Never expect another person to support you. This will free you. Find your purpose, or purposes, and live a life of meaning. Work hard to achieve financial independence, and buy a small place to live in as soon as you can.
Walk lightly on the earth. Be at peace with God. Never mock another person’s beliefs. Allow yourself, and other people, to make mistakes. Accept your family for their frailties. Love your brother, as he will always be your greatest ally. Stare down bullies and don’t walk past people in pain. But allow yourself to be vulnerable. Cultivate a sense of humour. Show mercy to yourself as well as others. Look at the world, and try to shift obstacles blocking other people’s paths to equality and contentment, as well as your own.
When in doubt, uncertain of yourself and frustrated by everything, focus on other people. We have a saying in my family: ‘Some people are penthouse people and some people are basement people.’ In other words, encountering friends, or strangers, can be like hopping into a lift. By the end of a conversation, or time together, you might feel lighter, happier, cheered. That’s a person who takes you to the penthouse. Or you might feel strangely flattened, a bit down. That’s a person who has taken you to the basement. Your Pa, your Nan and your uncles are the former. You, too, should be a penthouse person: uplift people and show them love; don’t be quick to judge or criticise; look for the best in everyone; and remember what it is you share.
Lend a hand to anyone who needs it, and stand by those who are being trolled, or picked on.
Always buy the underpants that match the bras — without guilt. Accumulate, slowly, beautiful or sturdy furniture, and surround yourself with things that you love. Delight in generosity, learn its joy. Pray, or meditate, often. Find the kind of art that thrills you, and drink it in. Dance as often, and for as long, as you like. Inhale music.
Be fair. I know I have told you this so many times, but truly: treat other people the way you want them to treat you. Unless they are hurting you, being cruel to someone, or making people suffer, in which case you should run to safety or wither them to sticks with one of your stares.
Know you are loved. When you were born, the world rebooted and my heart permanently cracked open. It was like you had suddenly darted out of a portal from another world and landed on my chest, immediately staring into my eyes. You were instantly formed: stubborn, funny, flamboyant and confident, you defied anyone to stand in your way. I was wheeling you around Central Park when you said your first word — dog! — and I held your hand when you wobbled your way to your first steps.
You were never interested in crawling; you went straight up from the floor and into the world. I marvelled, still do. I rode behind you in Paris when, even aged just eleven, your feet didn’t touch the ground when you rode a bike along cobbled streets. It didn’t deter you; you used walls as your brakes.
You have taught me so much. About certainty, confidence, style and first-guessing. When you went through a lengthy phase of wearing your shoes on the wrong feet (mostly by accident), if anyone upbraided you, you’d stare back and say, ‘That’s Poppy style.’
You are so loved for exactly who you are.
Know that being a woman is magnificent. Soon you will be a young woman, blazing away on the Earth. Remember — as I learnt from the ‘old ladies’ at Garma — that your elders and ancestors give you an authority; the authority of being female in this world. Of being strong and certain and bold. Of being able to create and nurture life. There are a million ways to be a woman: find your own and revel in it.
Shrug off anyone who would tell you to be less than you are. But perhaps I don’t need to worry about that. A moment ago, I sent you a text message asking you if there was anything I needed to know about your day and you replied, ‘Yeah you need to know that I am awesome.’ And I wondered if — or hoped that — this might be the beginning of you demanding not praise, but respect.
Chapter 12
Own Your Authority
IT HAD NEVER OCCURRED to me to add ‘PhD’ to my name on Twitter until I was slammed for mentioning that I had one.
In February 2018, I was tweeting about the media’s different treatment of the private lives of male and female politicians when someone snarled back, ‘And you have evidence of this or are you just being a bitter old sexist?’
‘Yes, I have written a PhD on the subject,’ I replied. ‘So it’s Doctor Bitter Old Sexist, mate.’
The response blew me backwards. Not from those who got the joke, but from those who took offence at the fact that I said I had an advanced degree in history — one that took several years of solid slogging for little financial reward.
Those were years marked as much by isolation and self-doubt as by discovery and original research. In the last few months of writing my thesis — which I did while working full time as a journalist — my hair began to shed in sheets.
Three times, I consulted a doctor who told me the only thing that would prevent my going bald was finishing my degree. No pressure.
For many years, I was not sure whether it was worth it. But nonetheless, I remain proud of my PhD because I persisted and completed it. So I was fascinated to discover that, years later, some viewed the degree not as a sign of expertise but as a provocation, a pretension. I was repeatedly told on social media that I was an elitist snob, that PhDs were worthless and did not prove anything, that five years of research were simply my ‘opinion’, that no one cared, that doctorates were no sign of intelligence and that I should be ashamed of myself. I immediately changed my name on Twitter to ‘Dr Julia Baird’.
And lo, every few days, someone — almost exclusively male — would tweet to say I was arrogant and stupid and that it would be in my best interests to take it down. One guy called Jim Ball posted: ‘Perusing @bairdjulia Twitter feed, yes we get that you have a PhD, Julia. Well done. But you reveal an underlying insecurity appending it to your Twitter handle.’
A host of academics then chimed in, with a large number of women revealing that they, too, had been taunted for using their titles, while many men who had not received such criticism were baffled. Dr Alan Nixon, a researcher in the sociology of religion at Western Sydney University, said, ‘I’ve had Dr in my profile name since 2015 and have never been questioned on it.’ Dr Stephen Maclean, an anatomy lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, wrote, ‘I had no idea doctorate-shaming was even a thing!’
Shortly afterwards, a British historian, Dr Fern Riddell, had a similar experience. On 13 June, reacting to a decision by The Globe and Mail to restrict use of the title of ‘Dr’ to medical practitioners (since overturned), Riddell wrote on Twitter, ‘My title is Dr Fern Riddell, not Ms or Miss Riddell. I have it because I am an expert, and my life and career consist of being that expert in as many different ways as possible. I worked hard to earn my authority, and I will not give it up to anyone.’
A David Green immediately responded that her comments could ‘legitimately be regarded as immodest’. A man called Warren Whitmore said Riddell had ‘shown extreme disrespect toward white men (who are generally far more useful to society than female academics)’ and that she would have to refuse help from a ‘white male fireman’ if her house were burning down. This response, she responded, left her ‘crying with joy’. (It should be pointed out that Dr Riddell’s area of expertise is sex and suffrage, and she has written a book about a woman who was both an arsonist and a suffragist.)