Yesterday was World Book Day - a day beloved by kids and geeks of all ages. Lovely, lovely books, to be celebrated, shared and enjoyed. T'interweb was awash with it! I expected to write quite a light hearted account of my adventures in a blue wig touting a battered copy of The Tempest to teenagers, however (and feel free to skip off
now if it's not your thing) instead I've landed myself with an opinion piece. Oops.
You see,
This post has been flying around Facebook and Twitter. I'm a woman who reads, and writes. A lot. A woman who reads and writes for a living, for a hobby, and to relax. A woman who has worked damned hard for qualifications, for performance, for publication. Who feels to the very marrow of my bones that words, and access to words, are a basic human right.
The thing is, I just couldn't relate to this post at all - as a reader or a (married- so presumably OK at the whole boy-girl malarky) woman. I won't go into endless depths here, but I guess at it's crux is the idea that a (quiet, slightly dowdy) bright woman is a boon to a less-than-great partner because she can forgive, support and sort said partner out. No need for self-reflection or tough love. Indeed, if she reads, she'll internalise your faults as part of some romantic narrative. A kind of non-threatening intelligence of the ilk that stereotypes women but also perhaps patronises men. At the end, fair enough, there's a whiff of 'and don't you treat her badly' thinking- but that conclusion doesn't marry up with the indie-girl-sighing-into-her-coffee stuff throughout the main body of the piece.
Instead of dissecting it, I vented in the form of a response...
