women

  • Men, women and paper

    Photo by Kelly Sikkema

    It is often said that history is written by the victors, the powerful – and that they are men. But have you ever considered what they were writing on? Paper has a history of its own, revealed to me by Madeleine Killacky in History Today (December 2022).

    Papermaking involved beating rags collected in the rag trade, before stretching, pulping, soaking, heating and drying them. Finished paper also had to be coated in a gelatin-based emulsion, made from boiled up animal parts, to prevent ink-blots. And most of this work was done by what Killacky repeated calls “low-status women”.

    Highbrow and low-status

    How many of history’s great historians, I wonder, wrote their histories on paper made by these “low-status women”? Almost all of them, we can assume. Which paints – or scribes – a rather different portrait of history.

    Every narrative of victory, every male-centred gaze upon the great moments that have defined great men, were all written upon pure white paper beaten into being by the sweat of “low-status women”.

    Hidden histories

    This is not a unique tale, of course. That paper was made from rags, not trees as I had always imagined, is revealing of other layers of unseen history: that of ethnic minorities. Jews thrived in the trade of schmatta (rags), while their history remained hidden to the wealthy and literate of London and New York.

    Paper pulp from trees wasn’t first achieved until 1800 in Germany. It wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that tree-based paper became the norm, allowing such limitless amounts to be made that we could even start wiping our bums with it.

    Before that, the laborious rag trade was the only route to a nice, bright white piece of paper, ready for the quill to hit it. I’ll never see a blank piece of paper the same again.

    And fast forward to today – what hidden stories lie behind the ice white screen on which this post is typed?

    Talking of words and letters, ever wondered where ‘Zed’ comes from?


  • Men and boats

    (Photo by Howard Roark)

    Sailing big yachts around the marinas of the world is almost exclusively the preserve of couples of a certain age. And captaining that yacht is – according to my eagle-eyed research – entirely the preserve of the man.

    It’s the end of another yachting season where I live in Malmö’s Dockan marina. That means a marina that lies dormant half the year has been full of yachts with Danish, German, Dutch and Polish flags.

    The economics and time constraints of this hobby mean that you appear to have to be a 50+ couple to even contemplate it. Almost every boat has aboard a man and a woman enjoying their silver age upon the high seas.

    Ahoy there, captain!

    And as they glide into the marina, without fail it will be the woman that stands at the bow, rope in hand, ready to leap nimbly to dockside like a good first mate and secure the yacht. At the wheel will be the captain. The male captain.

    We all know about male drivers – the propensity of husbands to drive the car. This is the almost unspoken collusion whereby the role of driver and passenger become cemented in a marriage. But this stereotype is no longer an absolute in the automobile.

    Yet in yachting, which is, after all, a higher end of the market, with much bigger, shinier and more expensive vehicles involved, the need/desire/inevitability of the man holding the helm appears unshakable.

    I’m still waiting eagerly for the first time I see a man clutching that bow rope, his wife eyeing the horizon with a steady eye as she nudges the ship’s wheel to port. Still waiting… here’s hoping…

    On the subject of men and women, have you heard about ‘mansplaining’? Let me mansplain…


  • I can explain everything

    (Photo by Dainis Graveris)

    This week, I came across the term ‘mansplaining’ – a great word for that tendency of men to explain things to women, including what women think. 

    An article in Prospect magazine cited Rebecca Solnit as having popularised the term in a 2008 essay about a man she met at a party in Aspen who explained her own book on the Victorian photographer Eadweard Muybridge to her. 

    The notion immediately brought to mind the brilliant ‘Amazing Invisible Woman’ sketch in The Fast Show in which a woman suggests a solution to a practical problem to a group of men (often involving cars or directions). She’s met by silence. Then one of the men repeats her advice word-for-word, and is heard!

    Early years learning

    This tendency isn’t simply the preserve of adult males. We start ‘em young. On repeated viewing of the Netflix series If I were an Animal (a generally brilliant programme, I hasten to add) with my five-year-old son, I began to notice a pattern. 

    The narrators are two children, a slightly older boy and a slightly younger girl, interacting as a brother and sister. They talk about the animals’ lives rather like young David Attenboroughs. But I began to notice that the boy almost always provided the information. 

    The girl would give each animal a name, say ‘awwwh, isn’t she cute?’ a lot, and generally gush and giggle at their antics. She would also ask lots of helpful questions: ‘Why is that snow leopard digging a hole, Tim?’ To which her brother would provide the insightful science. ‘Well, Emma…’

    After reading the Prospect article on Rebecca Solnit, I realised this innocent little dialogue has a name: mansplaining. 

    While we’re talking about little boys, turns out Boys Don’t Like Flowers