I will admit before I came to University, I believed there was equality between the sexes. My mother never made me feel any different from my brother and, when it came down to it, I just thought my dad was little bit prudish and old fashioned when it came to him letting my brother get away with bad table manners or loud and agressive attitudes (which were my not so secret talent).
But there isn’t, not completely, not at all. And it’s one of those things, we’re so used to it that it slips through the cracks. It’s not like racism, people see that a mile off now. Not that they always did. But if you say all black people are theives and crooks deepdown, it’s obvious to everyone that you’re a racist. Where as if you say all women are housewives or their only purpose is to have offsporn and care for them, it’s sexism but most ordinary people wouldn’t even think to point it out. Not that racism and sexism are remotely the same thing on any level, but racism is lot easier to see at the moment.
Since I’ve come to Uni, I’ve really seen it. And franky it’s soul destroying. No one has respect for you, or things you do. I’ve had conversations with men who are less educated on a subject than I am and won’t admit my point is right (or even factually correct, which it is) until another man has repeated what I’ve said in full as if they’ve made it up themselves. You work three times as hard as a man at university doing art and get half the marks if you’re lucky, and not because their work is good, but because they’ve got the lecturers, who are also all men, in their pockets. As a woman, they’ll name anything you do silly and girlish, like my themes of folklore and folkmusic, but a man who does the same is creative, innovative and intelligent. My work involving the death of a character, which does happen a lot in folklore, is – and I quote – “morbid and… unconventional…” while another male student whose work is based solely on drawing cartoon corpses is “an inspiring look at the world”.
They sound like small silly things, I will admit. But they add up and I’m tired of my work and thoughts and values being discredited solely because I am woman and I have a vagina. The thing that hit me hardest though and spurred me to write this post, was that I went to the Harry Potter Studio Tour yesterday with my friend for her birthday. When we got to to the art department’s section, I looked through the wall covered in works of art and at all the names of the artists there. The wasn’t a single woman. Not one. And if there was, they definitely didn’t display her. It really hurt, I was looking at it all thinking I’d love to do this sort of thing and then realising that I obviously don’t have the right genitalia for it. And that’s not an over-reaction. From my experience of doing Art in Further and Higher Education is that there are minimal men doing it. We’ve got a year of 60 pupils and 3 of them are men and I know for a fact that it’s very similar in most other Universities. But the men alway come out on top.
I don’t want my work to be judged on the hole between my legs.
Alexandra Girardey 