I write letters

Tags

#phdlife

Cover letters. Applying to jobs. Every other day.

Are cover letters necessary? Couldn’t one just forward a CV? Well, in my case, I feel the need to explain why I’m still competent even though I’ve been stuyding for a PhD.

Yes, even though the PhD. It seems as if a doctoral degree is like krypton to commercial employers. I’m beginning to think I should leave it off. It seems weird that 10 years of media/corporate editing experience at some pretty good firms counts for nothing in the face of the stupidity of pursuing a research project for a little less than 3 years. Now I know what those mothers who took breaks to look after the kids feel like. Except, ironically, I never took a break to look after the kids. I never even took a break from commercial work, I kept freelancing throughout. But I guess the fact that I got accepted into a programme for abstract thinkers that very few people get accepted to makes me untouchable now?

And why do I want to go commercial again? Well, because academia will qualify you but not employ you. That is, all the jobs want teaching experience even though you just got your qualifications. It seem impossible to get even a part-time teaching job (which by the way pays less than my PhD stipend) without teaching experience. That old chicken and egg thing. The way around this is to know someone. Basically, many positions aren’t advertised, and when they are, it’s a formality and they already have someone in mind. Yet, the ad makes the poor sods out there who don’t know enough people think they actually might have a chance and so you apply (‘to the void’ as my colleague put it because noone ever replies). The only two gigs I’ve secured are through people I know, which should make me happy but makes me sad instead. These gigs pay so little there is no point celebrating them,.

Forget part-time teaching, I have not heard back from teaching assistant jobs. Maybe because it might make the actual teachers who are not PhDs insecure, I suppose.

Okay, to be fair, I still don’t have a PhD (I haven’t submitted and done the exam yet). Though honestly a PhD as a part-time teacher is overqualified. But okay. Fine. Maybe all this will miraculously change when I have that piece of paper.

But what won’t change is how little they pay. After spending 3 years, at best (at worst 5-7) on this thing, you have to spend a couple more doing part-time work or if you’re lucky a postdoc before you can actually get a job that basically pays less than my previous job correcting people’s English.

This makes me feel so angry that I want to chuck the whole dream posthaste (and I would if someone would offer me something else to do. See part on commercial sector cold shoulder). The poor pay, exploitative working conditions for part-time staff and general lack of transparency makes me want to smack the next academic who starts sanctimoniously critiquing the commercial sector.

Because you know, in the commercial sector, if you apply to advertised positions, you actually stand a chance of being considered based on your resume. Well, it seems like a better chance than in academia which really does seem to run on influence at the lower levels anyway. And that sector pays better. And you get nice tea in the pantry. For free.

This morning when I was reading a story to Mimi I was thinking that I could apply for a teaching assistant job. At a kindergarten. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

By the way, those are the jobs that seem plentiful. The teaching English. At all levels. That I am not actually qualified for, because I don’t have TESOL qualifications, but I know that doesn’t matter in the lesser institutions, if you’re the right colour. Which I’m not. Too much cafe in my au lait.

I really should have gotten a TESOL qualification if I wanted to diversify my career path (which I didn’t. I thought of the PhD as a passion project and that I would get back to editorial work after. Except the blemish of the PhD it appears is overwhelming).

When I started this job hunt, I was wracked with indecision about what I wanted to do. Ha! Now I’ll take whoever will have me.

 

 

Conference notes

Tags

#phd

It never fails to amaze me how weird academic conferences are.

At a conference I attended recently, the first session I went to, one of the presenters mumbled about logistical problems and then proceeded to read from her paper at super high speed. Yeah, people were mostly ‘reading’ not presenting. All the while she was pulling her hair in different directions.

Another panelist in an attempt to be helpful turned out the lights during the presentation so we could see the visuals. But the lights system turned out to be more complex than anticipated and for a while it was a disco in there while hair pulling woman kept on going. Instead of giving up, the guy seemed to be obsessed with getting the perfect lighting, only when he did, it was time to turn the lights back on. Turns out he was this really famous scholar too.

In another sessions, the moderator timed the sessions using a standard watch instead of a digital timer, got into a passive aggressive thing with one of the speakers, and sliced her finger across her throat to indicate that speakers had to stop, now! Then at one point in the discussion, she burst out, “Well, I’ve been clinically depressed” to complete silence.

It struck me how this would be considered totally bizarre in any other setting. But here everyone remains totally poker faces through these shenanigans. Don’t get me wrong, I kind of love it. But it does make me want to laugh out loud sometimes.

As I’ve observed earlier, people seem to come to these things in groups and stick to these groups so while there is an illusion of networking, people are just largely talking to their friends while the monitory of us who didn’t come with a posse stand around FOMOishly. When you do reach out to someone they politely spend about two minutes with you before moving on. Except in this part of the world no one passes out cards.

Nevertheless, there were some really good papers and the discussions were some of the best I’ve witnessed. My own panel attracted a small audience partly due to being scheduled early in the morning but I got a great response from those who were there, so that was lovely (and frankly a first and a welcome change from the blank looks I have sometimes been greeted with).

On the final night, there was a dance party with a full-on brass band contracted to play, and it was great! I dithered over whether to go or not, seeing as I didn’t have anyone to go with, but finally FOMO and wanting to listen to the band got the better of me and I went, and it was fun. There were people from the age of 80 down dancing up a storm. I had lengthy conversations with more people here than I had had the entire conference, and ended up getting sweaty as hell dancing, resulting in me having no clothes to wear to the conference the next day and having to attend in a flannel shirt and slightly torn jeans (which again is perfectly fine at these things. heh.). I also noticed a couple of women dragging guys onto the dance floor and then getting really flirty, while the guys looked uncomfortable. One of these was a woman who had been quite aggressive to a guy during a panel, but then I saw them going to dinner together so they had clearly made up, only then she tried to get more handsy with him and he didn’t look happy and then she left.

Overall, this was one of the best conferences I’ve been to, and I think conference should always open with a dance party.

 

 

 

 

Academia

Tags

#phd

Attended a lecture in our department by a staff member of our department. Should be cozy and nice right. Well, not quite.

Looking around the room, I wondered at how things have changed. A couple of years back, I’d have been agog with interest and enthusiasm, gearing up to contribute to an exciting discussion. Now I find myself scanning the room and struggling to keep a poker face and not to roll my eyes because I can see all the posturing.

First we are urged to come sit in the front row, but the minute some senior person walks in there’s this silent pressure to move. Or to pull out more chairs for everybody. Apparently, this is the duty of the junior people in the department. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised given the part of the world I’m in, where hierarchy still prevails, but given the discipline I’m in, I thought the point was the smash these systems. Bah.

Then, the way questions are asked to the speaker and the politics of it. If the speaker is well-liked, the questions are less acerbic. The expressions around the room less smirky. Also who gets to speak. Two years down the line I realised, there really is an order in which people should speak and students are not high up in that order.

There are a couple of people in the department I really admired when I started. I still admire them as intellectuals. But as people, not anymore. I realised they are scary fake. Realizing that gave me a shock, even though I’m quite a cynic. I didn’t realise people could pretend to be that nice and end up being the opposite. It made me take a hard look at other people and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s hard to find nice people at the professor grade or thereabouts. Maybe because academia is so cut-throat these days that they are constantly embattled. I think it was easier to find nice people in the corporate sector ironically. Or maybe I never expected much in the first place.

The junior staff are much nicer. But I realise they are on the make too. They have to be to progress. So they choose who they give their attention to, and us being students, they don’t want to be seen interacting too much with us. There are I think exactly two people who fall into this category among the many quite nice ones.

Maybe the only people one can get on with are one’s peers, if at all. Even they, I guess, one will have to watch out for because we are all competing for such a small slice of the pie? Though there seems to be some genuine camaraderie among peers.

When I look at the new students in the department, I’m reminded of myself. How naive I was in some ways. How I wanted to read everything and do everything and be everything. There is one guy who keeps citing theory after theory and babbling about how he wants to “use” this and “use” that. And I was the same. Until I realised – two years down the line – that the boring things some people were telling me was true. You can’t apply everything and many of those big names are irrelevant to a work grounded in Asia. Then another girl wants to read everything. That was me too. Until I realised there isn’t time. You need to know what you want to do and read only what is directly useful. Such is a three-year PhD. Maybe it’s different if you have the luxury of time.

I feel so jaded, similar to when I was at the end of my MA, but not as fed up with the work itself. I still love what I do, even if noone else does.

 

Snippets

Nene’s eyes seem to be settling down. On his second week of steriod drops, at least I see no redness, and the swelling is down. I hope the drops can be stopped soon, but at this moment I’m just happy to see progress.

***

I submitted my chapter. I feel so relieved, and although I have like many more to do, I can’t seem to focus on the next one.

***

I had my first squabble on the PTA whatsapp group. Someone was clearly enervated with a line of (factual) questioning I was pursuing and went: “FFS, it’s this…” Please enlighten me hear if you have any other understanding of that acronym, but as far as I know it means “for fuck’s sake” which I think is inappropriate for a parents whatsapp group. I said so, she actually jeered at me for not knowing the meaning of it, so I screencapped the Google result and since then not a peep out of her. Some people are mental really. I wish it hadn’t come to that, I was rattled that morning and it was drama I could have done without.

***

Mimi had her mid-term break and I managed to sneak in some time with her. I took her to a cafe for breakfast after dropping Nene off to school and then to the park later. She ate every scrap of the (very substandard I must say) English breakfast and later commented that it was “so fun”. Then, on the last day of her break, I took her to office with me to pick up my computer. She played with stuff on my desk while I did a spot of work, and then we went to a park near my uni, which is one of the rare ones with lots of grass and not one but five swing sets. There were no kids there so Mimi had her pick, followed up by picking up sticks, unsuccessfully trying to smash fallen almonds, and drawing in the sand. That park usually has a couple of fat cats lying around, but they weren’t unfortunately absent, possibly due to the heat.

Save

What’s been happening

Nene was sick for about two weeks. First he had red eyes, but it wasn’t itchy or runny so I ignored it but it got progressively worse so I took him to the doctor and he had a slightly stuffy nose so the doctor says it’s an infection and gives antibiotics. Now, this doctor gives antibiotics at the drop of the hat, so I’m reluctant to give it. We decide to use the eye drops and wait for a day, and I take him to another doctor who prescribes eye drops but no antibiotics even though she checks his throat. But that night he develops a fever and the next day we spot white spots on his throat – which is the first time I’ve ever been able to (I remember when I was a kid, my mum would make me open my mouth and peer inside but I’ve never been able to see anything when I did the same, until now!). So we decide to give the antibiotics, but basically he has a fever for three days and no progress, so we go back and the doctor changes the antibiotics and drops, but after another two days, he still has a fever. Now, some people are recommending I take him to the hospital but I decide to go back to the doctor and he gives yet another antibiotic.

When there’s no change overnight, I take him to the hospital and the doctor takes one look and says she thinks it’s adenovirus because of the eyes and asks me if I want to get a swab test. Which was my aim of going to the hospital. The next day we get the results and it’s a virus. Not the one she suspected, but a virus which means the antibiotics were pointless – except probably preventing a secondary bacterial infection. I’m pissed for listening to stupid doctor.

So after a week, the fever has gone, but the eye is still bad and he has a cold again. He’s been out of school for a week, and fortunately had a midterm break after so he had time to rest. Take him back to the pediatrician at the hospital and she now thinks the eye is an allergy as is the cold. She prescribes a nose spray and drops for the allergies. I give it a day or two,  go to an opthamologist, who agrees that it’s allergies but prescribes steroid drops. This finally seems to be showing some results but considering the strength of the medication, his eyes are still reddish.

I feel so sorry for my boy who has borne all of this stoically. After the opthamologist appointment, I take him to a cute little cafe in Mong Kok, just a few streets away from the craziness of the Ladies Market. In a cafe with numerous coffee choices, I pick Earl Gray and Nene has a hot chocolate. We split a ciabatta and fish and chips. The flavours are unusual, but I’m surprised that Nene tastes and likes them all. We have a lovely time decompressing and go home. I decide that I need to do a date with each child more frequently. V tends to favour cha chaang tengs for meal stops with the kids, but I’ve noticed that they do appreciate places with nicer ambience.

***

We’re into birthday season, kicked off with V’s. This year was a big one and though he insisted he wanted nothing better than to be left in peace, his sisters decided to surprise him with a trip to HK. They are the fun loving types and I warned them that he would not want to anything crazy. Unfortunately, V ended up seeing their messages on my phone and the surprise was out of the bag (though he still pretended for their benefit). We had a lovely dinner at one of our favourite Chinese restaurants on his birthday and ice-cream cake which he requested. Then it was four days of basically non-stop shopping madness with the sisters-in-law (i.e. they proceeded to buy up half of Hong Kong; we watched in bemusement and were sometimes plied with the spoils). We also had some intense conversations, and ended up sleeping at 2 am almost every night. On the weekend, we went out for a drink with friends, the boys left after a couple of drinks and we proceeded to party till 3 am. I pretty much only go dancing in Hong Kong when the SIL is in town, and though I turn my nose up at the crazy of Lang Kwai Fong, it is pretty much the only place I know to go dancing properly (rather than shaking a leg to some uber trendy stuff). It took me a week to recover from the four days that the SILs were here.

***

In between, I’ve been trying to revise and submit a paper. I had submitted a manuscript to a journal a year ago, it came back with tonnes of very useful feedback from the reviewers, requiring major revisions. I asked if there was a hard deadline, and was told that there wasn’t. One year later, I get a note saying that my submission will be deleted if I don’t resubmit within 60 days. The fact is that I would have preferred to resubmit a little later on once I had finished writing a chapter or two and got my thoughts straight in my head, but I do understand that a year is a long time. Having gone through the process halfway, I couldn’t let it go either even though there is a low chance of acceptance. So I scrambled and wrote basically a whole new paper in about a month.

***

That’s what I’ve been up to. I have a birthday coming up, then Nene has his, and then we’re off to India in December. In between, I need to write a chapter of my thesis. Oh and did I mention, I’ve started Mandarin classes?

 

 

 

Writing a PhD

I rarely write about my academic life here, but I feel I should record bits of it at least.

A lot of it is reading. Reading frenetically, with excitement, all the time. A girl who finished her PhD in Anthropology once asked me: “Are you one of those whose research i mostly sitting in a library?” Why yes. Not specifically the library, but I do read there sometimes for a change of scene. (Mostly, I tend to behave in libraries as if I’m at a buffet. I go there for one book, and come back my arms full, some of which I will not get around to reading but I can’t find it in me to return them yet).

But also, the couch in my living room, my bed, the MTR, escalotors, and of course, my office. (Actually, in my office, mostly I’m writing.)

My object of study is novels so I read those too. That’s a different kind of fun, and a built-in change of place.

I read along different, seemingly random and endless trajectories. Today, I decided I needed to define “the middle class in India”. I know that there is no easy definition but I still wanted to a) see if there was one b) if there was none, cite those people who say so. I asked my friend Curly how she would define the class the protagonist of chick lit novels in India belongs to and she said, “it’s complicated.” Ha! So Curly was in agreement with current scholarship on the subject. However, I still needed a concise and articulate explication of that.

So I found a book on the anthropology of society in India. In one essay on the body and call centres (a superb one), I found some references to the middle class. I tried to find that book but it wasn’t in our library system. I googled and found the pdf of the book online! I proceeded to read book. I should probably have just stopped at the introduction but no, that wouldn’t be me. I never stop at the introduction, because reading for me is not merely goal-oriented.

I get fascinated by things that might not necessarily be directly useful to my work and I tumble down the rabbit hole. And then at the end of that hole, I tumble down another. The problem is that while the stuff I’m reading may not be directly useful, it is always going to be indirectly useful. There is no useless knowledge. So I don’t limit myself, though I should.

I like reading theory. I try to tell myself that the theory I’m reading is relevant to my work, and again it’s hard to argue that it’s not. I want to use every theory I have read somewhere in my work, and my supervisor gently tries to tell me it’s looking like a mess. But all these ideas are so cool and I want them all.

Amid them, I have to find my own. Ideas that is. It’s hard to remember that sometimes, surrounded by all this brilliance. I would be happy to bask in it without offering a thought of my own.

Eventually, I have to dig myself out of the rabbit hole of ideas, and write something. To write my two lines or one paragraph on the middle class, I’ve read some 10 things or more things. It’s serendipitous when the paragraph I was writing before I tumbled into the rabbit hole connects nicely with the paragraph I start writing when I dig myself out.

It doesn’t always happen, and I wish the connections would make themselves or the reader would just get with the programme.

Only there is no reader right now. It’s just me.

So tell me… how do you define the middle class? Do you think the protagonist of Indian chick lit is a middle-class girl?

 

 

 

End of year

This year has really sped by hasn’t it? Or at least the last semester has (I think in semesters now, maybe that’s why things seem to speed by so. Though even the summer went by in a blur).

I like to take stock, but the danger of taking stock is that you only remember the things that happened fairly recently and are fresh in the mind. Luckily, I have this blog and so I can go back and read posts for the year, and luckily, I didn’t post much this year so I assume those are the significant things that happened in the year. Soooo:

1. Biggest improvement of the year: My marriage

One of the big things that seems to be on the mend towards the end of this year is the marriage. It surprises me sometimes when the cliches turn out to be true, because I always think I’m more complicated than the cliches. But in all honestly, a big stress on our marriage was having two kids in quick succession coupled with a more stressful job situation for V. And the thing that seems to have helped me get over the years of assholery was him actually apologizing for being horrible. As I said to him, I’m not sure this will do the trick, that I can or even want to be the person I was, but if you keep apologizing, out of those many times, you may sound sincere in a few of them and I may believe you. The next step is to actually change the obnoxious behaviours and he has done that to a great extent, though it never really felt real until the apology. Of course, we have both changed in this process, the slate can’t entirely be wiped clean, but we have rediscovered how to enjoy time with each other and how to fight less, which is progress.

2. Biggest zen of the year

My holiday to Dublin and Cork, Ireland. I have not traveled for ages, and I have never traveled entirely alone. Ireland is also a place I’ve always wanted to visit. Apart from the visa drama, the whole trip was beautiful. The place was as beautiful and friendly as I imagined, I loved my little room in the B&B I picked after much drama, I met some nice people at the conference, and I came back refreshed even though I had flown some 20 hours each way.

3. Biggest low of the year

The debacle at the conference in Indonesia and being told my project was pointless. I recently gathered up the energy to tell my supervisor about it, and she was very nice and encouraging.

4. Biggest challenge of the year

Mimi’s tantrums. I have turned into a mum who loses it and yells. I’m often at my wit’s end with this girl, though at the start of the year, I accepted that  I was going to bear the brunt of her intense personality. MinCat tells me that from her niece’s experience, this too shall pass and I hope it does. In the meantime, we don’t have a strategy, but challenging her head on is not working.

5. Biggest change of the year

My attitude to money. I have pared down my spending a lot, and particularly in terms of eating out, I am very sensitive to value for money. Last night, we went to an Indian restaurant in Central, which itself should have tipped me off, but I checked their menu online and the prices seemed ok, but when we went there, it turned out to be one of those overpriced chi chi places which made me feel really stupid because I’m going to India next week.

I also can usually walk by shops without feeling the urge to buy anything. I do have my shopping binge moments, but once a year is acceptable I think. The next one will come on in India.

6. Biggest achievement of the year

Fitness and weight loss. I lost a tonne of weight thanks to being ill, and then I followed up by starting a running-yoga-swimming routine. While the swimming has stopped because it’s too cold, I’ve kept up the running and once-a-week yoga and I’m pleased with how I look. This month, V finally got on board and started exercising a couple of times a week with me, which is something I’ve wanted him to do for ages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Le Birthday

I recently celebrated a milestonish birthday. Let’s just say it didn’t end with the big 0, but halfway there. My group of girlfriends were meant to mark this momentousish occasion in Bali, but alas a volcano foiled our plans. So we were left to our individual celebrations.
It turned out my sister-in-law and nieces were to be here during my birthday. So I had a readymade plan. My birthday weekend commenced in Disneyland, which I am only a little ashamed to say I love. Considering we were going back after a couple of months, we really should have bought an annual pass (as V could not stop grumbling). However, I could not deprive the kids of the chance of seeing Disneyland with their cousins. It turned out to be the best possible weather, a little overcast with a hint of cool and no rain, and strangely, a lack of crowds and queues. So even though the nieces covered very little on the half day they were there before us, we covered a lot together on Day 2, thanks in no small part to what the sister in law referred to as my Disbey dictator tendencies whereby I marched everyone around in a predetermined order. As usual, from Tw moment I met the nieces, I became the Pied Piper with three children hanging off me at any point.

Also, thanks to many not-so-subtle hints, V got me the coveted mouse ears as a birthday gift. Alas, there is no being an adult and laying claim to the ears when there are kids around. My precious ears were appropriated almost immediately by Mimi who decided they were hers and what’s more, it was her birthday (the whole thing about having her birthday last is not going down well with the Meems). Then, oldest cousin Lala had her turn, and I only got to wear them before bed at night. Harumph.

However, I highly recommend them. At one point, V was arguing with me and he just gave up and said: “I can’t take you seriously in those ears.” Honestly, the Israel-Palestine conflict could be resolved if Netanyahu and Abbas donned a pair. Anyhoo, I digress.

The night before my birthday, I went out dancing with the sister-in-law, the bestie in Hong Kong, her sister-in-law and another girl who was scandalized by our behaviour. I have not been dancing and/or to Lang Kwai Fong in ages, but I got into the spirit of things quite quickly. One lychee martini helped speed up the process, which then had to be slowed down by an enormous bottle of mineral water and fries. Let us just say that we got home at 3.30 am.

Even more astonishingly, we actually woke up and went to the beach at 9.30 am, the day of my birthday. There was a typhoon in the Philippines and the waves were crazy rough but we had a lovely time nevertheless. Nothing like four munchkins collecting ‘special sand’ to rub over your legs to make you feel special.

V went out of his way to get me my desired very chocolate cake from Agnes B, which has been polished off at leisure all week. The candles however were blown out by Mimi and Nene.

The day ended with a huge pizza dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. We got a table overlooking an ice rink with extra space for the kids to move around though Nene still pissed off a neighbouring guest by bumping into her chair and thereby stressed me out. And then Nene slammed his finger in the toilet cubicle door. Oh well.

I have to say it was a lovely birthday. It has been one hell of a year emotionally. On the one hand, the PhD was going swimmingly, until most recently when I had a dreadful fall down to earth. On the other, the marriage was going not so swimmingly, but in the last month we seem to have simmered down and dare I say, made our peace? I feel like I’m finally getting off a rollercoaster and not a moment too soon.

PhD life

This semester, now that things have slowed down thanks to having just one course to take instead of two and a half, I’ve been getting into the groove as a PhD student. Two months into the semester, here are my thoughts on being a fulltime student:

1. I’m a student, but it’s more like I’m a freelancer in terms of working style. I have tonnes of stuff to do, but have to set my own pace. And I’m liking that. Especially once I bit the bullet and started coming in to office every day, even if I don’t have a class. I may do some faffing (like right now), and spend time and money on travel, but net net more gets done.

2. For a person who falls sick like me, having the flexibility to take time off and rest or work from home and take a nap and eat healthy is amazing. I could really get used to this. The more I do it, the more I think how tyrannical regular office hours are.

3. One of the things that scared me about embarking on a PhD is the loneliness of it all. You may have coursework but not much. And you may or may not meet your fellow students because their timings may not match yours. Doing my PhD in my home city where I have family and friends works out very well for me. I actually have a friendly cohort of fellow PhD students in the department and we do hang out, but it’s usually once a month or lunch once a week. I would probably be lonely and anxious about friendships, feelings which my MA experience taught me I don’t deal well with. I can see some of these same feelings in one girl who has come here from another country and doesn’t have an established friends circle. I would like to hang out more with her, but being a mum I have too many other commitments.

4. I get half the money I used to and cutting back on my expenditure has been a cause of some stress between V and me. Well, that aspect has always been. The fact is that I have more money than my fellow PhD peeps, thanks to my earlier job and savings and the buffer of husband. But it helps to hang out with people with thinner wallets when you’re trying to save.

5. I have always held back from hanging out too much with the intellectual set because they seemed so intense, and part of me felt I couldn’t measure up or sustain that intensity. Obviously doing a PhD means I’ve picked a side, though I’m still deeply into pop culture and silliness with my girls. I do find that running with the geeks is fun though. And I’m pretty smart.

6. Attended my first mini conference. It was grad students seminar with visiting students from Korea. The students were Masters students so a bit of a mismatch there. But I realised I can hold my own with the professors in attendance. I asked some good questions, if I may say so myself. If I had one problem it was talking too much. The other thing that surprised me (apart from feeling so high on bouncing around abstract ideas) was how flustered I felt while giving my five minutes (yes, absurdly short but that was the conference format) presentation. My friends told me I did well, but I wish I could not have felt that nervous in the moment.

7. People warned me about being the absent spouse once I started a PhD. V soon began complaining about how much I was reading. It has taken him a while to really wrap his head somewhat around the fact that it has to be done. For my part, I think  I read less than I should be as a result of having a family. Weekends and public holidays, for example are a complete washout. It’s an odd feeling to want to work on a weekend.

On philosophy

Last semester I took a course on a male philosopher that was pretty much a glorified reading group. You know how much I loved that. I didn’t have a problem with the reading group part. Something else bothered me throughout the sessions that I couldn’t quite articulate. While everyone else seemed to be nodding along wisely, I kept hearing “this is bullshit” in my head. Partly, I think people (including myself) did not quite understand the text. But also, I think people did understand and found it all A-okay and for me that was the most disquieting part.

Also, once, while waiting for someone to arrive, a discussion started about Bill Cosby, after which the three men in the room decided to play and listen to rapt nostalgia some Cosby segment about pudding, ostensibly so they could discuss whether it presaged the fact that he was/is a monster. As the only woman in a small room with three men and only the voice of a rapist to punctuate the silence while my companions hummed with pleasure at his humour, I was deeply uncomfortable. And yet, I did nothing except smile tightly. As we women are want to do.

Anyhoo. This is not about my discomfort about being a situation that is par for the course for a woman. It is about philosophy.

I subscribe to a non-essentialist position on gender. Pretty much, I believe both sex and gender to be the same thing, and a discursive construct. This stance poses problems for a feminist, because if ‘woman’ is a construct then how can we (?) organize any activism around the category. Quite simply, how to fight for women when ‘woman’ does not exist? (Or anything really – this is the postmodern dilemma.)

Actually, no one said ‘woman’ does not exist. Just that it does not exist as a natural category. We are born women only as much as this category is applied at birth or thereabouts.

So yeah, people – including feminists, because there is a strain of psychoanalystic (sometimes known as French) feminism that argues forcefully for difference – going variations of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus make me roll my eyes so much I get an instant headache. Now that I have kids I hear this on a daily basis. Sometimes, like talking about the weather, such nonsense slips out of my own mouth. It’s hard to resist as a conversation starter because people seem to love this line of discussion – how little boys and little girls are sooo different, and you can’t change it. Hint: it’s the latter part of the sentence I have the most problems with.

This semester I’m taking a gender class and the professor is slightly on the lines of the psychoanalytic feminists, in providing examples of difference that if not clearly paraphrased as constructed might be seen to be inherent. And I can see those of us who are on the Judith Butler side of things biting our tongues.

But today, something happened in class that triggered an epiphany of sorts. The men in the class have been grimly silent. They are not there out of choice – except for gay guy as is the norm – but because the course is semi-mandatory. Today, the presentation was by a guy with a philosophy background and focused on epistemological questions and suddenly the boys came alive.

One of them paraphrased his comment by suggesting that our discussions so far have been superficial and missing the point. I hope that something was lost in translation, but sadly I don’t think so.

Then, another guy commented that the presentation case was not about epistemology but about ethics. I asked him whether they could be separated – because all the readings thus far are making the opposite argument – and he said, yes, of course. Epistemology deals with knowledge that is ‘out there’. Truth is debatable but facts are facts. Ahem.

The point is not whether you, dear reader, know what epistemology is. The point is that the only thing that animated these guys was discussing whether a particular question was epistemological or ethical, i.e. discussing which category said question fit into, because of course that is the most important thing.

In retrospect, I want to laugh because the three of them were a living breathing demonstration of exactly what our readings have been arguing – that there is a philosophical tradition of knowledge that is (male) gendered and that this gendered tradition has been universalized and other ways of knowing silenced. And, I might add, that this is a violence. But it can only be experienced as such if you are undergoing the silencing. The speaking subject will be waffling on about epistemology versus ethics.

In the moment though I just felt deeply unsettled. Which anyone who is marginalized feels, enhanced by the irony of this happening in a gender class (which might be the only place it is okay to feel such because usually it is the other gender that feels marginalized).

This brings me to sex/gender. We have been talking about paradigms ( based on Thomas Kuhn’s ideas, which I am yet to read in the original) and how science is only one paradigm of knowing. I didn’t find this very exciting because most of us know this.

Then watching these guys, being so “male”, it struck me. If there is a masculine gender it is really this – the desperate need for the detached clinical stance, categorization and objectification. The body is irrelevant, anyone who functions within this paradigm, could be said to be “masculine”. Usually, people who function within this paradigm are what we understand as biologically male, and there are some interesting psychoanalytic theories about why this is so, based not so much on biology but infant psychosocial development. (The ‘social’ part hints that this is so for our time, but need not be so forever if society changes sufficiently, but that is easier said than done because the whole thing is like a vicious cycle.) In this sense, yes, there is an essential masculine and feminine and thus far, most people conform to this so exactly because the imprint is so deep.

This is not a value judgement on the masculine paradigm. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with it. It could be very helpful. The problem is the universalizing of what is just a paradigm and the erasure of all other possible paradigms.

If you function in another paradigm – one of which could be emotional (or “affective” as we say in fancy academic circles) or relational or experiential, all of which have been associated with the feminine/female – then you may feel the violence of that silencing. “May” because most of us have bought into the idea of one-and-only-one good way (the desire for one and only one is also typical of the masculine paradigm. First principles. Simple and elegant. All that.)

To discuss this violence is not “superficial”. It can only be superficial to those who do not experience it or empathize with it. The same people who dismiss women as the eternal victims and mourners would never dare tell a black persons that it’s trivial to spend time on seeing how conceptual categories erase their very existence. Or maybe they would. After all, the highest level of thought is abstraction.