the one in Dublin, which was uniformly lovely and produced at least two other professional writers from this period.) But it was while I was in Dublin I took the first steps towards writing seriously. And fandom in the UK told me not to. Someone I trusted lit into me in public and yelled at me for daring. Someone else I trusted told me never, ever, to speak to an editor or agent at a con because I was not the kind of person who should be doing that.
And I realised that, for all I had been told up to that point, that I was only partially a person. I gave up writing (apart from fanfic) for a decade or more, and I accepted the negativity I received in academia. I did more than my fair share of admin and pastoral care, published regularly in good journals, looked out for my students, and had some lovely colleagues.
And some appalling ones.
Up until around 1998, though, I still thought I was going to turn into a person some day. I worked hard, I got good feedback from my students (students are absolutely the best thing about academia). I wrote some important articles, including one on Denmark that helped to change the field  and a book on Wales that did change the field (warning: Kari speaking well of herself. Guilt incoming). I still had two novels in a drawer and I thought about them from time to time (but didn't write original fic, because, well, I'd been told off for doing so).
Then it all came down. I was nearly 40, and I broke. It was already too late for me as an academic: I would never climb high enough, due to my gender and to that drip-drip about my insufficiency due to that English blood. Most of my colleagues were lovely, I stress, but there were one or two who made sure I knew my place. (This looks like whining, I know. All I will say is: ask me in person about what happened. I am not prepared even now to write about it where it might be seen. I will note, however, that the union were so horrified they wanted me to sue.)
And I broke, and lost my academic career. And I ceased to be a person. I had no real job. People have jobs. People without jobs... well, they not quite the same thing as *people*.
By the time I was able to start over, I was over 40. I went back to writing, and, y'know, in many many ways I succeeded. I sold a novel and it won an award. I sold a second one. The thing I had day-dreamed about since I was 6 or 7 came true and I remain profoundly grateful for that. I have been very very lucky. Twice over, because I was in the last tranche of Celticists to find any kind of job at all.
And yet, looking at the Institute in Dublin, I realised something. I realised that somehow, between then and now, I have come to accept that I am not quite, not really, a person.
Women are not fully people.
Older women are definitely not fully people.
And women are told, over and over, when they are young, to be good and wait our turn, and many of us do.
And then, one day, while the white men of our age climb up and up, and are welcomed and praised, we are told: get out of the way, it's too late for you.
More so if, like me, those women are from the Lower Orders.
Even more so, if the woman is a woman of colour.
Even more, if she lives with a disability., if she is trans or gender non-conforming or queer.

I have a fifteen  year old niece, who is smart and talented and lovely. Right now, she knowns she's a person. I want her always to know that. I want her never to wake up and realise that she no longer thinks of herself that way. Not ever. I never want her stand outside somewhere where she started out with dreams and realise that even when they come true, people can make you feel you don't deserve them.

We all should get to be people.

Comments

Skin transplant

[jacey]

Kari, you are a person. F*ck anyone who makes you think you are not. They are liars and thieves. Don't let them get away with stealing your personhood. We all see the world in different ways, and I guess I've been lucky. My chosen career was librarianship. There were forty-five women on our college course and five men. I then worked in public libraries where women outnumbered men. I ran my own department. My immediate boss was a woman, and when the chief librarian (man) retired, she got his job. I started working for myself when I had kids and I haven't had a boss since then. I am blessed with a distinct lack of f*cks when it comes to anyone who tries to belittle me. Maybe I have small woman syndrome. We go in low and hard when we need to. Maybe it wasn't always like that, but I have learned to build a thick skin over the years. Happy to offer you a skin transplant. Just call me up whenever you need to. <>

[areteus]

I like to think that I have always considered you to be a person and a highly intelligent and capable and talented one at that. I hope I have never given you or anyone the impression that this is not the case.

It probably does not help but I think a lot of this sort of behaviour is a response to feeling threatened - lashing out at the percieved threat. Which means they were likely afraid that you were a better person than they were.

Oh and I'm well into 40s and still not quite where I want to be publication wise... but then I know of one other teacher who realised post retirement was the best time for that...

[klwilliams]

When I was in college I wanted to major in math and Medieval studies, until one night I had a dream. In it, I was walking in the hallway in front of the history department, and the head of the department (who I knew and was on friendly terms with) stepped out of the door and said, "You can't major in Medieval studies. Only wonderful people can major in Medieval studies, and you aren't wonderful!" I majored in math.

I believe you, I understand you, and I wish you had sued. I finally did, after decades of similar abuse (male programmers and managers are terrified of women), and you've been to the house I bought. I have an abundance of self esteem (you've met me), which is the only thing that's kept me alive (though now I have Chaz and Mac). I always have a plan, which sometimes works out or sometimes gets abandoned (another thing that keeps me going.)

You are a person, and a wonderful writer ("Living With Ghosts" is one of my favorite books). I'm sorry about your academic career. I no longer have a programming career, though ironically that means I've risen in the ranks. You have years left to you, to write or study or teach or do whatever you want to. And if anyone says you can't, send them to me and I'll set them straight.

[antiqueight]

I can only offer a hug because I have no words. And this minor thing. I think you are wonderful and amazing and so much someone to try to live up to and emulate. And for that I can only say thank you.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I really don't know what to say because to me all people are people. I haven't had anything resembling a "proper" career, but I've never considered that makes me a non-person. It sounds as though you have run into more than your share of arrogant pricks in the past and I can see how that could easily undermine someone's confidence.

But please be assured that there are plenty of us who see you as a very interesting and erudite person who has had a varied and worthwhile career and who still has plenty of years left in which to achieve whatever you want to achieve.

[dolorosa_12]

This is heartbreaking. I'm so sorry so many people in so many different parts of your life treated you in such a dehumanising way.

(I don't know how helpful it is to hear this, but pretty much all the younger Celticists I know today and who have gone on to permanent posts in the field are women, which gives me a vicious sense of justice being partially restored, in some ways. It's not enough, and it will never make up for what happened to you, but it's not nothing.)

It's not just men

[themis1]

Yes. Sadly almost all the people who have put me down over the years have been women. My mother, who said I was too uncoordinated to go to ballet classes, and later that I should concentrate on getting married and having children. My teachers (all women), who said I was stupid, and would be lucky to get five O levels (I got 8 of the 9 I sat). The woman who read my horoscope when I was about 15 and told me I would never be a published author ... and much more recently, the woman who - who had been perfectly friendly when I was the expert to be consulted when she was stuck - on being made my boss, immediately took to gaslighting me. Every meeting, she would tell me "but did you see their faces when you said xxxx? You really shouldn't have said that." She was pretty and fragile and cried when I talked back to her. I may never recover from that last one. And no, I don't expect I will ever get a book published (the PhD thesis doesn't count, that's a self-publish).

[lamentables]

I'm sorry you had such a massive dose of all that, and I'm deeply frustrated that things don't seem to have improved. I was exposed to some of it while working on a PhD not so long ago, and I hear dreadful stories from female friends who are still academics.

[alfreda89]

Of all the people I have been privileged to meet through the medium of words, you are one of the ones whose Presence stands like a huge pillar of carved stone, marking paths and Truths. I pity the men and women with small souls who missed the glory of you. I know reading this essay that I have just begun to understand the runes of your life.

I trust that all that you are and all that you have been will be carried into a future that we can now scarcely imagine. But we will build it, and it will be worth living.

[jreynoldsward]

Read this yesterday and wanted some time to think about it. I have always been intensely aware that being female limited my options; my first college experience was at a Christian college that strongly promoted women as secondary citizens and no more back in the 70s. The feminist group I was part of was much less popular than another woman's group focusing on how best to be submissive to men.

I got pissed by the whole thing and argued/fought against being fridged. It earned me a title that I still run into today in a secular context--"filled with a spirit of controversy." I got told that by another woman who was kind of vying with me to be another woman's close friend. I thought it was hilarious then and still do now, but boy do I ever hear that one over and over. So I suppose I reflect forty-some years of arguing and fighting against male authority. Think of me as being that woman marching through life with double upraised middle fingers toward authority.

Now, as a woman writer in my 60s, I get the strong impression that particularly white men in their 40s think I should shut the hell up and go away instead of trying to be the next "overnight success" writing strong female characters. Well, they've succeeded in pushing me into self-publishing, and I doubt I'm ever really gonna make it into tradpub (every time I consider it, I run into the thought that a. discoverability isn't going to be that much easier because I'm still gonna have to do the same kind of work and b. I want more control over series and everything I think about becomes a series, more or less. Perhaps if I had a reliable standalone idea that would be different).

But most of all, I realize that yeah, from the male perspective, I am still filled with a spirit of controversy and not really a person. To which my response is...in other species it ain't the boys in charge, it's the girls, and I identify with being a strong alpha mare, even if my horse isn't that way. And I will probably still march into my grave with middle fingers strongly upraised toward authority. That's just who I am. I am one of those mouthy uppity crones, and I'm embracing that role whole-heartedly.

[madrobins]

You are one of the most Person persons I know. The people who told you otherwise have been... misinformed. And you are particularly person-like in your writing, which is wonderful. So there's that.

I hate that you were badly treated; so many of us are. I have one or two such stories, but I have mostly worked in places/jobs where my work was to make the trains run smoothly for the creative people (which is something in which I have both talent and facility).

And I have two daughters who know they are persons and are ready to take no prisoners about it, and I worry about them. But I've told them the stories I have, by way of warning and preparation. It's all I can do.

[athenais]

I am sorry they stole your academic career and sense of selfhood. My own reaction to being gaslit and treated poorly at work was always to walk away. I had no heart for the fight. But also, those were only jobs to me, not myself and you wanted that career and that recognition. So it's heartbreaking that they won.

I could tell you all day long you're a real person, but that wouldn't make a difference, would it? Unpersoning is a wicked price so many women have paid. I am deeply sorry.