Blog # 77 …January 2018

Welcome to 2018 and whatever ups and downs it brings us.   As I was wondering how to start the new year blog, I saw a production of Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of no Importance and decided to weigh in on what‘s going on in that department…women and their importance. We’ve been inundated with hash tags the past few months... MeToo and now MeToo, NowWhat? TimesUp and from the guys - JustListen. Women all over the world walked last week-end to call attention to the crap deal they’ve been dealt - whether their personal issue was sexual harassment or racial justice, workplace fairness or pay equity, reproductive freedom, migrants’ rights or the whole mess together.

I first met Oscar Wilde in 1957 on the pages of The Picture of Dorian Gray and have re-visited him from time to time as I turn to books to find some sense in life.  “Mere words! Was there ever anything so real as words?” And, “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.” Still words to live by.

The themes in the play (written over a century ago) are still with us - how women are admired, feared, valued and despised, sometimes all at once. We’re still in a state of moral complexity and need to retreat from a black/white, good/bad stance and get comfortable with ambiguity; it seems to be here to stay. It’s some of the status quo that needs to change.

A few days later I heard a promo for a doc called Mummy Wildest, about females in the animal world - did you know that elephant societies value grandmothers most because they remember where the water holes are?  Another item reported that elder abuse in care homes had doubled in the past decade. Then I heard a centre for philanthropy announce a study that found qualities like empathy and generosity have declined markedly in the past dozen years.   In the UK, Theresa May announced a Ministry of Loneliness…see any connections here?

What to do…how to proceed in the never ending quest for justice and equality.  One specific thing,  in the interests of leveling the playing field, is supporting women running for public office.  I have immense sympathy for all women suffering workplace harassment, but women in politics have an extra dose, with death threats often thrown in and sometimes carried out. We need to keep our eyes open for that and stand with them. We can elect some wonderful women to decision making roles, some mediocre ones too, just like it is with the guys.


Although it was a bit predictable and got a laugh, I flinched at Wilde’s last line in the play “He is a man of no importance” Men are in a precarious state and we need to move to a more nuanced position, we’re all important - to ourselves and to each other.