The fracas incited hundreds of academic women to add ‘Dr’ to their name on Twitter, and the hashtag #immodestwoman spread globally.
Previous generations of women demanded entry to parliaments, churches, boardrooms, temples, universities, pubs and courts. In many ways, the online realm is the next frontier, a place where we are demanding to speak without abuse. We might not be physically chaining ourselves to fences while anticipating the arrival of the police, but we do opine in a space where we anticipate attack.
It’s not just about women: the disturbing tendency to dismiss academic and especially scientific expertise as bias, or elitism, is at high tide, and climbing. Witness public debate with regards to juvenile detention, domestic violence, medical requirements of asylum seekers, taxation — anything really, but most especially climate change. Men and women alike can find their (needless to say, non-partisan) research and experience dismissed as ideological barracking, though in some ways it is particularly acute for female academics who are often casually, or perhaps unconsciously, stripped of status. Women regularly report being called professor, and even reverend, less frequently than male counterparts, and research has shown that female physicians are called ‘Doctor’ less often than male doctors are. A 2017 analysis of introductions of speakers at medical gatherings found that about half the times a man introduced a woman to the group, he did not use her title, but he used it for men more than 70 per cent of the time.
It is these markers that indicate respect and an acceptance of authority. And it is these markers that can also be tiny plinths we occasionally mount to add our voices to the cacophony of words in public debate.
For centuries, the voices of women have been muted, discounted and minimised. Our right to speak has been questioned, our power undermined, our authority mocked. The cultural underpinnings of this run deep in church and state, and still erupt grotesquely online. We are regularly told to apologise, to shrink, to shut up, to expect physical abuse, to kill ourselves. Now this is occurring with even greater — and more frequent — ferocity. I used to think the best response was to periodically retreat and be quiet. But now I think we need to own those online spaces, which are an increasingly important part of the public square, to blaze and burn, and to swarm and support each other en masse, in vigilante hordes.
And in an era of ‘fake news’ allegations, when the expertise of scientists, lawyers and academics is regularly ignored and downplayed, I’d encourage men — and especially the too often unheard introverts — to participate and own their qualifications, too. In an era of global erosion of trust in institutions, we must work to maintain and protect trust in evidence and expertise.
Of course, you don’t need a title to speak. But if you do have one, use it. Find your voice, and raise it. Stake your authority, and state it. Don’t recoil. Don’t back down. Sometimes authority should be worn lightly. But at other times — especially once you have worked out what it is you want to say about justice, or joy, or in response to the nonsense that can sometimes pass as public debate — it should be brandished like a torch. It might take you decades to speak up about things that matter to you, but, being able to speak your truth is a vital part of being human, of walking with certainty and openness on the earth, and refusing to be afraid. Once you have found your voice, you must resist every person who will tell you to bury or bottle it.
PART III
Walking Each Other Home
The art of friendship: ‘I am here’
Author Ram Dass was born Jewish, but he considered himself an atheist until he began experimenting with hallucinogenics with psychologist and writer Timothy Leary. Dass, known as Richard Alpert before an Indian guru gave him a new name, claimed that he ‘didn’t have one whiff of God until I took psychedelics’. He went on to explore a host of the globe’s spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, karma yoga, Sufism, Hinduism and Judaism. But it is possible Dass will be remembered most for just one sentence he uttered: ‘We are all just walking each other home.’ It’s a beautiful idea, and it’s true.
It would be impossible to write a book about the things that sustain you when the world goes dark and not mention one of the greatest of these: friendship. Meeting wonderful people is luck; keeping them in your life takes thought, care, forgiveness and devotion. Friendship is an art and a gift, and some people are brilliant at it. Best friendships can last from kindergarten to the nursing home, almost unchanged, and somehow keep you laughing. Being able to walk alongside the companions of your childhood, or youth, throughout your life, is a profound experience.
My friend Jo, who loves music, food and self-deprecation, and is one of the funniest people I know, met me for dinner at a Greek restaurant near my home recently. We drank red wine and talked about a book I had just given her, the novel Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, about the last woman to be condemned to death in Iceland in 1829, for an alleged murder. In the final pages, a priest called Toti rides alongside the condemned woman, Agnes, as she trudges to her death on her horse. Agnes is shaking and chattering uncontrollably with cold and fear, unable to move her legs when she climbs off. Toti says to her, repeatedly and simply: ‘I am here.’
Jo began to cry as she spoke about the grace of the scene, and I realised that was what she had tried to tell me when she took weeks of carer’s leave after my operations and sat next to me in different hospitals, watching me sink into pain then emerge again, looking haunted and half-dead, then staying at my house, cooking and trying to persuade me to eat, just to get me through another day: ‘I am here.’
Sometimes it can be hard to be a companion, carer or witness. But I will never forget those who were there and their concrete loyalty, and those who are there still.
And yet when I think about my friendship with Jo, I think mostly of joy. So much of it is defined by laughter, dancing, unending conversation and escapes to a small fishing village on the NSW South Coast, where we explore the cliffs and deserted beaches of the untamed national park, climb over shipwrecks rusting on rocky shores, paddle along rivers and through mangrove swamps, and feast on freshly caught fish under wide skies as my kids explore rockpools.
We owe so much to our friends, each with their own story: those who have known us since we were children, those who joined the band along the way, those we met only fleetingly but who still stay with us, those who somehow manage to keep us alight. These people are the crossbeams of our resilience. Without them, I honestly do not know how I would live.
Chapter 13
Freudenfreude: Sharing the Joy
JANE FONDA TOLD VANITY FAIR that her female friends ‘keep starch in my spine’. So do mine. Which is why I have never understood why some people hold onto a stubborn, unbending belief that women secretly loathe each other, and will scrap and brawl at the slightest provocation — catfight! I am not sure why this myth persists when female friendships are mostly incendiary, bulletproof and enduring.
An Australian woman once wrote a book purporting to reveal ‘the truth about female competition’, as though she were lifting the lid on a putrid worm farm. When I read these words I was stunned:
Most women know, that as soon as their back is turned their female friends are checking out the size of their arse. If it’s grown then it will be discussed amongst the other women in the group with glee. If it’s shrunk then all sorts of hypotheses will be discussed. She’s bulimic, no, she’s on cocaine, she’s having an affair, no, she’s definitely a lesbian, can you pass the cake? Gossip is powerful. Considered a form of female bonding, it involves . . . enjoying the short-lived glee of Schadenfreude and passing moral judgment on fellow females.