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.
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